The First Grade Parade

Hoppy Leap Day!

2012-02-29T16:30:00.001-08:00

Hoppy Leap Day, sweet friends! Today was a CUH-razy day! Did anyone else feel like that?! I know I can’t be the only one :) We started out our day with a little Leap Day calendar fun and the kids couldn’t wait to learn more about our special day. Since Leap Day is sorta synonymous with frogs, we incorporated lots of frog type activities into our day which is sorta perfect considering we’re right in the midst of our camping theme!

We learned some fun little facts about Leap Day from a few different websites and I kept up this anchor{ish} chart throughout the day so that the kids would have a resource to use in their writing.

We made these hoppy little fellas for a little writing craftivity. Did y’all know that Leap Day babies are called “leapers” or “leaplings”?! I had the kids write about what life would be like if THEY were leapers/leaplings! Their answers were hilarious!

We also completed the cutest little Leap Day fact book from Miss Davis’ Desk. PRECIOUS!!! Absolutely loved ALL the activities in this little packet!! FULL of fun stuff!!!!!!!

We finished our day with a game of leap frog…kind of. I tricked it up just a bit :) I divided the kids into teams….Team Leap & Team Day :) One player from each team got to go head to head to find the word with the correct sound on the lily pads. Our spelling patterns this week are /oa/ & /ow/. When I introduced the /ow/ pattern, I explained that it can make two sounds. I wrote /ow/ words on the lily pads…each lily pad had a word either /ow/ sound. When I called out a sound to the teams, the players had to LEAP to a word with the correct sound. Such a FUN way to reinforce the different sounds & spelling pattern!!! Some of them were SO excited to be first to land on a lily pad, but they were bummed to find out the word they chose didn’t have the right sound :) They LOVED it!!! We’ll be doing MANY more of these little games with our spelling patterns…the kids were SO engaged!!!!

We also played this little game with numbers, too!! I wrote the numbers 1-28 on each lily pad and the kids had to practice skip counting by 4 by jumping from one lily pad to the next. After that, I called each student up and had them pick out a number. Then I asked them to either move to a number that was 4 more or 4 less than the number they chose. Then they had to give me a number sentence that matched. LOVED IT!!!!!

It was a busy, BUSY day in first grade for sure!! Now I’m at home nursing a very sick little 2-year-old. I picked him up from the sitter this afternoon and he was running a big fever. Our sitter said one of the little girls she watches is at home with the flu which means little mister was definitely exposed. YUCK. We’re about to head out for a night out at our favorite little after hours pediatric care clinic. Boo.

And before I sign off, let’s just take a moment to stop and remember my favorite Monkee, Davy Jones.

What a Daydream Believer. God rest his sweet soul. He was always my most favorite!!!!!!

A Sale, A Freebie, & An Anchor Chart

2012-02-28T20:14:00.001-08:00

I’m sure y’all have heard the news by now, but just incase you haven’t, a few of us bloggers {and SO many more!!!} are throwing a sale tomorrow…in honor of Leap Day! 20% off in our stores plus an additional 10% from TpT using the code L2P9Y.

If you’re in the mood to shop tomorrow {and who’s not?!?!}, visit my TpT store and the rest of these fabulous sellers!!! Here are a few things in my shop that we’ll be using over the next few months…

Are you celebrating Seuss’ birthday on Friday?! If you are, you should celebrate with Seuss Juice! An equal mix of red Hawaiian Punch and Sprite…super simple. IF you wanna get a little fancy, toss in some food colored ice cubes and watch the fun transpire :) We’ll be enjoying indoor s’mores and Seuss Juice on Friday & then we’ll follow up with these printables…{click on the pics for your copy}.

We’ve been camping out in our classroom the last couple of days. We started out our little adventure with a graph…

I honestly thought more kids had camped out before! Wrong. So….we needed some non-fiction books to help me teach the kids more about camping. We started out with our fiction/non-fiction anchor charts to help us differentiate between the two different types of text.

We read a few different non-fiction books about camping and mixed in a few cute little fiction books, too.

We’re still knee deep in our camping adventure. Today was skunk day :) I can’t wait to share the rest of our adventures with you!! And for those of you who’ve asked about my camping unit, I promise to have it up by the end of the weekend! I’ll keep everything in my store on sale until it’s uploaded :)

HAPPY Leap Day Eve, sweet friends!!! And happy leap day birthday {tomorrow} to Sarah Cooley!

Meeting Two of My Favorites :)

2012-02-26T07:36:00.001-08:00

A few weeks ago, sweet Diane from Made for 1st Grade emailed me to say she & Kelly would be visiting my old stomping grounds…Denton…for a weekend full of softball games and wanted to know if I’d want to meet up for lunch. A chance to meet two of my teaching heroes?! Of course, I was all over it! I couldn’t wait!! We met at my favorite little restaurant and spent several hours talking a million miles a minute…they are amazing!!! And just as sweet as could be!!! After lunch, the girls let me tag-a-long with them to go shopping. While we were out, we texted Abby to let her know we found this cute little number we thought she should add to her unitard collection :)

Our day started at 1 and ended around 7:30 and I’m pretty sure we could’ve shopped…and talked…a lot longer! As we were ending our day of fun, we grabbed a guy at a kiosk to take our picture and laughed that we should’ve snapped a shot earlier in the day when we were “fresh” :)

I can’t tell you how much I admire these women! Their materials and ideas literally SAVED my life this year as I was struggling to adapt to a very spirited class and limited on the time I had to create new things to fit the WIDE range of learning needs in my room. I would email them a million ridiculous questions about all sorts of different things and they always took the time out to email me such detailed and thoughtful answers. They completely changed the way I do my literacy rotations, too!! I just adore them!!!! And they were so sweet to bring me the most creative little sussy, too! Love it!!

