Stop- It's Gobble Time!

Time to start gearing up for Thanksgiving! Today I have a bunch of great activities that are perfect for filling in the gaps right before Thanksgiving break. Happy Thanksgiving! 😃

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Pumpkin-Pie-Rhyming-PuzzlesWord-Families-and-Worksheets-4150254

These adorable rhyming puzzles are one of the my favorite activities for Preschool and Kindergarten, and even 1st grade! Simply print each puzzle, laminate, and cut apart and store in a plastic baggie for plenty of future Thanksgiving use. The puzzles come with a little plate to assemble the "pie" on for a cute literacy center. Or you could print on regular paper and have students glue the pies together for a fun lesson!So many options, one great activity package. Find it here:https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Pumpkin-Pie-Rhyming-PuzzlesWord-Families-and-Worksheets-4150254

If you're in a bind and need some quick activities, or if you are looking to fill your sub tub, check out this Print-and-Go Thanksgiving Packet. It includes a great variety of activities, including graphing, story writing, and ABC order.

Come check it out here! 

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Thanksgiving-Activity-Pack-4193485


Are you working on telling time this Thanksgiving? Just look at how adorable these owls dressed as turkeys are!!!! I cannot resist their adorable-ness! Chances are, your students won't be able to resist them either! The packet includes practice worksheets AND flashcards for your kiddos!

Get your "Time to the Owler" pack here! https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Time-to-the-Owler-Thanksgiving-clocktime-practice-and-flashcards-4138460

If you have beginning readers (I recommend these for Fontas and Pinnel Levels F-J), they will love these funny and engaging fluency and comprehension stories! 

This great set of stories covers the major Fall Holidays with 13 different stories. Practice fluency and build comprehension skills with these entertaining passages! Find them here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Halloween-Thanksgiving-Winter-Holidays-Comprehension-and-Fluency-Passages-4122645

Here's another personal favorite- Thanksgiving Roll-a-Story. This is such a fun activity that helps lower elementary students practice creative writing! They love to roll the dice to create a funny story, while also getting to use their imagination to fill in the missing 

parts! 

 https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Thanksgiving-Roll-a-Story-4201028

Hope you enjoyed all the terrific Thanksgiving activities! Have a Happy Thanksgiving and try to keep your sanity before the last bell rings for Break! :) 

Silent E Interactive Notebook

Hey all, hope you are having a fantastic day so far! I have been super busy these last few weeks working on all kinds of resources for Halloween and Thanksgiving. The store is jam-packed with holiday goodies, with lots more to come! Come check it out here Owlways Teach From the Heart  and be sure to follow for automatic updates!

In the meantime, I started a new project completely non-holiday related. I had noticed recently that my little guy was having some trouble remembering and applying old phonics lessons that we studied over the summer. Sometimes he would breeze through a passage with no trouble, and at other times the idea of "silent e" or "r-controlled" would completely stump him. So to help him out, I decided I would kill 2 birds with 1 stone and create some interactive notebook activities that focused on Silent E.

I have ALWAYS wanted to do an interactive notebook, but when I was teaching full-time, I just didn't have the time or nerve to try something it in the classroom. I needed to try it out in a less stressful environment and decide what I really wanted to get out of it. This was the perfect opportunity to give it the notebook a shot with no risk and to test out my own creations at once.

So, after several weeks of work, I now have a full Silent E Interactive Notebook Package available that I am super excited to share! https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Silent-E-Interactive-Notebook-Activities-4165748

I have included tons of action shots and blurbs about how J and I put this notebook to the test.

Here is the first activity J completed in his notebook. It includes a simple poem that we read everyday to remember our rule for Silent E.  Today, I used this page to go with a mini-lesson on Silent E, since we were just starting. This page is also great for a quick review down the road!

Day 2- First we review the poem and the words on page 1. Then, we cut out the picture match flip book. We decided what each picture represented, then found and cut out the matching word. 

Day 3- Short and Long Vowel Sort. This one is pretty self explanatory, but very effective. It's also a great activity to open up discussion about what makes a long and short vowel sound to prepare for Vowel Teams in the future!

