“Not so far away, on the other side of teatime, lie a little group of islands.” is the first sentence in this delightful fairy tale by Nick Jordan.  It is a delightful story about poor Princess Rosehip who has to choose between two suitors.  Prince Spoon of Cup and Saucer and Lord Lid of Lid.  But then…a dragon! “at least meeting a dragon won’t be boring” thought Princess Rosehip. Who goes to seek the dragon?  Who does Princess Rosehip marry? What becomes of the dragon?  of the kingdom? No spoilers here!  You will have to read the book to find

Hurrah!  I love trying out new things in my classroom and this was no exception!   My swap partner was Planet Happy Smiles!   They sent me their Class Writing Journal Covers to try out! I have been wanting to try this forever and this was the perfect chance!  I chose a few I thought would spark my students imagination, printed them, and used packaging tape to affix them to the composition notebooks!  Aren’t they pretty? Also included was this label to put on the container you plan to store your journals in!  Here is mine: It fit perfectly on

Keri from Enchanted Kinder Garden is celebrating her 3rd Blogiversary! We’re having a scavenger hunt on our blogs in celebration. Ready to play? Here’s how this works: All you have to do is be a super detective, find the letters, and unscramble the words. Enter the words in the rafflecopter below to enter for extra entries. You may also enter by following our pages. There will be THREE winners. Up for grabs is a $50 TPT gift certificate, a $25 TPT gift certificate, and a $10 TPT gift certificate. We’ve all got hidden clues (letters) hiding on our blogs. You can find

I am blogging today at a new collaborative blog called: Classroom Tested Resources!  It is all about my one page lesson plan!  Hop on over there to check it out (and get your freebie of course)!!  Thanks for stopping by!

Hello all!  Today I want to talk about something new that I have been doing in my classroom this year and I LOVE!  I call it our “Dailies”.  I have mine on the whiteboard in front of the room.  This makes it easy to change what we are doing daily.   I will be the first to confess that I dislike calendar time (that is being polite), so I wanted to do something daily that included the date, but was not quite calendar.   This is what the Dailies Board looks like in my classroom. This is an example page

Hurrah!  March! It’s almost Spring…I can taste the warm weather!  Are you ready? I’m back with a fun bright idea for your calendar this month! 1.  Stikki Clips!  I use Stikki Clips to put up the days on my calendar! I love these things!  You can stick them up anywhere and insert a piece of paper and Voila!  They are awesome! 2. I mark what day it today with a clothespin and a bright orange sticker.  This was a spur of the moment, oh!  I have to mark the date…what can I use… types of inspirations and I love it!

Oh my goodness!  I couldn’t be more excited to share with you this fun product that I had the privilege of trying out in my classroom! I had never heard of mentor sentences before, when I came across this blog post by Ideas by Jivey.  I was intrigued.  At first I thought that this would work well with older kiddos, but let me tell you, my kiddos were champs with the one that we worked on in class!   At this time of year we start working on Folk tales and Fairy tales, so I chose The Three Snow Bears by

Welcome to the February edition of the Real Teachers of Blog County! Hoarder is kind of a harsh sounding word isn’t it? But I have a confession. I am a children’s book hoarder and I am passing that affliction passion down to my boys! (This is just what I found under my older son’s pillow).  He sleeps with 15-20 books per night.  “Just in case”… I have to tell you.  My husband is (GASP) not a school guy.  He didn’t have good school experiences growing up, so it is really hard to get him to come in to school.  So, when

Hello all!  Thanks so much for dropping by!  I can’t wait to tell you about this great product by Lisa at: This unit was AWESOME!  For the first time since I started teaching second grade we had school on Martin Luther King Jr. day!  (It was a built in snow day and we had 2 snows days).  So I was excited to actually get to teach my kiddos about MLK Jr. on his day! Lisa’s unit contains so many great things!  We started with the KWL chart: My kiddos knew somethings about MLK, but they were very curious to know

Hello all!  Today I am going to tell you about a fabulous product that I got to try out from my friend Stephanie Chambers of The Learning Chambers!  We swapped products.  I got to try her Reading Response Flap Books! This is a very versatile little product!  She has many different choices for different flap books that your kiddos could make!  We were reviewing Story Elements, so we used the Story Elements Flap Book!  These were easy for the kiddos to make on their own. I am a little possessive of my stapler, so I had to staple them for the kiddos, but

I am forgetful.  I mean, really forgetful.  While in my classroom I am so focused on the kiddos and teaching that I forget everything. So, I carry around a clipboard.  All day.  I even created special sheet to keep my on track! That was fine, but then I would be with my clipboard, but nothing to write with.  Then I found this: It’s called a Pencil Pull.  Carpenters us it to hook onto their pants and then they have a pencil when they need one.  My father in law had one and I got really excited, so he bought me like

Welcome to the November edition of the Bright Ideas Link-  Up! This one is a little different! Over the past 10 months, we   have shared thousands of great ideas through our monthly  Bright Ideas event. This month, we’re re-capping all of those great ideas, just in case you missed any! Below you will find some of my bright ideas from the  past several months (just click on the pictures and they will take you to the original posts):  I love to promote positive behavior in my classroom with my “Boasting Box”.  I try to recognize students throughout the week in my