The Biggest, Best Snowman!!

We are currently learning about fiction story structure; specifically beginning, middle, and end. I was inspired by a Pinterest post and did this lesson with my kiddos yesterday! 

We read the cutest book, "The Biggest, Best Snowman" by Margery Cuyler. 

It's a great book about a little girl who is told by everyone around her that she is too small to accomplish anything but, with the help of her animal friends, she is able to build the biggest, best snowman and prove her family wrong.

As we were reading, I stopped at various parts of the story and had students turn and talk, then share out. We had already learned about Set-It-Up (characters and setting) and Mix-It-Up (problem), so we added those elements to our poster, but we were really focusing on beginning, middle, and end. This is how our poster turned out. Those details are right from the kiddos sharing, aren't they great! One day I will share about how we partner talk and share out in my classroom. I learned the strategy from another teacher at the beginning of the year and was so impressed! Of course everyone has heard of partner talk and sharing out, but they way this other teacher did it was just so fabulous! But that's another day :)

After our mini-lesson with this great mentor text, students went out and made beginning, middle, and end snowman graphic organizers in their reading response journals. Of course I don't have pictures of their work. I totally forgot but will add them sometime this week. Happy Day!

Coin Counting Snowman Craftivity

I LOVE craftivities!! They are fun, keep students engaged, and usually turn out oh so cute! Here is a craftivity that I created this year. There are no templates, but it is easy-peasy to implement and adorable. 

We have been learning about coin counting for the past two weeks. I wanted a fun way to assess their skill so far so coin counting snowmen it was! 

Kids cut out three circles out of white construction paper. One big, one medium, and one small. Then they got to choose (choice is soooo important for kiddos) how many coins to put on their snowman. Of course the dimes had to go on the biggest circle because dimes have the most value, nickels in the middle, and pennies on top. Luckily our math curriculum came with these little paper coin manipulatives, but you could always just print pictures of coins off the internet too. Once they glued their coins, they had to find the value of each circle as well as the value on the whole snowman. After I checked that their math was correct, they could add arms and other details like bows and buttons. Some kids got really creative, even using pennies to make eyes and smiles. Happy day!

Five for Friday Linky! Mrs. Grisham, November 21st

Yeah, yeah. I know; it's technically Sunday. I've loved reading about everyone else's lives and have planned on joining this great Linky part for months now so Sunday is better than no-day I say! I'll work on my punctuality :)

Yoobi is definitely one of my favorite things from this week. It's this great American based company that makes high quality, colorful school supplies. The BEST part is that for every product bought,they donate a school supply product to low income kiddo's like mine. Check out my post Yoobi here!



On Thursday some friends and I did something that only crazy adults do. We went to a play that started at 8:00 on a weekday!! That is late in our old age. It was Little Women though and totally worth it! The actors and actresses were great and though there were many yawns during the show, it was fabulous. Love community theater :)




I FINALLY finished a Holiday Place Value Math Game Bundle just in time for math centers this week. I'm doing a GIVEAWAY of this product. If you teach 1st or 2nd grade please enter and good luck! Enter here! It focuses on addition and subtraction to 200, building numbers, comparing numbers, expanded form, and word problems.  Then I made it fun and cute with snowmen, Christmas lights, penguins, elves, pilgrims, and turkey's with pumpkin pie!

Crickets! My class is learning about insects this term. So far we'd received beetles, milkweed bugs, and butterflies from district. This week we got crickets! The students loved observing them at our science center, but boy are they noisy! I won't be too sad when all the insects go back to the district on Monday.

Oh Thanksgiving!! I'm am so excited! Of course I'm not quite on break yet. I teach Monday and Tuesday with after school meetings both days and report cards are also due to our principal Tuesday, but I'll take two crazy-busy days for a 5-day weekend! I'm looking forward to a fun two days of Thanksgiving theme learning. 

Liebster Award and The Horrible Blogger I've Become

Hello there! I have officially accepted that I, Mrs. Grisham, have been pretty horrible at blogging the past 2 months. I have tons of ideas and things to share and if there was a machine that would magically, or scientifically, take all my thoughts and upload them onto a blog without me having to do any work, I'd be a blogging master!! But since I am busy and somewhat lazy, this is not the case. My online to-do list finally required more than one page so I buckled down today and got some stuff done!

Despite my horrible habits the past few months, a few super sweet teacher-bloggers have nominated me for the Liebster Award; an award for new bloggers who are just getting started. Oh my goodness!! Thank you so much to My Life at the Pencil Sharpener, LisaTeachr, and The Owl Teacher. The online teaching community has been so welcoming and getting encouragement from others helps me tremendously!! Thank you so much for the award and I can't wait to share more about myself and pass on the love to some other new bloggers I've been learning and growing with.

