The Ultimate Freebie List

Don't you just love freebies? I do too! They can give you such a great sense of the authors style. I decided to make the Ultimate Freebie List because I want to have at my finger tips, access to authors freebies. I found and posted here for you some of the best teacher freebies out there. All of these links go directly to their freebie page or automatically search their blog for all their free resources. It's an amazing list and I hope you enjoy it! If you think that you have a great freebie page and would like to add it to the Ultimate Freebie List, please email me! I hope you enjoy.

Kids Cog Works
Laura Candler's Freebies
Raki's Rad Resources
Seasonal Freebies
Classroom Freebies  Too
Classroom Freebies
The Teacher Wife
Sunny Days in Second Grade
HoJo's Teaching Adventures
Nyla's Crafty Teaching
Innovative Connections
Innovative Connections 2
Teaching With Style
Addie Education: Teacher Talk
Globicate
Fun 2 B in First
MixMinder
Tales From Outside the Classroom
LMN Tree
Secondary Solutions
The Wise Owl Factory
Rockin' Teacher Materials
Ms. Fultz's Corner
The ESOL Odyssey
The Book Bug
A Teacher's Bag of Tricks

Teaching Blog Traffic School

Have you ever heard of Teaching Blog Traffic School?  I hadn't either until I took a webinar about blogging and saw Charity Preston's course.  She had recently launched TBTS.  I have to admit, I was skeptical that the course could help me.  I put it on a back burner.

Then I geared up to post and sell my Brain Tower for the first time ever on my blog and guess what happened...crickets.  No one came to see.  Now, the dreamer side of me was thinking that people would just find me!  "So simple," I thought.  Boy was I wrong!  I remembered that course after my heart break over no one coming to see Brain Tower. 

I bought the course and applied the technniques taught.  My pageviews went from about 300 to over 10,000 in just two months time.  I had 17 followers (most of which were my dear friends-thank you guys) but now I am over 100 followers.

These techniques work.  I am proof!  The best part about it-I get to interact with amazing teachers everyday because of the networking I've been part of.  I am inspired and love learning these new skills.

If you have just joined the blogging scene or have been doing it with little results-you need this course.  Don't wait like I did.  As Nike says, "JUST DO IT!"

Lucky for you, Teaching Blog Traffic School is on sale right now for $49.00 (per year) until Easter Sunday.  Do something nice for yourself.  You won't regret it.  Click on the bus below and get started right now.  I'll see you there!

Learn About Brain Tower

Brain Tower is a game that I created to work with the students I tutor. It's also a great tool to have in the classroom in small group settings. The best feature of Brain Tower is that you can write on the blocks surface and erase it. This allows you to change it up any time you wish! There are so many ways you can play.

For students learning to read, write sight words, word families, vocabulary, etc. Students pull out the block, read it, and place it on top of the tower. For math students, write basic operations, fractions, algebra, etc.

My students love this game! Even when I think they may be tired of it, they request to play it again and again. If you would like to learn more about this game. Come visit my Brain Tower page.

Featured on Globicate

Hi there!  I had the opportunity to share a little about Brain Tower over on Globicate today.  Heidi has such a different and fun blog.  She focuses on international things.  Globicate was recently nominated on Education World as one of the Top 25 Education Blogs. 

Pinterest Helps

I love creating products for the classroom, but I also enjoy learning from people outside of my field. If you haven't stumbled upon On the Dot creations, you need to go right now (okay after you finish reading this) and visit! She has an entire place for handmade business tips. I took her product description class and fell in love. Today, I found this helpful article about Pinterest and how to drum up more traffic to your own blog. Click here to go check it out. Okay...now you can go!

Melissa and Doug Spring Wish List

Don't you just love Melissa and Doug products? Their toys are some of the best lasting and fun toys you can buy. They have some great pretend play items and lots of fun new summer toys. I can't wait for it to warm up...come on Spring! You better get in on their Spring Wish List promotion and pin to your hearts content. It's super fun and you can see what I've pinned on my Spring Wish List. HAVE FUN!


Put your Pinterest Board link on Melissa and Dougs blog.  Not mine :)

Featured on The Art of Possibility

Hi everyone! I hope that Spring isn't teasing you too much these days. Today, Katie Lyon invited me to guest blog over with her. Make sure to come by and check it out. There's a little freebie involved for you!


 

St. Patrick's Day Blog Hunt

Welcome visitors! I hope you've found some great treasures on all the other blogs along your way. If you have a little time today, please check out some of my most popular posts on the left side of my blog. There's freebies there too!  Also, you may be interested in my current give-away for a March Madness Unit for 1-2 grade (preview the product here).  Come by facebook to enter.  It closes tomorrow!

Today, is day number 15. I've whipped up some silly fun for your students. A joke and fun book. A perfect little item to send home with the kiddo's that day. Click on the clover to get yours!

Now, you need to where to go from here...well you are in luck! There are two stops for tomorrow. Rebecca at Teaching First and Debbie at Rainbows within Reach. Both are wonderful blog stops to make. Enjoy!

If you have missed the other blog hunt days, get caught up by visiting the St. Patricks Day Blog Hunt on Pinterest by clicking here.

100? Whoo Hoo!

I am so excited to have 100 followers here on my blog!  Thanks for coming by and letting me know that you like what I am doing.  It means so much to me!  To show my appreciation, I am having a SALE at my Teachers Pay Teachers shop and Teachers Notebook shop.  15% off for you! 
The sale will last from today until Sunday, March 18th.  I also wanted to make a fun freebie using Ker-Plunk!  It's a homphone matching game.  Click on it's picture to download yours today.

