A Special Thank You!

Today I visited Heather's Peacocks and Penguins blog and was thrilled with what I read. You may remember her Rubric Linky Party, which also included a contest for the cutest rubric. I entered my Kindergarten Beginning Writing Rubric.

I won a $25 Amazon gift card for cutest rubric!!! I'm SO excited!! Thank you, Heather!!

On another note, here are the further adventures of Flat Stanley.

 Here are 2 of our Stanleys (one was made into a girl) at a Diner in New Jersey.

Another of our New Jersey Stanleys in a pile of leaves before the hurricane hits.

Thank you to my friends in New Jersey for helping us with this!

Friday, Flat Stanley, and Facebook!

I am so glad it's Friday! For some reason, this week really tired me. Maybe it was starting the week with a field trip that did it. Anyway, I definitely need the weekend to relax so I'll be ready for my students next week!

Several Flat Stanleys have safely made it to their destinations! We now have Stanleys in New Mexico, New Jersey, Kentucky, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maryland! My class was so excited to see the pictures some of our recipients sent!

 Stanley in NM

 Stanley in NJ (with the very 1st friend I ever had!)

 Stanley in KY

 Stanley in MA

Many of the recipients are from my Facebook friends list since all of the children didn't have an address where we could send Stanley. So, many of the Stanley posts will be on my blog's Facebook page. If you haven't "liked" that page yet, please do! All of my blog entries post there, and you can read other Stanley updates. I've heard he will be going to some interesting places during his travels!


One more thing, Mrs. Lindsey is having a giveaway to celebrate her birthday! She's giving away lots of great activities created by TPT Teachers, including my 3 Level Beginning Writing Rubric Super Pack! Click here to enter!

Have a great weekend! Feel free to leave comments below!

Rafflecopter, Rubrics, and a Reading Freebie!

Corinna at O"FISH"ally a First Grader is having a 100 Follower Rafflecopter Giveaway! She has 58 items to give away, and will choose the winners on Sunday, October 28! Please visit her blog to enter!

Tomorrow (10/22/12) our class goes on it's first field trip of the year! We are going to see a play based on the Skippyjohn Jones books. Field trips have always been stressful for me since I always worry about keeping the children together. However, I'm hoping a 2nd grade field trip will be less stressful than Kindergarten field trips. My class is very excited about it, and my son, who is also a 2nd grader at my school will be going with his class too!

After bundling my Kindergarten Beginning Writing Rubric with smaller printable rubrics for students, I decided to take all 3 of my beginning writing rubrics and bundle them with the student sized rubrics. Now, you can get all 3 rubrics (color and copier friendly) with the student-sized (color and copier friendly) matching rubrics in one pack! I wish I had thought of this when I was still teaching Kindergarten so I could use them myself! 

These are a few examples of how they look. If you want to check out the actual product, click here!

And now for the Reading Freebie! I created this poster based on the "3 Ways to Read a Book" in The Daily 5. I had it made into a larger poster using Vistaprint, and it looks great in my classroom! If you have questions about using my products on Vistaprint, feel free to e-mail me at lorismith51 at gmail dot com.

Click here to get this freebie! Enjoy!

As always, feel free to leave comments below. I just love reading comments from my readers!

Flat Stanley, Pumpkins, and Rubrics

Since my class is learning about maps, we are participating in a Flat Stanley project! Each child colored a Stanley (some of them were a little TOO creative for my taste), and we will mail each one to someone far away. Since many students didn't have anyone to send him to, many of my wonderful Facebook friends (some of whom are "real life" friends as well) offered to be the recipients. I'll post pictures and let you know where Stanley ends up very soon!

I posted earlier that we are doing pumpkin investigations in science. So far, we have measured the height and circumference of the pumpkins, and tested whether they would sink or float. When each group put their pumpkins into the water, they were astonished! I realized later that I hadn't taken pictures. I'm very sorry I didn't because the looks on their faces when they saw the pumpkins float was priceless! 

We are also researching and writing about pumpkins, which has been fun. We started by making this chart, and posting what we already knew about pumpkins. Then, we went to do research, and added new learning and misconceptions to the chart.

Our chart with what we already know about pumpkins.

My "Smarties" hard at work on their pumpkin research!

We haven't completed the reports yet, but I know they will be great!

This is an activity from the Clutter-Free Classroom. You can find it here.

And now for the rubrics part! Heather at Peacocks and Penguins is having a rubric linky party! I thought I'd share my Kindergarten Beginning Writing Rubric! I know I teach 2nd grade now, but people really seem to love this! I'm so glad people are finding it helpful!

I now have smaller and more copier-friendly versions here. I loved using this when I taught K!

 

If you'd like to share your experiences with any of these topics, feel free to share below!