 

Day 4- Simple and clean. We made a flip book and drew a picture for each word underneath.I couldn't help but love J's creativity with some of the pictures! 

Day 5- This was our favorite activity so far! First we cut out and read the story. Then J sequenced the story by gluing the puzzle pieces in the right order. Finally, we went back and highlighted every Silent E word we read. I also had J write them out for extra practice! 

Long story short, he LOVES it and can't wait for more! Everyday after school, he comes home and grabs his notebook, scissors, and glue and patiently waits for me to explain the directions. He can't wait to get started! I've also noticed that he is retaining the lessons a lot more effectively and his engagement level plays a big part in that. I cannot recommend Interactive Notebooks enough now!

Come get the full SILENT E INTERACTIVE NOTEBOOK PACK HERE! :https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Silent-E-Interactive-Notebook-Activities-4165748



Just getting started with Interactive Notebooks? Here are some tips on how to plan it!

1.Organizing and Planning Your Interactive Notebook
 If you are new to interactive notebooks like I was, I cannot stress pre-planning and organizing enough. It is VERY important and will save you a major headache in the future. Do not assume that you can just go online and print out whatever you want, and have a fantastic creation in the end. That's a pretty good way to end up with a Frankenstein Monster of a notebook, eek! 😓

Take the time to plan your notebook first. Decide what's going to be in this notebook so that you don't end up with a mish-mash of lessons that are difficult to organize. I decided ahead of time that this would be a Phonics only notebook- no fluency, vocabulary, or writing would be here unless it directly related to a phonics lesson.

The second thing to do is decide on the look and organization of the notebook itself. I created several Table of Contents pages, with a clear expectation of how I wanted J to use those pages. Then I NUMBERED the bottom of each page ahead of time. I did let J help me, but he was under close supervision. I really wanted our notebook to be easy to use for review, and the Table of Contents helps out a lot! I would recommend numbering your notebooks in small group, if you have the time available.

I also took a piece of ribbon and hot-glued it to the back cover to create a bookmark for J to use. We place it on the next empty page before we close the notebook for the day. This is such a time-saver! Trust me, you will thank yourself when you don't have to help 20 kids find the right empty page (you'll still probably have to help a few, but definitely not all 20!).  MAKE THE BOOKMARK!

Now, you just need to decide how OFTEN you want to use the notebook. Everyday? Every Friday? Make sure you have enough pages to fit your needs and plan accordingly. I decided not to do front and back, but you may need to!

2. In the Beginning...there was MODELING
I probably really don't need to say this, but I'm going to JUST in case. Be sure to MODEL, MODEL, MODEL your expectations and how to use the notebook! Create a notebook for yourself and model opening it, turning to the Table of Contents and filling it out, and turning to the correct page. Model how to cut out and glue the activity into the notebook. Model what to do when finished. Seriously, if you don't model it, they won't do it.

3. Planning Activities
 One more thing that I did with this notebook was to divide it into easily changeable sections based on the phonics that I wanted J to learn over the next few months. I planned out 5 activities a week, and sequenced out what specific phonics he would be learning. So, for the first month he would be learning only Silent E (20 activities=20 pages). Then, I used a sticky note to label the first section of the notebook.
I went a little crazy, and planned out most of the notebook ahead of time in this manner. That is not something that HAS to be done....but it does help, if you can spare the time!

Here is our notebook! I used sticky notes to create tabs for an extra layer of organization. You can also see the ribbon I used for a bookmark. Simple, effective, and it's not a big deal if anything happens to it! :) 

I hope that you found something great to take away and use in your classroom or home today! As "Owlways", remember that teaching is a work of heart! <3

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Puddles, Sharks, and Bats- OH MY!

It's been an entire week since I last posted, but I definitely have not been slacking! Last week was another crazy week for my family, as we had a 4 day weekend AND we were affected by Hurricane Michael. Thankfully, we did not have any major damage, but we did have an interesting encounter with a puddle (POND) in our front yard. Also, school was out, so that pretty much meant I had my hands full!