                               1. Why and how long ago did you start blogging? 

I blogged personally for a few years, but just couldn't find my niche. I was an avid Teachers Pay Teachers shopper for a few years and this past summer, about 4 months ago, decided to become a seller. I noticed many of the top sellers had blogs so I shut down my personal blog and transitioned to this blog. I am loving it so far! I've met so many other great teachers, am learning ways to improve my practice every day, and I love getting to share my work with others.

                      2. What one word sums up the heart of your blog and why? 
Fun! I love teaching because I get to have fun every day. I want to bring fun and creativity into as many minutes of my students day as I can. I think many teachers have this desire to infuse fun into learning and so I love sharing my fun ideas with others. I get paid back ten-fold in the fun ideas they share with me! Fun learning=engaged students!

                  3. Is there something you learned late in your blogging journey you                                                              wished you knew before?
I'm still pretty new to this journey, but I knew  how powerful networking was when I first started. I'm learning new things all the time from others and could have cut down a lot on my work load if I would have started reaching out earlier. I also seriously wish I had code skills. It's one of my goals to become more fluent is posting and altering html code.

                     4. What is your favorite past time other than blogging? 
Well, I love teaching. Other than that I love being outside. Kayaking is my favorite sport, but I also love hiking. Books, trashy reality tv, and good food are all some of my favorite things too! Oh, and that really handsome man with a beard sitting on the couch next to me :)

                  5. How many hours per week do you dedicate to your blog? 
Please see aforementioned admission of how horrible I am at this. My blogging schedule is definitely still in it's random phase. My goal is 1-2 hours a week. One day!

                      6. What category of blog posts do you enjoy the most?
I love posts with creative ideas that will bring excitement and learning into my classroom without a ton of money or prep work. I also love organization ideas, because who couldn't use a little more organization in the classroom,and book posts sharing new books and how they can be used as mentor texts. I love LOVE food blogs!

                              7. Where does your blog inspiration come from? 
Amy Lemons! She is my favorite! Her classroom ideas are always so cute. She shares ideas that are related to her products, but she also shares tons of free, easy to implement ideas too! I love how real and down-to-Earth she is and how comfortable she is to share news about her family; it's fun to watch her daughter grow up!

                      8. Which post that you've written are you most proud of?
Honestly, all of them. For me I'm simply proud when I've polished and posted something. I have about 10 un-finished posts so the finishing is the accomplishment, lol. 

              9. Is there any post you have been planning to do, but have 
                                             postponing it for a while now?
See above posts, about ten. I have ideas about how I run Reading Workshop and Word Work in my classroom, my classroom economy system, three craftivities we've done so far this year, Dia de Los Muertos stuff,  so many! They all win see their day in the sun though, one day :)

                                10. What is your favorite aspect of blogging?
I love talking and collaborating and I think it is amazing that this platform allows me to do that with people from all over the world. How cool is that!!

              11. Which recipe, project, or idea on my blog would you be 
                                                  most likely to try yourself?
I really like how The Owl Teacher uses the differentiated Monster Math Program as I'm looking for a quick and easy-to-implement daily fact practice method. LisaTeachr has so many ideas I can't even pick a favorite! She is so much more techy in her classroom and I hope to become like that in the future and I do really admire her ability to post quality content so frequently. I'm going to use My Life at the Pencil Sharpeners Writers Workshop launch book idea next week!! We've launched Writer's Workshop already, but I love a good book suggestion!

Wooo, I love sharing! Now here are my nominations to pass the love along! 

1. Jan Hayden: Smiling in Second
2. Grade 2 Happenings
3. Growing Smart Readers
4. The Cutesy Teacher
5. T is for Teaching
6. Life is Everyday Choices

Now its your turn (nominated bloggers) to participate - here are the official "rules" for accepting:

1.)   In your post link back to the blogger who nominated you as a thank you and "shout out".

2.)  Answer the 11 questions given to you (the ones I answered above)

3.)  Nominate 11 blogs that have less than 200 followers each. Provide them with 11 questions (listed above) to have them answer.

4.)  Let your nominees know they've been nominated and provide them with a link back to your post so they can accept.

5.)  Send your nominator a link to your post so s/he can learn more about you as well. (you can just put your post link in the comments below) 

Holiday Themed Place Value Math Game Bundle and a GIVEAWAY

I finally finished my holiday math games! I love the holiday season; turkeys, elves, and snowmen, yay! I know my students do to so I wanted to put together some themed games to help them practice the math skills we've been working on. There are games for addition and subtraction up to 200, comparing numbers, expanded form, and composing numbers using hundreds, tens, and ones. The games are all common core aligned too in case you need that :)

You can find them in my TPT Store Mrs. Grisham's Little Lighthouse Learners. To spread the word about this new product I'm hosting a giveaway! It ends on the 22nd. Enter below
a Rafflecopter giveaway


I make several copies of each game and put them in sheet protectors. Then students play these games during math rotation with a partner using whiteboard markers. This allows me to quickly check student work and provide activities without wasting a ton of paper. 

