Another week of fun and a freebie!

  

1. So this isn’t from this week, but close enough….last week I stayed in a lake house in Michigan which was so relaxing and enjoyable! My hubby and I were there with my family and we had a great time…especially since I got to spend all day each day with my little niece who I just can’t get enough of- she’s just the cutest little thing!

2. This week my hubby and I continued on with our vacations and went to Rocky Mountain National Park and stayed in a teepee! We usually go camping in our tent, but thought, hey- why not- let’s stay in a teepee- and let me tell you it was pretty amazing!

3. Before heading to Colorado this week, I had some quality TPT creating time and am super excited for this Vowels Bundle Pack I just posted. I spend SO much time trying to get my little friends to remember all the different sounds vowels can make and this pack will hopefully be really helpful for my little friends next year.  I already started using the posters in this pack this school year and now I also added a whole lot of center activities to practice all those vowels! The bundle pack focuses on short vowels, long vowels with silent e, r controlled vowels and two vowels walking. I included a few pics below of some of the activities, but you can check out the entire pack here!

4. My freebie for this week is one that you can use all year long as a weekly center activity- it’s a Searching for Sounds Journal. I have done a version of this for awhile in my classroom, but finally took the time to make it a little cuter…:) This can easily be added to your weekly literacy centers by aligning it to your word work focus of the week.  Each student can have his own journal and then you choose the type of words they are searching for (words that end in -en, words with short i sound, words with long u with silent e, -s endings, etc.) and then students search the room for these types of words and make a list on their paper.  I personally use magnifying glasses for this activity (which my little friends love) and I also have my students look through books and look around the room at our posters, games, etc.  I usually put out several books that I know have words that follow the type they are searching for that day to help guide them in the right direction and make sure they stay on task.

This is my old version- just writing on papers- but fun still because of the magnifying glasses!

New version!

You can grab this freebie here!

5. Next week I will be headed to a 3 day workshop on a Comprehensive Literacy Model.  The focus is to provide ideas for school improvement in relation to RTI.  I’m hoping I will be able to get lots of new literacy ideas to bring back to my school!