Showing posts with label Giveaway. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Giveaway. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Bonus Sale on TpT

One day only!  Bonus Sale for August 19th, 2015.  Sitewide sale, perfect time to get extra curriculum readied.

My store will be 20% off all items.  Visit Gillian Ivy Chasing Grades on TpT.

As I create new assignments for Chase, I plan to upload more products to my store.  I hadn't updated in quite a while, just enjoyed my summer vacation...  But didn't really prepare.  I decided to start school next Monday instead of tomorrow like his original school's schedule is.  I'll need to adjust the calendar to reflect these changes, as that makes the end of the school year three days longer.

I saw wonderful tip, for the first two weeks of school, go over daily routines and procedures.  Perhaps this will help cement them in myself.  Kevin will be splitting some of the lesson plans with me, unlike last year, which was all me.  I got completely burned out.

Patience.  Breathe deep and relax.  Think I'll need a mantra.

We've ordered our books.  Trying DK Publishing's 3rd Grade workbooks.  They appear to have great ratings on Amazon.  I'm eager to check them out.  Perhaps I'll write a review once we've received them.  They'll possibly arrive on Monday.  Got my fingers crossed.  I've added the new workbooks as well as some of my wishlist items to my Chasing Grades Amazon Associate Store.  Support my homeschool by purchasing your workbooks and more through our school store.


I do have a duplicate workbook, BrainQuest Grade 2, from last year that was given to me.  I think I'll hold a giveaway for this.  Don't know how much it would cost to ship it.  I'll have to inquire at the Post Office.  I've set up a Rafflecopter thing for this.



a Rafflecopter giveaway


Saturday, August 24, 2013

And the Winner Is....

Me!  I've been entering giveaways like mad lately and by luck, I've won one of the Mrs. O "Knows" giveaways she held for her one year Blogversary.  Congratulations to all of the winners!  I've won a set of Quick Response Whiteboards.


 So what are they?  They are double-sided dry erase boards on a handle.  Great for making quick answers or playing games.  I'll be teeming with ideas of how to use these soon.  Hopefully, it will be a fun exercise for Chase to use this homeschool year.  I think I may donate the rest to his local school, since we'd only need 3 of them at a time.  I don't know what colors we're getting,  I hope red, since it is Chase's favorite color.  I'm partial to red myself ;D

Looks like Trainers Warehouse has a lot of useful and fun teaching peripherals to make school more entertaining.  I'll have to browse through their catalog a little more thoroughly.

Redacted more personal thoughts and posted to my personal blog...

Monday, August 19, 2013

Classroom Friendly Sharpener Linky

This is a list of several blogs hosting a giveaway for the Classroom Friendly Pencil Sharpener.  It is supposed to be super quiet, quick and makes perfect pencils.  There's some that have reviews of the product and they seem to have very happy customers on Facebook.  So, I want this.  We have an old school style sharpener that suctions onto the table.  But I hate it, it works fine and all, but it about falls apart and loses suction constantly.  So it is a bit of a hassle.

I've entered all the ones below.  Most use Rafflecopter for entries and have extra chances to enter.  Good luck everyone who enters.  Some of these expire soon.

Pencil Sharpener Giveaways




Rafflecopter Embeds


...

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

BlogLovin' and The Lolli Gang

I've just joined BlogLovin, so need to add my link to it in a blog post.  I've seen a lot of people using BlogLovin, and I might connect my other blogs there as well.  Honestly, I joined because of another giveaway which had BlogLovin following as a required step.  I've missed a few giveaways already because I wasn't signed up. Follow my blog with Bloglovin

So, I'll take this moment to also share the giveaway which brought me to BlogLovin in the first place.  The Primary Chalkboard is a collaboration blog between several teachers/bloggers that focuses on 1st and 2nd grades.  They are having a grand opening giveaway and an awesome back2school e-book freebie that would be a great resource for homeschool and teachers alike.  The focus is on the classroom, but still, lots of great printouts.

I've noticed TpT is seriously lacking in varied artwork of the kids, or at least EVERYONE uses the same styled art for every worksheet you find on there.  So, I'm going to rejuvenate some old characters of mine and make them more age appropriate.  The Lolli Gang was a group of misfit kids, kinda preteen/young teen aged.  A goth/witch girl named Cess Pool, a punk girl named Rebecca but had a rather inappropriate nickname, a sort of art/emo type (made his character before emo's existed) named Skot and a dead (ghost) ska kid who always wore a collared shirt with a tie, his name was Jimmy.  I made these characters in 1999.  I wrote one 'comic book' on notebook paper and using ballpoint (it was my tool of choice back then).  It had a very stylish look to it.  They would have semi childish adventures and a bit of all age clubbing.  Basically, kinda like my teenaged years.  Which would entangle them in mature situations.  For example, the first book, Jimmy died.  But he would return every frame afterwards as a ghost following his friends everywhere.

So, to adapt this idea to a younger audience, I still want them to be misfits, however younger and Jimmy will be an imaginary kid instead of dead.  Don't know if I'll go so far as to make complete stories for them, but I will bring these alternatively styled kids into classroom settings.

Wow, just checked through my entire DeviantART gallery, I thought I had them up there, at least the cover page.  But looks like I never transferred it from my old account, which is now a closed account.  But here is an old scan of Rebecca's character.

Rebecca from Lolli gang by GillianIvy
My style for the strip was a mix between Tank Girl and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.  I've decided I'm going to steer this blog to be more my style.  I'm not a typical homeschooling Mom.  Even though I dress normal now (or rather don't go out and do anything so wear t-shirt and jeans 24-7 with my hair grown out and naturally colored), I am still the same goth/punk girl I was in high school and throughout my adult life.  I might not go to clubs any more, but I still have the same friends, listen to the same music and love steampunk, goth and punk fashion.  I'm not going to pretend to be some socially acceptable blog mom.

I don't care if I don't make money on TeachersPayTeachers because my stuff isn't normal enough.  I've always done my own thing and that is what I'm still going to do.  And I bet, there's plenty of goth and punk teachers/moms who want stylish resources that don't all look like those big smiley kids.  And I know kids relate to characters rather than big headed stick figures.  I might add a bit more kawaii styling into their designs as well.  I'll probably rename the characters as well, since gangs doesn't sound very good.  The name had a few elements in mind, Lolly, as in under age, lollipops, and lollygagging (funny old word that means dawdling) and gang to mean group.  I'll have to put some thought into it.

I think I'll have to redesign this blog as well.  I really hate this template.  I'm a coder and CSS designer, I should have at least one decent looking blog.