Helpful Hints on Hump Day

Guess what day it is?  It's HUMP day!  It's a new week for my weekly link up "Helpful Hints on Hump Day!" once again.  I like seeing it grow each week, and have big hopes for it soon.  (It grew by one last week, so let's see!)

Now for my helpful hint...

Looking for cute clip art like this?

Want free clip art?  Need a place for students to find clip art safely?  Check out www.mycutegraphics.com It is amazing and I appreciate Laura Strickland and all of her hard work and support of teachers like me!  She also has a paid site now with high-quality graphics and different images.


Link up an join in the fun! Share a helpful hint that has worked for you and let others learn from your success!  Here are the rules so please play along the right way:

1.  Each Wednesday I will have a post with a linky at the bottom for you to link your helpful hint for all the world to see!  It will be open for 1 day only each week.
2.  Please include the "Helpful Hints on Hump Day" graphic in your post and link back to this post.
3.  Your link must be to a blog post. NO STORE LINKS PLEASE!
4.  If you don't have a blog but would like to share a helpful hint, please do so in the comments!
5.  Please visit at least 2 blogs If you find it helpful, please be sure to let them know!  Leave a comment or follow them!  We will share the love, meet some new friends in the process, and learn something new!  Happy Hump Day!

Helpful Hints on Hump Day!

Guess what day it is?  It's HUMP day!  It's a new week for my weekly link up "Helpful Hints on Hump Day!" once again.  I like seeing it grow each week, and have big hopes for it soon.  (It grew by one last week, so let's see!)

Now for my helpful hint...

Possibly the only thing cooler (or more annoying) than Hump Day is "What Does the Fox Say?"  So today I am asking "What does the pumpkin say!"

Click here to download this file to teach or practice quotation marks.  The students will create their own jack-o-lantern, name him/her and write what they would say in the speech bubble.  The next step is to translate the picture and speech bubble into a sentence using quotation marks.

Try it with your kids to see "What does the pumpkin say?" (ding-ding-ding-da-ding-da-ding)
I can't wait to see the other helpful hints from those that link up!

Link up an join in the fun! Share a helpful hint that has worked for you and let others learn from your success!  Here are the rules so please play along the right way:

1.  Each Wednesday I will have a post with a linky at the bottom for you to link your helpful hint for all the world to see!  It will be open for 1 day only each week.
2.  Please include the "Helpful Hints on Hump Day" graphic in your post and link back to this post.
3.  Your link must be to a blog post. NO STORE LINKS PLEASE!
4.  If you don't have a blog but would like to share a helpful hint, please do so in the comments!
5.  Please visit at least 2 blogs If you find it helpful, please be sure to let them know!  Leave a comment or follow them!  We will share the love, meet some new friends in the process, and learn something new!  Happy Hump Day!

A TpT Trick or Treat Grab Bag

Who doesn't like a treat?  I love a treat, especially when it is free!  In this weeks TpT newsletter, they shared a link to a great grab bag of free products!  Click here to check it out!

In addition to all of these treats from TpT I wanted to add to the sweetness!  (I can't believe they didn't include of of my fun and spooky freebies... just kidding!)  It is a cute way to practice 3 addend addition.  Grab it here!

I actually did this work sheet wit the students before I taught 3 addend addition.  I told them I found this really need worksheet, but wasn't sure if they could do it!  I told them I knew they were great at adding 2 numbers, but could they do 3?  Of course they were up to the challenge!  I let them work for a while to figure it out, then we discussed the strategies they used.  This made it soooo much easier to teach this skill with the math series.  Hope it works as well for you!

iFlash with Glitter

iFlash my students do you?  I'm not talking about the kind of flashing that will put you on the 11 o'clock news!  I'm talking about flash cards!  Skill and drill practice with sight words, addition facts, subtraction facts, numbers, and alphabet is key to building fluent readers and mathematicians.  I have decks and decks of flash cards!  (nothing is worse than when they get mixed up!)  I flash the students when they enter the room, when they leave the room, in small group and anytime I have those odd 3-4 minutes.

Many times I can't find the deck I am looking for or we have a few minutes and I don't have a set with me.  I usually have my iPad or iPhone with me.  Although we need constant practice, the same old cards can get kind of boring.  Wouldn't it be great if I had holiday themed or more colorful cards?

So, one night I had a fabulous idea!  I could load flashcards on my iPad as a PDF and flip through them in iBooks with the class.  Think how colorful and fun I could make them with no worries of printing and colored ink!  I could change them out as the themes change.  Not only can you view PDF files on iPads, most eReaders and tablets can do this too.  I can put several of these older devices I have to use!



So this is how iFlash was brought to life!  I took Pre-primer sight word flash cards and spooked them out for Halloween!  Click here to download them and try them out yourself.

Simply click here to go to my TpT page and download the freebie.  Then click open in iBooks if you are on an iPad.  (With the TpT app, you click on the little eye next to the download button.)  Download the PDF on any mobile device you can use to view PDF files and page through with your students!

I have also done an iFlash Halloween themed set for all 220 Dolch Words, Addition and Subtraction.  You can grab each one of them for only $1.  The students will love them!

As I was creating these, I have fallen in love with the glitter graphics!  It is all the greatness of glitter and sparkle with out the mess!  I am quickly becoming addicted!

You can grab other great freebies too at classroom freebies' Manic Monday!

Helpful Hints on Hump Day!

Guess what day it is?  It's HUMP day!  I am excited to try my new weekly link up "Helpful Hints on Hump Day!" once again.  I like seeing it grow each week, and have big hopes for it soon.

Now for my helpful hint...

Make practicing those weekly words fun and interactive.  Get the wiggles out while learning too!  We practice out high-frequency words "Tae-Bo" style!  We punch them out.  

For "tall" letters we punch up.  For "small" letters we punch straight out.  With "fall" letters we kick low.  Then as we say the word we do an upper-cut.  We also chant the letters while we are moving.  Here is what we would say for "here":

H-E-R-E
H-E-R-E
H-E-R-E
Spells HERE, HERE, HERE!

So this week get up and get moving while you practice those words!

I can't wait to see the other helpful hints from those that link up!

Link up an join in the fun! Share a helpful hint that has worked for you and let others learn from your success!  Here are the rules so please play along the right way:

1.  Each Wednesday I will have a post with a linky at the bottom for you to link your helpful hint for all the world to see!  It will be open for 1 day only each week.
2.  Please include the "Helpful Hints on Hump Day" graphic in your post and link back to this post.
3.  Your link must be to a blog post. NO STORE LINKS PLEASE!
4.  If you don't have a blog but would like to share a helpful hint, please do so in the comments!
5.  Please visit at least 2 blogs If you find it helpful, please be sure to let them know!  Leave a comment or follow them!  We will share the love, meet some new friends in the process, and learn something new!  Happy Hump Day!

Do you LIKE TpT?

Teachers Pay Teachers is celebrating reaching their 100,000 likes on Facebook.  To celebrate they announced a secret flash sale!  (It pays to like them!)

I am sweetening the pot by also adding an additional 20% off at my store.  So if you use the code they posted (FB100K) that will make it 30% off!  Happy shopping, but you better hurry it only last until midnight 10/13!

Helpful Hints on Hump Day!

Oh my!  Hump Day was sneaky today, I didn't even realize it was here so quick!  It is time for

Today we are celebrating Unity Day and wearing orange.  If you haven't found the site for the National Bullying Prevention Center at http://www.pacer.org/bullying/ you have to check it out for all of their great resources!  They have fabulous resources for all ages.  My favorite is the material for Spookley the Square Pumpkin.

Check out my post from last year on this fabulous book!

I can't wait to see the other helpful hints from those that link up!

Link up an join in the fun! Share a helpful hint that has worked for you and let others learn from your success!  Here are the rules so please play along the right way:

1.  Each Wednesday I will have a post with a linky at the bottom for you to link your helpful hint for all the world to see!  It will be open for 1 day only each week.
2.  Please include the "Helpful Hints on Hump Day" graphic in your post and link back to this post.
3.  Your link must be to a blog post. NO STORE LINKS PLEASE!
4.  If you don't have a blog but would like to share a helpful hint, please do so in the comments!
5.  Please visit at least 2 blogs If you find it helpful, please be sure to let them know!  Leave a comment or follow them!  We will share the love, meet some new friends in the process, and learn something new!  Happy Hump Day!

Helpful Hints on Hump Day

Guess what day it is?  It's HUMP day!  I am also excited fo the second week of my new weekly link up "Helpful Hints on Hump Day!"

Now for my helpful hint...

I do a quick informal assessment of my kids every time we leave the room!  I ask them a question as we line-up or walk out the door.

Sometimes I will ask them information about a topic we just covered to gauge understanding.  It may be generating rhyming words, phoneme deletion or what does a scientist do.

Other times I use flash cards as their way out the door.  They have to answer an addition fact or read one or two high-frequency words.  If they can't do it, they go to the end of the line and then get to try again.  (I find this helps encourage them to practice at home too!)

Today I found another fun way!  I have the app Math Bingo on my iPad.  It ask the students an addition or subtraction problem (even multiplication or division) and they pick their answer on the bingo board.  I held the iPad and they read the question making their choice.  They loved it!  If you only have one iPad, this is a great way to give everyone the chance to interact with it.  I plan to try the Sight Word Bingo with them tomorrow.

I can't wait to see the other helpful hints from those that link up!

Link up an join in the fun! Share a helpful hint that has worked for you and let others learn from your success!  Here are the rules so please play along the right way:

1.  Each Wednesday I will have a post with a linky at the bottom for you to link your helpful hint for all the world to see!  It will be open for 1 day only each week.
2.  Please include the "Helpful Hints on Hump Day" graphic in your post and link back to this post.
3.  Your link must be to a blog post. NO STORE LINKS PLEASE!
4.  If you don't have a blog but would like to share a helpful hint, please do so in the comments!
5.  Please visit at least 2 blogs If you find it helpful, please be sure to let them know!  Leave a comment or follow them!  We will share the love, meet some new friends in the process, and learn something new!  Happy Hump Day!

Currently October

Happy Fall Y'all!  It is October and I am linking up with Farley at Oh Boy! Fourth Grade.

So what am I up to currently...

Listening...  I am binge watching Revenge as I work.  I am a person who hates to wait for what comes next, so I love Netflix and Hulu Plus.  Speaking of Netflix, I use it at school also.  Today we watched a Magic School Bus and the Leap Frog learning videos are on there as well.

Loving... Pumpkin!!!  I adore pumpkin latte's and pumpkin muffins.  My favorite pumpkin muffins are the ones I make.  Mix a box of spice cake mix and a can of pumpkin.  That's it, two ingredients!

Thinking...  Really what happened to September; was it shorter this year?

Wanting and Needing...  I really think is I could get a chauffeur to drive my girls to all of their various after school activities I would then have the time to exercise!

Trick or Treat...  I will take both please!

I can't wait to head over and see what my favorite bloggers are up to.

Don't forget!  Guess what day tomorrow is?  It is Helpful Hints on Hump Day!  Check back and link up!