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...