Teachers Pay Teachers is one of my absolutely favorite places to find creative printables to go along with our homeschool! Whether it's a holiday-themed activity or something to complement a book study, I always jump on there if I need an additional resource. 

I don't know about you, but I love documenting little things about my boys at each stage. I love getting those Mother's Day questionnaires with their sweet thoughts, and I especially love seeing their thoughts when each new school year comes around!

Since I'm always randomly searching for a new one each year, I decided to just make one this year. If this is something you might enjoy, be sure to click on the image below!

I'll try to upload an image soon of the sweet thoughts my boys wrote down... ;)

So, as you may have noticed, it's been a little quiet around here...

I've started several blog posts, but I (sadly) haven't had a chance to finish any of them lately. We've been in school a month now and things have been unexpectedly hectic! Gosh, I can't believe it's been a month already! Well, while we've been busy trying to get back into the groove of things, something unexpected happened. I was offered a teaching position at the weekly homeschool class my son's been attending for the last two years. I'm not sure what you'd call it. I don't think you technically call it a co-op since we drop the students off? Whatever you want to call it, my son has been going one day a week for science and social studies/language arts since kinder. He LOVES it! It adds a fun/hands-on day to the mix while still doing our curriculum at home.

So with this said class, apparently the Grade 1/2 class roster grew larger than anticipated over the summer, so they decided to split it into two and needed an additional teacher. It came out of left field when I got the call asking if I'd be interested, but I'm excited about the challenge ahead! It's a good thing we started school early, because I don't think we did a single thing for a week while I was trying to prepare for this new additional aspect of our school year. Ha! I'm looking forward to it, though. I think it's going to be a great year for my son (who happens to be in 2nd Grade now) and the rest of the students!

So why am I writing?

With this new position, I'll be making various printables that we plan to use for our classroom activities. I thought I'd share some of them as they come. Today's post is a freebie and I hope others can enjoy it! It's simple, but fun enough to possibly motivate students. (I hope?!)

So without further ado...

Both of my boys LOVE Mo Willems. If he's written a book, you better believe we've read it -- especially Elephant and Piggie books!!!

With Tuesday being our first class of the semester, I decided to make it a fun one during our reading/writing block and do an Elephant and Piggie theme. We'll start the year with My New Friend Is So Fun! Considering it's the first day, with lots of new kids in the class, I thought this particular book was fitting...


My hope is that most of the kids can read this book, but if not, it's simple enough that we can hopefully get through it without much effort. I found a couple fun activities to do after we read it, but I also wanted to encourage some freewriting. If you've read anything I've had to say about Brave Writer, you know how big Freewrite Friday is in that circle! I love it! Not only do I want to encourage pressure-free, fun, writing, but I also want to see where each of my students are in their ability to write. My hope is that by allowing them to write whatever they wish, we'll see where to go from there.

This Elephant and Piggie printable can be used in a variety of ways. I'm going to use it as an intro during our transition to our writing block. There are three images of the famous pair. I'm going to instruct them to write whatever they want about what they see on the paper. If you think it might interested you, click on the image below for the free download...

As you know, my son is just about to finish up 1st grade! Over the last year, we have slowly begun working on grammar, and gently introducing writing. If you've read past blog posts, you know that I chose First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind Level 1 as our main grammar curriculum. Even though it was a bit bland at times, I still plan to use it again with my younger son. It gave a solid foundation and was SUPER easy to use. With that said, we completed the book much earlier than I had anticipated. So, we have since been digging into the Grade 1 Evan Moor Daily 6 - Trait Writing, as well as making up a few of our own fun lessons.


That's why I'm writing today. I wanted to share with you one of the activities that we have enjoyed and continue to use on a normal basis! I wanted my son to have fun while writing, so I created a silly sentence builder that would incorporate writing skills, parts of speech, and reading -- all while getting a good laugh out of it! We already use the LeapFrog Tag Funny Phrases game and my absolutely LOVES it! (That's what gave me the idea.) I figured I could expand on that and create more options in a colorful way. So far, he loves it!

As a way of introducing writing to my 1st grader, we have started doing a weekly journal entry. I generally have him do the journal entry one day, and then a rewrite the next. For the rewrite, I correct any grammar or spelling issues, so it's essentially copywork. Over time, I have seen his writing improve by doing this, which is awesome!


Even though we typically use a composition book for the entries, on occasion, I'll give my son a fun printable with a theme. Considering today was our first day back to school after Christmas break, that called for a fun printable! He has talked so much about how much fun he had over break, so I wanted to encourage him to write about it...

If you're like me, you're always looking for FREE ways to incorporate fun activities into your homeschool lessons. While I LOVE our curriculum for language arts, I still want to mix it up on occasion. Plus, I'm trying to add more writing into our lesson plans. For my son, trying to get him to write is like pulling teeth. I've started adding a daily journal entry to our morning work, but if I can find something fun and exciting, I'm there!

As you know (if you've been reading the blog), my boys love snowglobes. We recently even made our own DIY Snowglobe Ornaments last month. Well, going along with that theme, I decided to make a writing activity for Sam. I figured that could be a fun way to ease our way back into school when we start back up again after Christmas break.