Here is a video of my son jumping into the "puddle". It's pretty epic, and BOY, were we surprised when those feet didn't hit the ground right away!


Again, thankfully that was about the worst thing that happened during the Hurricane and we are feeling very fortunate. That being said, that also left me with ANOTHER 4 days with my kiddo home and wanting his 7-months-preggo Mommy to run (waddle) after him at high speeds. To combat all that energy, we took some time to practice some of his math and reading skills!

The first thing we did was work on his number sense, specifically number relationships. This is a skill that his teacher said he was a little weak on, but that he had a basic understanding of. We did Shark Number Sequencing together for about 10 minutes. Then I let the little bugger try it on his own for the last 10 minutes. He did great! Nothing like sharks to help engage a 5 year old boy!

Yes, we are on the floor and that is OKAY! Kids can learn anywhere, as long as they aren't being distracted! :) It's hard to see it here, but this kid was smiling every time he picked out a new Shark card. I can say this activity is kid, mom, and teacher approved!!

You can find the FULL LESSON here:

 https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Shark-Number-Sequencing-Full-Lesson-4110479

A few days later, I felt like his confidence and understanding had increased and that he was ready for a little bit more of a challenge. I decided to give J another one of my math activities that I had created when I was teaching 1st grade. He did well with it, but it is definitely one that we will have to bring out more often to really get the concept down.

This one also happens to be Halloween themed- Bats! In this activity, the child picks up a bat body with a whole number written on it. Their job is to split the whole number into 2 parts. This is often referred to as "PART-PART-WHOLE" by teachers, and it's a great stepping stone to understanding addition.

For J, I also provided manipulatives to help him split up the whole number. He would divide his number into two groups, then find the correct bat wings to complete his bat. Finally, he recorded his answers on his giant laminated bat with a dry erase marker.

With J, we only practiced the numbers 1-10, but the complete packet goes up to 20. Each number is printed on both a left and a right wing, so that there isn't any fighting over wings!

This is such a fun activity, and J really loved getting to find the bat's wings and record them on his big bat. This can easily be differentiated too! You can decide what whole numbers to use, provide manipulatives or tools, or you can just have students MATCH all the numbers if they need more number recognition practice!
You can find Bats and Wings here:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Bats-and-Wings-Part-Part-WholeAdditionNumber-Rec-Math-CenterActivity-4119278

To round off all this math, we also did some sight word review with a fun Halloween coloring sheet. This is a color-by-sight-word Haunted House! J LOVED IT!

I have quite a few of these up in my TpT store, but this one is probably one of my favorites. As you can see, J does not believe in traditional ghosts and opted for orange. As always, there is both a color-by-sight word version AND a regular coloring sheet available. 

You can find them HERE:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Halloween-and-Thanksgiving-Color-by-Sight-Word-Coloring-Pages-4117668

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great day!

Halloween!

Good morning! I hope everyone had a great weekend! We just had a wonderful 4-day weekend ourselves. I love it when I have extra time with my family, especially my husband. Sometimes it feels like we rush around and push so hard to get things done during the week, that we have so little unfilled time. This weekend we were able to knock out some major projects (like cleaning out the shed for the first time EVER) and also spent some great time just hanging out as a family.

Even still, I did find myself with just a bit of extra time that I decided to use productively. While my boys were busy cleaning out that shed, and I was busy being too pregnant to waddle over paint cans and spider webs, I made some Halloween goodies!

These are geared towards 1st and 2nd grade readers. I chose the Fry 300 word list for the comprehension passages,  and the Fry 100 list for the color by sight-words.
Here is the Halloween Comprehension Freebie:

You can find this kid-friendly, spooky freebie HERE:
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/A-Haunted-Place-Halloween-Comprehension-and-Fluency-Passage-4113885

This passage works on fluency, has the Fry 300 word list sprinkled in, and of course it's just an adorable story about a not-so haunted hotel.  Enjoy!

If you want even MORE Halloween comprehension stories, you find a pack of 5 HERE:
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Halloween-Fluency-and-Comprehension-Passages-4115461

My personal favorite story is in the pack ;) Can you guess which one it is?

