More than $500 in prizes awarded!  Enter as many giveaways as you would like and come back each day to earn more chances to win!

Giveaway # 1 - $10 Shopping Spree To 8 Great Stores (K-2)

March 22 - March 30
a Rafflecopter giveaway



Giveaway #2 - Winner's Choice To 8 Great Stores (K-2)



March 23-March 31
a Rafflecopter giveaway


Giveaway #3  - Awesome Products (12 Great Products)

March 24 - April 1
a Rafflecopter giveaway

My Life At The Pencil Sharpener:  store and blog (you are here)

ABCDee: store

Lil' Sprouts Pre-K: store 

Josie's Place: store

Nancy Strout: store  and blog

Scissors and Crayons: store

Creating and Learning: store

Joyful Proections: store

Positively Passionate About Teaching: store

Jungle Learners: store 

KB3 Teach: store

Curry's Creations: store and blog 


Giveaway #4 - $10 Shopping Spree to 7 Great Stores (3-5)


March 25- April 2
a Rafflecopter giveaway

MyLife At The Pencil Sharpener: store and blog (you are here)

TiePlay: store 

Reading Royalty: store 

Getting Nerdy With Mel and Gerdy: blog

The Core of Grade 4: store

Kelly Malloy: store 

The Owl Teacher: store

Giveaway #5 - Winners Choice To 9 Great Stores (3-5)

March 26 - April 3
a Rafflecopter giveaway

My Life At The Pencil Sharpener: store and blog (you are here)

Fourth Grade Frenzy: store 

Pam's Place: store

Teach2Tell: blog

Rose Loiacono: store

Tied 2 Teaching: store

Teacher's Lounge: store

A+ Kids: store

Heart2Heart Teaching: store

Living, Laughing, Teaching: store 

I am so excited to announce a HUGE giveaway coming soon to this blog!  I have partnered up with 31 great stores from Teachers Pay Teachers for one gigantic event!  There are so many great prizes that there will be 5 seperate giveaways, which means....FIVE CHANCES TO WIN!  Just look at some of what you could win!

Giveaway #1: $10 Shopping Spree to 8 Great K-2 Stores!


Pick a $10 item or combination of items from each of these great stores:

My Life At The Pencil Sharpener: Check out the "Word Problem Detective Unit" or any of the book studies for great resources!

The Chocolate Teacher: I love her grammar activities such as "Cooking Up Some Progressive Noun Practice"

Brittani Black: Her Llama Llama craftivity looks super cute!

Mrs. Roltgen:  There are so many great products, but you can get prepared for the end of the year with the "Kindergarten Summer Packet"

Momma With A Teaching Mission:  A store full of great common core aligned products!

My Carolina Classroom: From readers theater scripts to behavior charts...so much to see here!

Powerpoint Gaming: You can follow their store and so much more on their blog!

Kinders In NY: Lots of activities ready to print and go!  Check out the "Sight Word Hunt"

Giveaway #1 will run from March 22-March 30.  Starting getting your wish lists ready and stop back to find out how to enter!

Giveaway #2: Winners Choice To 8 Great K-2 Stores!



Chose your favorite product from each of these 8 great TpT stores!  The product of your choice will be emailed directly to you!  See what these stores have to offer:

My Life At The Pencil Sharpener: The "Vocabulary Game Bundle" is a favorite for winner's choice giveaways!

Elementary Creations: "Building Word Family" puzzles is one of the best sellers on this store.

First Grade Fun With Mrs. Dunn: Just looking at this blog makes me feel better with products like "Yoga," "I Belong To A Group," and "Feelings"

Kelly Caldwell: Kelly has so many "Count, Tally and Graph" choices to choose from!

Lattes and Lunchrooms: So many adorable resources here!  I personally love her "Word Work Bundles."

Miss Jelena's Classroom: Lots of great resources to help boost early vocabulary and grammar skills.

Maureen Prezioso:  Maureen's store is full of activities to help improve your students' phonemic awareness.

Crystals's Classroom Creations: Crystal has several products with varied levels of questioning for classic books like Owl Moon.

Giveaway #2 will run from March 23-March 31.  Find your favorite products from each of these stores and get ready to enter!

Giveaway #3: 12 Awesome Products



Check out these awesome products from great TpT stores!

