I'm probably biased...

...but I have the SMARTEST students ever!  Today, I gave my students some "free" time after testing, but told them they had to either read from their book bins, or do a Word Work activity [I wanted to be certain they actually did something worthwhile for 15-20 minutes!] My usual suspect finished first and found an activity from my Word Work bin. Well, he thought he found an activity. He pulled out an envelope filled with sentence strips of nouns. He wasn't sure what to do with them, and then told me he wanted to put them in alphabetical order. He then noticed he was sitting on my alphabet rug and decided to use the rug to put the words in ABC order! I loved his sudden inspiration to challenge himself! To be honest, I was a bit jealous I hadn't thought of it myself! What a smart kiddo! Hence, the title of today's post. I loved the idea so much, I took a picture and made sure I wrote a post so everyone could see his awesome idea! Cheap dollar store noun strips and an ABC rug is all you need!

SALE TIME!

With standardized testing taking place all this week and next, not much fun has been happening in our classroom. Well, scratch that. One thing did! We planted our bean plants this week to finish up our science curriculum, and are really enjoying watching them grow! We're recording our bean plants in My Plant Journal that I created. Every few days we illustrate how our bean looks, measure it in centimeters (eventually it will be in inches) and write what we notice about them. They have grown a lot already this week. It's amazing what you can do with store-bought lima beans, wet paper towels, and Ziploc baggies!

I hung them across the windows on yarn with clothespins so they get more sunshine. I added some questions we had about our experiment with window chalk!

And now to the title of this blog.... SALE TIME!

School will be over in just 32 days (for me anyhow!) and I know many of you are even closer to being done. So, to celebrate I am throwing a sale at my TpT store! Click the word CELEBRATE under the sale tag image below starting Saturday, April 21 and purchase ANY of my items for a whopping 20% off!! The sale lasts until Monday, so check it out! If you like My Plant Journal I described above, you can get it even cheaper this weekend and have your own plant experiment in your classroom too! Your students will love it!

CELEBRATE!

Success! and Easter Break....finally!

The Phonics Egg Hunt was a success!!! Everyone did an awesome job, and it was much-less chaotic than I thought it would be, and it took about hald the time I had planned too! I will definitely be doing this again next year! The kids LOVED it and loved the treats I hid inside for them too :)  Please comment below if you tried this out! My Pinterest was blowing up after I posted it on Monday and got a ton of views, so I know someone else did it too! Please let us know how it went!

I got it to work! Here's a picture of a student looking at his clue and the egg to see if he found the right word:

In other news, the countdown to Easter break is on! Just one more school day after today and we are off for a WHOLE WEEK! When I went to school growing up, and even where I worked for the past 2 years, we only got Good Friday and Easter Monday off, but now I am so blessed to be off an entire week! With the weekend it totals to 9 days of freedom! I'm going to walk my dog, ride my bike, start training for a fun 5K race in June I'm doing (more about that later!) and repaint my bedroom! Plus, this Saturday my husband and I are FINALLY getting our new bed delivered that we ordered about 4 WEEKS AGO! I can't wait for my beautiful, queen-size sleigh bed! (We had a full size now and it's way too small!) and (of course) it's coming the same day I get to babysit my adorable 2 1/2 year old nephew. Oh well, we'll make it work! I am so excited because I haven't seen the Cubster (our nickname for him) in ages! We're gonna have fun eating fruit snacks, playing with my pup Reagan (she's so cute, I had to post a picture below!) and playing outside in the gorgeous weather! What are y'all up this weekend!? Are you off school too? Comment below and let us know!

Come on now, you have to admit shes's the cutest! :)

I also need to work on a Plant Unit I have been conjuring up in my head for the past month. Myself and the other 1st grade teacher are going to plant bean plants after we come back for break to finish our Science curriculum when we study plants. So I'm working on a Plant Observation Journal (which I need a much cuter title for) and other fun activities to integrate other content areas. I will definitely post some FREEBIES when it's finished and put the link up to my TpT store.

Well, thanks for reading and have a blessed Easter!

Tami :)