WHOOOO Doesn't Love an Owl Valentine bag?!

Oh, my word.  Can you believe your eyes!?  A blogpost from little old me?!?!?  I'm back to work--barely above water, yet I have to share this with you.  Since moving to second grade, I could no longer make the adorable penguin valentine bags that we've made in the past in first (click HERE to read and see those)... since, well, they have done it!  So, this week I was on a mission to find something equally adorable.  I had no luck online, so I whipped something up myself.  {You'd think by now that would be my FIRST step...}

First, I have to tell you that Target has patterned lunch bags now!  I've found these dot ones and also blue/green striped ones.  (I may or may not have gone back to my Targets and gotten quite a few of the dot bags to supply me with YEARS more of these bags... I think they make the bags even sweeter)  I THINK they are $1.99 for 40....  You know.  You go to Target for like 1-2 things, and come home with like $200 worth instead....  Thank goodness for the Red card and Cartwheel! :P

Our OWLdorable Owl bags!  Aren't they a 'hoot'?!  My kids love them.

If you'd like to make them for your kids, you can click {HERE}  There's nothing fancy with it.  I had NO time to cute-sy it up for ya.  I traced what I made onto paper and scanned it (really, so I had it on my computer for the future, when I'm looking around my classroom like a madwoman looking for the patterns.... especially right now since I'm in a new room, back from a 4 1/2 month maternity leave... lol)  PS-the eyeballs--the kids drew hearts in their favorite color--there is no template for those!  Gotta have something a little different to make these stand apart from each other! ;)


Happy Valentine's Day friends!  Hope your week is filled with love and happiness!

Nocturnal Animals and more Frightfully FUN hunts!

We've officially started off one of my favorite units this week.  Nocturnal Animals!  It was the first "research" packet I made last year, and now I have turned just about everything I can think of into some kind of researching!  If we read Froggy books, we'll research frogs.  Pete the Cat?  We'll research cats!  {Most of my lit packets--with the exception of Mo Willems and Robert Munsch--and my Click, Clack DO pack have research built in--though, don't be surprised when you notice a "download" again blinkie because I just may have added a little research into those too!} ;)

Here are some pictures of owl researching this week.  I didn't get too many.

Next week is Bats!  Can't wait!  {You can get all of these sheets in my Creatures of the Night pack on TPT}

On a different note---this is what I spent last night doing:

{Notice the Matchbox cars nearby....  I do what I can do with those little ones I have at home!  I gotta say, my 3 year old is one of the best cutters I have seen!  I think he may cut even better than some of my firsties!  He's not quite ready to help ME cut though!}

I got this laminator from mybinding.com.  I gotta say, I never thought I would need a laminator at home.  We have one at school, that usually lasts all year.  When I was offered this, I thought it was an offer I couldn't refuse!  And, now, I'm SO glad that I did take it!  It is SO convenient!  SO easy to use.  It laminates different thicknesses and even has a cool laminating setting.  (I really am still new to those.  I've just kept it on the one it tells me!  HA!)  It also has a release button if anything gets jammed, though I haven't had to use that yet! :)  I'm finding it quite convenient and am not quite sure why I haven't had one in the past!  It reminded me of when I first got an iPhone.  I just couldn't see needing such a fancy thing!  NOW---I can't live without it either!  THIS is the laminator I have.  I've used it a lot for home things too, such as photos, but also those adorable drawn artwork my boys will do on rainy days!

Last, here are some pictures of my kiddos going on their "hunts" today!  I had them bring in flashlights and they just had a BLAST!  It was awesome to see them SO excited!  I actually did a math and reading one today (at different times, of course!) BUT, I had all cards hanging up keeping the kids in anticipation all day as to what we'd be doing with the cards!  I have more of these in the works!

Leave me a comment and I'll send these to a lucky winner on Sunday night!  (get your comments in by 9pm EST on Sunday!)

Owls, Bats and Spiders?!

If you are a reader out here in blog land---almost everyone, it seems, is talking about bats and spiders!  What better month than October to talk about these creatures?!