Word Problem Detectives: A great unit from My Life At The Pencil Sharpener to teach students how to solve addition, subtraction and multi-step word problems as though they are solving a mystery.

Scalloped Frame Boarders: KB3 Teach is offering a great pack of scalloped frame boarders.  Perfect for sprucing up any of your printables!

Journal Prompts: Curry's Creations has a set of journal prompts that is perfect to keep your kiddo's writing!  Follow her blog here.

Telling Time Task Cards: These basket ball themed telling time task cards from Andrea's Artifacts are perfect for the NCAA tournament time!

Opinion Writing With Mentor Text:   ABCDee is offering an opinion writing unit to fit with the common core curriculum.

Interactive Sight Word Printables: Lil' Sprouts PreK has a great set of interactive sight word printables perfect for early readers!

Number Math Up: Students practice 6 different ways to show a number with this great activity from Josie's Place.

Spring Math Games: Get ready for spring with these great math games from Nancy Strout.  See her blog here.

Place Value Pack: Place value such a tricky concept.  Make this easier for your students with a 73 page bundle from Scissors and Crayons!

Base Ten Block Puzzles:  Creating and Learning is offering another great place value resource!

Area and Perimeter Bingo:  Practice this important skill with this fun game from Joyful Projections.

Context Clue Task Cards: Positively Passionate About Teaching has created great task cards to practice finding the meaning of words using context clues.

I Have, Who Has Alphabet: This game created by Jungle Learners is great for students learning the letters of the alphabet.

Giveaway #3 will run from March 24 - April 1.  Stop back between those dates for multiple chances at winning!

Giveaway #4: $10 Shopping Spree from 7 Great 3-5 Stores!



Check out the stores involved in this giveaway!  ALL of these are great sellers who I personally own and have used items from each these stores!  One lucky winner will be able to choose $10 worth of items from EACH of these great shops!

My Life At The Pencil Sharpener: So many great products to teach typical spring math concepts such as geometry.  Look for the "Differentiated Polygon Scoot."

The Core of Grade 4: This great store has so many posters to help keep your classroom organized and focused on learning standards!

Michaela Almeida:  Michaela Almeida, also known as "Reading Royalty," invites the winner of this giveaway to choose $10 worth of products from her store.  Be sure to look for her writing activities (including a great freebie)!

Getting Nerdy With Mel and Gerdy: If you teach science you HAVE to check out this store!  I could get lost in all of the great ideas to be seen here!  For the giveaway they will be asking for entries to follow their blog here.

Tie Play: Lots of great activities for all ages!  Check out the Folk Tales and Fairy Tales Task Cards

The Owl Teacher:  The Owl Teacher store has many great products including science units on rocks/minerals and the solar system.

Kelly Malloy: Kelly's store has many great products including many to help students master math facts!

Giveaway #4 will run from March 25-April 2.  Get your wish lists ready and come back to find multiple ways to enter!

Giveaway #5: Winners Choice From 10 Awesome 3-5 Stores!

One lucky winner will get to choose your favorite product from each of the 10 stores listed below!


Heart 2 Heart Teaching: Do you teach Social Studies?  If you do I am sure you will love some of the great units found in this store!

Living, Laughing, Teaching: This store has many great foldables and science activities to help keep your students engaged.

Pam's Place: The many math resources found in this store will be sure to excite your students.  I would love to try the "Whack A Factor" game.

Giveaway #5 will run from March 26 - April 3.  Start thinking of what would fit best for your classroom!

WOW!  5 giveaways!  Choose your favorite to enter or enter them all!  Stop back by beginning March 22 to find out how to enter!  You can enter every day in multiple ways to increase your chances!

Who doesn't love a sale?  Teachers spend countless hours and dollars getting their classroom ready and preparing great lessons for their students.  Teachers truly are our heroes and deserve a sale!  My products on Teachers Pay Teachers will be on sale for 28% off with the promo code "Heroes" on Wednesday, February 25th!  Happy shopping!

