Five for Friday//February 13, 2015

It's Friday! It's the day before Valentine's Day! I'm participating in 5 for Friday for the first time in a loooooong time! It's a good day!

This little lady is 5 months old today! I would like to reinforce every single cliche that is out there: time is flying, babies don't keep, I'm exhausted but it's worth it, being a mom is a really super-amazing blessing.

Ella is sitting up {when I put her in a sitting position...she's not that advanced ;)}, reaching for things {especially the cat's tail}, and putting every.single.thing in her mouth! Things she is not doing: napping for more than 40 minutes and being predictable. Sigh.

My beautiful, amazing, wonderful mom turned 60 this past weekend!

We surprised her with a trip to the Poconos for the weekend. We had such a fun time playing games, snow tubing, eating, and hanging out in the local bar. With a baby.

My mom is seriously one of the most amazing people I know. I found this quote by Jodi Picoult, who is a favorite author of both of ours, and it sums up how I feel about my mom, PERFECTLY. I am so lucky to have her.

I am hard at work on my March Sentence Scrambles and Main Idea unit. Creating a monthly resource can be a bit of a bear at times but I have heard so much positive feedback about how they're working in your classrooms...it keeps me motivated!

You can purchase the February editions by clicking the pictures below:

How big do you do Valentine's Day? My husband and I don't do too much {read: I prefer small gestures from time to time as opposed to big holiday hoopla}, but now that we have Ella, holidays mean something entirely different!

My dad always got my sister and I something for Valentine's Day. My mom did too but Valentine's Day was the only holiday when my Dad did something specifically from him only. Dave is going to start this tradition with Ella as well. I hope she'll look back on this Daddy/Daughter tradition as fondly as I do.

I started a tradition of getting her a book every holiday. I am in love with these two books that I am giving her for Valentine's Day.

Also pictured: The Biggest Kiss

"Hug Time" is literally the sweetest book I have ever come across. And the illustrations... I melt!

PS: I will be giving Dave one of these cards ;)

I am so excited to share that I am heading to Atlanta next weekend to participate in the EdMarket Expo. I get to walk around the expo with tons of other fabulous bloggers and play around with manipulatives, games, teacher supplies, etc. and choose my favorite items for your classroom . Then, I get to blog all about it so you can go grab my favorite fabulous items {or tell your principal to buy them for you}! I am really looking forward to it!!

Now it's your turn to go link up with Doodlebugs! Happy Friday!

This is Your Year: GIVEAWAY!

2015. It's your year! We owls are here to help you make it happen with a pretty awesome giveaway on the Owl Blog and many separate giveaways on many of our own blogs!

If you came here from Owl-ways Be Inspired, you probably already entered to win a $100.00 Amazon gift card.

{I'll cross my fingers for you}

But I think I have a pretty sweet prize to offer up as well!

While perusing Etsy for baby headbands Christmas gifts, I came across the MOST DARLING shop for all things printable.

Seriously. I immediately ordered two sets of stationary for my grade partners and favorited everything else in her shop, including the sweetest, cutest, most adorable {yet totally grown-up} owl stationary.

How perfect.

You can enter below to win a set of the personalized owl stationary from The Fox and the Teacup. It comes with 12 cards, envelopes, and seals/stickers. It's darling for any time of year but is practically perfect to use as thank-yous for any Valentine's gifts you might receive from your little guys and gals.

Enter using the Rafflecopter below...

a Rafflecopter giveaway

...and don't forget to head over to Owl-ways Be Inspired to enter for your chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card and see what the other owls are giving away...I happen to know it's some fabulous stuff!

Click the picture to head over the Owl Blog

Good Luck and Happy New Year!
~Halle

Interactive Sentence Scrambles Freebie!!

Hello!

I hope you're enjoying these last few moments of your Thanksgiving weekend and gearing up for TpT's Cyber Monday {and Tuesday} Sale!

I have a fun new product and freebie for you today!

I've always loved using sentence scrambles in my classroom as a way to reinforce proper sentence structure.  They're just one of those things where the students are doing work and learning but they just think they're playing, ya' know?

As much as I love sentence scrambles I found myself wanting to get more out of them, especially in the upper elementary grades. We all know that time is precious in our classrooms and I so I became determined to find a way to get the most out of these scrambles my students loved so dearly.

And so my Interactive Sentence Scrambles were born!

Students are still unscrambling the sentences and having fun while doing it but they're also getting practice with parts of speech, writing detailed sentences and responses, prefixes and suffixes, and synonyms and antonyms!

I've created these interactive scrambles for the months of December, January, and February so far. They are available to purchase by month or bundled together for each season {winter season is the only available season currently}

Here is an example of a completed sentence scramble:

Each interactive scramble unit also comes with a "sentence board" and large cut-apart sentences. These are perfect if you use interactive notebooks or centers in your classroom, or if you want to cut down on your copies!

Want to try before you buy?

Click the picture below to grab an interactive sentence scramble freebie. The freebie contains two interactive scramble sheets.

The scrambles are posted in my TpT shop and will be discounted during the sale. Click below to add them to your cart!

Happy Shopping!

Halle