This is the first year in MANY years that I am not required to use our Reading series!  (well, last year too---but I only strayed from what I knew for like 8 years... about mid year)  I have been having the time of my life teaching with actual literature about things that kids are SO incredibly excited about!  This past week we tackled owls.  I started with owls, cause well.... my room is filled with owls!  Naturally the kids were excited to learn about it.

We read fiction and informational books---hitting the CCSS's hard!  We discussed informational text features along the way----and we actually did RESEARCH!  (another CCSS covered!)   I broke it up and had the kiddos work in small groups to find information 1 page at a time.  It was SO neat to see them using the INDEX to find pages that they need!  (and I will add---most cannot read all that well-but they were able to take the ABC ordering skills we learned a few weeks ago-which I just realized I never posted about..  I'll try to post about that soon!) and could narrow down their choices to find what they needed!  I couldn't have been prouder!

Check out these cute "research" papers!!!!

(even my messier, more challenged students did really well and were SO engaged!)

We will be redoing the whole thing next week-but with BATS!  Then on to spiders! Speaking of spiders----look who visited our classroom last week as a little "preview"!!!!!!

O.M.G.  Notice how I decided to take a picture of it instead of immediately run for the hills like I would at home?!  So, after taking its picture, I tried various ways in attempt to capture this thing..  Luckily one of my windows does not have a screen (before this day, I thought it was dumb that one of my windows didn't have the screen.... now-not so much!!!)  After getting it into a paper tray, it immediately FLEW out the window!  He was WAAAAAYYYYY too big to step on!  NO WAY did I want to feel that bone chilling "crunch" under my shoe!  EEEEEKKKKK!  I'm SO not a spider person.

Last-I want to leave you with a fun freebie---Click on the picture to grab yourself a copy of the OWL KWL page we used last week.  It is included in my Owl and Bat Research Packet that I just uploaded last night.  I included the pages above that you saw as well as some of the other worksheets I created to use during the week as we read stories and compared them---and used lots of informational books that I checked out of our school library.  You can click on the picture to see more about the packet at TPT!

{Sorry for the sideways picture---I started working with the packet in landscape---so it has a lot of sideways pages!  Luckily when you print it out-it doesn't make a difference!!!}  

FALLing behind--catching up with an Owl Glyph

I can't believe that Fall is here already!  I honestly feel like it was just yesterday when I was looking forward to summer vacation (or maybe it was yesterday?!) ;)

First, I just wanted to let you know that I have everything October related up and posted at my TPT store.  Check out the pics below to see what I have!  (click to read more about them on TPT)

I also have them bundled here

I wanted to share with you a glyph that I made and had my firsties make 2 weeks ago.  They turned out OWLdorable! :)  I searched online to see if I could find one already made, but I didn't have much luck finding just what I wanted. 

Click on the picture to grab yourself a copy of the questions. 

CLICK ON THIS LINK FOR THE BODY TEMPLATES...  (I'm having difficulty with my new computer on combining PDF's.....)

This past week and this coming week we've been working with all of the "If You Give a...." books by Laura Numeroff.  (another reason I've been MIA)  I've been creating activities to go with each book as we read them.  I'm planning on putting it up on TPT as well, as I have bought MANY graphics for it that I cannot give away free, plus so far it's over 125 pages!  {I forgot how much time it takes to design units to teach, rather than following a teacher's manual.  Since we group, and our reading series is older, I haven't been able to use much of it this past week.  Next year will be great though with time to breathe since it will all be done!} 

I thought for sure that I would be back to blogging sooner than I have.  I seriously think September is a month that I purposely forget about each year.  The good news is that I'm actually DONE planning this weekend BEFORE Sunday night!  It was nice to have a day off of thinking and stressing.  Here's hoping that this week I'll have enough planning time to get it done before Friday.  (We had our Back To School Night last week---so I was busy preparing for that.  Now it's home free till November conferences!) 

Hopefully I'll be back more often!  I need to share with you what I found at Target this weekend, but I need to get my camera and make my lil' math idea first so I can share it with you ;)  Have a great week!