Johnny Appleseed Giveaway !

 September 26th is Johnny Appleseed's birthday! Yes that is soon! I have collected some great videos for the kiddos to watch to teach them about the life of Johnny Appleseed. I have also made a packet with two writing activities, a hat template, and a T or F sheet for the kids. I have posted it in my store here!

 I found these two videos ( CLASSICS WHOOP WHOOP) and have linked them for you below...

Here is the giveaway details...

On September 23rd I will pick 2 winners to receive the Johnny Appleseed Activity Packet and 1 free item of choice from my TPT store! All you have to do is comment on this post with the number of your email address and visit/like my Facebook page with a comment under the giveaway post!

Exploring Space with an Astronaut

This week's story was Exploring Space with an Astronaut!  This  was a fun story because there is no limit to the activities you can do with this story.  One activity I had my student's complete was a writing activity on what they thought space would be like if they could explore it. I asked them to answer these questions:

• What would it FEEL like to visit space?
• What would it LOOK like?
• What would it SMELL like?
• Would you HEAR anything?

I was surprised at how excited my kids were about this writing activity. When my kids get excited about writing I always feel like I have won. Writing can sometimes be hard to get students to do. They want to tell you ALL ABOUT IT , but they don't want to write it. After my students were finished they were allowed to color and cut out this trendy little astronaut I found here<---- . When I found this I signed up for education.com  They have some really neat things. After they cut the astronaut out they glued it to black construction paper and drew their stars and planets with white (light colored) crayons. woo-lah! They turned out A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E! And their writings??!..... IMPRESSED ME! I will definitely try this activity again next year.

Reading and Math in action

 In other news I have been SLAMMED busy keeping up with second graders...... ready for it? SIGH!!!! They are busy bodies for sure but I absolutely love teaching 2nd  grade. I'm still moving things around in my new classroom and trying to figure out what exactly works best. Its a slow progress but I will get there eventually. I have been creating some new reading packets for each weekly story we have. I tried to include some fun writing activities that the students can get excited about . I have recently posted the kits for Henry and Mudge and A Walk in the Desert. Check those out by clicking the links!

  This year our school district has picked up a new math series called GOMATH! Its taking some time to adjust to a new series but so far I really like it. The website access gives you tons of animated resources that demonstrate the skills being taught. All of the manipulatives are digital with LOTS of noise which the teachers...I mean kiddos really like :) Next week we will be beginning chapter 2 which is all about comparing numbers. I have just recently completed a packet that has several activities for Common Core's comparing numbers. The packet also include the chapter vocabulary for that topic.You can find it here!

While working on different ways to write numbers this week I noticed my kids definitely needed some extra practice identifying the word for of numbers. Here is a little freebie practice sheet I  threw together to quiz my kids--->Name That Number Freebie