Creative Teaching Press New Product Give-Away!

School's out for summer!  Woo-Hoo!  

I may be crazy, but my mind is already thinking about how to make next year the best year ever!  One of the areas on my "brainstorming list" is classroom decor.   I've been perusing decor "themes" and am SO EXCITED about redecorating my classroom this summer.  

It's no surprise that I have fallen in LOVE with Creative Teaching Press' Painted Palette collection! Creative Teaching Press (CTP) always offers the BEST teacher resources! Their designs are always the perfect blend of classy and cool! 

I LOVE CTP products.... and I LOVE CTP's commitment to help teachers!

Creative Teaching Press is proud to be celebrating 50 years of teachers helping teachers.  It was 50 years ago that a veteran school teacher named Luella Connelly got the idea to make her creative ideas for fun and effective teaching available to other teachers.  And with the success of her “Recipes for Creative Writing,” CTP was born!  Since then, generations of teachers have looked to this family-owned, teacher-managed company for the supplementary materials they need to help their students learn and make their classrooms a positive learning environment. I'm one of those teachers, and am proud to share with you a few of the CTP products that you will be seeing in my room next year!  

Check out some of the awesome products that are on my "must have" list for next year...

#1 - Painted Palette "Inspire U" Posters

I love how these trendy and stylish posters bring positivity to life!  One of our school-wide goals for next year is to create a positive school climate.  Poppin' up these posters will add sass and class to my classroom...while echoing encouragement and positivity!

#2 - Painted Palette Colorful and Classy Decor

Check out these color-filled borders, pennants, chart cards and more!   AAHH!!  LOVE. THEM!  ALL of these items are on my "must have" list for next year!  Eeks!  Can't wait to see how these items brighten up my room!

#3 - Perfect Pockets!!

Anyone else out there addicted to organization?  Messes and disorganization STRESSES me out, my friends! One of my new "go to" organizational products are library pockets!  LOVE THEM!   I don't actually use them for library cards... I use them to store student name cards, name sticks, etc. for attendance, job charts, and various activities that require student participation.   Don't they make organization attractive?!

  

{Click HERE for more ideas on how to use these awesome library pockets in your room!}

Don't all of these AWESOME products make you swoon?  

I bet you'd LOVE the chance to fill your classroom with some of these goodies too, right?

Well...Like I said, CTP's mission is to help teachers and they have generously offered to donate $50 in CTP products of YOUR CHOICE to one of my lucky blog followers!  Sign up to win below! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Want to see more of CTP's Painted Palette Collection?

Simply click on the image below to check it out!   

You'll fall in LOVE!!!

Want to learn more about how other teacher bloggers plan to use Creative Teaching Press' awesome new products in their classrooms next school year??   

Simply join in the "hop" by clicking on the image below!   

Start Your Engines! It's An Indiana Bloggers TPT DOLLAR SALE!

It's a wonderful weekend... and I'm happy to give you one more reason to enjoy it!

Join me and my "Indiana Blogging Buddies" as we host an awesome 

TPT DOLLAR SALE!

Here is a sneak peek of what my $1 SALE items are...

 

An InLinkz Link-up

Oviparous Animals... An EGG-cellent Unit!

May??!!  What?  When did that happen?  Friends... The last month has been C.R.A.Z.Y.

This is the first year that we have ever gotten out of school in May... and while I'm LOVIN' the thought of finishing early, I've felt the pinch of trying to "fit in all in!"

Perhaps you've "been there."   A million things on your TO-DO LIST... but never enough time to check them all off!

And as much as I love and value blogging and TPTing, my TEACHing always comes first!  So... even though my blog has been like a field of chirping crickets lately...I assure you that my classroom has been full of activity!   I've got SO MUCH to share with you in regard to what has been happening in my k-classroom this spring!  I can't blog about it all in on post, however, so I will start with highlighting some of my favorite parts of the oviparous animal unit I've been working on for the past few weeks...

Here are a few of the TPT resources I have been using throughout my unit.  The GREAT part of these units, is that they are "beefy!"  They include a LOT of activity ideas, so you can pick and choose which ones you like...and ignore the ones you don't find useful!

I also used this little video to introduce my oviparous animal unit.  The kids always think it's hilarious!

Of course, the book "Chickens Aren't the Only Ones" by Ruth Heller is an ESSENTIAL resource if you're doing a unit on egg laying animals!   There used to be an AWESOME thirty minute Reading Rainbow video on all things OVIPAROUS that was great... but due the fact that there is a "new" Reading Rainbow... it was taken off of YouTube.  {Super Bummer!}  However, a few smaller snippets remain on YouTube that are still pretty good.  Here is one that I used this year....

We also used the Scholastic "Let's Find Out" magazine and online resources to do learn more about OVIPAROUS animals! 

The BIG FAVORITE (of both the kiddos and myself) was our oviparous animal research project.  

It was simple, yet powerful!  

After spending a week reading books and watching video clips about oviparous animals, we began our oviparous animal research projects.  Sound dull?  Well... it was NOT!  It truly was a blast!  

To introduce the project, I knew I needed a fun and engaging "hook," so I filled several dozen plastic (Easter-type) eggs with pictures of a wide variety of oviparous animals.   I took them outside during a short break and hid them around the playground.  I explained that we were going to start an awesome new research project, and that each child would be assigned a specific oviparous animal which to study.   In order to find out which animal they would be assigned, they had to go on an egg hunt....find an egg, open it...and see what type of animal was inside!  The animal inside their egg would be their assigned research animal.

Above are a few pics of from our "hunt!"

The kids had a blast and were SO excited to get started on their research!  

I knew I was "on to something" that other teachers might like to try with their classes, so at that moment I decided to make a TPT unit on this research project. {More info about that in a bit!}

Being straight up honest, it was quite a pain to look up pics for that many oviparous animals and copy and paste pics from the 'net.  The pics you see above are from my "original" attempt at the egg hunt. What I ended up creating resulted in being much better... and much more visually appealing! LOL

Next, when we went inside,  I recorded the animals that each kiddo found during the hunt and wrote them on research project send-home packets that I created.  

The cover page of the packet explains what the project is all about (to parents) and gives the directions for kiddos to complete some VERY simple research at home...which they will then return to school.  When the research is returned, we complete the research projects in class.  

Here are a few peeks at this project in action....

(Kindergartner working on project)

(Middle school student completing project)

Here are some of my kinders' finished projects...

Here are a few middle school student projects...

If you teach about oviparous animals in your class and want to know more about this project, you check it out by clicking on the image below! 

I just posted this resource in my TPT store and it's on SALE May 5 and 6th for just a few bucks!!!
Just visit my store by clicking below...