Now for my little readers- don't worry, I didn't forget you! I made some cute color-by-sight word worksheets that focus on the 1st Fry 100 list. There are a lot of words on the page, but it is fairly easy to inference a few of them (pumpkins are usually orange, for example). You can find the freebie here:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Cat-Magic-Halloween-Color-by-Sight-Word-4112131

If you don't want any sight words, but just love this cutie kitty, there is also a normal coloring page version! I've had to print this one out about 10 times already for my own son, because he is obsessed with making the cat every color imaginable!

Be sure to check on my store throughout this month, because I'll be adding some more of these VERY soon! They are so much fun to make, and the kids absolutely LOVE them!


Also, when I said I had "some" time on my hands, I had almost a whole day. Like I said, that shed hasn't been cleaned EVER haha! In addition to all these great reading activities, I thought I should round things out with writing too!

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Spooky-Sentences-4094156

Simple, Halloween-themed sentences for your K,1, or 2 student. These work on starting each sentence with a capital letter and ending with punctuation. Students are given a convenient check list for self-check before handing it back to you! Don't forget to use finger spaces ;)


I hope you like all these terrific freebies! Until next time!

Be sure to like us on Facebook too!!! Sometimes we announce new things and let you know about LIMITED freebies! https://www.facebook.com/owlswaysteachfromtheheart/


Have a great day and "owl"ways remember- teaching is a work of heart!

Shark-spiration

Good morning, ya'll! It's a gloomy, lazy Saturday morning here in the South, but you'll hear no complaints from me! This weather is the perfect excuse to cuddle up in bed with my computer and a cup of coffee, with a TV episode I've seen 1000 times on in the background. As a bonus, it's just myself and the 3 cats at home right now, so I have lots of peace to work!

Last night, I started on a project that I naively thought would only take my an hour or two around 8 p.m.. Flash forward to me at 1 am, still drawing my own art, furiously working on text alignment, and absolutely determined to make my creation come to life before the dawn! I did have to call it a night long before dawn, but I was right back at it by 7 am. INSOMNIA is the word of the day: I simply could not get this project off my mind!

So what in the world was I so obsessed with that I woke up looking like a frightening, unkempt version of Victor Frankenstein? In a word- SHARKS!

I know, I know- Shark Week is long over with by now and it's well into fall. Shark season is officially over, right? WRONG! 

My son is even more OBSESSED with Sharks than I am, and I was determined to make him some math work that centered around sharks. 

Why? Well, because 

A) Sharks are freaking awesome!

 B) My kid is awesome and 

C) He's really bad at math 😉

The great thing about being a mom and a teacher, is that I have a lot of tricks for helping my kiddo learn new concepts. But that doesn't always change pure personality. I seem to have raised a James Patterson, not a Stephen Hawking. That boy LOVES to read, but give him a number and he looks like you handed him....well you get the idea (💩).

Thus, this crazy all-nighter to create the perfect Shark-themed math lesson was born. My boy is in Kindergarten, and one of his problem areas is number sequence. He does great with rote counting and 1-1 to correspondence, but comparing and ordering random numbers? Not so much. Thus, much of my lesson focuses on these 2 areas, but I have included some extra materials to allow for variety!

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Number-CHOMP-Comparing-Numbers-with-Sharks-4105839

Here is the freebie that I created to share with everyone. There are 4 worksheets that work with numbers 1-20 and allow for differentiation. 

But that's definitely not the only thing I made last night! You can find the FULL LESSON here:

 https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Shark-Number-Sequencing-Full-Lesson-4110479

13 pages of instructional material, tons of sharks, and engaged kiddos all in one awesome pack! Hope you all enjoy this lesson as much as my son and I did!

Now, I think it is finally time for me to log off, blink the sand out of my eyes, and...go watch JAWS! 

Have a great day!

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Ch, Ch, CHA!

