New products (I was on a roll!) and a giveaway

Teacher workdays have come to a close, and I feel like I got a lot accomplished - at least for my TpT store. On Tuesday, my sweet hubby called at lunch to say he was going to pick me up and take the family to the Williamsburg Outlets since the weather was PERFECT yesterday. He brought Keagan to the school a little early, and I got to show him off. I'll have to post the picture I took later. He found my rocking chair and loved it!

In contrast, we had those storms move through last night (a few power outages, but nothing major). Well, our school is REALLY old (well, not REALLY old, but in that time where construction must have sucked. Our school needs to be bulldozed and rebuilt) and has a flat roof. Since we've had all this precipitation recently (oh, and snow is in the forecast for tomorrow as well) and last night we had high winds as well, two of the classrooms flooded! Apparently there was about an inch of water sitting, and the kids are in the computer labs for the day because of it. Such a mess! Yet all the other schools in our county are state of the art...

Anyway, about those TpT items:

First, I made a quick writing craftivity for President's Day. It's similar to my craft for Valentine's Day and MLK, but I changed the writing part to a hat. Students write what they would do if they were President. Cute. Simple. Love it!

My next project was much more in depth. I said I was going to make something to go with John, Paul, George, and Ben. I was thrilled that so many of you love the book as much as I do!

Here's the packet. Don't you just love the name?

I ended up creating a plan that's really a BDA (before, during, and after) on accident. I guess my grad school program rubbed off on me more than I thought. Before reading, I thought it was important to activate their schema (which a big thing with me this year. All of the students who see me at least once a week know that word) about each of the founding fathers. So they will split into groups and list everything they know about each person on a word splash sheet. If they don't know anything, they can do a little research ahead of time to build their schema.

Then they will read the book, and I would have them differentiate fact from exaggeration. After reading, each student will do a biography sheet on one of the founding fathers. This sheet is a little different though. They will focus on the reputation each person had and how they earned that reputation. I thought that was a fun way of looking at it and still have them write what the person was known for. I also think I'll have the students fill out a bio sheet on themselves and do the same. It would be great for making them reflect on what kind of reputation they're building for themselves.

Finally, I included a "Create your own story" sheet. For this, they will choose a different person in history and think about what they're known for. They have to choose a reputation and then imagine what kind of trouble they might have gotten into as a child because of their reputation (for instance, maybe bossy John Smith got in trouble for telling his teachers what to do, or maybe he had trouble making friends because he always told them something like, "If you don't help, you can't play!"). I may add more to it later, but I'm in love with it already. Enjoy! 

And before you go, Lisa from Growing Firsties is having a fabulous 400 follower giveaway where you could win a $25 Erin Condren gift card. Have you seen the adorable stuff over there? I could spend $100 EASY. Go check it out!