Read Across America Freebies

I'm so excited about this week. I love Read Across America week. We have a dress up day associated with a Dr. Seuss book each day. Today is multicolored clothes day for the book My Many Multicolored Days; Tuesday is green day for Green Eggs and Ham; Wednesday is Who hair day for Horton Hears a Who; Thursday is crazy sock day for Fox in Socks; Friday is crazy hat day for the Cat in the Hat. On Friday, our librarian has arranged a variety of readers from the community and school system to read to our classes. My wonderful fiance Chris is going to read to the 7th and 8th graders. Last year he did The Tell Tell Heart and they loved it. This is just another one of his many talents. He's pretty good at drama type things.
I'm going to read a different Dr. Seuss book each day and do a craftivity to go with it. I haven't quite decided what I'm doing for each book. I've seen so many great ideas on other blogs and pinterest. Our weekly reading homework is even Dr. Seuss. I took an excerpt from Red Fish, Blue Fish, One Fish, Two Fish.  a

I've updated the freebie to some clipart that is acceptable with copyright issues. I hope you can use it.
Click here to get that freebie. 
I'm even wanting to do some Seuss themed snacks. I'm so excited. What do you do at your school for Read Across America? Please leave me some comment love if you download this packet. I'm hoping to do some similar games with other themes so I would love some feedback.

New items and updates

I hate to promote myself. I'm was definitely not born to be a business woman. But I'm trying my hand at selling some packets on Teacher's Notebook and now on TPT. I'm trying to earn a little extra money. Right now I'm just using the money to fund my desire to buy units on TPT and Teacher's notebook. It would be nice if I could supplement my income during the summer. Since I'm going to be a newlywed this summer it would be nice to be able to contribute to our new family. So that being said, I have a new item up in my TN store and my TPT store. It's called Monster Mapping. The packet contains 8 different thinking maps to use with books or stories read. I've been using them in my class the past few weeks and my students are doing well with them. They like the monster graphics which is kind of funny. I think they think that I draw the clip art that I use for their different worksheets and activities. I tell them that I don't but they keep complimenting it. We've been working on filling buckets so they are full of random compliments like "I like your glasses Ms. Kerri." or "I like your hair." Now those are becoming, "I like your monster."
Anyway, I have a sample from my packet for free.

 

You can get all the thinking maps at either my Teacher's Notebook Store or my TPT store.  While you're there you might want to check out my Word Work Tools games. I updated it to include some short e and short i words. This is one of my kids favorite games. I'm partcipating in the Leap Day sale on TPT so if you buy any of my items on that day you'll get 20% plus an extra 10% when you use the Promo Code L2PY9

Click Here to Get your copy

If you download my freebie or check out my stores, please let me know. I can use all the encouragement I can get. Thanks for following and supporting me.

Freebie Friday (A day late)

I had every intention of posting this yesterday afternoon, but I was not feeling well yesterday. I think I have a sinus infection and I was feeling awful yesterday. I just came home and crashed.
We had a teddy bear day yesterday. One of letters of the week last week was b. So we read different things about bears all week long.
We started the day by doing our read to self as read to our bear. The kids have reached 15 minutes which was our goal for this year. I'm really proud of how well they are doing. I need to spend a little more time in some mini lessons before letting them read. I have one little girl who gets really upset during read to self. She was crying but seems to be adjusting. We haven't quite figured out what was going on with the tears. But hopefully she'll get used to it. Our poem of the week came from Kristin at A Teeny Tiny Teacher. The kids did an awesome job with it this week. They were able to read it pretty fluently by the end of the week. We read A Bear Snores On and discussed some Text to Text connections.

Click Here to get your own copy.

Kristin had some other great ideas for Teddy Bear activities. I was inspired by her gummy bear activity to create my own. I was going to use hers but then I remembered my kids don't know how to subtract. So I gave my students 10 gummy bears to use as counters to solve the addition problems. So check it out here. The graphics are from KPM Doodles.
I'm working on one more post for my praise challenge to post hopefully tomorrow. But if you have a praise you want to share please comment below. If you grab my Teddy bear sheet, leave me a comment as well.

Praise Challenge day 4

I'm probably going to post twice today. I know that it's against all blogging ettiquiete but I want to post about the praise challenge and I have a freebie to offer for a math activity. I can't do my post about praise at school because I have a youtube video to share and I left my math activity on my portable hard drive at school. So I apologize ahead of time.
Today's post is going to focus on ways to praise God. I've focused on things that I praise God for the past few days. But it's so important to praise God for who he is. I've been reminded of that by all the wonderful comments other bloggers have left. I get a lot out of worship and praise music. I have no musical ability what so ever but when listening to this music I'll belt it out. I've gotten in the habit lately of listening to christian music while getting ready in the morning and in the car. It just helps me focus on what is important to start my day.
I'm going to share a couple of my favorite praise songs and I hope you'll comment with yours. I'm always looking for new songs to add to my ipod.
My all time favorite is "Amazing Love." I get choked up at the idea that my king would die on the cross for my sins. I praise God everyday for loving me that much when I know I don't deserve any of it. For the past 5 years I've been helping with youth in some capacity. I love it. I was never in a youth group when I was a teenager so part of me feels like I'm having that experience now. Last year when Chris and I started dating, I started going to church with him. He works with youth at his church so it was natural that I would help there too. I still worked with the kids I had been but then eventually it was time to just go to one church. The kids that were my first group of youth will always be a special part of my life. I'm still close to several of them and most of them are in college now. But I'm also really enjoying being a part of this new group. I praise God for giving me the opportunity to work with such amazing kids. The group I work with now has a youth choir and I've been introduced to several great songs. I am in love with the song "Glorious Day" by Casting Crowns. When I hear it, I have to sing along. It's such a great expression of how God and Jesus loves us.


The last one I want to share is "Blessings" by Laura Story. There's an eighth grader at church that sings this song and she has a beautiful voice. This song is just a great reminder that God works in all things. Things that don't seem like blessings God will find a way to use.


So what are your favorite ways to praise God? What praise and worship songs are your favorites?

Praise Challenge Day 3

So far this challenge is going great. I've really been thinking about ways to praise God and trying to stay positive and joyful. I'm so thankful that I'm able to share this with other bloggers. It makes me so happy that I have an outlet for all my thoughts about everything. Today I'm really praising God for the blogging community. I really feel like being a part of this community is part of God working in my life. I really needed some support and rejuvenation in my teaching this year. Blogging has been the answer to that. I had someone leave a comment yesterday about praising God everyday through Lent. Her son and her were going to do this and she asked me to join her. I love it. I had just been thinking yesterday about Lent. I don't like to give things up that seem pointless or have no impact on my spirituality. So I try to add something to my walk with God. As I've been thinking about praising God everyday during the season of Lent, I thought of starting a praise journal. That's a project I'm going to work on and hopefully have some things to share this weekend with you.
I had intended on today's post to be about ways to praise God and especially through music. But I read a post from 3AM teacher today that changed my thinking. She shares a really personal struggle that has been in her life. It just made me think how thankful I am to have this community. I praise God that he's giving us ways to come together even when we are no where near each other. We have the opportunity to find healing and growth through blogging.
What are you praising God for today?

Praise Challenge Day 2

Yesterday I presented my challenge of praising God each day. I loved reading the comments from others about what they were praising God about. So keep the comments coming. I think on Friday I'll have a linky party so you can post on your own blog about the challenge. You're more than welcome to use any of the pictures that i created with the Bible verses and the challenges on it. The graphics are from Graphics From the Pond.
Here's today's verse:

If you haven't checked out Tamera from Teaching with TLC and Annie from The Moffet Girls, 7 week study to transform your teaching., you need to. Check out the newest post here. They are looking at the fruits of the spirit and how it relates to parenting and teaching. This week it was about Joy and how this is something that comes from God not our circumstances. I felt like that fit in perfectly with what I was thinking with this praise challenge. We are facing a lot of challenges in education, but I strongly believe this is what God created me to do. So I need to remember that so I can remember to have joy and to praise him through all the challenges.
So keep the praises coming this week.
Today my praise has to do with my wonderful fiance Chris. I've blogged about him a lot but I feel so blessed that God brought us together. He's truly God's choice for me. My mom and dad were both praying that I would find the right person since I moved back home 5 years ago. They both feel like God brought Chris into my life. I praise God everyday for bringing us together. We try to keep our relationship Christ centered. He's my number one fan. He encourages me in blogging, teaching, creating materials. He listens to me talk about things he doesn't know anything about and goes with me to find the materials I need for some idea I saw on a blog or pinterest. Last night, he and my dad were being sneaky and it turns out they were working on honeymoon plans. But I was a little annoyed with him because they didn't tell me what they were doing. I went home and was in bed reading, when he brought me some flowers before he went to his house. It was so sweet. He even put them in some water for me. I should've taken a picture this morning because he creatively used the juice container he had emptied the night before. But here's a picture of them in a vase.

What's your praise today? Leave me a comment and keep praising the Lord for all the good he gives us.

Praise Challenge

A couple of Sundays ago, I was sitting in church listening to the sermon. Our pastor loves preach out of the Old Testament. I've learned quite a bit about stories that I never knew existed because of this. One of these stories has to do with David and when Saul was searching for him. (I'll have to look up the exact reference when I get home. It's in my Bible at home.) In this story, David flees to Samuel to find out what to do and is hidden in a place of worship. When the soldiers come in to get David, they instead begin to praise God. This story amazed me. The idea that you could be in the middle of a battle and you stop to praise God is just so inspiring to me. It got me thinking about how education is kind of a battle. Especially these days. We're getting attacked from so many sides. The government on all levels, the public, parents and sadly even sometimes other teachers. So I was inspired to create a praise challenge. This week I am going to work really hard to praise God in the middle of whatever challenges I'm facing. I've also been inspired by Tamara and Annie's challenge to change your teaching in 7 weeks through the fruits of the spirit study. So I'm bringing my challenge to you. Each day this week I'm going to present a verse and a praise. I want to invite you to either post about it on your blog as well and link up (I might not get the linky party up today) or to comment on this post. Tell me how you're praising God through the challenges.

My praise today has to do with my mother. She had mammogram on Thursday and they found some nodules. We went back to the doctor yesterday and they told her they were benign cysts. I'm so thankful and praise God to have healthy parents who support and love me in everything I do. Both my parents are always willing to help with field trips or parties at school and that means everything to me. What are you praising God for today?