There's a Wocket in My Pocket...What's in Yours? (TPT!)

I love Dr Seuss! I want to do my entire classroom in Dr. Seuss. It's my favorite thing to teach during the year. I spent the weekend in my classroom preparing it for Read Across America Week. Here are some pictures of my boards.

I also created an activity that goes along with the story There's a Wocket in My Pocket! My class did it this afternoon and had a ball with it! I have uploaded it onto Teachers Pay Teachers for $2.50 Again, thank you to everyone that has purchased my other items and/ or followed me. :) :) Here's the link the the Wocket in Pocket Activity:

There's A Wocket in My Pocket TPT

I also found the best new teacher blog called Finally in First. This teacher has some great ideas and I used her Horton craft this morning. Go Check it out!

Book Club Reading Packets (Also available on TpT!)

This week, I started something new in my buddy reading center. I call it "Ms. Leslie Ann's Book Club" and it's modeled after Oprah's Book Club. Each day, I pick one group to go to book club for the day. This means that they do not rotate to different centers during the reading block. They spend the entire morning in the Book Club, with the exception of meeting with me for small group time. I set up a book club meeting area on our back rug. I have started creating a board beside it and when I get it finished I will upload pics. We've done this all week and I'm so pleased with how it's gone. The kids LOVE it! They have all been begging to be picked for it and they do really well at it. Friday, we are going to have our first interview in which several of my students will pretend to be Laura Numeroff and certain characters from the books and I will interview them like Oprah does. We are really excited about this :)
This week, my chosen books are the Laura Numeroff books like If You Give A Moose A Muffin, If You Take a Mouse to the Movies, and If You Take a Mouse to School. My kids are having problems with sequencing, so these books are helpful.
I have made what I call 'book club packets' These include comprehension questions, story maps, venn diagram, story starters, and more. These are available on Teachers Pay Teachers. Even if you don't use them for a book club, they would be good for mini units on the books.
I originally made these for my kids to practice for their A.R. (Accelerated Reader) tests and I can already tell a big difference. I will start adding more comprehension questions to the packets since that seemed to help the most.
Sorry for a post without pics. I hate those...I'll upload pics of our Book Club when the board if finished.
Thanks again to all who have purchased from me on Teachers Pay Teachers! :)
Teachers Pay Teachers: Book Club Packets link

Vowel People!

Last week, our phonics skill was /ai/ and /ay/. I was tickled pink when I saw a chart for this skill on Babbling Abby's teacher blog The Inspired Apple. She made the cutest 'ai' and 'ay' people, along with a memorable story to help inforce the sound. I made my own 'vowel people" and told my kids the story of the old married couple. They loved it! One of my kids even randomly raised his hand in the middle of a math lesson and said, "Hey Ms. Leslie Ann, I have the married couple in my name!"(meaning 'ai') :) Here's my vowel people for 'ai' and 'ay'

Since our phonics skill this week is /ea/, I made a helper chart for these two vowels, along with the song from Starfall. If you haven't seen it, you must check it out here! I show this video to my kids when I introduce this new sound and it really helps.

Thanks for the great idea, Babbling Abby! :)

Gotcha phonics game now on Teachers Pay Teachers!

Thank you so much to all of you that have bought my Olivia craft on Teachers Pay Teachers. :) We celebrate Valentine's day Monday with an Olivia themed celebration, which I will upload pictures of soon.
I have just uploaded a new product on Teachers Pay Teachers. It contains all the word cards for a game called Gotcha! that I use everyday in small groups. My kids love this game and beg to play it each day. It is great for teaching the weekly phonics skill. Check it out!

Gotcha! Game listing on Teachers Pay Teachers

Pattern for Olivia Craft on Teachers Pay Teachers!

I finally learned how to make PDF files. I cannot believe how easy it was! And I've been so excited that I created a seller account on Teachers Pay Teachers and created and uploaded an Olivia packet. The Olivia packet contains all the patterns for the craft and it also contains the directions and pieces for an artist project we did in my classroom and a graphic organizer that is used to compare and contrast Olivia to real pigs. It's my first time to create anything like this, so I priced it cheap at $2 :) Click here to see my account on teachers pay teachers. :)

PDF Help!

Okay, so I may be asking a dumb question, but how do you make a PDF file that you can post online? I would like to start making these for patterns to share with all you bloggers out there, and eventually on TPT, but I'm completely clueless on where to begin. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

More Olivia Author Study

We made our own Olivias today! The kids LOVED this! Here's a picture of our February author study board, which include the character maps we made Friday.