Such a fabulous weekend with two of my favorites :) I can’t wait to do it again!!

They Like Me! They Really Do!

2012-02-25T07:50:00.001-08:00

My {school} kids, that is. Well, most of them do anyway. 17 out of 23 to be exact. We had a mock election today and the votes were tallied…Mrs. Carroll by a landslide :) This week we learned about our country & state and threw in some fun activities from my little Pint-Sized Presidential Fun Unit. The kids had a blast!

We read these books….one a day…and filled out some fun little graphic organizers.

The kids got to choose one of the characters from each book…Grace, Duck, or {ahem} Mrs. Carroll, y’know, from My Teacher for President :) …to campaign for. We made little campaign posters and hung them all over our room.

For our culminating activity, we held a little mock election today and the kids got to vote for either Grace, Duck, or me!! 17 of my little friends voted for me. Those are the 17 I said can stay with me til the end of the year :) HA! Just kidding. Duck got 1 vote, Grace got 2, and one little friend turned in an empty ballot. I guess none of us seemed like good options!!! HA!! 2 of my little friends were at home fighting the flu…BOO.

As the kids were coming up to vote, they had to show me their Voter’s Registration Cards. Hilarious. I was the voting deputy and I sent them “home” {to their desks} if they forgot to bring their cards.

They got little “I voted” buttons to decorate when they were finished and then we tallied and graphed the results.

Earlier in the week, my kids wrote about what it would be like if they were President. I got some hilarious answers!!! They did this fun little craftivity from the same unit to go with their writing…

Such a fun week!!!

Next week we’re going camping. Oh, yes friends. CAMPING. In the classroom. And I can’t wait to share our fun with you!!! Stay tuned to see WHOOOOO will be hanging out in our classroom next week :)

We’ll be learning about lots of woodlands mammals…life cycles, habitats, and more. We’ll be using lots of fiction & non-fiction books to use with some pretty stinkin’ cute craftivities that I’ll be sharing with y’all. This past week, I introduced the difference between fact & opinion with some activities from my Fact & Opinion Fun Unit and we’ll continue that as we move into our fiction & non-fiction fun next week.

We’re also starting fractions!!!! Last year I was TERRIFIED to teach fractions, but it turned out to be SO much fun!!! We’re bustin’ out a lot of the activities from my Fraction Action Unit and I can’t wait to get started!! I’ve got my Domino’s pizza boxes waiting in the wings for some fun pizza style fraction activities next week. We’ll also be making our little “fractionpillars” which will fit in great with the little camping unit we’re doing!

Yeeks!! I can’t wait!!! S’mores, tents, campfires…I’m getting’ a little excited people!!

Why are the short weeks always the longest?! For real?!?! I couldn’t be happier it’s the weekend & I’m SO excited about my little lunch date today with two of my teaching heroes…Kelly & Diane from Made for 1st Grade!!!! They’re here in the Metroplex and I can’t wait to spend an afternoon with them at my favorite little Mexican restaurant! Good food & teacher talk?! Sounds like a perfectly perfect Saturday to me!!! SO pumped!!!

Hope y’all have a WONDERFUL weekend!!! Only 2 more full weeks of school until Spring Break, but who’s counting?!?!?!

After the Sugar High Sets In...

2012-02-15T14:51:00.000-08:00

I hosted a little Valentine playgroup party at our house on Monday. My oldest is part of the sweetest little playgroup...8 boys...ALL the EXACT.SAME.AGE!!!!! Their mommas are some of my favorite people in the world!!! Love them!! There were about 12 kids under the age of 4 running around my house that night. We consumed way too much sugar, played our little hearts out, and made these PRECIOUS Valentine bags courtesy of The Teacher Wife. If you don't have her Valentine unit, you MUST!!! It's darling...even for the littles!!!

My boys handed out these Valentines {thank God for Pinterest ;)} I ended up giving my kids the little "love bugs", too!!!

Yesterday, I was WAY too tired to think about a dang thing after school. My.word. That party took it right outta me. It was a CRAZY day full of WAY too much candy. When I got home, I had two VERY excited boys and slipped right into my sweats. Elastic is SO forgiving :)

We had the most fun little chocolate fondue bar at our party yesterday. Yes...I had a few servings.

The kids had the absolute BEST time and ohmiword. Things got crazy. My parents coordinated this cute little Minute to Win It game where the kids had to transfer Skittles from one plate to another using a straw. SO fun!!! The winning team got bragging rights and even MORE candy to add to their stash!

I picked up my boys and took them out for a little date right after school. Usually, our little family of 4 goes to Snuffer's every Valentine's Day. We started this tradition while I was pregnant with Landon. Who doesn't love hot dogs, cheese fries, and milkshakes on Valentines?! Well..Mr. Spouse had to work last night and he specifically requested we wait for him to continue our tradition. SO...I've absolutely got my elastic pants on today ready to devour even more fattening food tonight :) Instead of our favorite little restaurant, I took my boys to McDonald's for 2 hours of playtime and ice cream last night. BRING.IT.ON. Not a soul in the entire place!!! Best date ever!

I knew my little itties at school would be suffering from a serious candy hangover today. What better way to treat a hangover than with the exact same thing that made you feel all fuzzy in the first place?!?!? I pulled out the leftover kisses and hugs this morning and we started out our day with a taste test. The kids had to try both candies and decide which they liked best. We graphed the results when we were all finished.

Seriously, as nervous as I was to start the day with more candy, this little activity couldn't have been better!! They were SO excited AND they rocked their little graphing skills. Turns out we love kisses WAY better than hugs :) If you're looking for a way to get rid of all of that extra chocolate, you can grab a copy to download by clicking the pic below.

I wanted to do a little literacy piece that tied in to what we were doing in math, so I had the kids write about which they liked better...{people} hugs or {people} kisses. Then they got to create their own little candy hugs and kisses to match :) They thought this was hysterical! I found this idea on Pinterest, but I don't think I pinned it. If you know where this idea originated, can you let me know?!?!? I'd love to give a shout out and link back!!! For this little craftivity, I just cut out a class set of construction paper kisses and had the kids cover them in foil. They glued on googly eyes and then added some glitter squeeze paint for the smile. Love it!!!

I wanted to put more of my leftover candy to good use, so we did Abby's Sweetheart Snatcher activities today and OHMIWORD...AMAZING!!!! I was going to do this for my formal observation last week, but I ended up doing something not as exciting instead. Honestly, I'm so glad I waited til today because this was the PERFECT after-the-sugar-high-sets-in activity. They LOVED it!!!! SO much fun and SO engaging!! This is another "must have" in your arsenal of Valentine goodies!!!!

I'm STILL without a computer and it's driving me absolutely CRAZY!!! I'm dying to catch up!!! However, I gotta say that it's pretty nice going to bed at a normal hour instead of staying up and playing around on Pinterest :) Now it's off to stuff my face full of cheese fries and fried pickles. Nothing says "love" like a heart attack ;)

Oh, and for those of you who have recently emailed me to ask if I've ever gotten any not-so-nice comments and how I handle them, well, I found the perfect post for you to read!!!

You can read more about it at Home Stories A to Z.

TOO funny!!!

Happy hump day, sweet friends!!! Friday's almost here!!

What Happened to Mrs. Carroll? And a Few Other Things...

2012-02-09T14:14:00.000-08:00

I took a personal day on Monday. I hadn't seen my sweet family since mid-December, so I took my boys home for an extra long weekend. Mr. Spouse had to work. Boo. While I was out, I had my kids write about what they thought happened to me. I didn't tell them where I was going or what I was doing, so it was hilarious to read their responses when I got back!!

One of my sweeties said that I was spending the day shopping with my sister, Mrs. Cortez. Mrs. Cortez is a precious 6th grade teacher. We are NOT sisters, but we *might* have told the kids that we are :) We get told we look alike no less than 20 times a week :)

Last week we celebrated the 100th day of school Sadly, I've got NOTHING to share with you. I absolutely got ALL of my ideas from Pinterest and loved every little minute of not having to recreate the wheel. We had our annual balloon launch in between the intermittent spurts of rain. It stopped right before we headed out and started right back up again as we were walking inside! Dear Mother Nature...thanks for that!!!

We also celebrated Groundhog Day sans my camera. However, I did get a few pics the next day of some things that we did to celebrate.

We made a grade level graph {Pinterest inspired} and we did the same little writing we did last year, only this time I had them draw their burrow instead of making one for them.

We kicked off our Dental Health unit with this writing I did last year. Honestly, one of my favorites of the whole year!! This year's is NO exception!! Love this little tooth fairies!!!

Now we're working on Valentine related skills and having SO much fun!! Our math tubs are FULL of Valentine math activities and we're using some of our Love, Splat centers for our literacy tubs. Next week we'll continue on with our Valentine theme and we'll be doing some awesome little activities from First Grade Blue Skies & Fun in First. They both have DARLING "Froggy's First Kiss" units!! Here are a few little things I made for our literacy tubs. Just click on the pics to grab your copies!! And feel free to leave a comment and let me know if you have any kind of Froggy activities so that I can link to yours as well!!

Froggy Freebies

In other news, I'm 100% obsessed with these cups.

They *might* make me happier than the red cups during the Christmas holidays. Bless you, sweet Starbucks. You and ALL of your overpriced coffee. Dangit.

Now you might wanna head on over to Heather's Heart and enter her giveaway...just sayin'. She's "totes adorbs" {that phrase tasted terrible coming out of my mouth. I promise I'll NEVER use it again.} Heather is always SO dang sweet and encouraging. She always leaves the sweetest comments and she has the most giving heart. She's got TONS of freebies up for grabs so you need to head on over NOW. Enter for your chance to win one of these PRECIOUS tees from Sewing Sassy...

AND a Consious Discipline CD and 5 items from Heather's TpT store. In addition to all that, Rachelle from What the Teacher Wants will be giving away 2 of her units, too!! LUCKY {in my best Napoleon Dynamite voice}. GOOD LUCK!!

I'm still computerless and going through serious withdrawls right about now. Not sure when I'll get my little laptop back, but I miss her so much I can hardly stand it. Sad, I know. Not sure when I'll be back, but stay tuned for some super fun ideas on teaching and introducing dictionary skills! We're LOVING it and having a blast {so far}!!!

TGI{almost}F!!!!

Tagged :)

2012-02-02T17:03:00.000-08:00

Mrs. L from Life with Mrs. L and Sydney from Lessons Learned...fun! Thursdays are S-L-O-W for any kind of quality tv watching, so I thought I'd play along.

The Rules
1) Post the rules.
2) Post 12 things about yourself
3) Answer the 12 questions sent from the person that tagged you. Then create 12 new questions for the people you tag.
4) Tag 12 people and link them to your post.
5) Let them know you tagged them.

12 Facts About Me...

1. I am the oldest of four {2 girls & 2 boys}

2. I am TERRIFIED, absolutely phobic, of frogs. And flying.

3. I auditioned for the Mickey Mouse club when I was in 6th grade. I didn't get a call back, so I'm currently living out my MMC fantasies in my 1st grade classroom.

