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I am linking up with my favorite Hawaiian teacher bloggers to bring you Hawaii-exclusive freebies! 

 This week marks my one year anniversary of living on Lanai!  Just like Audrey's swim shirt from my favorite surf shop on Maui says, This Ain't the Mainland!  

And really, they are right!  Our kids look different, talk different, and grow up different.  Our schools have our own set of content and character building standards, and we even have our own unique Hawaiian culture and traditions to teach in schools.  While we love teaching products we buy on TpT, some things just have to be customized to work in our classrooms.

That being said, I have created a set of standard sheets to fit with April McNair's amazing Chevron Chic teacher planner.  I blogged about how my planner is coming along here.  

April has given me permission to share them with you!  I made standard sheets for grades K-3rd.  Just print, hole-punch, and add to your teacher binder.  This will help you check off your list as you plan each quarter!  Click any cover to take you over to Google Drive.




And not to leave out my mainland (and global!) readers, my entire store will be on sale today and tomorrow! :)  Head on over to score your 20% off deals!  I have several tropical and summer products that would be perfect for Back to School!
Button made by Corinna Gandara

And one more goody - My Hawaiian Color Posters are free ONLY TODAY!
Here mine are, hung up with our Hawaiian Anuenue (Rainbow) crafts.

Click the picture below to download from TpT!

To continue on this hop, stop by my girl Angelia's blog, Extra Special Teaching, to snag her Hawaii-exclusive freebie and see her sale!!

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I've been making quite a bit of progress in my classroom this past week.

I organized some books:

Put up my new Tropical WBT rules signs {snag them for free on my WBT Blog!}

Painted my cabinets white (that's the only color that was in the janitor's shed, and I just really couldn't justify spending money on more paint!)

Worked on my student folders {see the freebie on Owl-Ways Be Inspired}

Prepped My Name Is class book to do the first week:

And made my READ display:

Materials needed:
  • Cardboard, foam, or wooden letters that spell out "read"
  • Scrapbook paper in the colors you want
  • Mod Podge
  • Foam brush
  • Squeegee
  • Sandpaper
I started out with scrapbook paper that matched my fun, tropical color scheme.

I traced my letters.  Notice this is an upside down V - I couldn't find an A at the store and thought this would work.

Here are my letters and paper cut out, ready to go.

I brushed some Mod Podge on the letter.

I placed the paper on the letter, and squeegeed out any air bubbles.

I waited for it to dry, then I used leftover sandpaper to rough up the edges of the paper and make them align with the letter perfectly.

I then brushed Mod Podge over the top of the scrapbook paper, and a little on the edges to seal it all in.

I used 3M removable tape stuff to attach the letters to the cinder block wall in my classroom.  I love it!

I'm linking up with 4th Grade Frolic's Monday Made-It!

Make sure to stop by tomorrow, I'm joining in with some of my favorite Hawaiian bloggers for a fun blog hop!

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Have you heard about the new 2nd/3rd grade collaborative blog, Owl-Ways Be Inspired?  Well, I'm an author!  Head on over today to read a little about me and also to snag my Back to School Exclusive Freebie!

With my freebie, I printed the labels on Avery full page shipping labels.  This is one full sheet of sticker, so you can turn anything into a sticker!  So cool!  I printed my labels, and cut them out on my awesome Paper Monster paper cutter from My Binding.  I love the Paper Monster series, I also have the letter opener and the binding machine.  The thing I love about them is that the products are lightweight, but made out of durable plastic, so they are perfect for the classroom!  The paper cutter is actually a 2-in-1, it cuts either with a sliding blade or a guillotine. I love that it has a handle, so it is easy to carry from one end of the room to another, or easy to take home if I want to.

The three different blades

Using the slider

A little tray catches the slivers of paper that you cut off.

Guillotine has an adjustable handle.

Enough about my awesome paper cutter, here is how the folders came out.  LOVE!

My friend and former colleague Laura makes the cutest clipart over in her TpT store!  I used her new School Supply Clipart on this freebie.  There are 106 images in this little set!  

Laura agreed to let me give one away to celebrate my first post on Owl-ways Be Inspired!  Woo hoo! Click below to enter. GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED.
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Do you have a classroom pet?  Maybe you have a guinea pig, fish, or a snake.  Maybe you don't have a pet, but you want to have one.  Did you know that taking care of a classroom pet can help teach your students responsibility and can also be an engaging motivator ("When you finish your assignment, you can pet Lulu").  The downside to having a classroom pet is that they are expensive at first: buy the pet, the cage, the treats, the accessories, the food, etc.  Once all of that up-front cost is taken care of, you may only need to continue purchasing food and litter, depending on the animal.

To help take care of some of those costs, you can apply for a grant from Pets in the Classroom!  You can choose from one of 5 pet stores listed on the website, or you can get a rebate to buy a pet that is not listed or from a store that is not listed.  I chose PetCo, because there is a store in Maui that I can go to.  Once I had selected my store, I got to choose the animal.  At PetCo, you can choose from these pets:

  • hamster
  • guinea pig
  • fish
  • bearded dragon
  • leopard gecko
  • crested gecko
  • fire belly toad
  • tree frog
  • mouse
  • gerbil
  • corn snake
  • ball python
  • tarantula
  • scorpion
In Hawaii, you cannot buy or own hamsters, geckos, snakes, or dragon lizards, so those were quickly crossed off my list.  I am not that adventurous, so I went with fish.  I used to have a fish tank in my old class and I missed it!  My hubby was afraid it would break on the container over to Hawaii, so I gave it to a former colleague.  

After my grant was accepted, Pets in the Classroom sent me a letter verifying that I had indeed won the grant and then some coupons to go shopping at PetCo.  I got a coupon for a free ten gallon fish tank, coupons for money off water conditioner and food.  I also got a coupon for $5 off a fish.  When I went, I was going to be staying the night in Kihei and taking the ferry home the next morning.  I was afraid a fish wouldn't make it on the journey, so I just got my supplies.  

The tank already has a filter system and came with a thermometer.  I had to buy rocks and I bought some plants and decor.  


Here it is all set up in my classroom.  My kids love the Spongebob pineapple house!  They think it's hilarious!  

Even without fish, it makes a soothing noise and I'm already enjoying it.  The secretary at my school has a freshwater pond in her yard with these pretty little guppies with red tails.  I'm hoping she'll maybe give me a few, then I won't have to worry about taking fish on the ferry.  Otherwise, one of the other teachers I work with vacationed on Kauai a couple of weeks ago and a pet shop there mailed a beta fish here to Lanai.  It went to the post office and all.  So, I could do that, too.  Since I got the tank for free and I got money off on all the set up, I would be willing to pay a little more for a fish.  Hopefully the secretary will just give me one, though :)

Are you thinking about having a classroom pet this year?  I definitely urge you to apply for Pets in the Classroom!  The application was easy and they were so quick to send over my stuff.  I'm excited to have this fish tank in my classroom this year!

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Back when I taught 3rd grade in Oregon, one of our science standards was to learn about inventions.  Students were to create a prototype and test it.  My district used OCDE Project GLAD® (Guided Language Acquisition) units to teach science that teachers in the district wrote.  The people who wrote the inventors unit were not given a lot of resources or time, so the unit was lacking.  Because of this, I decided to write my own!  I taught my unit to incoming 4th graders at summer school, tweaked it, then taught it again to my 3rd graders that year.  I tweaked it again and used parts of it (the informational text and biography writing) with my 2nd graders this past year.  Now it is all ready for TpT and I can't wait to teach the whole unit this year!  It is by far the best version of the unit!

To introduce the unit, I start off with a KWL.  I want to know what background knowledge the kids come in with.  I then give the Pre Test.  There are 4 different homework sheets, too, that involve the families.

The next step is to build academic vocabulary.  I whole-heartedly believe that students can handle this type of technical vocabulary,  We just have to break it down for them in easy to understand chunks.  Students will predict the definitions, look up the origin of the word in a dictionary to study the root, draw pictures of the word, and finally define the word.  I have essential vocab and additional vocab in this pack with picture clues and definitions.  I also have a literacy center for matching vocab words and definitions.

 Poetry is the best way to learn new content!  Kids will get these songs and chants stuck in their heads!  My class likes to sing all day long and some kids will choose to read their poetry books during Read to Self or even as recess!

Each inventor has a poster with a motivational quote, informational text, various sheets to choose from for note taking, various sheets to choose from for organizing an essay, and paper for writing a biography.  You can choose to split up your class and have each group learn and write about one inventor, then teach each other in a Jigsaw manner, or you can have all students learn about all inventors.  It's up to you!

These activities are for when you are done learning about the individual inventors.  Sheets are included for if you choose to do a jigsaw and students can write down information that they learn from each other.  There is also a geography and timeline activity to tie in Social Studies.

This is such a fun, new component!  When I found out that Holly Durst from The Bachelor wrote children's books and that her book, Chocolate Socks was about inventing something, I knew it would be perfect for this unit!  In her book, the main character wants to combine two of her favorite things in the world: chocolate and socks!  She makes them on a conveyor belt (brings in some Henry Ford history!) and shares them with her friends.  It is a darling book about being creative and following your dreams!

In my literature connection, I created two writing prompts, a synonym literacy center, and an invention brainstorming sheet.  This book is a great segue into the Invention Project!

The last component is the Invention Project!  Students will go through the steps of the Scientific Method to create their own product!  How fun!

Here are some of the inventions my kids came up with when I taught 3rd grade:
"Robo-Mom"

"Camera with a radio"

"Radio Shirt"

Pretty funny!  The kids loved this culminating activity and it brings in those scientific method standards!

You can check out my unit here on TpT!

Does this look like something that you could use in your classroom?  Well I am going to giveaway one of my units and a Signed copy of Holly's book, Chocolate Socks!  Enter below! GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED.

And as a freebie for all of you, you can download the literacy center, Synonym Socks, that I made with go with Holly's book!  Just click the picture to download.  Enjoy!
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