I love the holidays. It's a time to eat be with family, eat & drink yummy things (cookies & hot chocolate are my number one choices), and GIVE & GET presents! WOOT! So in the spirit of giving, I have some of my favorite things to GIVE to you! First up, a recipe for my favorite cookie bars. Do you like Nutella? Do you like S'mores? Do you like things that taste amazing? Oh, you do? Well then MAKE THESE -----> Nutella S'Mores Bars Next, my favorite and EASY homemade hot chocolate. It takes minutes, y'all. And is sooooo worth the tiny bit of extra effort. Make it----->&n ..read more

I've posted before about one of my best selling TPT products - Reading Morning Message. It's a 6 week spiraled review of reading skills including main idea, character traits, character changes, making inferences, theme, word meaning, text structures, and figurative language. Each set spirals different skills - check out all 4 editions & holiday editions here! I recently started making a 6 week set for math! It's a great way to review and front load ESSENTIAL math skills. My math teammate and I are LOVING it. I recently went out on maternity leave, but my sub is continuing to use it. I lov ..read more

I love Thanksgiving. Fall is my favorite season for so many reasons - the colors are so warm and comforting, the food is PHENOM (candy on Halloween and home cookin' on Thanksgiving? YES PLEASE), and hellooooo everything pumpkin spice!! This year I've added even ANOTHER reason to love this season, my newest little pumpkin Mackenzie Jo! She was born 10-4 and I am sooooo in love. Teachers love Thanksgiving too, because it's a time to TAKE A BREAK & REFRESH. I feel like the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving Break are some of the most exhausting. Our district takes the entire week off, but in ..read more

Y'all. Do you own a set of LEWO Stacking Blocks yet?? Well YOU SHOULD! I love having old games & game boards around the classroom - you can always pair them with some task cards and create an instantly awesome station/ center. So when I saw the LEWO Rainbow Stacking Blocks, I knew I HAD TO HAVE THEM. I had been meaning to paint a few old Jenga games I had collected and pair them with some task cards BUT could never find the time... Then I saw LEWO had done the messy work for me! I wanted a math review game to go along with these blocks, so I created a multi-skill task card set that co ..read more

Do you have an animated banner in your TPT store? I've tried to make several but they're always a big ol' fail: Either my product link is messed up or my pictures come out WAY smaller than I expected... But that's all changed now that I found this tutorial by Carolyn Wilhelm from the Wise Owl Factory! Here are the images that I'm using... I uploaded these gifmaker.me to make this:  Thanks to the tutorial, I've made these into a GIF that looks AMAZING on my TPT store! Check it out here in my TPT store!!  ..read more

Hey friends!  I know it's been FIVE-ever since I last posted... It's been whirlwind year. My awesome fourth graders have done lots of learning, had lots of fun, given me lots of gray hairs, and now we start TEST PREP TIME. Ugh...  Thankfully, I've gotten together with some AMAZING teacher sellers to bring you a big ol' TEST PREP GIVEAWAY! I'm so excited to be partnering up with these amazing ladies to offer you a giveaway for WRITING, SCIENCE, MATH and READING! Oh, and we're giving away TPT CASH! Woot!  How do you enter? It's a CINCH! Just find your subject area below and ente ..read more

Hey friends! Let's not mention how long it's been since I've posted.... Let's just focus on the fact that I'm back! WOOT! Today I'm posting about a company that every teacher knows and loves - Oriental Trading!! Did you know you can create a Teacher Wishlist page? Well, YOU CAN! Here's what you do: 1) Log onto Oriental Trading (or create an account if you don't already have a log-in) 2) Go to the Teacher Supply Page 2) Go shopping!! Instead of "Adding to Cart" you'll "Add to Wishlist" (as shown below) What should you do once you've made your fantastic Wishlist? Share it, of course!  ..read more

Hey friends! Are you in crazy-test-prep mode?? I SURE AM! STAAR testing season has officially started. Texas, I know you feel my pain. UGH... And I know PARCC testing has started, too. UGH2.... To make this time a bit less painful for my STAAR teachin' peeps (sorry PARCC), I got together some of my F-A-V-O-R-I-T-E Texas teachers to donate some of my F-A-V-O-R-I-T-E STAAR prep products to bring YOU a big ol' STOMP THE STAAR giveaway! If you're looking for some simply fantastic STAAR reading prep products, LOOK NO FURTHER. I'm giving away my Morning Message Set, Edition 3 Cassie of Texas ..read more

Hey friends! I'm so excited to post about one of my FAVORITE products I've made for my TPT store... Morning Message: Spiraled Review of Essential Reading Skills! Morning Message is a PROJECTABLE, daily review of essential reading skills. It's saved as a PowerPoint file, so it's easy to project and flip between days. The ONLY thing to print is the answer sheets! Morning Message, Edition 1's spiraled reading skills include Topic and Main Idea, Character Traits, Theme, Inferencing, and Context Clues. Morning Message, Edition 2's spiraled reading skills include Main Idea and Supporting Detail ..read more

Hey friends! I have nothing educational to share with you today.... Only fun stuff and a free thing. More on the free thing in a bit! :) I hope you had a wonderful weekend! I for sure did, because I attended the Houston TPT & Blogger meet up on Saturday! Big ol' Texas sized thank you to the amazing Megan Favre (all the cute clipart used on the pics below is from on of her awesome clipart sets!) and Sandy O'Brien for setting the shindig up! They are just the sweetest! I met so many amaaaaazing teacherprenuers. Look at all these lovely ladies!  I enjoyed the wealth of knowledge ..read more