4. I dressed up as a cow for Halloween my freshman year in college. I flew back home that same day. The flight attendants let me pass out peanuts on the flight! Needless to say, my parents were "udderly" embarassed when I stepped off the plane ;)

5. I once *stalked* Britney Spears at a hotel here in town when she was visiting on tour {circa 2001}. We met her bodyguard {Molicious} and he invited us back up to her room. He was CREEPY as all get out. Britney was sleeping in the room adjoining the one we were in, so we didn't get to meet her. Sad face.

6. I read magazines from the back to the front.

7. I'm obsessed with crossword puzzles and LOVE to read the dictionary for fun.

8. I was in labor with my first born for 24 PAINFUL hours. I wouldn't dilate and they were about to wheel me back for a c-section when the little mister decided he was ready. By the time I was ready to push, my epidural wore off and I couldn't get another refill. Let me just say that I could feel every part of his little body make his way into the world. And I promise his head weighed the most :) Lawd.

9. When I was a senior in college, I got a $500 tip from a guy at the golf course where I worked!!! It couldn't have come at a better time. Rent was due and my dog had just been diagnosed with mange! His treatments were a whopping $250 every two weeks!!!

10. I was the victim of a {super creepy} Peeping Tom in high school. We moved shortly after he tried to crawl through the window in my bedroom!!!!

11. The house we moved to was haunted. I never believed in ghosts before we moved, but I swear...they are real. We lived in fear for 6 months!!! Finally, my mom had the house blessed and there were no more scary incidents. My parents are still living in that house. Freaks me out EVERY.TIME I go home.

12. I student taught at the same school where Mr. Spouse was working as the P.E. coach. He never knew I existed. I thought he was the cutest dang thing I'd ever seen. A year later...hadn't seen him in about 9ish months...we both got new jobs at a different school in the district. So, we were both at the same school. 3 months later, he asked me out on our first date...in an email that I still have saved...and we've been together ever since. Godwink!!!!!! HE always has a plan!!!!

Questions from Mrs. L...

1.What is one thing you wished you had for your classroom?

I'd LOVE some iPads!!!!! Even a few iTouches would be amazing!!!

2. What is your favorite professional development book?

Anything by Fountas & Pinnell

3. How would your students describe you?

LOUD! Funny/silly & loving

4. Where do you get your clipart?

Either from Scrappin' Doodles or JD Digi Designs.

5. What is your favorite concept to teach?

I'm SO not a math person, but 1st grade math rocks my socks off. I love teaching any and everything related to math!!!

6. What is one thing you wish you knew before you became a teacher?

To document EVERYTHING and save ALL emails and correspondence with everyone!

7. How do you stay organized?

Organized?? For real? Running to-do lists!!!

8. What do you do when you are on break?

Spend as much QT with my boys as I possibly can :) Lots of trips to the mall play area, park, movies, the village beach, baking cookies, movie nights at home, dance parties in the living room, & playing in the backyard :) And I'm a big fan of going out to eat, too.

9. How many blogs do you follow?

Between all my DIY/craft blogs, cooking blogs, personal blogs, design blogs, and teaching blogs, I'm pretty sure it's well over 300. I read them all through Google Reader, so I'm not really sure!!!

10. What is your favorite band/artist?

I have WAY too many to name them all. My favorite artist of all time is definitely Frank Sinatra. I could listen to him ALL.DAY.EVERY.DAY. I'm also a HUGE fan of Jack Johnson, Ben Harper, Amos Lee, Ray Lamontagne, Mumford & Sons, Dave Matthews, and Jimmy Buffett. Let's not forget George Strait, too :)

11. What is the last movie you saw?

At home, it was Moneyball. Totally fell asleep for the last 30 minutes, so I'm still not sure how it ended. At the theater, it was Alivin & the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked. Terrible, horrible, no good movie. My boys LOVED it.

12. What are you currently reading?

I just downloaded Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God by Francis Chan and The Ministry of Motherhood by Sally Clarkson. Can't wait to start both of them!!! On another note, if you're looking for a good Bible study, you should check out The Wardroble of Christ by Carrie Rogers. BEST Bible study I've EVER done. Wow.

Questions from Sydney...

1. How long have you been teaching?

This is my 10th year in the classroom!!! CRAZY!!!!

2. Have you taught at the same school the whole time?

This is the 3rd school for me :) I taught at my first school...with 10 teachers on my team!!!...for 3 years and then the school split. It was HUGE. I was excited for the opportunity to open up a brand new school, so I headed to my 2nd campus. Loved it. I was there for 4 years. The commute was a killer. It took me forever to get to school in the mornings and the drive home in the afternoon was even worse. By this time, I had my boys and I hated all the time we were spending in the car instead of spending it with each other. I wanted to be closer to home and then God gave me the most amazing opportunity. He truly blessed me with the school I'm at now...I've never been happier!! AND, I'm only 12 minutes from home :)

3. Do you like to travel? Where?

LOVE to travel, hate to fly. If I could road trip everywhere, I would. I'd prefer to travel somewhere beachy. I've been to Europe 4 times and that was amazing, but I'm way to chicken to fly that long again, so I'm not sure I'll go back. There are A TON of places I want to visit here in the U.S!! I've never been to California, and I've only been to Florida once...for a destination wedding. I'd love to go back!!! And I REALLY want to visit Savannah, GA, anywhere in Colorado, and the Carolinas!!! Chicago is my most favorite place to travel in the states and Las Vegas runs a close 2nd :)

4. How early do you get to school? OR How late do you stay?

Depends on the day! Lately, I've been getting to school about 10 minutes before we have to pick up the kids. I usually stay 'til about 4:45ish because my boys have to be picked up by 5 :)

5. Why do you like blogging?

I have 3 different blogs and I love them all for different reasons. I love having my family blog because it's my scrapbook of my most favorite memories. I have all of my posts turned into blog books to give to my boys :) Our little family adventures aren't very exciting to read about, but they're OUR family memories and I don't want to miss a thing! Plus, it keeps our families totally in the loop. We have no family in town and this is the best way to let them know what's going on in our neck of the woods!!!
I love having my cooking/DIY blog because it's just fun and it keeps me from being too lame in the kitchen. Mr. Spouse loves it because he never has the same meal more than once a month. We're always trying new recipes!!! And I've had a lot of really neat opportunities because of it, too.

