Halloween Activities!

I told myself that I was not going to spend any more money on TpT for awhile, but then I was bored yesterday and started searching Halloween......and ended up purchasing a bunch! I am super excited to do these activities with my students this week! They are going to love them, I just know it! Take a look at what I bought!

What are some of your favorite Halloween activities?

The Sunday Scoop!

I'm linking up today with Teaching Trio for their Sunday Scoop linky. 

Have to do: I always leave laundry and going to the grocery store for Sunday afternoon when all I really want to do is be lazy all day! I am excited to make copies of the new Halloween products I purchased on TpT! I will share with you tomorrow what I purchased!

Hope to do: I really, really, really hope to make it back to the gym this week. I have got to get into a better gym routine! My boyfriend and I are basically on completely opposite schedules so I'm hoping we get a night to have dinner together!

Happy to do: Saturday I get to go to wedding number five of the summer! I'm happy to see two of my friends tie the knot :)

Snap!

I have become a little obsessed with couponing lately....and being on a teacher salary can you blame me? If there are any of you out there like me, I want to share the latest grocery savings app that I found. It is called Snap by Groupon. It doesn't offer a ton of coupons like some of the other apps, but what I like about this app is that you can purchase items at any store to receive the deal. Every couple of weeks or so they put up new $1.00 off deals. Right now you can get a $1.00 off any bag of candy and any gallon of milk. They also offer deals on fruits and veggies! To get the rebate all you have to do is purchase the item and then submit a picture of the receipt on the app. When your balances reaches $20.00 you can cash out!

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

We just finished our second novel of the school year....Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume. 

This is the first year I have read this book with my students. It was only $1.00 in the Scholastic book order, so I couldn't pass it up! It's still available in the 4th Graders September catalog if you are interested. My students absolutely LOVED this book. It was a quick, easy read so it was perfect for the beginning of the school year. 

I purchased an awesome novel study on TpT by Renee Smalley. I highly recommend it. 

At the end of the book, my students completed a super cute character analysis project that was also included in the novel study. Here are some pictures of the completed project. This was the perfect project to have on display during Parent-Teacher Conferences too!

Christmas Shopping Already!?

So I have a confession to make....I'm kinda anti-Christmas gifts. I am really not into buying gifts or receiving them. Every year I try to convince my family to not buy gifts and no one ever buys into it. So every year I wait until the very last minute, like the day before Christmas, to buy gifts. This absolutely kills one of my co-workers because she finishes her Christmas shopping during the summer. So anyways, I'm super excited to say that I just bought my first Christmas gift!! My sister is a scarf addict, so when I saw this cute white hanger, I thought it would be the perfect gift! I found it over at Pick Your Plum. 

Have you started any of your Christmas shopping yet? Have you found any good gifts? I am the worst gift giver ever and would love to hear some ideas!!

Thank you and Monogrammed Sweatshirt Blanket!!

I want to start by thanking those of you who offered advice to my classroom management post! I have so many great ideas to think about now and figure out what system I want to use! So thank you, thank you my blogging friends!

The next thing I am super excited to share with you has nothing to do with school, but I'm sharing anyways! I am a total blanket snob. I am one of those who walks around with a blanket wrapped around them at all times. I am that dork that would buy a snuggy! When I was in high school, my grandma made me this awesome sweatshirt blanket that had the name of my high school embroidered on it and it was my favorite blanket of all time. I somehow managed to lose it a while back and have found nothing even close to replace it....until today!! I'm a tad bit obsessed with Groopdealz, which is a site that offers daily clothing, jewelry, and home decor at a discounted price. As I was looking around today, I found my sweatshirt blanket! Now it isn't hand-stitched by my grandma and won't have my high school embroidered on it, but I still had to order one. I can't wait for it to arrive! I ordered a gray one with pink lettering!

Disclaimer: Groopdealz provided me with a giftcode to use towards the purchase of this item. 

Government Activities!

I used to hate teaching government, but luckily it is starting to grow on me. Honestly and sadly, I think it's because now that I have taught it for 5 years I am even starting to understand it! I'm not wanting to jump into politics or anything, but I kinda get what each of the branches of government does! :)

One of my favorite products to use with this unit is Ashleigh's American Government Activity Pack. It has tons of great activities to use and unfortunately I don't usually even get to them all. I love the levels of government and branches of government organizers. My students love the cootie catcher reviews! 

This year I had the students create a tree poster on the branches of government. They had to label each of the branches with a branch of government and then use the leaves to write a description of what each branch does. Here are a couple that I thought turned out nicely!

I like to end this unit with a review using my Government Task Cards and my Government "I Have, Who Has" Game. 

What are your favorite activities for teaching government?

Brag/Reward Tags Opinions??

I have a rough group this year and my behavior management system that I have used in the past is just not cutting it! I have used a clip chart the past couple of years and it worked well. Unfortunately, it is not effective for my group this year. I have heard a lot of talk about the brag tags/reward tags and I would love to hear your thoughts on these if you use them! Does anyone use them for a behavior management system? Would you recommend it? Or what do you use for your behavior management system? Seriously, help me....before I pull all of my hair out! Ok, it's not really that bad but any advice you can give me would be awesome!

Open Your Eyes and VISUALIZE!

I've told you before how I have jumped on the anchor chart bandwagon....so here is my latest chart to share with you! We have been working on visualizing this week, which is probably one of my  favorite comprehension strategies! Of course I can't take credit for my poster because I "borrowed" the ideas from multiple posters that I found here and here on Pinterest and I used the idea from our Interactive Notebooks from Nicole Shelby. 

We really focused on using all of the senses when visualizing. Luckily our book has some great descriptive stories that are perfect for working on visualizing. 

Here is a picture of what we added to our interactive reading notebooks...thanks to Nicole Shelby! I love her Interactive Reading Notebook!

Teaching with a Mountain View has a great free set of visualizing task cards that we also used this week. My students had fun illustrating what they pictured in each task card. 

What are some of your favorite visualizing activities?