I LOVE the math topics that seem to always be taught around this time of year!  From fractions to measurement and geometry...the topics lend themselves so well to fun, hands-on learning!  Of these topics, however, geometry has to be my favorite.  Geometry is such a broad topic that requires students to have strong background knowledge in attributes of shapes as well as other geometric terms to be successful.  To practice this background knowledge I love to get students up and moving. We use our bodies to create a variety of shapes and angles (laying on the floor),  get outside and draw shapes and other geometric terms using sidewalk chalk, use food items such as marshmallows and pretzel sticks to build models of these terms, and so much more!

One of my favorite ways to practice these terms is to make a class dictionary.  Our class roams the  school in pairs with digital cameras and iPads/iPods and take pictures of a list of geometry terms (example: quadrilateral, hexagon, parallel lines, obtuse angle, etc).  Each pair is given a checklist of items to look for as we walk.  When we finish our hunt students can either create a collage or powerpoint presentation of their findings (adding labels to each picture using a geometric term).  I then choose a few pictures of each term to print out and create a class book.  This book is a great reference tool for the class and students enjoy applying this knowledge to the real world.

My TpT store has many products lending itself to an elementary level study of geometry (grades 1-5) from polygons, geometry terms, perimeter and area, etc. Check it out!  Here are a few of my favorite products:



  


      Lines and Angles Matching Game and Worksheet
This matching game features many key geometry terms with images for students to match in a "Go Fish" style game.  An assessment worksheet is also included along with answer keys.




   



       Differentiated Polygon Scoot and Worksheet
 This product includes 3 levels of practice with polygons ...perfect for print and go differentiation!   Play it as a scoot game or use as task cards (answer keys included).  Differentiated worksheets/assessments are also included in this purchase!




Stop by my TpT store where I am putting all of my geometry items on sale for the remainder of February!



 

I am always on the lookout for fun ways to reach my students...unfortunately too often these creative ideas mean spending more money! How exciting is it, however, when you find a great idea that utilizes items that you already have!  One go-to item that seems to get a lot of use in my classroom is a hula hoop.  I did not realize it until I pulled out this versatile little piece of play ground equipment for the second time this week, how many uses it can have.  Of course it is a favorite for recess time and gym time, but it can also be very handy during classroom instruction.  One of my first alternative uses for a hula hoop came a few years ago when I started using hula hoops for venn diagrams.  It is funny how simply turning this graphic organizer into a larger scale,  hands-on activity increases engagement of your class.  I have had students write their own ideas to compare/contrast with the hoop venn diagrams onto sentence strips or given them various pre-written cards to sort onto the hoops.  A great learning tool for so many age levels.

Nothing excites me more than finding a  book.  This summer, while in a quest to find engaging chapter books for my students I came upon the book The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo.  From cover to cover this book is a great story with so many teachable moments - with lessons on perseverance, friendship and family just to name a few.  I read it with my third grade daughter and she loved it!  Even in the summer months she was asking me if she could continue reading.  This is what I love...watching kids truly LOVE reading.  For this reason, I have made it a point to not end any of my book units found on my Teachers Pay Teachers store with any big test.  Instead, each book unit ends with a variety of end of unit projects and activities that allow teachers to choose what they like best, or differentiate and let students choose how they would like to show their learning.  For this particular book unit there are 4 different options available for the end of the story - check out the preview to get an idea for what you will see!


In this story a boy, Rob, who has struggled with friendships and sadness after the loss of his mother is bullied and misunderstood everywhere he goes.  He keeps himself shut off from the world as he follows his fathers advice to not show any emotion and keep your emotional "suitcase shut."  A new student in school entices his curiosity and seems to understand him more than most as she is also struggling with family and friendships.  The story progresses and these characters forge a secret friendship before Rob finds a caged tiger.  Students will find many parallels between this caged animal and the main characters.  From this point the story truly blooms as the friends begin to learn much  more about each other and themselves as they decide what to do about the tiger.

I do not want to ruin too much of the story as it really is a great one (and the end definitely has a twist).  All I can say is that boys and girls alike will love this story.  I loved it so much I decided to create a book study for this.  This book study includes a pacing guide, comprehension questions and printables for all 30 chapters, weekly focus skill activities (cause/effect, sequencing and character traits), weekly vocabulary study and end of unit projects.  Everything needed to start this story with your class right away!

This product will be offered at a special sale price of $5.00 for the rest of this month!  

Tiger Rising Unit