Rainy Days in Texas

Hello Everyone!

     It has been raining like crazy here in Texas the last couple days. Our back yard just a couple days ago had nice cut grass, and is now a muddy puddle. But at least it is going to cool everything down so summer doesn't come so  soon! And we got to wear our rain boots this week!!!! 

    I love my rain boots, well not the part where they make my feet look 2 times bigger. I actually got them in New York City, we went there a couple years ago in the winter and didn't realize that are feet were going to get soaking wet and freeze from walking around so much! So on day 2 I picked up some rain boots =] 

     Rainy days though always make me want to go through old things, and I was looking through Monkey's brain book I made her last year, it has a bunch of different games for her to play covering a ton of different things. And since everything I am currently working on is not complete yet I figured I would give you one of the games I made her for vowel sounds. It just covers Vowel sound "a" long and short. But if you like it I'll look at making more for the rest of the sounds!

The game is called Shoot for the Stars:
This game is to help students have fun learning the different sounds the letter "a". It could be used in centers or groups. 

Game is for 2 - 4 players. Similar idea to the bump it number games with words. all words focus on the vowel "a" sounds. Students must read the words aloud with the proper vowel sound, long vs short. 

Download the Shoot for the Stars game for FREE at my TPT store

LittleSaturdaySchool TPT Store

Hope you enjoy it, please let me know how you are liking it, and how you are using it! I'd love to hear from you all!

Thanks Bunches for stopping by.

Hannah 

Phonics Chart and More Summer Planning

Good Afternoon, 

     Are you having a Sunday fun day? Or a lazy one like me? I love staying in all day and not having to deal with the outside word. What have yenz been up to this weekend? I have been trying to find printable's to take with us on our vacation over the summer. It's never to early to start planning!

To help any of you looking for some good websites to find activities these are a couple really good ones: 

If you are looking for:

• Dot to dot 
• Hidden pictures
• Mazes
• Cross words
• Word searches 
• Find the difference 
• + tons more

both Activity Village  and All Kids are great resources for you!

However what I am most excited about Tangrams!

If you have never heard of them before this is what they are:

http://www.tangram-channel.com/

      You are given a silhouette of something and then you have one box of shapes and using one complete box you try and make the picture. The website Tangram Channel is amazing because it has so many different silhouettes and then it shows you the answer, and after you see the answer you can print them out for personal use. I'm so excited for Monkey play, she LOVES puzzles! I excited to do it too though!    

      To make the Tangram box you can just print it out and laminate or print it out on card stock. What I did was used some foam I got from the Dollar tree and cut out the shape, one down side was my foam was rectangular, It took 2 sheets to get a full box, but I did 9 sheets of different colors only. They definitely are not perfectly cut, but I like that they will last long. 

     But while I was doing all this I have been trying to think of a way to get some Phonics into Monkey's day to day, we don't always have time for games. So I made a Phonic Chart, it has 100 different Vowel sounds, Consonant Blends, Silent letters, Endings. It is all on one page with one or two examples for each one. I'm hoping Monkey can go over the page either Daily or Weekly just to refresh on them. She can also refer to the chart while reading independently and is stuck on a word. Lastly I can take sections of it when we focus on certain vowels or blends, so we have something to refer to. 

Download the Phonics Chart for FREE at my TPT store

LittleSaturdaySchool TPT Store

Hope you enjoy it, please let me know how you are liking it, and how you are using it! I'd love to hear from you all!

Thanks Bunches for Stopping by,

Hannah

It's My Friday... But Why Does it Feel Like a Monday?

Good Afternoon All!!

     I did not want to get out of bed this morning, I just wanted to sleep, sleep, sleep! Not only is my Husband awesome and lets me use him as my pillow, we sleep in an awkward upside down L shape way ( the way we sleep is never on those "What your sleeping position tells you about your relationship" articles). But I also have the cutest puppy (50lb puppy) that sleeps right next to me, and my senior citizen puppy (11 years old) who sleeps by my feet!

Meet, Zack, Senior on the left, Zoe, Puppy on the right

     Who would want to leave these 2 in the morning and go to school?!? (NOT I, yet I did :-/) But the best part is our "gardener" (Lawn man) came over this morning to cut our grass for the first time since October! I cannot wait to go home and see the nice cut grass!! Me and Zoe are going to play for hours! Who else loves the first grass cut of the year? 

     However, until I get home I wanted to give yenz ("Yenz" means "you all", I grew up close to Pittsburgh, yenz is slang from that region of the country, and it is etched into my sole!) the Number of the Day for the middle elementary levels. This is the number of the day I put together for Monkey for over the summer.

In Number of the day there are 40 day worth of problems. 

Each day there is:

A new Number, that is 4 digits

A subtraction problem with that number

An addition problem with that number

Multiplication 

Place Value

Rounding

Expanded form 

Expanded Notation 

Download it FREE at my TPT store

LittleSaturdaySchool TPT Store

Hope you enjoy it, please let me know how you are liking it, and if you would be interested in more number of the day activities!

Thanks Bunches For Stopping By,

Hannah

Getting ready for SUMMER!

Hello hello hello,

     I hope everyone had a great weekend! Monday is over and we are on to Tuesday, one more day and we will be halfway through the week! I can see Friday already. Though I go to UTA (University of Texas at Arlington) and only have classes on Tuesday and Thursday so today is my Monday and Thursday is my Friday. Which makes it really tough because ever morning I wake up and don't want to go because I either just had a nice long weekend or am about to! (I have only missed one class and I was sick :-)

     But SUMMER is in the plans! I'm so excited for our trip to be soon. Monkey does not know when or where we are going so I am going to keep the destination on the DL, but round trip we will be driving for 52 hours!!!! and we only have a week to do it! With all the driving though I still want to keep Monkey learning, and her cousin is coming with us. She is is 5th grade this year, and I didn't think it would be fair to Monkey to have to do some school work when she didn't. So I am now putting together 5/6th grade activities as well. (I am so out of my league!) But I think it is coming along well. (I promise I am not working them to hard! Just keeping them fresh!)

     I started with some basics Number of the Day and Word of the Day 5/6/7th grade edition. So far I have completed the Number of the Day, working on the Word of the day. 

     The basic outline is to multiple a four digit number and also divide it. Then use either the number of the day or word of the day to create a word problem. There are 27 different numbers, so 27 days worth.

Download it FREE at my TPT store 

LittleSaturdaySchool TPT Store

Cursive Handwriting!! and crossing the middle line?

Good Afternoon,

     I hope everyone's week is going amazing! Only one day left and it is Friday! I feel like this week has just flown by! But ready for a great weekend, Fuller House comes out!!!! Who else is going to watch it all by Monday? I know Monkey and I are, we have been planning this for months. Also we have a birthday party to go to, the birthday boy is turning 6, what do you get boys? We got him a castle tent I hope he loves it!

     Today though is not Friday, so we have been practicing spelling words! We did a practice spelling test and after Monkey completed it I rewrote all her spelling words in cursive. (BTW she got an A++) I just wanted to show her how cool cursive looks. By 2nd grade I had already learned cursive! I think it is so sad they do not teach it anymore. Though my name does not look that pretty in cursive. It is like a little mountain range is going on in the middle of my name.  

     But to the title of today's post, why do I mention the middle line? Maybe you are wondering what this middle line is. Well I am no expert on it, though what I have learned is it help cross the invisible line in our brain that connects our creative side to our academic side. There are exercises that can be done and different activities that can be done. Here is a great website that talks about it ilslearningcorner. 

     Also though I've read about cursive writing is able to help cross that middle line. Which make sense considering writing is a academic thing and cursive is an art. A while back I put a cursive handwriting activity together to teach Monkey, but time got in the way and I plan on teaching it to her this summer. But maybe one of you will have time now so I wanted to share it with you, and if not now hopefully later it will come in handy for you!

Get the complete handout for FREE at my TPT store here:

LittleSaturdaySchool TPT

Thanks Bunches for stopping by,

Hannah 

P.S. Follow me to keep up to date on new items! 

Knowledge Check

Good Afternoon Everyone!

      I hope everyone's Monday went amazing! Ours had it's ups and downs but ended on a high note. We went to the Japanese grill, I WISH I could cook like them! I was so yummy though so I'll leave it to the professionals. 

      Also today marked the first day of the 5th 6 weeks. I have to say I do not like the 6 weeks increment thing. Where I Grew up we had four 9 week periods, which I prefer. 6 weeks is not enough time to give a fair assessment of your child's progress. If you live in Fort Worth ISD it was hard this year, to make the semester end before winter break the 6 weeks were under 30 day. I felt like Monkey was coming home with a progress report or report card every other week! 

      Any who, fingers crossed for and awesome 6 weeks! I am working on a lot of things for summer and we started summer vacation planning! Woot Woot! But until then I wanted to give you all something I made last year for Monkey. I wanted to see where she was truly at academically, so we knew what to work on throughout the summer. So I made her a Knowledge Check Test:

There is 14 pages total of work to be complete, half math and half reading.

This will help with getting an idea of where your student or child is doing well and where they are struggling.

Math has:

Adding with regrouping

Math Adding Facts

Place Value

Shapes

Money

Fractions

Word Problems

Time

Reading has:

Grammar

Constant Blends

Vowel Sounds

Verb Tense

Sentence Fixing

listening to reading 

** Not included** Also the one I made for monkey I had taken a Coloring page off google, that had a lot going on in it and had her write about what she thought was going on, **

Here is what the Place Value page looks like and a snip it of the Vowel Sounds page. 

To get the full Knowledge Check for free!!! 

Go to my TPT store: 

LittleSaturdaySchool TPT Store

Let me know if it worked for you, and what you like and what could have been better or fixed! I love hear from you!

Till next time....

Thanks Bunches

Hannah

Story Explorers

Hello Everyone

         Sorry it has been so long, it has been a very hectic year. From some of the hardest struggle my family has experienced, to some of the best things to ever happen for us! But now it is 2016... which is already flying by!

         Though the learning never stopped! Monkey is now in 3rd grade and I am already getting things ready for the summer! Crazy! However I wanted to share somethings I worked on over the last 12 months. 

         Monkey has changed schools since last year. Her school rating now doubled from the school she went to last year, which has been a big challenge for her! We absolutely love, love, love her new school. Though she did start out academically way behind her 3rd grade class. We are so proud of her though, with lots of hard work she improved a whole grade level in 6 months, so now we are only a little behind. But with 4th grade is right around the corner there is no stopping! 

        Our biggest struggle is reading and reading comprehension! Which snowballs into every other subject. I didn't want us to just be able to read words though, I wanted her to comprehend it! So I created Story explorers for her:

This is to help your student dig deeper and think about there text, improving their reading comprehension.

It is one page that offers 6 different ways for the student to explore reading comprehension in the story they just read. 

It is not specific to any book, and can be used with a variety of different books and levels.

This handout will help with: Vocabulary development, prediction, character description and development, and providing details of the story. 

Here is and example of it:

To get the full Handout for free!!! 

Go to my TPT store: LittleSaturdaySchool TPT Store

I hope this can help your Readers with their reading comprehension! Please let me know what you think! 

Thanks Bunches,
Hannah