In honor of Memorial Day, I’m offering for free the Memorial Day Word Search Puzzle from my Spring Days Word Search Puzzle Pack.
Feel free to download a copy for your students or children. The download also includes the answer sheet. 
This will be free through at least Monday, May 27, 2013.
Enjoy!
Pumpkin Fact Cards for Calendar Pocket Charts are a fun, colorful and easy way to extend your study of pumpkins.
You will receive 32 cards, each with an interesting fact about pumpkins. The facts take you beyond the basics to intriguing tidbits that will spark the interest of your students and generate additional conversation.
The 3×3 cards easily slide behind your date cards on the calendar pocket chart. Each day during calendar time, you can either remove the card yourself or have a student take it out to discover the fact of the day.
The cards are unnumbered so they can be used in any month and in any sequence. You can use the pumpkin cards all month in October or you can use half of them for two weeks and then use another set of fact cards relevant to your study (such as Tree Fact Cards) for the other two weeks. This provides maximum flexibility for the teacher and her schedule.
Also included is a hyperlinked list of the relevant websites where the facts were located.
These are just one in a series of fact cards for calendar pocket charts that you can use all year long! Click here to see all of the topics currently available with more being added regularly!
Here is another great video about the importance of play for young children. This video focuses specifically on kindergarten.
The push to full day, academic kindergarten is such a tragedy. Expecting all children to learn to read by the end of kindergarten is simply wrong. The push for the Common Core standards is just going to make all of this that much worse. High-pressure standardized testing in early elementary is criminal. We are burning out these sweet children and will pay the price later on.
My favorite quote from the video: “Do we raise robots who can regurgitate facts and pass tests or do we raise thinkers and problem solvers who are creative and cooperative?”
Apple Fact Cards for Calendar Pocket Charts are a fun, colorful and easy way to extend your study of apples.
You will receive 32 cards, each with an interesting fact about apples and apple trees. The facts take you beyond the basics to intriguing tidbits that will spark the interest of your students and generate additional conversation.
The 3×3 cards easily slide behind your date cards on the calendar pocket chart. Each day during calendar time, you can either remove the card yourself or have a student take it out to discover the fact of the day.
The cards are unnumbered so they can be used in any month and in any sequence. You can use the apple cards all month in September or you can use half of them for two weeks and then use another set of fact cards relevant to your study (such as Tree Fact Cards) for the other two weeks. This provides maximum flexibility for the teacher and her schedule.
Also included is a hyperlinked list of the relevant websites where the facts were located.
These are just one in a series of fact cards for calendar pocket charts that you can use all year long! Click here to see all of the topics currently available with more being added regularly!
This thought-provoking video about the importance of play is soooo good.
The need for play is one of the key reasons we have chosen to home educate Caroline. She is becoming an amazing problem solver because she has had so much unstructured time to explore and play. Playing and creating nearly every day for the past four years with TinkerToys alone has been amazing for her. Her ability to create, think outside the box, and problem solve is so far beyond her age level.
Would she learn to adapt to little to no playtime if she was in a school setting? Yes. She would learn to cope. But, oh how much she would miss!
What jumps out to you in the video?
Here’s a fun quiz for your older students or for the parents. The Pew Research Center and The Smithsonian created this quiz to test the knowledge of the public on science topics.
It includes topics that are both textbook-type questions as well as science questions related to daily living.
I scored a 12 out of 13 and missed the one most people miss.
How do you do?
Science and Technology Knowledge Quiz
Time to study plants and gardening! This FREE sampler pack includes four ready-to-go activities that will reinforce important literacy concepts.
Full color and black/white pages are included.
Appropriate for first grade and second grade, depending on student skill level.
The sampler pack includes:
Scrambled Sentences – Students unscramble the sentences and write them using correct capitalization and punctuation.
Growing Things List It! – Students will attempt to write a word for each letter of the alphabet.
Gardening vs. Greenhouse Venn diagram – Students will compare and contrast gardening outside with growing in a greenhouse.
Story Map – Students will identify title, author, characters, setting, beginning, middle and end for their story.
Terms of Use
You may:
• Use these for your own classroom or homeschool use.
You may not:
• Sell or redistribute these products in any manner.
• Give away this product.
Contact Me
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the terms of use or desire to use the product for something beyond these terms. I will be happy to discuss it with you!
Eyewitness to History is a website the provides firsthand accounts of important historical events. They include narratives, radio broadcasts, and historical documents.
It is a perfect website for researching historical topics or trying to help students understand how events impacted real people like them.
Some of the topics include:
Charles Lindbergh speaking after his historic flight
The Invasion of Normandy – A civilian’s view
Thomas Jefferson’s Advice to His Eleven Year Old Daughter, 1783
Christmas in the Trenches, 1914 – British and German troops meet in no-mans-land
It’s picnic time! Time to bring the fun of grilling and outdoors to your literacy centers!
This packet includes nine literacy and writing activities. Each student recording sheet is offered in color and black and white.
These are appropriate for first grade and second grade, depending on student skill level.
The packet includes:
Picnic ABC Order – Students will select six of the eighteen cards to put in ABC order and write them on their recording sheet. They will then select six more and record in order. They will then use the last six cards and record them in ABC order.
Short and Long Vowel Sounds – Students will sort cards into short and long vowel sounds piles and record on sheet.
Picnic Sentence Scramble – Student will unscramble sentence cards and write the sentences on the student recording sheet. They must also determine the correct capitalization and punctuation.
Fact or Opinion? – Student will read picnic-themed sentences, determine if they are fact or opinion, and circle the correct answer. They will then write one original sentence about picnics and determine if their sentence is a fact or opinion.
How to Plan a Picnic – Students will write six steps to planning a picnic.
Compare and Contrast – Students will use a Venn diagram to compare ants and butterflies.
How Many Words? – Students will write as many words as they can using the letters in the words “Grilling Hamburgers.” At the bottom of the sheet are optional letters to cut out to arrange as desired.
Can-Have-Are – Students will complete the Can-Have-Are chart for ants.
Memory Game – Picnic-themed pictures in a memory game.
NOAA (North Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) has a free downloadable Discover Your World Activity Book for children.
It is full of hands-on activities related to science topics such as the earth, weather and climate. These would be especially good for upper elementary and middle school students.
Check it out here: NOAA Discover Your World Activity Book
