Celebrating a Mother's Love

Hi!  It's Heather from Learning with Mrs. Langley, and I'm excited to share a little Mother's Day Activity with you today! 

With April coming to a close it's time to start thinking about Mother's Day.  This has always been a source of stress for me in the classroom.  I have the sweetest gifts that teachers have put together from each one of my daughters and I cherish each one.  How do I possibly live up to those expectations? 

A few years ago I started doing these recipe books and they were such a BIG HIT!  I got messages over the weekend from moms who absolutely loved them.  That had never happened before!  They are pretty easy to have the kiddos make and then copy and put together.  It's a no fail Mother's Day project! 

Step One: 

Send home these simple recipe pages with a quick note explaining we are planning something sweet and would like a copy of your favorite recipe (hand written in blue or black ink).  I usually get them all back within a few days but a few parents needed an extra copy.  I gave myself a week to get them all in.  

 Step Two: 

Have your students draw a picture of their family enjoying the recipe, a picture of their mom, or just a sweet note on the following page: 

Step Three: 

Copy the pages back to back to create a class book (each child should have a recipe on the front of one page and their story on the back).   Then copy a book (one recipe from each child) and a cover page and you're all set!  I laminate the covers to make them a little more special and add a black piece of tag board as the back cover.  Every child takes one home and they have a special Mother's Day gift and a cool class memory book all at the same time. 

I've tried many of the recipes over the years and I'm never disappointed! 

I've made these files available for FREE here.  Just click and download and you are ready for Mother's Day! 

Thank you for stopping by for a little SUNSHINE today, I hope your families enjoy these as much as mine do! 

Heather

A Little Ray of Spring Sunshine

Fourth Quarter is in full swing and spring fever is upon us.  The home stretch can get tiring for students and teachers alike.  My teammates and I decided why wait until Teacher Appreciation Week to let our fellow teachers and staff members know they are appreciated.  We decided a few weeks ago to spread some sunshine on our campus.  Each week we choose a different grade level or area to target.  We get them little treats and notes to leave in classrooms and mailboxes.

This was a little treat that I left for my teammates a few weeks ago.

  

Treats to thank the cafeteria staff for taking extra special care of our kiddos everyday at lunch.

Everyone can use a little ray of sunshine during their day, so I made these little notes and I’m sharing them with you for free so that you can spread some sunshine around your school.

Just click on the pic above to go grab them for free! 

I’d love to hear/see how you put them to use.  Take a picture of some of the sunshine you’re spreading and tag Hello Sunshine Teachers on instagram so we can all see!

Now go and spread some sunshine!

Love,

Jennifer

Sharin' a Little Sunshine: Spring is in the Air!

We are so excited to present our very first monthly linky - and we warmly invite you to participate!  The more, the merrier!

As you may have already guessed from the title of this post, our theme this month is everything and anything to do with spring.

To join in the fun, just grab this button to include in your post:

...and nab this handy template to organize your springtime ideas, activities, links, and books:

(To use this template, save it as an image to your computer.  Use it as the background for a power point page, use text boxes to add your info, and then save your whole new creation as a PDF and/or as an image to include in your blog post.)

Next step:
Link up with us!
(Please link directly to your Sharin' a Little Sunshine post url to keep things easy to find.)

And the optional-but-awesome final step is to visit other linked-up blogs... and leave some love!

Ready...
Set...
SPRING!

An InLinkz Link-up

And for even more springtime ideas, visit our Pinterest board!
Follow Confessions of aTeaching Junkie's board Spring is in the Air! on Pinterest.

I'm In a DAZE

Spring is in the air, and my mind is thinking about DIBELS.  I am in charge of coordinating the DIBELS testing at my school, so I dream of acronyms such as EOY and DORF at night (#TrueStory).
One test for third grade students is called DAZE.  The kids have to read a passage and use their context clues to choose a missing word every so often.  The kids are given three words from which to choose.  One big concern about this test was that it was not formatted like anything they had probably ever seen before.  The kids would have experience with fill in the blank and cloze passages, but they would not have seen multiple choice/fill in the blank passages.

Light bulb!  What if there were passages that were formatted like the DAZE passages so the kids would feel comfortable with they completed the real DAZE benchmark passages? And, what if those passages were non-fiction and incorporated retell?  It was the trifecta!