Dia De Los Muertos: Free Resources

I love Fall and every Fall I teach my class about Dia De Los Muertos; a holiday celebrated by some Mexicans and Mexican Americans where they honor loved ones who have passed on. It's a great holiday to start the conversation about cultural differences. It's also really beautiful and kids can connect the concept to their lives because everyone can relate to the ideas of family and love. 

We are so lucky to live in a city with a great Art Museum. This great Art Museum hosts a Dia De Los Muertos event each year and offers scholarships for local low-income schools to come and visit the exhibits. I jumped right on that throwing together a field trip in less than 2 weeks; parent volunteers, scholarship application, bussing, lunches, and all! I teach in the 3rd largest district in my state serving more than 28,000 children so this was no small feat! I annoyed a few people because I totally didn't follow protocol which calls for all field trips to be scheduled 6 or more weeks in advance, but I will upset a few people for my students any day of the week!

Most of my students had never been to the museum despite it being 15 minutes away from our school. This is why field trips are so important! Especially for low income students whose parents often don't have the resources or time to provide them with these experiences. They got to look at all the art exhibits, but I will highlight the Dia De Los Muertos gallery here. They were entranced with the beautiful colors of the altars and stories of loved ones who had passed one. 

We were also incredibly lucky to get to speak to a woman who had built an altar for her granddaughter who passed away unexpectedly 2 years ago. Conversations between different generations is something to cherish so I will always remember this special moment my class was able to experience.








In addition to our museum experience, we did a few activities in the classroom. I'm the queen of finding quality activities that are FREE for little units like this and I wanted to share what I found. Thank you to the authors for sharing your great work with us!

My students read about the holiday and completed the comprehension questions with this worksheet from education.com

Then they really enjoyed the coloring sheets provided by Standoo.org.  So beautiful and intricate!

Lastly, I used the resource pack from the Mexic-Arte Museum to educate myself further on the holiday. It has many great activities for the classroom too!

I hope you will consider talking about this holiday in your classroom if you are able to start the conversation about cultural differences. If you are unable to talk abut the holiday, try to plan a field trip of any kind! Getting these kids out into the real world is critical to helping them grow into successful citizens who contribute to their community. Happy Day!

Yoobi! Amazing School Supplies Made in the USA; For every product bought, a product is donated to a school in need!

Yoobi is this great American company that makes school supplies right here in the USA. From their website: "Yoobi, pronounced “you-be,” means “one for you, one for me.” For every Yoobi item you purchase, a Yoobi item will be donated to a classroom in need, right here in the U.S. It’s that simple! Yoobi was born to make colorful, vibrant tools that spark learning and creativity. Not only did we want to perk up the school supplies aisle, but we wanted to help solve a very big problem."

How cool is that?!?! Due to my school's low income status, we qualified to get a FREE Yoobi Classroom Pack this year. It had folders, pencils, glue, markers, crayons, crayons, rulers, pencil sharpeners, practically all the basic supplies my kids use on a daily basis. They were high quality materials made using bright colors. I would even dare to say the quality was higher than my favorite supply company that starts with a C! My students LOVED their Yoobi bags and I just had to share the photos. It's too bad I can't show you their faces. Just imagine 24 surprised and smiling faces!

I encourage everyone to buy Yoobi supplies and want to thank this amazing company for their impact in my classroom this year!! Here is the link again, go check out their products! http://yoobi.com/

Space Week: A Vocabulary Writing Craft FREEIBE and a Sale!

My students love learning about space! They are so curious about how the universe works and the awe they have at the size of things is exciting to watch. Our Reading Street story a few weeks ago was an informational text about space. My students were very excited! I love teaching informational text, but vocabulary is often the hardest part of non-fiction to teach. Yeah, it's easy to get kids to memorize definitions for a test, but to really get students to deeply understand and make connections with vocabulary words is another story. I have about 40% ELL (Engligh Language Learners) in my classroom so this makes effective vocabulary instruction even more critical. 

Lucky for me space vocabulary lends itself well to acting out and physical movements related to content is one of my favorite ways to teach. We had students ascending and descending from desks, orbiting around friends, and investigating tools! Once I felt like my students really understood the astronaut space vocabulary, I wanted them to demonstrate their knowledge with a writing prompt. Vocabulary writing can be a great assessment tool. I wanted to spice it up though and what better way to do that than with a craft! I came up with my Astronaut Vocabulary Writing Craftivity. 