I love my teaching blog because of all the amazing people I've met through it!!!! I love sharing ideas and collaborating with other teachers from all over. AND...I love being able to look back and visually see what I've been doing in my classroom. It really helps keep me on track!!!

6. Mac or PC?

PC! But, after the latest snafu with my laptop, we're seriously considering switching to Mac!!

7. Do you use any drawing programs on your computer?

I'm learning Adobe Illustrator!!!!

8. Do you like to make photobooks? How do you store your memories?

All of my family memories are stored on my personal blog and slurped into Blurb for our family scrapbooks. I backup all of our pictures on my EHD, CD's, and Mozy :)

9. Plants - do you have them, can you keep them alive?

Mr. Spouse has the green thumb in our family. He takes care of all the landscaping and flower beds. We have NO living plants inside :)

10. If you could go to one event over the weekend, what would it be?

A cooking/food event :)

11. Do you make your bed every morning?

Mr. Spouse is still asleep when I leave in the mornings and if you think he's makin' the bed, you're crazy!! It's always in a state of messiness unless we have company over.

12. Do you refill your car with gas the minute the light comes on, or do you press your luck?

Totally press my luck. The light on my gas tank has been blinking for the last 30 miles :) I'm *praying* I can make it to the gas station before school tomorrow!!

I'm terrible at choosing people to tag...I don't want to leave anyone out!! So...if you made it this far and you're still reading...consider yourself TAGGED!!!!!!

Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner

2012-01-31T15:14:00.001-08:00

A few things I learned from this giveaway:

1. Y’all love February because that means it’s just a little bit closer to Spring…goodbye jackets & uggs, hello flip flops!!!! Girls after my own heart. I couldn’t be MORE excited!!!

2. Some of y’all get a week off in February?!?! FOR REAL?!?! And one of y’all said it’s because of the Rodeo?! I think I know where we’re moving…SOON.

3. Y’all LOVE 3-day weekends as much as I do.

4. Y’all love teaching about all these fun little *holidays*…Groundhog Day, Valentine’s Day, President’s Day, Dental Health…just as much as I do, too!! Hopefully the winners of this little giveaway will find a few things to make planning in February a little easier!

Without further ado….

I will contact y’all via the email y’all left in your comment!! Thanks for playing, you guys!!!

For those of y’all that didn’t win, you can head on over to my TpT shop for 20% off of everything in my store through Friday!!

Have a great week!!!!!

Love, Splat. Black History Month. And a Giveaway

2012-01-28T11:25:00.000-08:00

Hey sweet friends! Happy Saturday! Okay, so maybe notsomuch on the *happy* for me. The screen on my laptop decided to die, so I spent the morning taking her to get fixed only to learn that she needs to be sent off to be repaired! Shoo! I'm taking this as God's way of telling me to take a break from the computer, so my blogging and commenting will be very minimal the next few weeks. In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out a way to upload several new units I've been working on...just a few little goodies for February.

My newest little mini unit...Love, Splat...was just added to my TpT shop in the nick of time! HA! Here's a little preview:

You can grab it for $5 HERE.

Are y'all looking for the *perfect* activities to implement for Black History Month?? Well, you're in luck!! LaNesha Tabb, from First Grade Awesomeness, has an amazing unit for primary teachers! She started posting some of the activities on her blog for you to check out.

I have it and I LOVE IT!!! It's awesome!!! You can pick it up HERE.

So, this is the first time I've logged onto my actual blog in a while. I noticed that I reached 4,000 followers so I thought this would be a great time for a BIG giveaway!

I'll be giving away EVERYTHING in my store to 4 lucky winners :) I'll randomly select the winners via Random.org and I'll announce them on Tuesday. Just leave a comment telling me what you love most about February. Only one comment per person, all additional comments will be deleted. Please remember to include your email so that I can contact you if you win!

Have a GREAT weekend!!!!

Praise Jesus! And a Little More Alliteration

2012-01-25T19:21:00.001-08:00

I PASSED THE ESL TEST!! I’M OFFICIALLY ESL CERTIFIED!!!

PRAISE JESUS!!!!!!

In other news, I just wanna put him in my pocket in take him home with me! PRESH!

Sarah left me a comment the other day directing me to this absolutely DARLING activity she did for alliteration.

We didn’t have the book Ten in a Sled, but I loved the idea of using verbs with alliteration. So…while I’m waiting for my copy of Ten in a Sled, I decided to do a little whole group shared writing activity with the class. We made two word alliteration sentences using nouns & verbs. This was a great way to assess my kids’ understanding of action words…a few of them were still having a hard time with it! When one kiddo couldn’t figure out the perfect verb to go with his/her name, he/she got to call on a friend for help. This was such a FUN activity!!!!

Then they got to follow up with a little writing activity for their desk task {literacy station} that day.

Since that little activity got such rave reviews, I followed it up with something similar today. Instead of alliterations using nouns & verbs, we used nouns & adjectives! This was A LOT harder!!! It took lots of little minds working together to come up with words to describe themselves…especially words that had to start with the same initial sound as their first names!!!

We followed up with another little writing activity for their desk task today, too.

I collected all of their writing to laminate and then turn into class books for our library.