The passages are written in three levels for easy differentiation.  The first level is the passage only for straight comprehension.

 The second level is the passage with fill in the blanks and a word bank. 

 The third level is the DAZE where the kids choose from one word in each word box.

The second and third grade teachers at my school use the passages and LOVE them!

I have made seven different sets of DAZE passages, with biographies on famous scientists, explorers, presidents, and people that overcame adversity.  If you are interested in more information, please click on the picture below to head to my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  

Thank you so much for stopping by!  The ladies and I really appreciate your support. 

Hello Sunshine Winners!

We are so excited to share with you all the winners from all of our giveaways!

Thank you so much to everyone who entered, and helped us with our big launch!  We are so eager to share with you and we hope that you find some great ideas here with us!!

Stay tuned for something exciting on Tuesday!!!  See you then!!

Celebrate This Spring With Independent Readers

Don't worry I'm not feeling any pressure (NOT!) as I am the first blogger to share my creative ideas on this amazing new collaborative blog! I hope you have had a chance to enter the giveaways on each of our blogs and took a few minutes to follow us and get to know each of us. I'm so grateful for this opportunity to work alongside 11 other amazing teachers but more importantly gain friends along the way!

During the month of April we are going to be sharing springtime ideas that can be used in classrooms all over the world. Here in Arizona, it's starting to get hot! We have had to turn on the A/C and the swimming pools are beginning to get packed. Our spring weather may be different than yours but the things we are doing in our classrooms are the same as you!

I love this time of year because in my 2nd grade class, my students have developed into confident learners and are independent readers now! It's my biggest success to say that all my 2nd graders are reading at or above grade level! It's a time to celebrate and reflect and I teach my students this in our classroom conversations. One thing that I love to do in the spring is a reading contest. It helps the kids continue reading and build a love for books that can carry them through summer break and into the next school year.

This year I did a Monster Madness reading contest where they are tracking at-home reading minutes for the entire month of April. I check off their tracking sheets on each Monday and keep track of them on my teacher spreadsheet. The students started with a monster body of their choice and as they read they earn more body part for their monsters! So far we have some pretty funny looking monsters with one eye, crazy mustaches, and even a cowboy monster! They have loved earning parts for their monsters and making them individualized. At the end of the contest the students will earn prizes for the total minutes read. Below you will find my prize list.

500 minutes - Show Off Monster - Extra show and tell for a day

1,000 minutes - Lazy Monster - Pajamas Day

1,500 minutes - Sweet Monster - Sweet Treat (I'm having snow cones brought in)

2,000 minutes - Genius Monster - No homework for a week

2,500 minutes - Mega Monster - Dinner with teacher at Chick Fil-A

Thanks again for your support and following us here at Hello Sunshine! If you are interested in the Monster Madness reading contest click on the product pic below and enjoy your spring time readers showing their independence with reading comprehension and fluency!

Love,

Hello Sunshine!

Welcome to our brand new collaborative blog!  Perhaps you have seen this image and have wondered what we have up our sleeve:

Well you have come to the right place to find out!  Hello Sunshine is a collaboration of 12 Arizona educators.  We are all passionate about teaching, and we've joined together to share a little sunshine with other teachers!

Before we launch into our first monthly theme, we thought it would be fun to share our excitement by hosting a gigantic giveaway... a $100 gift card to Teachers Pay Teachers!  And why stop there... when we can each host additional giveaways of products and gift cards on our own blogs as well!

Here is the entry for our big giveaway, and you will find that part of the fun involves visiting each of our blogs so you can get to know us a little bit better - and leaving a comment at each so that we can get to know YOU a little bit better too!

a Rafflecopter giveaway
Here are links to all of our Hello Sunshine Teachers' blogs in the order of our hop:

The Creative Classroom
Crockett's Classroom
Learning with Mrs. Langley
Nurturing Noggins
Mrs. 3rd Grade
Hedgehog Reader
The Blessed Teacher
The Kinder Garden
Adventures in a First Grade Jungle
Little Bird Kindergarten
Confessions of a Teaching Junkie
The Sharpened Pencil

Once you have hopped through all of our blogs, don't forget to come back here so you can enter for the big giveaway!  First stop on our blog hop is:  Ashlyn at The Creative Classroom!

Good luck, and Happy Hopping!