TPT Sale - 3 million teachers

Today I have some exciting news!  Teachers Pay Teachers is having another sale to celebrate the fact that there are now 3 million teachers joined up with Teachers Pay Teachers!  Woohoo!   TPT only puts on a few sales a year so now is the time to get all your spring teaching resources.  

 Here's the nitty gritty:

• TPT is offering everything at a 10% discount.  Many teachers have also put items in their store on sale as well so many items will be 28% off!!
• You must enter the promo code: TPT3
• The sale is only on for 2 days, February 27 & 28, 2014.

EVERYTHING in my store is discounted by 28% (just remember to use the promo code: TPT3)
Including some of my best sellers:

Learn to write your name activity booklet is a tool that teachers can use to help their students learn to print their name.  You can see my post about it here.

Spelling Success includes worksheets and hands on activities for grade 1 spelling practice.  There are 40 weeks of worksheets that can be sent home for homework.  Each week the activities focus on specific consonant blends, vowels, word families, or diagraphs as well as incorporating frequently used sight words.  You can see more about this package by reading my post Spelling worksheets for success.

My St. Patrick's day unit is also on sale, see more here.

Don't forget that Easter and Spring are just around the corner.

I hope you have fun shopping!

To get you started have a look at some of these great products from other teacher blogs.

An InLinkz Link-up

How to make a paper mache love bird for Valentine's day

Paper Mache we have all heard of it but are you brave enough to have your students or kids use it?  Paper mache is the process where you take a glue mixture made from water and flour or white glue and dip newspapers or paper towels in it and construct your sculpture.  Sounds very scary now doesn't it!  But it really is not.  It's actually very simple and works great for kids crafts.  The hardest part is deciding what you are going to make!

For this project we decided to make Valentine Love Birds.  Aren't they cute!  These were made by my own kiddos (5 years old).

Supplies needed:

• newspaper or paper towel
• cardboard
• masking tape
• flour (1 cup)
• water (2 cups)
• salt (1tsp)

To begin you need to deign your base or basic shape.  There are many ways you can do this.  Some people use balloons and some use newspaper or cardboard.  To make our love birds, I decided to use newspaper.  We scrunched the paper into balls and then taped two balls on top of each other.  We also added a beak, made by folding a cardboard rectangle in half and then we taped it on as well.

Next you need to cut up strips of newspaper or paper towel and prepare your glue mixture.  There are many different paper mache recipes.  Some use white glue, some use rubbing alcohol, some use flour, some use salt, and the list goes on....  For our love birds I decided to use 1 cup of flour, 2 cups of water and a tsp of salt.

What you are left with is a nice goopy, globby, drippy concoction.  This next step is defineately the fun part.  You take the newspaper strips (or paper towel) one at a time and dip them into the mixture and then simply wrap them around your base.  You keep doing this until you have about 3 layers and your entire base is covered.   Some kids will not like touching the mixture and won't add enough layers and others will get right into it and have a drippy, soggy, blob.  Just keep reminding them to add one layer at a time and to cover the whole area.  The great thing about paper mache is that it is forgiving when it is wet.  Simply pull off layers or add layers until you get your desired result.  Then you have to let it dry.  It will take at least overnight.

When it is dry, take a little sand paper and give it a quick sanding, just to take off all the left over flour globs and give it a smooth finish.

Lastly you get to paint it!  Now you might want to give it a quick layer of white paint first as a primer coat before you get into the colored paint but that is up to you.

 

And voila!  After adding some feathers our love birds were done just it time for Valentine's Day! 

This post is part of the Ultimate Guide to 50 Craft Materials Linky, Coordinated by Craftulate.  50 different bloggers each presented an ultimate guide to different crafting materials.  To see the list of all 50 Craft Materials and the corresponding blog posts and linky head on over to Craftulate.

If you have any posts that show off your paper mache ideas and projects please link them up below.

I may get commission from purchases made through links on this page. Please see my disclosure policy for more information.