Gooooood Morning! It's a Friday (FriYAY!)  It's been an absolutely crazy week over here, mostly because I have been fighting a horrible cold (while pregnant, BOO!) and have been confined to bed for days. That means that my boys had pretty much free reign of the house for the last few days, and WHEW! Let me tell you, we'll need the whole weekend just to find the floor again 😩

On a different note, all that confinement left me with a chunk of hours to waste on my computer, so I was able to create lots of freebies this week! 

Here is a special one I made for little readers who are learning letter sounds like ch, sh, and th

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Say-it-Cut-it-Glue-it-Digraph-and-Blends-Picture-Sorts-Packet-4099724

What you see is pretty much exactly what you get! This is an easy and terrific activity for emergent readers, designed to engage kids through verbal, visual, and hands-on activity. This is best combined with mini-lessons on digraphs if you have them. If you're a parent helping a child at home, these are still great to use! Plus, you can have a great discussion on what ELSE makes these sounds and/or have your child draw their own pictures :)

Find this freebie here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Say-it-Cut-it-Glue-it-Digraph-and-Blends-Picture-Sorts-Packet-4099724

If you are successful with this and loved having it, you can find the FULL packet with over 14 practice sheets for both blends AND digraphs here:
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Say-it-Cut-it-Glue-it-Digraph-and-Blends-Picture-Sorts-Packet-4099724

Hope you have a great Friday! I'm now off to reconstruct the house haha! 

As always, thank you for dropping by and remember to "owlways" teach from the heart! 

One Week!

Today marks one full week since I started creating and sharing resources for teachers! I am so excited each morning to log into my computer and begin designing, that sometimes I even let my coffee get cold (that's how you know this is serious business, haha!).

In celebration of a full week of creating, blogging, editing, and NOT breaking the computer out of frustration, I made these little babies for....the babies! Well, they probably really aren't babies if they're learning to read, but I consider anyone beneath the age of 25 to be a baby! ;)

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Point-and-Read-Sight-Word-Fluency-4106025

I created the prototype for these guys a LONG time ago, when my own little guy was about 3 1/2 years old. He knew all his ABCs and letter sounds, and was very, very slowly learning to sound out words. But how do you "sound out" the word "the"??? Well, that's when I discovered the magical world of sight words as a parent (this was before my teaching days!). 

Sight words help a child to fluently read a word, without the need to decode it by sound. Some critics say this is unhelpful to the learning process, but in my experience, sight words boosts a child's confidence ENORMOUSLY in reading and take out a lot of the guesswork! Don't be mistaken though- learning both in tandem is the BEST way to learn to read!

With these little readers, the child is exposed to the sight word over and over (yep, we're going old school here!), while being given picture clues for the rest of the sentence. Also, each word is accented by a chunky dot to help your child learn word tracking and reinforce their concept of word (the idea that chunks of letters make words!)

This is a great tool to use as both a teacher OR a parent! Enjoy a freebie version here https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Point-and-Read-Sight-Word-Fluency-4106025


LOVED working with the freebie?  Check out the  full version here:
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Point-and-Read-Sight-Word-Fluency-First-25-Fry-Words-4107766

As always, thank you for dropping by and remember to "owlways" teach from the heart!

Welcome!

Hey there and welcome to my page! First, I want to thank you, along with my very supportive husband, family, and friends, for taking time to visit this page and being part of this adventure!

I started this journey only recently, when I created a few worksheets for my 5 year old son to complete at home. I had looked EVERYWHERE, and could not find what I was looking for! So I took matters into my own hands, whipped up my first batch of resources, and I sent them to my husband to print them out at work (haha I NEVER have ink in my home printer!!). I didn’t think a thing of it, until my husband called me up out of the blue.

“Honey, did you make these? These look like they were done by a professional!”

It could be the pregnancy hormones, but I tell you those words had me in tears with such pride and happiness! His words were so simple, but they sparked the creative light burning inside me that had been slowly fading since I came home to be a stay-at-home mom. One thing led to another, and now I eagerly dash to my computer each day to create new resources for teachers and share them with the world!

I wish you well in your own teaching or parenting journey, and I hope that these resources help you in some small way. “Owl”ways remember- teaching is a work of heart!