These shared writing activities were also great for reinforcing punctuation and stretching out sounds to make words….we’re working SO hard on that!!!!

Nothing too exciting, but my kids had such a blast with these!! And to those of you that think my anchor charts are always fun and frivolous, as you can see, they’re clearly NOT. As long as it gets the job done, sometimes it just doesn’t matter how they look!!!!

I’ve got a glass of cabernet & Top Chef calling…y’all have a great rest of the week!!!

A Little Alliteration

2012-01-23T18:53:00.001-08:00

One of the objectives we’re working on this week {and last week} is alliteration. There are SO many great books to read to introduce and cover this topic. Some of our favorites are…

Shel Silverstein poems are great for alliteration, too! My kids loved Picture Puzzle Piece, Noise Day, and Spoiled Brat :) the most!! The beg me to read them on the daily :)

We talked a lot about alliteration last week and ended the week with a little alliterative writing after reading If You Were Alliteration. We brainstormed a giant list of animals and then I had each of my firsties choose an animal to write about in an alliterative sentence. The sentence could be silly or serious. OF course, all of the writing I got back was definitely silly! The kids had to write a sentence and then illustrate it. They loved this activity!!!

I absolutely LOVED Julie Lee’s “All About Me Alliteration” activity, so I borrowed that idea and gave it a little twist. Instead of having the kids write an alliterative sentence about themselves, I had them write one about a friend! They thought this was the neatest idea! They couldn’t wait to say silly things about their buddies. I definitely chose partners so that the kids weren’t fighting over each other. They did such an AWESOME job!!!

I created a little anchor chart today to hang up and display all of their alliterative animal sentences. I haven’t started on that yet, but hopefully that will be up by the end of the week! In the meantime, it’s sitting on the easel for reference.

As we were packing up to leave this afternoon, one of my sweeties said she couldn’t wait to do more alliteration activities. “We get to do some more tomorrow, right Mrs. Carroll?!?!!?” Ummmm…sure! Have y’all seen any great ideas or do you do anything in your class you want to share?! I’d love to add a few new things to the mix!

ps: thank you for this! you can head on over and vote for your favorite blog ‘til January 26th!

My Current Obsessions {Totally Unrelated to Teaching}

2012-01-22T20:13:00.001-08:00

After a week of cramming for that dang ESL certification, I’m back and ready to blogstalk. I missed catching up on everything y’all are doing in your classrooms!! Now I’ve got lots to read while I’m waiting for my test results {gulp}. In the meantime, I needed something totally unrelated to teaching to occupy my time. So I thought I’d share with y’all my current favorite obsessions.

1. My growing collection of M.A.C. eyeshadow.

I’m completely obsessed. Mr. Spouse says I’m going through a mid-life crisis. Not sure about that, but I LOVE me some M.A.C!!!! Their eyeshadows are the best…they stay on without getting icky and they last forever, too!!!

2. This perfume.

Alfred Tsung, Shi. A total throwback to my college days. Found it at Marshall’s for $15 and had to bring her home. It reminds me of Friday nights out on the town with my girls and scarfing down Quizno’s sandwiches and watching Lifetime on Saturdays.

3. Stripes.

Holy heck. I own a lot of stripes, I guess. Dangit. My mom is sick of this obsession of mine. Whenever we get together and go shopping, she has to pry me away from buying more. I love stripes.

4. This song.

“Who’d Have Known”

I know this is nothing new, definitely made an appearance on my ipod circa 2009, but it’s definitely been repeat the last few weeks. Maybe because T-Pain made it famous again?!?! Love her voice. And all her music. But this one is my current favorite because I like to go “old school” every now and then. Also on constant replay?!?! Justin Bieber’s “Never Say Never” {my 4-year-old’s favorite song} and Zac Brown Band’s “Knee Deep” {my 2-year-old’s favorite song}. Wow. Never thought I’d say that in a sentence.

5. This album:

Oh how I love me some Amos Lee. I started listening to him about 7{ish} years ago and man, that boy can sing. If you like folk{ish}/acoustic-y type music, you’d LOVE Amos. Soooo good. Especially “Colors” and “Arms of a Woman” from his first album. Chills. Right now.

6. This FREE App…

Red Stamp…LOVE. Found out about this from a sweet friend and now I’m obsessed. I just posted a ton of Red Stamp creations on my family blog. I absolutely LOVE this app!!!!

7. This show…

This show gets me through the week. I love it. Cracks me right up. And I have a serious not-so-secret crush on Phil Dunphy. He absolutely makes the show! SO funny!

8. These candles…

Circle E Candles. I burn these ALL.THE.TIME. I promise these are the best candles you’ll ever burn. I haven’t burned anything different since I started using these about 8 years ago! My current favorite scent is Apple Streudel. Birds of Paradise is pretty dang good, too.

9. Caramel Cappuccino from La Duni Dulce.

Do y’all have one of these where you are?? I LOVE La Duni. The food is to die for. Dulce is almost better, especially if you have a hankering for sweets and coffee. Their desserts are insanely amazing and the caramel cappuccino is like heaven in a cup. SO good.

10. This Lip Balm

Love it. Absolutely ADORE. I can’t go a day without it. Perhaps I’m a little addicted.

11. These cleaning supplies

Mrs. Meyer’s cleaning products!!!! Ohmiword. I don’t like cleaning {who does?!?!}, but these cleaning products make me happy. I actually want to clean as often as I can because this smells SO dang good. I have the lavender scent and ohmiword…AMAZING. You’ve gotta try these out!! Sweet Janell {who doesn’t have a blog, but absolutely should} gifted these to me {THANK YOU!!!!} and it was love at first spray. I swear I don’t want to use anything else anymore!!!!

