VA is for Bloggers - Southern Hospitality Freebie Blog Hop

Welcome to Virginia!

 

 A lovely group of Virginia bloggers would like to help usher in the new school year by extending a bit of southern hospitality.  You can follow along the blog hop to visit 20+ Virginia teacher blogs for terrific teaching tips and fun freebies to help get your new school year off to a great start.

 I live in a RURAL portion of Virginia, folks.  This is what I have a quarter mile from my house:

and I can't say I am filled with a particular sense of "Awww, cute!" when I pass this fella by on my daily walk.  In fact, it makes me feel like I know why they were frightened when Dorothy fell into the pig pen in The Wizard of Oz.  Because those pigs were going to eat her.  I just know it.

And let me tell you I had this post written three days ago.  And it was great.  And it was funny.  And it was exactly what I wanted.  Then I came in to add a photo in an edit and somehow I deleted the WHOLE THING!  Yar!

At least my stuff is made up for you still though.

Virginia is not part of Common Core- but I think you will find the standard of having kiddos have command of their basic ten facts to be a universal one.  With that in mind, I created this Go Fish sort of game with another Virginia Standard in mind- the white-tailed deer.

Yeah.  For serious, peeps.  The Old Dominion determined that second graders needed to know the life cycle of the white-tailed deer to be proficient in the Living Systems domain.  Which I find slightly hilarious and fraught with irony that deer hunting is a major deal here.  So, it's sort of like let me teach you about this majestic creature so you can go out and shoot it.  But we press forward.

Even though we've been given this standard- we haven't been given a lot of information to help us teach it.  And I teach in an URBAN portion of Virginia the DOES NOT participate in hunting.  Like, at all.  Clearly, there is a lack of background knowledge when we get into this unit.  So, to help myself out- I've been starting to insert white-tailed deer into other parts of my curriculum to try to front-load the kids.

Enter -Tens Go Huntin'!

 What I've got for you here is a deck of cards.  Four each of the digits 0 - 10 as well as four wild cards.  Play as you would Go Fish. Great for pairs, but also will work for up to four.  Each player starts with five cards and asks another player for a card that would COMPLETE the necessary equation to equal ten.  So, if you have an eight, you need to ask Lizzy Lou for a two.  If she does not have it- this is when she gets to put on her best southern drawl and say "Go Huntin'!".  And, I seriously.cannot.wait. to get my city kids to say it just like that.  I might even get them to give a yuckle laugh afterwards.

I also made a combo list so you can spice it up for the kids who have the tens combos down, and also add in some information about the family dynamic of the deer.

A mother deer - doe, a deer, a female deer- generally has twins or triplets in early June.  Hence the Mama Mia! combinations. That's right, I just mashed Julie Andrews AND Abba- that's how ridiculous I am. You got to get ridiculous occasionally in your life.

If you would like this freebie card game:  Click the sleepy fawn:

***This card game has been added to our Tpt Store for a steal! The new link will take you there***

If you like this card game and find it useful can you drop me a line sometime and let me know?  It really helps when deciding whether to make this sort of thing with other content standards infused, as opposed to just lollipops and rainbows and whatnot.

And can I just let you Virginia lovers know that I have a special custom kids football pack that you might enjoy?



First three commenters (regardless of residence) that can say they bleed maroon and gold and leave an email address may receive it for free.  Otherwise- you may click the picture and find this handsome package modestly priced at our TpT store.

Now, I also understand that folks that do not bleed maroon and gold are stopping by to peek.  So tell you what- if you can guess my favorite team, then I'll set you up with a free pack of football kids in your favorite colors.  If more than one person guesses my team we'll do a drawing. Just leave a comment with your guess - and be a good sportsman! - and also a way to get back in touch with you if you win. Note I am not making you follow my blog or store to participate- but hey- if you want too...it's not like I'd not like that.

 I'll give you three hints:

1.  My favorite team is not based on anywhere I have lived in my life. Just on the fact that it was my boyfriend's favorite team and he's the only person that ever took the time to teach me what was actually happening in the game.
2. My team has not done, ummm, well, like, at all, for a couple of years now.  Even though they have had some dynamic players and have made some dynamic plays. 

3. Their name is based on an animal.

Winner picked the day after the hop ends on the 10th! Which would be the 11th- snarf. Good luck!



 The next stop on the hop is Carla at: