TpT Seller Challenge Week 2: Dare to Dream!

I am very grateful for the opportunities that TpT has given me to make additional income beyond my teacher's salary. When I first became a seller, I just wanted to make some money to spend buying products (because I buy a LOT from TpT)! But, when I began to sell more than I spent, I began dreaming about making enough money to cover my car note every month. That dream ACTUALLY came true (!!!) which has inspired me to DARE to DREAM a little bigger. FYI, I drive a Toyota Sienna, not a Maserati, so we're not talking big, big money here, but my van is PAID OFF. Woo-hoo!

Week 2 of the TpT Seller Challenge is about sharing your goals and dreams for yout TpT business...

Here are a few of mine:

KITCHEN APPLIANCES: We just replaced our washing machine and dryer, so, of course, the ice machine stopped working in our kitchen freezer and the oven appears to be on the fritz. I dare to dream that over the course of the coming school year, I'll be able to replace our old appliances with shiny new stainless steel ones!

BATHROOMS and POOL: Hey, there was no time limit listed for this DREAM LIST! Our house is about twelve years old now, so eventually I'd love to help fund a few renovations.

PERSONAL TRAINER: I'm not a self-motivator when it comes to physical fitness. I'm on and off that bandwagon quite often. Perhaps, If I could afford a trainer...

TRAVEL: I wanna go, go, go, but it's expensive to take a family of 6 anywhere! 

TpT Seller Challenge Week 1

Sweet, sweet summer-time is here! But what does a teacher blogger blog about when she's not in the classroom??? Trapped inside today by the reminents of a tropical storm, I spent a little LOT of time watching tv and on the computer. I spotted this pic on Instagram:

So, I'm linking up with some super fly teacher bloggers for the TpT Seller Challenge.  I've only been selling resources on TpT for about a year and I always struggle with the cover pages. I'm never satisfied with my covers and I haven't really found my own cover style groove yet, but I decided to revamp  the covers on my word work packets. 

I made these four packets to supplement the Words Their Way word study program. All four covers had gray backgrounds and some BLAH fonts. I liked it when I made it last summer, but now...not so much. I'm still not sure about the background, but I LOVE the new font choices. 

Short Vowels

Same Vowel Word Families

Mixed Vowel Word Families

Diagraphs and Blends

Now back to Orange is the New Black...

Minute to Win It Games for Your Classroom

Our last day of school was only four hours long. The highlight of the last day was our game show inspired by the tv show, Minute to Win It! If you are not familiar with the program, contestants have one minute to complete a deceptively simple task using household items. My firsties had never heard of the show before, so I got them pumped up about playing "the best game of all time" with my fake game show host voice and a series of YouTube clips. 

The class split into five teams and nominated one person from each team to play each game after we watched the video clip of how it was done. Scroll down to see the game show video clips. I made a few modifications, of course. 

Game one is called Movin' On Up. We used a stack of blue cups and one green cup. The objective is to inch the green cup upwards by moving the cups from the top of the stack to the bottom. I modified the game by using 20 cups instead of 40 and the kiddos were not required to use alternating hands. 

Game two is called Elephant March. I put a baseball in the toe of a pair of panty hose. Each player puts the pantyhose on their head so that a leg of the hose hangs down like an elephant trunk. The player uses momentum to swing the truck back and forth to knock down water bottles, or in our case, plastic cups. 

Ka-Broom is game three. You can see the blueprint for the gameshow version in the video clip. This is the game I modified the most. I sat paper plates on the edges of desks. Each plate had a large marshmallow on it. One team mate karate chopped the plate sending the marshmallow flying through the air. Another team member tried to catch the flying marshmallow in a cup. 

Click the video clip to see games 1-3. 

Game four is called Card Ninja. On the show, a contestant tries to fling a playing card and stick it in a watermelon. In the classroom, students threw cards one at a time trying to make one land in a bucket. This is way more difficult than it sounds!

The final game we played is called Apple Stack. The game is played just like it sounds. The kiddos thought this would be soooo easy, but only one little guy was able to stack four Red Delicious Apples in a tower. Tricky, tricky!

See the game show inspiration for our final two games in the clip below:

I overheard a child tell her team mates that the last day of school was the best day ever because it was so much fun! Melted my heart. 

To play these same games like we did you will need:

Movin' On Up: 19 plastic cups of one color and one cup in a different color

Elephant Walk: one pair of pany hose, a baseball, six cups

Ka-broom: ten paper plates, ten large marshamllows, and a cup

Card Ninja: deck of cards and a bucket

Apple Stack: four or more Red Delicious Apples

a timer

Happy gaming!