Share the Wealth Teacher-Author Spotlight- The Peanut Gallery

Greetings My Dear Share the Wealth Friends!

I know that I am jumping the gun just a little bit by going with the holiday theme here, but I can't help it. Christmas/Winter Holidays are my favorite time of the year. The warm fires, the tasty hot cocoa, warm fuzzy blankets, and of course, the opportunity to give to those we care so dearly about.

I do hope that you had an amazing Thanksgiving holiday and that you are looking forward to the amazing Cyber Monday + Tuesday sale over at TpT (Just remember the magic code of: CMT12 at checkout to get an additonal discount on what will sure to be amazingly low prices). I am absolutely giddy about the sale. I have a ton of items on my wishlish that I have been saving for the next sale! WAHOO!

On that note, I wanted to introduce you to a rising star on Teachers Pay Teachers. This amazing teacher-author has been highlighed in the TpT newsletter multiple times and has created some of the most engaging and inspiring resources to be found. Without further ado, I would love to have you meet Mrs. S, the owner and creative mind behind The Peanut Gallery.

Because it is always nice to get to know the person behind the genius  I wanted to share what Mrs. S shared with me: "I am in my 24th year of teaching middle school students and  still love it! I enjoy creating products for both my classroom and TpT which add creativity and fun to teaching and learning."

As you can see, this is an experienced teacher that knows what's going on! After all, 24 years teaching MIDDLE SCHOOL and she STILL loves it. That alone shows how amazing she is.

But, of course, it doesn't stop there. The Peanut Gallery currently has over 125 products for you to browse. I can guarantee that if you visit her shop, you will find yourself still viewing resources 30 minutes from now! There is so much to see from common core resources to classroom theme kits to in-depth grammar lessons. Need MORE reasons to visit her?  You can get quite a few FREE items (Click HERE to check them out). 

I think it is important to point out that this teacher-author is also consistently donating her items to good causes, like teachers who lost everything in Hurricane Sandy, others who have experienced devastating illness, and more. I think that is a large part of why she is so amazing and successful. From what I know about Mrs. S, it isn't so much about making money as it is sharing amazing ideas and resources with those around her.

On that note, I want to share 10 amazing resources with you that I think you will find yourself adding to your Cyber Monday wishlist! (I know I have a couple tucked in there...ha ha). Yes, many of these come with a price tag, but remember that good classroom tested resources can be hard to come by. And, with almost 700 teachers following her store, you KNOW that she is GOOD!

Here are the 10 resources I thought you would enjoy:


Teacher-Author Spotlight Resources Participants

1. Christmas Mail (Writing Point of View Postcards) 2. The Christmas Writing Mega Bundle (Three Packs in One!) 3. The Christmas Mystery (Preposition Practice/Writing Activity) 4. Synonyms & Antonyms: Color-Coded Candy

5. Get Bitten by the Reading Bug: Using Active Reading Strategies 6. The Figurative Language Mega Bundle (Four Items in One!) 7. "Book Buffet" Fiction Book Report/ Book Project 8. Pronoun Picnic (Personal, Possessive and Reflexive Pronouns)

9. Let's Play Reading Bingo! 10. December Prompts (40 Writing Prompts/Discussion Starters)

Powered by... Mister Linky's Magical Widgets.

Now, I truly hoped you paused in reading this post and clicked on a few of those links. No, really- it will be worth it. After all, with almost 900 teachers leaving feedback and an average rating of 4.0/4.0, you can't really go wrong!

I mean, here are a few comments made  by those who have purchased her items:

punkinpie123

I love all your items! When I am planning a new unit, I specifically come and look to see what you have! They are inventive, accurate, fun and they look great. I enjoy using them in my class! Keep 'em coming!

esseH

I love Christmas lights and decorate my classroom with them every year so this fits right in. I am going to use Christmas ribbon as suggested by you and instead of putting it on paper, they are going to attach the bulbs right to the ribbon and I will string them up around my room under the lights. It should be cool. Thanks! A fun parts of speech activity with a holiday twist.........

Moridanu

PERFECT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love them so much I am replacing my current behaviour management one with these!!!! Thank you! I love all of your work and will be a regular customer.

Once Upon A Teacher

My kids did this today and LOVED it!! I had them decorate the back of their page like a postcard and then bound them in a book for our library.

With feedback like that (and remember she has almost 1000 of 'em) it is easy to see why her items and shop are worth your time.

Before we end this amazing spotlight, I just wanted to share a freebie that I can hardly believe is FREE! No, really, this free resource is over 20 pages long. Now, if your students are like mine, then using literary devices can be a challenge. That is why I simply LOVE this freebie called: Out of This World Similes .

Let me share a few of the pages with you so you can see the quality of the work:

I chose to use the "answer key" pages to share with you so you can see the fun end products and projects that your students will get to experience! LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS UNIT!

With 81 teachers leaving feedback, and over 22,700 (Yes, you read that write twenty-two THOUSAND) downloads, you KNOW that this is a MUST HAVE resource and it's FREE! WAHOO! 

Hopefully this small sampling from the unit was enough to whet your appetite. Click HERE to go and get it for FREE right now! (Don't worry, it will open in a new tab so you won't lose your place here.)

Well, I think I have shared enough about Mrs. S and The Peanut Gallery to get you on your way over there. You can also find The Peanut Gallery on her BLOG and on PINTEREST. Click on over now, she is waiting for your visit. 

Have a fantastic Saturday and thanks for stopping by and "Sharing the Wealth" with me. Remember to click on a social media button at the bottom of the post to help others learn about this amazing teacher-author.

Cheers!

-MrHughes :0)

Please Note: This was NOT a paid review of this teacher-author. Neither money nor product influenced my opinions or statements about this seller and his/her products. Also, prices, ratings, and changes to products after my review may occur, but I do strive to give the most current and accurate information possible at the time of this posting.

Product Swap Review (The Peanut Gallery)

 I need to tell you about this amazing teacher-author that I discovered a few months ago. Who is the amazing  person you ask? Well, it is none other than:

I have had the privileged of getting to know The Peanut Gallery over the past several months and when we got partnered, I was VERY excited.

I wanted to review one of the 4 sets in her Figurative Language Mega Bundle.

Because I am the writing teacher for the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders in my school, I wanted to try something that I would actually be able to use over and over again- and believe me when I tell you I WILL BE USING THIS BUNDLE AGAIN (and again, and again...)

For the swap, I decided to focus on test driving ONE of the four amazing kits. (You CAN get just the kit I reviewed separately by clicking HERE- but I would TOTALLY recommend the Mega Bundle. Not only do you save money, but you will WANT all four kits.)

This is the kit I choose to review.



And Now, On to the Review...

I started by choosing the pages I wanted to print from this awesome kit! As you can see from the table of contents below, there was PLENTY of activities to use to get the idea of Onomatopoeias across to my students.

Aren't the amount of pages you have at your fingertips amazing? Phew. It was hard to decide exactly what activities I wanted to do first. This was a GOOD problem to have.

Thankfully we have a nice color-laser printer at home. It made choosing and printing what I needed a snap. And, what is nice is that even though everything is in nice bright and eye-catching color- if you needed to print in black and white- it wouldn't affect the usefulness of this set of lessons. I found that be a huge positive in my mind.

Here is my selected and printed activities. I LOVE the anchor chart that is included. (It is the top page you can see).

My wife was a lifesaver. I was swamped with grading papers and she stepped in and copied and laminated for me. I wanted to laminate several of the components so they would be useful year after year.

These are activity cards from the set. I LOVE the ideas- yes IDEAS (PLURAL) that are given on how to use these fun cards. I used them with my document camera (as shown below). The students LOVED trying to write the sounds that would be made by each picture I showed them. We laughed and had a great time with that activity.

A favorite of the kids was also reading the included story (not pictured here). The kids loved being the sound effects for the story. It was too funny. In fact, they kept making the sounds from the story for the rest of the day. It was fun.

For their homework that night I assigned them the comic strip activity. The kids had a great time writing and coloring their "story". I had several students share their work with the class using my document camera. I was impressed with the amount of thought that went in to so many of the projects. It was impressive.

Above and below is more of the amazing work my students did.

The last part I want to share from this kit (and there was more that I could have done) was the poetry component. My class was a little hesitant to engage in this activity. Not because it was "boring" or "lame", but rather because it was going to cause them to think. However, after some convincing they embraced this activity. Below are three that I thought were VERY well done!

As you can easily see, this is a quality kit- complete with engaging student friendly handouts, easy to follow teaching instructions/suggestions, and more.

Like I mentioned above, I will be using this kit EVERY year. I can't wait to use the other kits in my mega bundle. They are TOTALLY worth EVERY PENNY I paid for them. :)

What are you waiting for? Get Clicking! :)


Thanks for stopping by.
Cheers!
-MrHughes


P.S.
Don't forget to check out the review of MY item over at The Peanut Gallery's blog. Click HERE to visit her site.
P.P.S
If you don't follow my blog, I would encourage you to do so. We have a good time here at An Educator's Life, with Share the Wealth Saturdays and more.

To my current followers, I encourage you to signup for email updates. With exciting opportunities from time to time to win free resources to those who respond first, I don't want you to miss out because you didn't know about them. :)

Please Note:
This product review was part of "The Magical Product Swap" hosted by Jessica Stanford. Click on the picture below to visit her site and see ALL the amazing product reviews that have been linked for your CLICKING pleasure. I hope you have a while- you will get lost in a world of amazing "must have" resources!