This week's theme is Valentine's Day! I'm a big mushball romantic, so I love this holiday. I hope it's controversy-free enough that you all can celebrate it with your class!

And now...my Featured Five to get the party started:

Stephanie at Falling into First has this super adorable monkey craft that I just had to share. I saw this little guy in the planning stages and let's just say that at first his tail placement posed a bit of a unique problem. I'm glad to see she figured it out! Click here to check it out.

Next up is my friend Hadar over at Miss Kindergarten with two new craftivities (don't you love how we made that a real word?) These are great because they don't require hours of pattern cutting and tons of supplies. And they're just dang adorable! Click here to see more.

This beautiful banner comes from my superwoman friend Jen over at The Teacher's Cauldron. Seriously, she rocks it out at the teaching stuff AND the mommy stuff!  AND she exercises. AND cooks! I get tired just hearing about her day. Click here to see her step by step directions for the banner she made in her spare time ;)

This next share isn't a product or craft, but it's so worth mentioning. It's a new blog dedicated to helping children's cancer centers. Click here to learn more about Cupids for Cancer. I just love the little falling hearts on the blog!

And my final featured five this week a party pack that I'm planning on using from Sandy at Soaring through Second. It's a party set up as learning stations that all have a valentine/heart theme. It's all common core related and the math has a great measurement activity which we're studying right now. Click here to check it out! Her post also has a fun freebie at the end.

Now I'm going to cheat and add a sixth thing! Tracee over at Mrs. Orman's Classroom has a great linky party filled with freebies. Check that out here!

As always, any blogger is welcome to link up to the party! The only rule is that it must be a blog post about Valentine's Day and it must include the button below that links back here.  Yes, you can feature a freebie, paid product or just a cool idea. If you have a suggestion for future Show and Tell Tuesdays, leave me a comment and let me know!

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 Did you know that pediatric oncology departments at children's hospitals all over the country are in need of individually wrapped snacks and bottled juices or water that can be given to their patients while they are at the hospital for radiation or chemotherapy?  Being able to eat healthy snacks and stay hydrated helps fight off those sick cells and replace them with healthy cells. 

Learn more about how you and your school can help at a new blog called Cupids for Cancer. 

Here you'll find out how you can start this community service project at your school and even  ideas about how to make it interesting and fun while kids help other kids!

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We all know that finding a way to motivate kids can be difficult. I've had countless conversations with parents asking for some magical way to motivate their kids to do their homework, read each night, or work on book reports or science fair projects sometime before the night before they're due.

I recently learned about a website that I really feel comfortable recommending to parents when they ask for help in this area. It's called MyJobChart.com and is basically an online chore chart for kids. Parents can set up chores that they want their kids to complete during the day or at night, then kids log in to their own account and check off their chores as they are completed. The really cool part is that the kids earn points for completing their chores. Those points accumulate and eventually they can decide to save the money by sending it to a real bank account, share it by donating to a charity of their choice, or they can go shopping on Amazon and spend it!

It's free, easy for parents to set up, and very kid-friendly. Besides the normal chores a parent might want their kids to do, they can add any of their own, like reading each night or completing homework. If I had kids of  my own, I'd definitely be setting up accounts for them, but it's just me and the hubs and I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be too crazy about the idea ;)

MyJobChart.com also has a super easy school fundraising offer. Just send an email to your students' families and for one month your school will earn $1 for each family that signs up with a free account. You can read more about that here.

I love the concept of this site and have passed along the information to our PTA.  I also created some resources to use with students to help them understand the differences between saving, sharing, and spending and to give them a general idea of how the site works.

Click  to download them free here or from tpt here.

I hope you find this as useful and interesting as I do!

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This week's Show & Tell Tuesday showcases the 100th day of school. I hope yours hasn't passed yet so you can find some new ways to celebrate! As always, I'll start with my featured five to get the party started!

My friend Lorraine at Fabulous Fourth Grade Froggies (hi Lo!) has a great art project that I know my kids would totally dig. She had them make a picture with exactly 100 squares of paper. Cute right?
Click {HERE} to see more.

Anna over at Simply Skilled in Second has a great freebie that uses leftover book club flyers. I don't know about you, but we have TONS of those in the mail room at our school. Anna has her kids buy books that would total exactly $100. I'm definitely adding this one to our celebration!

Click {HERE} to grab her freebie.

Doodle Bugs has an amazing post with a bazillion cool things they did on their 100th day. Her blog is so stinkin' cute and her classroom looks like so much fun! I love that so many of her ideas would be easy to add to what you've already got planned. I think it's the ultimiate compliment when another teacher says they'd want to be in your class. I can certainly say that about this class! Click {HERE} to see more.

I found a great product over at Teach 123. Michelle has created a fun project that would be great for upper grades or some of your advanced second graders. Teaching gifted, I knew I had to have this one as soon as I saw it. Instead of all the traditional 100 day things, she has kids look back in time to 100 years ago. Genius! Click {HERE} to see more.

And my final featured five this week is actually my own post from last year. I had the best time ever last year and I put almost all of it together for you in a nice, neat free download for you! Click {HERE} for the downloads and details!

As always, any blogger is welcome to link up to the party! The only rule is that it must be a blog post about the 100th day and it must include the button below that links back here.  Yes, you can feature a freebie, paid product or just a cool idea. If you have a suggestion for future Show and Tell Tuesdays, leave me a comment and let me know!

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There seems to be a glitch with the email sent Teachers Pay Teachers to notify you when a seller uploads a new product. Since I've spent many hours of my life and ruined a good manicure creating some new things, I thought I'd take a moment to let you know what's new in my store.

First up is my February Printables Pack. This month I've added the Common Core State Standards for 1st and 2nd grade right on each page. I'll be updating it to include 3rd grade CCSS soon. This pack has lots of literacy and math printables centered around Valentine's Day, President's Day and Groundhog Day. Here's a little peek at what's inside. If you download the preview on TpT, you'll get the cute Groundhog Day math page for free! Click {HERE} to check it out.

Next up is my February Calendar Center. My kids have been loving these every month. It's a great way for them to really understand how to use a calendar instead of just recalling basic information like what comes before and next, etc. They really have to look at the calendar and do some problem solving. If you don't want to use this as a center, they make a great addition to your calendar time, too. Just hang them near your calendar and choose one to discuss each day. I've noticed a big improvement in my student's true understanding of a calendar since using these. Click {HERE} to see them on TpT.

And finally I've finished up the 2nd nine weeks of my Weekly Word Wizard spiral language arts printables for first grade. They are completely aligned with first grade CCSS. Each week follows the same format and each question targets one CCSS (some of them are tough for firsties!) Click {HERE} for set one, click {HERE} for set 2.

Tomorrow's Show and Tell Tuesday topic is the 100th day of school, so if you're a blogger I hope you link up. If you're not a blogger, get ready for some awesome ways to celebrate 100 days!

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Down here in Florida most teachers are becoming quite familiar with the work of Dr. Robert Marzano. His works have been the subject of many staff development meetings over the last two years. A lot of his principles are common sense, good teaching practices. Some are a little harder to implement. But, for better or worse, Marzano is here to stay for a while.

One of the things that we've all been implementing is a student rating scale. It's basically a way to assess how they feel about something they've learned. We have to use a scale of 0-4. There are various ways that the kids can show how they feel, but here's the gist:

Here are some of my beautiful teammates modeling for you how they feel about using the Marzano scale. One of them was showing a different finger, but after some redirecting, she complied quite nicely. We have them hold their fingers over their heart to minimize the urge to look around and compare themselves to what finger others are using. 

Of course, that sign up there was not hang-worthy for my classroom. I had to cute it up. So I make a scale that went along with my flip-flop love affair. It's a freebie on TpT. Just click {HERE} to download a copy.

Here's how I have it displayed in my classroom. Once the kids understand the scale, they don't really have to refer to it very often. It doesn't take up too much room on the board. Ignore the messy junk everywhere...

I do have to use the scale a little more, but after 19 years of NOT doing something, it's hard to make it an automatic part of your day - but the kids do seem to like it.

We have Monday off, so I'm really looking forward to maybe taking down the Christmas tree. Yup, I'm one of those people. eek!

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This week's Show & Tell Tuesday showcases some great winter related activities. I spent tons of time scouring the web to bring you some really cool things, get it? As always, feel free to link up your ideas at the bottom of the post!

I've seen lots of snow globe activities and they are all so cute, but this one was just a notch above! I love how Tori added real pictures of the kids. Her use of clear plastic plates also makes them very bulletin board friendly. Click {HERE} to read more and download the free writing template.

This book would be a great pairing to the craft. Click on the cover to check it out.

I've seen this next project in person, and they really come out great. The kids love learning how to fold the paper into a little house that actually opens up! My friend Gina at Beach Sand and Lesson Plans has provided step by step visual directions for how to fold the project as well as a great parts of speech freebie to go along with it. Click [HERE} to check it out.

Tamara from Teaching with TLC has outdone herself with this collection of winter activities for kids. Being a fellow Floridian, I love her warm weather twist on the snowman! Lots of fun for teachers and moms too, just click {HERE} to check it out. 

Heather from HoJo's Teaching Adventures has guest blogged for me a couple of times now and she is always so positive and generous! I love this great freebie of hers. It's appropriate for many grade levels and makes a great center or early finisher activity. Click {HERE} to download.

And my final find this week is from an amazing mommy blogger I came across on Pinterest. Crystal from Growing a Jeweled Rose has so many great ideas for sensory play and kid friendly art projects. If you've got little ones of your own at home, you're going to love getting lost on her site. I thought this frosty fluff was especially interesting and easy enough to make. It's the closest thing to real snow that my little Florida babies will see! Click {HERE} to see more.

As always, any blogger is welcome to link up to the party! The only rule is that it must be a winter related blog post and it must include the button below that links back here, just like last week's party. If you have a suggestion for future Show and Tell Tuesdays, leave me a comment and let me know!

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