CRASH!

The great part about this game is that you can make as many cards as you need or as little as you need. Students will feel like their turn is longer too. It's just plain old fun and FREE!

To download, you'll need to visit my Teachers Notebook Shop or Teachers Pay Teachers.

CRASH! works well in math centers.  You can use any math topic that you are working on and write them on the back of the cars.  Set up for this type of center is less than 10 minutes.

To Play:
Decide which subject you would like your students to practice. IE: addition, subtraction, algebra, rhyming words, spelling words, etc.

Provide scrap paper to do their work on or dry erase boards and markers.

Write on one side of the car what you decide in wet erase markers. Spread the cars over a table or on the floor. You can have groups of 2-3 children play together. The first player picks up a car and does the  problem. The same player continues in play until they get a car that says "CRASH!" on the back. The game ends when all cars have been played. The player with the most cars wins!

Find more Math Center Ideas Here.

Fell in Love with Cardboard

The other day in the doctors office, I was skimming through Family Fun magazine and saw an article with all these neat crafts that you could make with cardboard. They were all created by a blogger named Lorraine at ikatbag.com.

She has such great ideas for making things with cardboard. My mind swirled with ideas at how much fun it would be to make those items for the classroom or for a class play. Check out her site and see if there are any little magical items that you could make for your classroom.

Integer Fear Factor

Teaching integers can be a little tricky.  Students see the number line and the negative numbers seem to be getting larger, but they just don't quite grasp that their value is getting smaller as the number continues to the left.
My favorite math book author is Danica McKellar.  She writes books aimed at helping girls conquer their fear of math.  When she introduces integers, she refers to them as "mint-gers" in her book, "Kiss My Math".  She refers to the value of negative integers like the flavors of Harry Potter Jelly Beans.  If you are unfamiliar with the flavors, they range from earthworm, vomit, rotten egg, skunk, and so forth.
I created a freebie for you that tells you how to play Integer Fear Factor with your students.  This would be one lesson they would never forget!  Click here to get it on TpT or download on google docs here!

Featured on Teacher Garden

Candice from Teacher Garden allowed me to share her readers with her this week! Be sure to check out the post, it's got a fun phonics lesson for FREE!

March Madness Basketball Unit

On Leap Day, I did a guest post for Denise at Sunny Days about Basketball in the classroom. I got so excited about using sports to teach that I decided to make a unit for the younger grades to use. It's not a unit about math statistics or information about the NCAA or NBA. You can preview the entire unit here.

It's a unit with Math, Science, Reading & Language Arts, and Art. Look at my table of contents here:
Math
Estimation
Counting by 2
Greater Than, Less Than File Folder Game
Customizable File Folder Game Cards
Color the fractions
Reading and Language Arts
Basketball Mini Book
Compound Words Memory Game
Basketball Poem
Acrostic Poem
Science
Collecting Data
Graphing Data
Observation Skills
Art
Design a Basketball Jersey

To go with this unit, I started a March Madness Pinterest Board with other great ideas and resources. If you look in my shops, you'll see that I have other freebies that are basketball themed as well.

Even if sports are not your thing, you're students will love the change of pace and active movement they'll get using this unit in class. Come by my Teachers Pay Teachers store or Teachers Notebook store to get yours.

Come by my Facebook Fan Page and enter to win this unit! All you need to do is enter your email address in the comment area and like my page.

A Sweet Award....

Beth Ann at Taming my Flock of Firsties awarded me "One Lovely Blog Award'

These blog award rules are simple! Thanks for reading Beth Ann and seeing value in what I read. Here are the rules:

1. Link back to the blogger who gave you the award
2. Pass on the award to 15 other fellow bloggers (Sorry...I only have time to do 10)
3. Follow the blogger who sent it to you

And the nominations go to...

www.teaching4real.com

http://www.numbersrulemyworld.blogspot.com/

Tic-Tac-Toe a Word

This is a classic game with a learning twist. On a piece of paper (or white board),draw a tic-tac-toe that takes up the whole paper. Then inside the squares, write sight words or use it as a phonics review.

Finally, play the game! The child chooses to be X or O and you can draw over the top of them or use sticky notes with X and O on them or you can use your checker board pieces.

I love the versitality of tic-tac-toe. I use it with my math students as well, even my algebra students enjoy the break from a worksheet. Just write what ever question or problem you want, instant fun!

Thankful Thursdays #2

For those of you that missed last Thursdays message, you can read it here. I am starting a new weekly post about things I am thankful for in education.

This week, I am thankful for amazing Special Education teachers. They have a difficult job trying to understand and help such a wide variety of students each year. Not to mention they run a staff of aides as well, a difficult task in and of itself. Every year, they assess a students progress and make a plan. Sometimes, they give heartbreaking news or suggest testing that parents resist.

About 11 years ago, I worked at an autism preschool. Students came to us immediately after they were diagnosed with autism. Parents were heart broken and confused. It's a difficult place to work at the beginning of the year.

I watched amazing teachers and support staff work with these sweet little children and bring amazing progress to pass in just a few short years. I witnessed one little girl coming from a spanish speaking home with no language leave our school with both spanish and english language coming from her mouth. Miracles are worked within the Special Education programs across America.

Special Education teachers are close to my heart. I am most thanful for the seemingly thankless job they do each day.

What are you thankful for today?