12. This oatmeal.

Starbuck’s Perfect Oatmeal. It comes with a little pack of nuts, dried fruit, and 50 calories worth of brown sugar. I don’t like the nuts or the fruit, so I just eat mine with the sugar. I LOVE IT!!!! I ate it for breakfast every day last week and I’m pretty sure that’s how I’ll start my day tomorrow, too. SO yum!

Another obsession?! My bed. We haven’t spent much time together this past week, but we’re getting reacquainted starting now!!!! As my dear friend, Abby, would say, “PTL!!!!!”

Have a great week sweet friends!!!!

Inferencing with NO David! and a Silent E Freebie

2012-01-18T14:03:00.001-08:00

To kick off inferencing, we started out using Abby’s Snow Day Case Files. Do y’all have this yet??

If you’re teaching inferencing, you SERIOUSLY need this!!!! Let me just tell you that my kids were all over it. I set up my case files and the kids went to town being little “inference investigators”. Wow. I mean, they really got it!!!!!

To follow up, we pulled out the book, NO David! My kids LOVE this one!!! Our whole team is using this book to reinforce inferencing skills. First up, we made a little “No David!” inferencing brainstorm chart. We talked about using our schema and the clues in the text to make really good inferences. As we looked at each page of the story, I called on a few kids to give me an inference about the picture and then the clue/schema that helped them make the inference. We broke up this activity into parts because even though this isn’t a long story word wise, it’s pretty long when you’re making inferences!!!

After we brainstormed our inferences, I introduced our little inferencing anchor chart. We talked about words to use {sentence starters} when we’re making/writing about inferences. We went over schema again and they IMMEDIATELY knew what evidence was {thanks to Abby’s Snow Day Case Files!!!!}

I had the kids fill out this little inferencing sheet where they had to describe a picture from the story, write their inference about the picture, and then write about a clue/schema that helped them make their inference. LOVE!!!!

We’ve got lots more inferencing activities planned, but so far we’re off to a great start!

We’ve also been reviewing and working with silent e. I don’t want to jinx myself, but I think they’re *finally* getting it!!! Now we’re working hard to incorporate the silent e into our everyday spelling. Here’s a little activity we did a couple of weeks ago. My kids LOVED it and it really helped them to understand the job of silent e!!!

Click to download Silent E Freebie

I’ll be spending the next few nights cramming for my ESL certification test on Friday. EEEEK!!! Nervous!! I’m NOT a test taker by a LONG shot. However, I think God is helping me through this one!!! I’ll be praying big time!! Have y’all taken it?!?! I heard it’s REALLY hard!!! Nothing like waiting ‘til the last minute to study! To prep for a long night of studying, I’ll be watching Top Chef and cooking THIS for dinner. That should help me make it through!!! HA!!!

HAPPY HUMP DAY!!!!

Snowflakes Falling & Contraction Surgery

2012-01-12T19:48:00.001-08:00

I love Mr. Spouse. Like, BIG love him. Even when he’s being a turd, I adore the man. However, I think it’s crazy how helpless men are when they’re sick. Completely helpless. I’ve been less than sympathetic toward him and his recent bout of sickness this week. Not sure what’s wrong with him, but I’m sure hoping I don’t get it. I started feeling a little guilty about my lack of nurturing, so I made him some soup tonight. And it was pretty dang good ifidosaysomyself.

I’ve been escaping the germs in my house for even better germs at school :) We’ve been incorporating cutesy little snowmen into our learning this week, but we’ve also been knee deep in some big stuff…contractions, inferencing, place value, and problem solving just to name a few.

We started out the week introducing my little “Contraction Crocodile” {from my Crazy for Contractions unit} to kick off our little contraction activities.

Then we did a little surgery :) I found this darling idea on Pinterest from Mrs. D. Lue Pann at Buzzing About Second Grade…contraction surgery!!! LOVE!!! The kids got masks & surgical gloves and then went to town with their scalpels {scissors} cutting apart words and then bandaging new words {contractions} together. The kids were SO pumped! I put them in small ‘surgical teams’ and each doctor got to perform surgery while the other team members assisted in surgery if the doc needed help. I swear they’ve never been more engaged. I took all the bandaged words and then made a little anchor chart{ish} to remind the kids what we learned. And seriously…they’ve been knockin’ my socks off with their use & recognition of contractions! I’m so dang excited!

We do word problems in our calendar notebooks almost everyday, but we got a little crazy today and added a little craftivity into the mix. Of course, this was Pinterest inspired as well. I loved the idea of this little art activity from Joanna Davis at Our Art Lately. Precious, right!?

Well, we pretty much did the same thing, but I threw in a little problem solving and patterning to tie it all together. The kids had to solve the word problem, create a number sentence, and then write a complete sentence answering the question. Once I checked to make sure everything was correct, the kids got to work creating their snowmen. I had them make a pattern on the scarves to tie in last week’s objectives and then they added thumbprint snowflakes to match the sum of the word problem.

LOVE!

TGIF sweet friends!!! This will be the best Friday the 13th yet :)

Snowmen at Night and Ryan Gosling :)

2012-01-09T20:12:00.001-08:00

Happy full moon Monday!! Did y’all realize that there’s a full moon today and we’re ending the week on Friday the 13th?! Should I just go ahead and call in sick now?! I’m sure y’all are all cozied up on the couch…in your Footed Hoodies…and drinking a few glasses of cabernet if your day was anything like mine :) HA!

We’re all ready to learn more about snowmen this week, so we started out by reading the story, “Snowmen at Night”. Now, if you were reading this little ol’ blog last year, you might remember this little writing craftivity we did after reading the story {inspired by Rachelle at What the Teacher Wants}.

