ALL things Basketball with freebies!

Are you a basketball fan?  We definitely are in my house, but I also know that my students were all gaga about basketball too.  I am a huge advocate of tapping into what kids are into and taking advantage of that excitement.  My personal kids wanted to learn more about the schools that are in the Sweet Sixteen so I made this ABC order.   

Not too long after I started working on this ABC Order I received a request from Emmie's teacher for a few centers.  So voila!  Here they are!  Okay, really there was no voila.  More like 2 1/2 days of nonstop work! HA!

These centers are a combination of challenge/review to get those kids ready for end of the year assessments.  I also have to say that aesthetically they are some of my favorites yet!

For Math:

Fractions

Money to Five Dollars

Perimeter/Area

Multistep Word Problems

Time to Five Minutes

3D shapes

I am very aware that a couple of these centers are above what is expected of 2nd grade.  I marked 2nd/3rd on TPT for a reason.  These are definitely meant to stretch your on grade level to above grade level students.  You know your students best and you know what they are ready for!

For ELA:

Onomatopoeia

Homophones

Genre Sort 

Parts of Speech in the sentence

BBall Vocabulary

Ending Phonics Patterns (-ble, -dle, -tle)

The Basketball Centers are on sale for HALF off until Friday morning!

You know I can't write a blog post and NOT give you book recommendations.

Have you read Salt in His Shoes {affiliate Link}?  It is one of my favorite books about perseverance.  Kids love Michael Jordan (especially if you show them MJ's TOP 10 dunks on Youtube).

I also LOVE the book Basketball Belles.  It is a fantastic book on its own, but especially relevant during Women's History Month! You can find lesson plans for Basketball Belles HERE.

You can even see a SUPER fast snippet of Storybook STEM in action from Chloe's awesome class. So cute!

You can find a FULL week's worth of lesson plans for Salt in His Shoes HERE!  Amy also has this fantastic graphing freebie for a whole class lesson below.  You can can snag that by clicking on the picture!

13

Tennis Top It!

One of my students' favorite games ever is Top-It! This game has always been one of my store's best sellers, but I have to admit I would cringe when it would sell because it was so ugly! Ha!  Well that all changed because today she got a MAJOR facelift! 

I am super excited about this part of the update.  There is an instructions/prep page for the teachers and then there is a Student Instructions page.

The Educlips graphics are perfect and I love the card game style learning!

I also have a recording sheet, but this is a completely optional aspect to the game. 

You can find it in my store by clicking on any of the images!  Have a great weekend y'all!

34

More Two Digit Addition Freebies for West Coast Buddies

Tomorrow is Friday! Wahoo! This week has flown by!  My fantastic teaching partner Cathy came up with this little game to finish up our whole group teaching of Two Digit addition with regrouping.  

She sent it to me so I could make a cover page with a border "From the Pond." So Cute!!

 
This would also make a great Math Work Station.

I didn't mean to upset my West Coast friends by taking down my Math Center so quickly last night!
Here is another go at getting one part of My New Math Centers for free.

I just ask that if you download it to pllllllease leave me some feedback. My new Common Core Math Work Stations are selling fairly well, but are still without feedback! If you have purchased my centers, please take a minute to rate them for me!

Happy Almost Friday! Yippee!

OH- I almost forgot- The babies have arrived!

37

Two Digit Addition with regrouping and Limited Time Freebie

So I have to admit that I was SUPER nervous about starting Two-Digit Addition with regrouping.  We tackled regular two-digit addition before Spring Break and the kids had no problem. 

 Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy! 

We used a couple of activities from my Spring Packet for Math Work Stations. 

I had started regrouping in small group, but I just imagined that my lower kids would struggle with it. You would think after six years, I would learn to stop doubting them :)

To start with on Monday, we spent a lot of time with tens and ones. 

We played Race to 100 with tens and ones. We usually play the game with a Hundred's chart, but I wanted to reinforce the idea of exchanging ten ones for a ten.  The smarties were making connections to pennies and dimes as well! 

After the game we went on to some guided practice. We used this template (click to download) that I made really quickly to practice. There is also a exit slip on the first page of the document.

I printed a class set on colored paper and then put them in sheet protectors. We used Dry erase markers and socks for lots of practice!

Today- I felt much better about our regrouping abilities- so I let them go- just a little bit :).  We used cards from my math game Tennis Top-it.  Students used the template again for more independent practice!

I am putting this game on TPT for free until I go to bed tonight (and I am warning you I am super tired friends)- then I will charge just a very tiny fee for it after that! If you want to check out the whole set, it is available below.

I am very impressed with how we are tackling the hard task right now, but we will continue to drill this skill home through May 17th (I promise I am not counting).

Off to Church to be with my precious little four-year-old class!

