You have to check out the giveaway that Sara at Miss V's Busy Bees is having! It is HUGE!!! Wow!! I can't even describe it...go see what I mean!
After some blog stalking and checking out a bunch of new blogs via Sara's giveaway, I am ready for bed. Halloween at school always exhausts me. It makes it worse because we had the day off today due to Sandy so it will be a little Cray CRAY (Farley style:)!! Night!
I have loved getting so many ideas in the bloggy world and this book was one of them. I read Crazy Like a Fox to my students to introduce similes. Fourth graders still enjoy a great picture book (do we ever outgrow them??). I loved that the book had similes that continued onto the turn page so it left students guessing what might be the end of the sentence on the next page to complete the simile.
Each simile had a fun, colorful illustration to go with it. So, I had my class come up with their own similes and then write it on construction paper with an illustration. Here are some of their simile illustrations:
"A tennis racket on the basketball court is as useless as a shoe when you are starving."
"The pumpkin guts are like slimy wet slugs."
"Slugs are as slimy as an owl's pellet."
"When babies eat cake they are as messy as hungry pigs."
"LeBron James is as good of a basketball player as Babe Ruth was a baseball player."
"A boxer is as tough as a macho man lifting eight hundred pound weights."
My students also had fun with this Halloween math FREEBIE from Making Math More Fun magazine. Scroll down to the 23-24 pages for this game where students have to arrange the numbers into a square where each pair matches up to 13.
The early finishers worked on another freebie on the following page, "Mummy Loves 31". It was a fun break when we had 10 extra minutes:)
What a busy week! I am so happy to be home on a Saturday morning catching up on blogging (those papers to grade can wait!). Kelly from Teaching Fourth is having an amazing new Fun Friday linky party inspired by Farley! Genius:)
I love the idea of having the students write book reviews and share them with the class. I have a class of 24 students and we divided October into four book review days (usually on Friday) with six students sharing each time. The students LOVED it and asked lots of questions. We first wrote a book review together based on Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing that the whole class read. I modeled sharing the review without giving away the ending (SO important!). Here is a sample of a book review a student recently shared:
Students can add books to their "Books I Want to Read" list they keep in their folders as they listen to book reviews. The students asked many questions and were really interested in so many of the reviews! I am putting all the book reviews in a binder by our library for students' future reference.
I downloaded these editable binder covers from A Year of Many Firsts and they can be downloaded here for free! I love them:)
I am also linking up with Peacocks & Penguins to share the rubric I created to use for my book reviews.
You can download my book review rubric for FREE here at my TPT!
Be sure to check back at Peacocks & Penguins for other rubrics and ways teachers use them in their classrooms! Have a great weekend everyone:)
When I checked my blog tonight, I received two comments from fellow bloggers about being "Boo'ed" in two different linky parties! Yay!! First, thank you to the wonderful Kelly at Teaching Fourth for Booing me in this linky party by Cynthia at Second Grade Pad:
Here's how to play. Choose a fellow blogger that has MORE followers, another that has about the SAME number of followers, and last, someone that has LESS followers.
Lastly, leave them some love by offering them a goody from your store as their "treat."
First, for the blog with less followers, I am booing back Kelly from Teaching Fourth to share the love:) She is a fantastic blogger and has so many wonderful ideas! I love her TPT store where she has many owl themed items (LOVE the owls!). Check out her blog at:
Next, for the blog with about the same amount of followers, I am booing the lovely Liliris at Fourth Grade Garden. She has SO many cute products and is having a giveaway right now for some Monster Themed Products! You have to check out her blog!
Finally, for the blog with more followers, I am booing the amazing Layla at Fancy Free in Fourth. Every time I visit her blog, I find incredible ideas and lessons that she has shared. I also have bought several items from her TPT store. You have to check out her blog at:
Here are some wonderful October activities I recently have found in blogging land:)
This is a "Boo Gram" made by Layla at Fancy Free in Fourth and you can get it here at her TPT store for FREE! What a fun activity for you colleagues this time of the year!
This is a great government unit by the talented Laura at Love to Teach. With the election coming up, this is a great resource to review government standards this fall for upper elementary students. You can find it here at her TPT store!
Here is a great fall themed book recommendation kit from Heather at Peacocks and Penguins! You can find it here at her TPT store.
Congratulations to the Winners of my 200 Follower Giveaway!!! Yay!! THANK YOU so much to all who participated by donating products and entering! The blogging world is so amazing and I am so blessed to be a part of it. Have a great Sunday everyone!
Kelly J. won a $30 gift card of her choice! Sharon G. won:
Have you ever heard of the Think Breakfast program?
This is the third year my school has used it in New York and I noticed that now on their website it states:
"Because of the overwhelming response to this year’s program, we have made the entire program available online. Included here for download:
Teacher Program Guide, Progress Chart, three Classroom Posters, Parent Letter, and a Certificate of Completion.
To print out the PDF of any of the following images, double-click on it to open the PDF. Then right-click on the PDF, select the print option to open up the print dialog box and select your preferences to print. That’s all there is to it!"
Go to this link for materials! Our students really enjoyed this program and the activities are fun but do not take a lot of time. It is a good filler. This is the cover of the activity booklet:
The website has a TON of information and activities:
There is also an interactive story for the students:
If you teach in New York and receive the free packet of materials, they usually arrive in the spring. However, you can download the activity booklet and other materials now here!
We always save the materials for the following fall. We just finished our three week unit (small mini lessons...doesn't take much time!). To celebrate the end of the three weeks, parent volunteers came in and cooked breakfast for the entire 4th grade! We had families donate one item and our menu consisted of pancakes, grapes, bananas, juice, and milk. Easy, fun activity to get the parents involved. Here is a picture of the students in line getting their breakfast:)
The students also LOVE this Think Breakfast theme song on Youtube
even though it is a little old school:) I want to dance to it too!
Also, don't forget to enter my 200 follower giveaway that ends on Saturday! There is a $30 gift card and lots of GREAT products from AMAZING bloggers up for grabs!! Thank you for your support!
Yay!! I am thrilled to start my 200 Followers Giveaway today! The blogging world is amazing and so generous. I decided to make the giveaway with THREE WINNERS because there are so many awesome products being offered by fellow bloggers! I cannot thank them enough!!
Now, for the October Currently from my blog crush, Farley at Oh' Boy Fourth Grade!
So, I am loving my new MacBook Pro but was definitely heartbroken when mine crashed Thursday night! I knew it was getting bad after 8 loving years. When I went to restart it after it froze (happened often), the hard drive just kept clicking and then a gray file folder appeared on a white screen with a question mark in the middle of it. NOT GOOD! I had most things backed up on a flash drive BUT most of the ELA work I downloaded blogging this summer is gone:( I didn't have enough space on my flash drive (go figure!) and just got a new 8GB and was planning on backing it up this weekend (doesn't it always happen that way?). I have one last hope...our computer guy is taking the computer to try one last retrieval of anything from the hard drive...fingers crossed!!
I really want to get my scrapbooking stuff organized and get something done but life is in the way (and my new hobby of blogging!).
You should see the stack of papers I am behind in grading...yikes! I literally cannot grade anything at school during my preps. Every minute is spent copying, planning, getting absent work together, etc. We are really feeling the crunch with cut staff.
The book, Fancy Nancy Thanksgiving Banquet, is one of my 5-year old daughter's new favorites for the Fall. I love the Fancy Nancy books and all the neat vocabulary she uses. My daughter loves the illustrations and Nancy's clothes:)
Have a great Columbus day weekend and thank you again for following me!
