A brag (or two!), a new product (or two!), and a freebie!

Today is certainly shaping up to be a good day! Alessia, from Mrs. Albanese's Kindergarten, sent me an early morning email, to inform me that I am one of the Top 100 Sellers this week at Teachers Pay Teachers. Of course I had to look to be sure, thinking that Alessia must have confused me with one of the other Lori's because I never look at that list, thinking I would never be on it. Me? Really? I am thrilled to pieces, and grateful to Alessia for letting me know. I actually took a screen shot and will save the image forever. 

I am also proud to have come in second place in the TpT banner contest. My goal was to come in first place, but I simply could not compete with someone who actually increased her votes by the hundreds every hour. Like Dave said, I guess it pays to have a lot of facebook friends! There were tons of great banners submitted and I was happy to be part of the contest. I think TpT chose a great banner as the ultimate winner.

Okay, I'm done bragging now! I don't usually toot my own horn; actually, I'm pretty hard on myself, but, I felt justified in doing it this one time! :) 

This week, my classes will be completing many Mother's Day activities. In the past, I usually do it the week before Mother's Day, but then I feel pressured to get it all done and I feel bad if we don't succeed. This way, if we don't finish, I can take a day or two the following week to do so. I plan on having the children fold a large pink piece of construction paper in half to make an envelope to hold all the activities they will complete for their moms. They can decorate the outside and I'll staple up the sides. Then, I can send it all home on the Friday before Mother's Day. Many of my activities will come from my own Mother's Day Packet, which you can find by clicking the preview below.

It's filled with many different writing activities for grades kindergarten through second. My students will write sentences, letters, essays, and more about their sweet moms. I love to read all the kind cards and emails the moms send me after they receive their goodies. It makes all the hard work worth it!

After we are done with Mother's Day, we'll embark on a two week ocean animal extravaganza! Most of my activities will come from my own Oceans of Fun Activity Pack for Kindergarten:

and first and second grade:

For those who are also doing an ocean theme, here is a labeling activity I hope you find useful. Just click on the first image to download from TpT or the second image to download from Google Docs .

After we are done exploring the ocean, we will begin to wind down the school year and spend the final 2 1/2 weeks completing fun end of the year activities. Most of them will come from my own End of the School Year Writing and Grammar Activity Packet. My students will conduct interviews, write letters of thanks to support staff, sort parts of speech cards, and much, much more. The activities are designed to keep my students engaged while I deal with the minutia of closing out my classroom. Here is a preview of my activities. Please click on the image for more information.

Thanks for letting me brag and show off some of my goodies! I promise my future posts will contain more substance than this one! Now, I'm off to take care of a leaky window in my bedroom. I had no idea the window was leaking so terribly until one of my yorkies was in there barking terribly. I went to see the commotion and found him standing in a small puddle of brown water. Eeww! I know! We are having terrible rains in Florida and it will be this way for the rest of the week. I closed my hurricane shutter on that window and it is STILL leaking! I guess I know where my TpT banner prize money is going! :( 

I'm linking up with: