The Valentine Train Roll-a-Story Freebie

What is the Valentine Train? Where is it going? Who is waiting for a Valentine? What if one gets lost? These questions and more can be asked and answered by students... all they need to do is roll the dice, then add their ideas to create their own original stories. (A black and white version of the story element grid is included in the PDF.)

Each kiddo rolls the die once per column for a total of three rolls. They enter their results on this page:

After this pre-writing activity, the kids will be ready to "roll" and finish up their stories.
You can download the PDF here. 

Happy writing, and have a great Valentine's Day!

Clickety-clack, The Valentine Train is coming!

This Valentine Train card has been a fun project to work on. I wanted to design an activity that would be good for both boys and girls, since most Valentine stuff is fairly "girly." Not sure how the train popped into my head, but here it is. 

This card shown is printed on plain paper...printing on cardstock will give a sturdier result.
You could easily design your own using construction or scrapbook paper, but if you would like an easy printable version, please visit my teacher resource store on TPT.

Here is the cover image: 

For writing an original story, please check out The Valentine Train Mini-Book printable and the FREE Valentine Train Roll•a•Story. The Roll•a•Story recording sheet is below: 

I hope you have a wonderful Valentine's Day!

A mysterious package arrives...!

What could it be? It was from one of my publishers, so that was a clue. They usually send things without any notice, just assuming I'll be home. Which I generally am, as opposed to jetting around the globe. Anyway, it was a nice surprise to see…

…the paperback version of my spring book Seeing Symmetry. That's pretty quick to have paperbacks already. I'm hoping it means that lots of schools will be ordering classroom sets (smile). In case anyone hasn't rummaged through my web site lately, there is a large activity pack in PDF form that goes with this book. Anyway, it was a nice surprise to get these today, so yay!

Winter Holidays Teaching Tips & Freebies ebook

Ho, ho, ho...click here for a holiday gift for teachers! It's a free ebook with dozens of seasonal tips and links to free classroom resources. Here is a preview of my page, which has a link to my Winter Symme-TREE activity.

This ebook is for PreK and Kindergarten, then there are several more for other grade levels. They are in PDF format so all you need is Adobe Reader.

Let's all try to have a low-stress December!

Loreen Leedy Math Books poster

I was emailing with an international school in Germany whose theme for the year is mathematics. The librarian wanted to make a display of my books so I agreed to make a poster with a message about my math books. With the emphasis in the U.S. on the Common Core standards, it might come in handy on this side of the ocean, too. The image is a medium resolution jpeg, which should print fine. If anyone needs a larger file, let me know and I'll send it to you (please send your request to: me AT LoreenLeedy.com.) Enjoy!

Curiosity has landed!!!

What a thrill to find out that the Mars Science Laboratory rover, nicknamed Curiosity landed safely this morning! This short animation shows the landing sequence:

My husband Andy is a scientist whose research centers around simulating Martian conditions, so naturally we have been monitoring this mission closely. Some of his work is about how Earth microorganisms fare in his Mars chamber…many of them die very quickly, but do they all? Stay tuned!

We wrote a picture book together about Mars a few years ago that introduces quite a bit of info about the Red Planet. If your young readers love space, please check it out at your local library. Preview the book on this page of my web site and see Andy's lab here. 

Happy reading!

What do you think of my new blog mascot? A blog button mini-tutorial

This is the 2nd or 3rd try…it looks pretty good but I'm still not sure. The last one was also a cat, but there was too much detail that got lost when it was shrunk down. Hope this one will work as a blog button! Of course, it has to be much smaller, like this:

The web site app I used to generate the button code is called the Grab My Button code generator, appropriately enough. First I uploaded this 150 pixel by 150 pixel image into this blog post, then clicked on the image while in the Blogger editor. The blue option bar shown below pops up.

Click on Edit Link, then select and copy the code for the image. 

Paste image code into the Your Image URL box on the Grab My Button page. Follow directions on the page, then paste the resulting code into an HTML gadget on your Blogger blog. 

This mini-tutorial doesn't cover every single step, but I hope it helps somebody.