Groundhog Day Product Review

Alright, pressure is on - I am stepping outside of my little box and trying something new.  Oops!  Yep, I tripped over the side, but it's all good.  One of my newest blogger friends is Jessica over at the Second Grade Nest.  It's a long story how we became friends, but now it feels like we've known each other forever.  I'm a Georgia girl and she's a Kentucky girl, but we definitely have tons in common!

Anyway, so between Facebook, blogging, and TPT, we discovered that we both had brand new Groundhog packets that we wanted to get out there.  I have a Groundhog Printables packet and she has a Groundhog Craftivity and Mini Unit packet.  The fun part about this is she teaches second grade and I teach first, so we were definitely going out on a limb to see if our products could work for a different grade level.

Well, today is our product swap day!  She's featuring me on her blog and I'm featuring her on mine.  I'm a little nervous because I definitely want you guys to see how incredible her packet is and I definitely want to do it justice.  I have to say, I cannot wait to do Groundhogs next week!  It was created for second graders, but I can definitely use every item in the packet I saw.  My favorite part was her writing craftivity.  I feel like her craftivity writing was exactly what I needed to fill in a few gaps and my kids LOVE to write about anything that they get the opportunity to experience.  The other part I like is she included a picture of what the final product should look like.  I'm so visual that without pictures, I'm always afraid I'm going to make a mistake.  I made a sample yesterday so that we can start it Monday.  It took everything I had not to show the kids what they get to do next week.  To save a little time, I ran the body of the groundhog off on brown construction paper.  Then, the other page I ran off on white.  I am also a HUGE fan of colored paper, so I ran the rough draft writing page on white and the final draft writing page on yellow.  I also mounted it on green construction paper.  It turned out really cute!

I also liked her prediction sheets and her word work.  She included several different sheets for the students to use to provide their predictions.  One of them had pictures that the students could cut out and glue and write two sentences about their predictions.  Another one of them had where students could write about what they predicted and then what actually happened.  I loved these pages because it will make it easier to differentiate work for my students.  My lower students would definitely do great with the pictures and my higher students would do great with the predictions and then writing about what actually happened.  We will probably do the first part of these sheets next Friday and complete them the following Monday.

The word work activity will be perfect for my higher kids.  They are given the letters that form the words "Punxsatawney Phil".  Then, they take the letters and use their recording sheet to write down all the words they can come up with using those letters.

Jessica also had another prediction sheet that I thought was adorable.  I went ahead and printed one yesterday and made an example for my students of what it would possibly look like when they are finished.  The reason I put a yellow sticky note on it was to remind me to have the kids write their predictions on a sticky note.  We have a vote box anytime we do elections, predictions, etc.  We make a HUGE deal out of not telling each other what we are predicting.  This way, I don't end up with 20 kids voting one way and 1 voting the other.  This sheet is the perfect opportunity to do that, so I know my kids are going to be excited.

Anyway, if you haven't checked Jessica out, you need to definitely go visit her.  She is one of the nicest people I've met since I started this crazy adventure!  Below are links to her blog and to her TPT store.  I promise you won't regret visiting her!

Have a great Saturday!