Super Cyber Savings

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! Hopefully you were able to spend some time with you family and not just in line at the stores. Black Friday may be over but Cyber Monday is right around the corner and online prices are dropping low. With that in mind, I am having a Super Cyber Savings Sale!

EVERYTHING IN MY STORE WILL BE 20% OFF!

Some of my favorites are: 

*Includes: calendar set, locker tags, hall passes, group work badges, classroom helpers sign and badges, notebook/folder subject labels (and editable labels), expert shoe tiers sign, 10's 20's 100's club signs, owl name plates (not chevron).

Regular - $7   Sale - $5.60

* Tons of fun candy activities for every subject! Satisfies Common Core standards.

Regular - $5   Sale - $4

*Fun character and setting chant with puppet cards, lesson plans, worksheets, and an assessment.

Regular - $3   Sale -$2.40

* Spelling Test templates for each month. Comes in dotted lines, regular lines, and bonus spelling sentences.

Regular -  $2   Sale - $1.60

These are just a few of my favorites. However, EVERYTHING is on SALE. So check it out! Have a great week and happy shopping (: 

-OneCrazyS

Addition Boxes

Addition is on every first grade teacher's mind as all we hear about is, "They need to be fluent with their math facts NOW." I use these addition boxes for centers or as an early finisher activity. They are easy to make and they love to "play" with them. They can write their facts on a separate piece of paper or use a dry erase marker on the lid. The super recycler that I am kept all of these boxes from when my son used to eat baby food. I knew I'd use them one day! You don't have to use these boxes though, any small clear box will do.

Materials:

small clear boxes, permanent marker, dice, hot glue

First, flip the lid over. Then, write the base for the addition sentence backwards like this:

So when you flip it over it looks like this: 

(I put the writing on the inside of the box so it doesn't wear off)

Then, add some dice to the box and some hot glue around the rim.

After that, stick the lid on while the glue is hot. And POOF it is done!

You can also do this for adding three numbers together too.

These boxes are great for fact practice. No more running around the room for roll-away dice. Thank goodness! If you don't have any of these boxes, you can use ones from the dollar store or send a note home to your parents. Someone is sure to have a baby at home and would probably be happy to send them your way! Hope you're having a great cold day (: 

-OneCrazyS

Operation Safe Buddy

FREE SAFE BUDDY PACK 

*Everything you need to make Safe Buddy for a solider ... and more!

(a non-TPT download is available below)

A few weeks ago I saw this story on Facebook and honestly I cried. I thought it was so sweet of a small girl to give a soldier her stuffed fish (Chester) to keep him safe. As Veteran's Day rolled around, I really wanted to do something for these men and women who risk their lives and spend large amounts of time away from home.

First, I was just going to have my students write letters:

 

Then, I decided that a poster of handprint flags would be nice:

Finally, I realized that there was no reason why we couldn't make buddies for the soldiers like Chester. I gave each of my students a small person outline and had them draw a happy buddy for a soldier. After that, I had them glue it to the blank side of a note card.

Then, I wrote this on the board for them to copy onto the template I made: This is Safe Buddy. I made him/her to keep you safe when you are fighting bad guys. Love, (their name). Then, they wrote their own little message on the P.S. line. Having them write this on their own made them more personal but I also have pre-made cards for those who can't.

I looked up where to send these items and found Operation Gratitude. They said to be sure that the students only write their first name and have the address of the school on everything you send. I found all of the information I needed here: Operation Gratitude  After I added the address and the school year to all of the buddies and letters, I laminated everything. I was so excited about the Safe Buddy idea that I made a whole pack (for all ages) of Safe Buddy people, notecard templates, letter templates, teacher ideas and information. I really think the soldiers would love to have these little Safe Buddies tucked in their pockets to make them smile. I would LOVE it if any of you reading this would have your students make Safe Buddies for soldiers. They don't take very long to make and I know it would brighten their day!

This is where I sent our package: 

Operation Gratitude

CA Army National Guard

Deployed Troops

Attn: Angel Cuevas

17330 Victory Blvd

Van Nuys, CA 91406

More information can be found on the Operation Gratitude site. 

Here is the FREE SAFE BUDDY PACK again if you don't have TPT

Please share this with others so that our soldiers can have a little love away from home! My class is going to try to make more buddies at the beginning of each month so that we will send out over 100 this year.

Please leave a comment if you like this idea, have any other ideas, or have any questions (: 

Fun with Candy!

50% off for the first 72 hours!

Candy here, candy there, candy is absolutely everywhere! I said candy was coming and I couldn't disappoint (even though that meant staying up until 5am!) The Common Core Candy Activity Pack is finally here. We have had so much fun with these activities the past few weeks. They keep asking when we are going to do another one. After a week of fun, we finally finished our Safe Candy Creations. The students were given a problem: There is a candy thief taking your candy at night. Design something that will keep the intruder out but let you get in. They came up with some great designs:

 

We talked a lot about the importance of testing your inventions. Once they tested them, a lot of my students realized that theirs didn't work. This was a great chance to talk about the importance of failure. We discussed how their invention not working was a good thing and that instead of getting upset, they needed to focus on finding a solution. It was very cool to see all of the wheels turning in their heads.

We also made our candy landforms this week. This was a load of fun too. We spent the early part of the week learning about landforms and yesterday we finally got to build them. I gave them Starbursts to use so it was easy to mold (Tootsie Rolls, Airheads, and Laffy Taffy also work great). Here are some of the landforms:

 

I gave everyone a baggie and let them take their landforms home. I can't wait to do the Treat Trade activity next week to practice their sight words! All of these activities and worksheets are in my Common Core Candy Activity Pack. 

Don't forget that it will be 50% for the first 72 hours!

Check it out here: 

Common CoreCandy Activity Pack

Coming Soon...

I hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween night full of tricks and candy treats! We got to go trick-or-treating for the first time with my son and I loved every minute of it. With all of that trick-or-treating, trunk-or-treating, and parties, you must be swimming in massive amounts of candy! Oh what to do, what to do with all of that sweet, sugary candy? I know I don't want my own kid to eat that much candy. Sure, my husband and I will be eating some but really, how much can a person eat? I decided I wanted to use it at school and not just for my students to eat. They love candy and everything about it, so I knew this would be a great way to keep them engaged in anything I wanted to teach them. I'm working on a whole Common Core Candy Activity Pack that will be sure to please! Here are some of the activities I've done with my students already:

Smarty Pants:

They used Smarties to make their very own Smarty Pants! First they used Smarties to make their pants. Then they filled in their data. After that, they used the data to fill in the graph. For the white they just wrote the number of white Smarties they used. 

Monty the Monster:

I wrote a cute story called Monty the Monster that we read. Then, they were asked what they thought Monty looked like. They made him out of candy on their Monster Mat and drew a picture of him on their sheet. Then, they had to write if they would like Monty as their pet and describe why or why not. Here are some examples:

Nerdy Place Value:

We also had some fun with Nerds this week. Everyone got a box of Nerds and filled in their tens frames while we listened to music. Then we counted our tens and ones to find out how many Nerds were in our box. 

* I have changed this one to include a space for hundreds at the bottom since most of the boxes had over 100 Nerds. There is also a space at the top for the students to put a few Nerds for them to eat when they are done.

My students absolutely loved doing these activities! These are just a few of the activities in the Candy Pack. There are STEM projects, Quiz,Quiz,Trade games with sight word cards for grades PreK-3, Doubles and Doubles plus one fact cards, Cardinal Directions Treasure Hunt, persuasive writing, MadLibs and more! 

I have decided to start something new with the release of this product. The first 72 hours after this product is released, it will be 50% off! Make sure you follow me on Facebook or TPT by clicking the green star under my name so you know when this product comes out so you don't miss the sale. It won't be long now, keep an eye out next weekend for this awesome treat!

-OneCrazyS