Get an entire year of easy to use spelling activities for kids

Today I wanted to talk a little about my newest product on TeachersPayTeachers.  It is an entire year of easy to use spelling activities.  So if you are looking for first grade worksheets or kindergarten worksheets that focus on spelling patterns and phonics this is the resource for you.  It is also perfect for home school learning.

Spelling Success Weekly Homework Activities is a 40 week program that presents 10 new spelling words each week and a review week every 5th week to further practice the previously presented words. Each week teachers will send home 1 page double sided for homework.  How easy is that?  Parents can encourage their kids to complete one or two practice activities each day so that over the course of the week they will have a strong grasp of their spelling words. 

Each week 10 new spelling words are given (with a review week every 5th week) that focus on a specific phonetic skill necessary for learning to read and to spell.  Included are:

• consonant blends (cl, fl, br, sn, th, sh, ch, etc..)
• vowels (short a, e, i, o, u, long a, e, i, o, u)
• word families (at, ig, in, ot, ell, ill, etc..)
• vowel diagraphs (ai, ow, oo, ew, etc.)
• frequently used sight words. 

Each double sided page includes a variety of activities including:

• Spelling worksheets which are "pencil and paper" tasks, such as tracing words, printing, filling in bubbles, matching, sorting, completing word searches, filling in blanks, etc..
  

• tasks that need to be done with a parent.  These activities are more hands on learning and incorporate many different fun ways to practice their spelling words.  For example, students might be asked to clap out their words, jump on the letters as they spell, perform jumping jacks, sing the letters as the spell, etc. 

Making words tasks which include either cutting and pasting letters to make words or manipulating letters to make words.

I have tried to make this package very simple for teachers, parents and students.  Focusing on one or two phonetic skill per week allows teachers to plan instruction around those blends and sight words and also gives your students a chance to learn and practice using different blends and words. And check back because I am working on a supplementary package that provides teachers with spelling lessons and activities to complete at school which will complement the homework worksheets.


Recently I have had questions whether these are first grade worksheets or kindergarten worksheets.  In my opinion they could be either depending on your class and your students ability levels.  The worksheets start off with CVC words and then move into 4 and 5 letter words but if your kindergarten class is capable of making 3 letter words than they would be fine starting with this program.

As a bonus I am taking 20% off this weekend only.  Don't miss out on this limited sale!

If you would like to preview more sample pages on TPT click here.

If you are ready to purchase click the buy it now button below.

Are you a teacher?  Thinking about making your own products for sale?  Click below to sign up to become a TeachersPayTeachers seller.  It is free and so easy to do!  

I may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post. For more information about this please see our disclosure policy

Learn to read with these easy to make magnetic sight words

There are a ton of learning to read resources available but many of them are not very wallet friendly, if you know what mean!  So I decided to make my own magnetic sight words.  They are very easy to make and lend themselves to so many activities. 

First I bought full magnetic sheets (with a self-adhesive back).  You can get these at the dollarstore, walmart or here on amazon.

Then I printed and laminated the sight words I needed. 

These laminating sheets work well and you don't need a machine to laminate.

Then I attached the laminated words to the magnetic sheets and cut each word out. 

My kids really enjoy playing with the magnetic sight words and they will stick them all over the fridge.  At school the kids stick them to the white board or my filing cabinet.  The kids love to move them around as they read them.  I also like to give them challenges to sort the letters and to get them to really look at the letters and how the words are made.

These are some of the ways I challenge them are:

• Have the kids put the words in alphabetical order. 
• Have the kids sort words by words they can read and words they are learning. 
• Have kids sort words by how many letters each word has.  
• Have kids sort by beginning letter sound.  
• Have kids sort by ending letter sound.
• And many more ways!! 

How can you sort them?

These printable sheets can also work.  Simply put the paper into your printer, print out your words, cut and you are done!  Easy Peazy!

I may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post. For more information about this please see my disclosure policy


You might also be interested in: