The End is NEAR!

Well today was our field day....  guess I am getting old because I feel like a truck ran me over!  I'm going to keep it short tonight.  After we finished state testing it seems that everyone has checked out... not just the kids but I think me as well!  Ha Ha....  just kidding!

To keep the kids engaged and wanting to finish out these last few days I put together all of my favorite end of the year activities into one HUGE packet.

This has a bunch of writing, math, and just plain fun activities to end the year.  The best part is other than running copies it requires no teacher prep at all.

Here are some pictures of some of my favorite parts.  I love making and ABC of Third Grade book. The kids have to write a page for each letter of the alphabet.  They turn out so cute!  I also love the graphic organizers and writing papers for all the fun things we did this year.  It has several activities that have sheets tailored to each grade that you can use as keepsakes.  For math it includes everything they need to make their own math games and even develop a class game of SCOOT.

To celebrate a TPT milestone and thank all of the teachers that have helped me to reach it I am putting this packet on a special sale for the next  five days!  Click on the picture to go to TPT to purchase it.

Enjoy those last few days!

Happy Teaching!
Tracy

Testing, Mother's Day, and Gifts Oh My!

Well it has been two crazy weeks for us.  We had state testing, had to get ready for Mother's Day, and celebrated my student teachers last day.  So here are some pictures of what we have been up to.

To get ready for state testing, we created a "Let it Show" book.  We played the song from Frozen and decided that our theme would be Let it Show.... a little play on words, but it worked!  We made books and copied bunches and bunches of these charts I made.  I wrote one on every standard that was suppose to be on the test.  The kids took the books home to study and I made up some little quizzes to go with them.  Kids that earned at least an 80% on them got a treat!  It was a huge success!

To motivate us to work hard during testing we had an Earn your way to an Ice Cream PARTY!  I divided the picture into 8 sections and each time they worked hard and showed effort, they colored in a spot.  It was amazing how excited they were.  I found the ice cream picture online.  Just google ice cream picture and pick one out.  I am happy to report that every child enjoyed a BIG HUGE ice cream treat after testing was over.

Mother's Day was here before I knew it.  We made one of my favorite presents to send home for mom. We made flowers and on each stem the kiddos wrote a reason they loved their mom.  We wrapped them up like flowers from the florist and wrote the note in CURSIVE!  Yes, we have conquered cursive.  I have to admit that teaching cursive to third graders is so much easier than when they are in second grade!

Last week we had to say good-bye to our student teacher.  His time with us went so fast.  I searched online for the best gift and I decided that a little bit of everything would be nice.  So I made a tub full of recess toys, pens, sticky notes, folders, games, chalk, and anything else I could think of.  It looked so cute all arranged on my kitchen table.  I wish I would have taken a picture before it took a ride in the car, but I didn't even think of it.  I really think he liked it and I know he will get lots and lots of use out of everything.

My last two pictures are of new ideas....

Paint in old glue bottles, well that is just genius!  I don't know why I haven't ever thought of that!  We made two projects using the paint in a bottle and it works like a charm.  No puddles of paint and barely any on their clothes!  This is a winner!

I love to do a project at the end of the year.  This year I decided to do a 50 state project.  The kids love learning all about the states and it isn't in our standards, so the end of the year is perfect.  I found these great books at Michael's Craft Store....  only a $1. They had lots of different titles and subjects!  You never know what you are going to find.

That's about it for tonight!  I only have 8 1/2 days until summer!  I can't believe how fast it has gone!

Enjoy those last few weeks!

Happy Teaching!

Tracy

TPT Easter Sale - 20% Off!

Happy Easter Weekend!

I am joining in with a BUNCH of other sells to celebrate Easter with a 20% off sale!  Click on the picture below to go to directly to my store!  Happy Shopping!

It's Testing Time Already??????????????

Where has the year gone?  I can't believe we will begin state testing in two weeks.  Did I get it all covered?  Are they going to bubble and not get lost in the answer sheet?  I am starting to have those testing nightmares already!  Ha Ha!

This post will be all about test review.  YIPPPPEEEEE!

We reviewed conjunctions with a quick activity.  Each child picked out two sentences that they could join together with a conjunction.  They wrote each sentence on a sentence strip.  Next, they glued a "glue bottle conjunction" to join the two sentence strips.  This really helped them understand that they had to "glue" the sentence together to make it correct.  We still are working on capital letters and punctuation, but they basically have the idea.

I had to share some other Pinterest finds that another teacher on my hall found.  She made this cute replica from a picture she saw on Pinterest.  So cute to help them remember the difference between area and perimeter.  I'm going to made this to my charts for next week.

 They made some "pledges" for testing time.  "OWL" use my BEST Test Taking Strategies.  Adorable!  Each child made their own owl and write their favorite strategy on it.

We made a BRAG BOARD on the chalkboard to show off good work from our review activities.  The kids LOVE to see who's papers got picked and we make a huge deal as we put new stuff up.  Here is a picture of the board from one day this week.

                           

We reviewed magnets and made these flipbooks.  They turned out GREAT!

We have been using several packets from my TPT store to help them review.  At this point in the year I don't have time to spend with a lot of prep.  Most of them are just print and GO!  Which I LOVE!

The first one is no prep to review sentences that don't belong.  It's a project on my board and use product.  No copies at all.

Elapsed time!  Holy cow is that a hard skill.  We have been much more successful since we started putting it on a number line.  Here is something that we will be using next week to review.  It is another SCOOT game that is a simple print and go.  Nothing to put together.

We are also reviewing place value with a SCOOT game.  Can you tell we love to play SCOOT!  My kids LOVE to see the cards hanging up when they come in.  It's so easy and it gets them up and moving.  

It has an answer sheet and key, as do all the games.  Since paper is a little hard to come by this time of year, we are going to just write our answers on notebook paper.

We will also being using one of my newest products for math test prep.  All you have to do is project the questions on the screen.  It comes with answer cards that you can print off for the kids to use or you can use whiteboards.  

I also have math and ELA test prep available in my TPT store for my 1st and 2nd grade friends.  It is aligned to common core and SAT 10.  All of the test prep bundles are on sale right now.  : )

So that's about it for today.  I am getting very close to my first goal with my blog and TPT.  As soon as I hit it look for some very special "thank you" giveaway and a sale to celebrate.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Happy Teaching!

Tracy