97

Raining Clocks Freebie

I think I can make it... okay I really hope I can make it. Spring Break is 3 looooong days away.  As I am sure many of you have experienced this year--- we had a snow day-free winter for the most part. I know I will be thrilled on May 17th, but for right now- I.am.beat.  So, needless to say- exhausted me, means short post.  BUT it is a good one!  I threw this little freebie together. We decided to review time this week instead of jumping into regrouping right before Spring Break (let's be honest- their brains are mush).  We needed this review sooo badly.  They are reading clocks (digital and analog) very well for the most part, but I am very unimpressed by our sloppy drawing of the times. I loooove Read the Rooms, so I used some clip art I already had and made an activity or workstation. Click on either picture to download!

Let me know what you think!

17

Fast Facts Exercise Download

I have been meaning to post about this fabulous exercise for over a year now...

One of the fourth grade teachers at my school told us about how she had started using PowerPoint to practice Fast Facts with her kids.  All her kids would have out their slates or white boards instead of little pieces of paper (Totally speaking for the trees here!).  You set your PowerPoint to have whatever facts you want. The best part is the fact flashes on the board and you put the sum on the following slide. GENIUS. They practice it correctly every.time. 

 I tell my kids all the time "It's not practice that makes perfect. It is perfect practice."  If students guess and get it wrong, they are training their brains incorrectly. 

*For a challenge, I turn up the automatic speed from 5 seconds to 3 seconds. They really enjoy this challenge.

My kids absolutely LOVE this drill. I uploaded my doubles version to TPT for free.  Click on the picture to check it out!

 

I found this little note on my desk at the end of the day and it made me cry... in case you can't read it a very simple "You make my day!" It doesn't get much better than that.

16

New Unit and Sale

I LOVE creating. It makes me feel really good to finish something and be proud of it!  I just uploaded my Spring Literacy and Math Centers  to TPT. 102 pages! Are you kidding?!? Lots of goodies!  I have both my units on SALE today and tomorrow! GO check it out!

Have a great Sunday evening!

6

My Money Unit and a GIVEAWAY

Okay- I know, I am totally breaking the rules, but if you all had any idea how excited I am you wouldn't blame me for posting twice in one day. I just finished my Money Unit and sent it to some people for proofreading.  I got the green light so I figured I would go ahead and tell you all about it! It is packed full of 70 pages of challenging math games and activities.  

I love being able to offer one of my products for a giveaway for a change!  Here is how it is going to work:

1 entry for being a follower of my blog ( a must!)

1 entry for being a follower of my  *TPT store* ( a must!)

1 entry for blogging about my givewaway

1 entry for having my blog or button on your sidebar

****If you are not a blogger, just tell me that you emailed some friends to tell them about it!

Leave a separate comment for each entry! I will randomly pick ***3*** winners!

The giveaway will close on Thursday at 10 p.m.

If you just can't stand it and wait to buy it RIGHT now, of course you can do that too!

101

Money Mega Pack Preview

With a little coaxing from my blogging buddies (and my hubby), I put together my first TPT unit for sale. I will be finishing it up today and then having those same buddies proofread it.  I think this unit will be perfect for end of year first graders or second graders.  I tried really hard to incorporate some activities that help students view money in relation to representing numbers. When I put the finishing touches on this I will be giving this packet to 3 lucky followers so stay tuned!

9

goodbyes and new math work station

A couple of weeks ago I told you all how much I was enjoying my student teacher *here*. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. My student teacher left me to go to big people land (aka 5th grade!).  Boo Hoo. In all of the madness of impending tornadoes we were unable to celebrate her time with us properly so we had a little make-up party on Monday.

 My moms sent in the BEST Dr. Seuss themed snacks for us to enjoy.  Yes, those are humongous Truffula trees.  You can almost see the hunger in my kids eyes!

 Menu- Pink Ink (Pink lemonade), Cat and the Hat cookies, Green Eggs and Ham treats, Truffula marshmallows, and goldfish (for One Fish, Two Fish).  We gave Ms. Student Teacher a signed by all copy of Oh, the Places You'll Go! We know she will be a wonderful teacher one day very soon! We also gave her a framed class picture and a photo album that we filled with all our favorite things about her.

The basket above is the WAY too generous gift she gave me.  Does this girl know me or what? Tomie DaPaola books, zebra themed items, and cardstock! She also brought the kids very sweet goodie bags.  Needless to say we had a very special goodbye!

I am going to try something new here with my latest math game.  I am going to give you until Friday evening to email me  (queenofthefirstgradejungle@gmail.com) and I will send you the fun game below! I just ask that you follow my blog and my FREE TPT store first (Click on the picture to go to my TPT store). Thanks a bunch!

9