Thankful for Learning

This Thanksgiving season has me thinking about how very thankful I am for the many blessings that I have in my life. I have a wonderful, healthy family. I have many great friends. All of my students are adorable and wonderful people. I work in a great school.
I am able to work hard and play hard. On top of all that, even though I am getting "older", I am very thankful for the drive that I have to still learn every day. I am learning how to create good teaching materials, to blog (kind of), to share good thoughts on social media, who knows what will come next. I guess that all teachers think this and that is probably why we are teachers ... but it is so important to keep learning. 
On that note, here's a freebie that I made for my class that I wanted to share with anyone who is teaching cause and effect. I've never tried to put a link on here before so I hope it works. (learning - haha) Happy Thanksgiving!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Thanksgiving-Cause-and-Effect-Cards-1560673

The Candy Corn Contest

I just discovered this book this year - The Candy Corn Contest - by Patricia Reilly Giff. The most awesome thing about it is that it motivated my students to read. In the book, a teacher has a jar of candy corn and has a contest to see who can guess the number of candy corn in it. Every time that one of the students reads a page in a book, they can make a guess. I had a contest in my class too after we read the book. I decided that after each chapter of a book they could make a guess. It was amazing to see my little hard workers trying to get their work done so that they could read. Pretty awesome teacher moment. We counted the candy corn and announced the winner on Halloween. Next year I will probably do it the week before Thanksgiving. That is when the book takes place. The students loved it.