First students wrote about what they would do if they were an astronaut on this space themed handwriting paper. Then they made an astronaut out of a paper plate, one of the best craft materials in the world I think. I gave them some black construction paper, crayons, and start stickers and the end product was not only adorable but a great way for me to assess their learning. 

I want to share this project with you so I just posted it as a FREEBIE! Astronaut Vocabulary Writing and Craft FREEBIE

To celebrate the end of October and the beginning of the most wonderful time of the year, I am hosting a 10% off sale in my Teachers Pay Teachers store through Tuesday, October 28th! Happy end of October! Go here for the sale Mrs. Grisham's TPT Store

First Week of 2nd Grade

I've been MIA for awhile which means it is back-to-school time, the busiest time of the year for all us teachers for sure!! I've transitioned to a new school district so added onto all the typical back-to-school chaos, I'm learning a new system. It has been exhausting to say the least, but despite all the craziness I am LOVING my new school and I'm pretty sure I have the best group of 2nd graders in the world :)

This is a First Week of 2nd Grade post, however we are now in the 6th week. Oh man! From now on I hope to post at least once a week!! Maybe one day I'll be one of those great bloggers who posts every day, a girl can dream, huh?

The first week of school was full of teaching routines and procedures (we are still doing mini-lessons and practice of expectations daily), fun get to know you games and activities, and I even was able to sneak a little district required assessment in there.

We started our first day reading the book, "Do Unto Otters: A book about Manners" by Laurie Keller.

Students then broke up into small groups to write down what they thought our rules should be on sticky notes. Don't Sticky Notes make everything more fun!! (P.S. they are a great formative assessment tool too!) I wanted my students to know right away that I value their opinion and that group work and participation are expected in our classroom culture. They came up with some pretty great ideas and we were able to group them into about 5 "Promises to Each Other". Then all the students signed that they agreed to these promises.

Math started with math tool exploration!! Not only is this what best practices say should be the first step in using math manipulatives, but kids think it's fun and I score major brownie points. Yay!!

They loved just playing with the math tools, but the next day we got serious and used Amy Lemons Tools or Toys math sort lesson from her Let's Get Started (Beginning Math Activities) unit. I just love anything she does and my kids loved this lesson. They learned the difference between a toy and a math tool, and we were able to set up our math journals at the same time.

 We also did her Mathematicians lesson. We talked about what Mathematicians do and the kids actually were full of ideas! I was pleasantly surprised at how much they already knew about math and what mathematicians do! Then each made their adorable little Mathematicians and wrote a sentence or two about what Mathematicians do. I LOVE craftivities that incorporate content areas, writing, and art and this is a perfect example of the greatness that integration can provide for students. Thank you Amy! I just love the way they look on our cupboards and I've had many parents comment on how their child is now saying they are a mathematician. I call that a win.

We also launched Reading Workshop and my students loved getting access to lots of quality books in their book boxes. The first day I put all of our book tubs on student desks and then had students rotate the tubs abound so all kiddos could see what kinds of books were in each tub. Students also started learning how to pick their own books for their book boxes and worked on building up their stamina. They sure are a chatty bunch and aren't yet use to the cognitive demands of 2nd grade, but we built our independent reading stamina up to 4 minutes the first week which I think isn't too shabby.

A favorite first week activity is always decorating Writer's Notebooks. Students love the idea of having their very own notebook where they can write or draw whatever they want. I gave them access to stickers and magazines and let them work. This is fun and I get a little insight into my student's personality.





We played a fun get-to-know you game that requires no materials. I learned this game during my days as a summer camp counselor and it's so fun! All the students stand in a circle. I start by saying, "My name is Mrs. Grisham and I like to kayak," while moving my arms like I'm paddling in my kayak. All the students repeat, "My name is Mrs. Grisham and I like to kayak," while doing the same paddling movement. We then go to the next student who says what their name is and something they like to do with an accompanying body movement. Students repeat and then go around the circle, always starting with Mrs. Grisham and then saying all the students names and interests so as to repeat names and likes many times. This takes about 20 minutes, gets the kids up and moving, plus we all start to learn names and find out about student interests. I had students who liked to ride horses, play ping pong, all kinds of sports, math, reading, writing, shopping, checkers, and a whole bunch of other really cool things I would have never known if it wasn't for this fun and easy game. Try it out!

The last thing I want to highlight is the adorable book "First Day Jitters" by Julie Danneberg.

 I read this book on the first day of school and the kids loved the surprising ending!! We then used the First Day Jitters writing FREEBIE from Fun-n-First. The students writing was so gosh darn cute and I got a little insight into what their writing ability was.

We had a great first week, although I always feel like there a TON of cute ideas that I never get to. Share your fun first week ideas below. Happy day!