I loved that activity…and so did the kids…but then I found this DARLING little guy on Pinterest…

via The Elementary Art Room

Precious. Well, since we were writing about something we would do at night if we were snowmen, I used black paper instead and had the kids draw a little moon{ish} for their snowman to look at. The writing prompt was, “If I were a snowman, at night I would…”. I LOVE how different they all turned out!!!!!

We also made our symmetrical snowflakes this morning so that I could replace the Grinches that were still hanging from my ceiling :) This is always one of my favorite activities because it really helps me to see who struggles with the concept of symmetry and they ALL turn out DIFFERENT!!! Since we’ve been reviewing repeating and growing patterns, this was a great little closure activity to our learning.

Now, if you remember yesterday, I posted about this little gem of a snuggie…

Sweet Katie sent me an email today and said that I reminded her of Ryan Gosling in my little getup. Umm, say what?! I’m all over that….

Ya see. We’re starting a movement, people! You might wanna jump on board ;) All I gotta say is…

Frosty & Friends and Sunday Randomness

2012-01-08T17:58:00.001-08:00

I think I’m coming down with something. Could be a case of the Mondays, the mid-year blues, a little bit of both, or something flu-ish. Ick. I’ve been getting random migraine{ish} headaches this weekend and I’ve been SOOOOOOO unusually tired. Not too tired to stay up ‘til 2am on Friday night/Saturday morning watching “The Help”, though. Ohmiword. Might be the best movie I’ve ever seen {not counting Tommy Boy, of course ;)} I cried like a dang baby. That one chick in the movie was a straight up meanie. She made me so dang mad. Minnie *might* have been my favorite character…the scene with the pie made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. That was hardcore. I swear I didn’t want to movie to end!!! So dang good!! Still haven’t read the book…and I’m sure it’s better {aren’t they all?!?!}…but with two crazy kids runnin’ around this place I barely have time to read the mail.

I found out that my Aunt passed away over the weekend. Such a sad story, but to sum it all up, she’d been living with Alzheimer’s for the last few years. I swear that disease is the devil….my great grandmother died of the same thing and watching her go through that was the worst. My aunt was in a really sad place and she finally went to be with Jesus late Friday night. I know she’s in a much better place now…and hopefully having a few cups of coffee with my sweet grandma in heaven...but I miss her. The REAL her. And I hate Alzheimer’s. Did I say that already??

Mid-year assessments are starting in another week so we’re spending this coming week getting the babes back on track and ready function independently for long periods of time while I assess. We don’t get subs on those days so it should be interesting :) Starbuck’s will know me by name by the time assessments are over :) We’ll be working on the literacy centers from my latest literacy pack, Frosty & Friends. Here’s a little preview for those of you that have emailed me about it…

We’re introducing place value in Math this week, so we’ll be working on lots of activities from my Place Value Packet of Fun. We’ll also be working on some Math tubs from my new Winter math tub packet {not uploaded yet because I found several errors…let’s contribute that to lots of late nights, jet lag, and peppermint punch :)} I’ll upload that either tomorrow or Tuesday, so if you’ve recently asked me about it, I promise I’ll get it up early this week!!!

Alright sweet friends. I’m laid up in bed watching Lifetime. Tonight’s theme must be about crummy friends because every movie is all about friends killing friends and stealing each other’s husbands or boyfriends. My word…I love Lifetime Sundays. I’m also wearing this little gem Mr. Spouse bought me for Christmas…

GAH. I’m no fun to look at in the mornings. How does Mr. Spouse manage?!

No, it’s not a joke. He got it HERE and I swear it’s the coziest thing I own. I actually laughed out loud when I opened it up because I thought for sure it was a gag gift. Oooops. We’d been talking about the Forever Lazy the night before and I couldn’t believe there was really such a product. This little number is definitely no Forever Lazy. I promise you’d love it. I’m actually obsessed with it. It’s got footies and everything. For this cold natured momma, it’s right up my alley. It’s warm as all get out. And when I wear it, I’m pretty sure this is what I look like:

BEST.GIFT.EVER.

3 Days{ish}, $3

2011-12-30T12:35:00.000-08:00

Since there's 3 days{ish} 'til the new year, I'm having a $3 flash sale in my little TpT shop starting now and ending after date night tonight :) Not sure what time that will be, so get it on the cheap while ya can!

A New Year Freebie & Some Resolutions

2011-12-29T20:11:00.001-08:00

So…let me just go ahead and say that I LOVE New Year’s :) Not because I’m partyin’ it up on NYE…unless you consider sparkling cider, my sofa, and MTV a party…but I love it because it gives us a chance to start all over. Such a great time to reflect and make resolutions and ohmiword…I’ve got a few! I thought I’d go ahead and share those with y’all and then share a *little* freebie :)

This has been one of those years. I’m sure you can tell by the lack of my blogging :) Between my very spirited class, my even more spirited boys, a husband that works nights, and domestic duties, this little blog has been pushed aside. I’m sure it doesn’t help that I’m also trying to maintain my personal blog AND my domestic blog, too. My personal blog is my journal…the random stories of our little life…and I don’t want to slack on that one, so I’ll be keeping up with that one a lot more often! But I also LOVE this little blog. I love all the opportunities it’s thrown my way and all the WONDERFULLY TALENTED, AMAZING teachers/friends I’ve met through it. And keeping up with it has really helped me stay on track in my own classroom, too!

I’ve been SO blessed by so many of you in SO many different ways. Your comments, your emails, your posts, your ideas, your funny stories, your creativity, your sharhing hearts, your vulnerability…everything!! I’ve loved meeting some of y’all in real life and feeling like I’ve known you since forever. I’ve loved meeting some of y’all just through comments/emails and feeling the same way. This little blog…and ALL of you…have been such a blessing to me :)

In 2012, I plan on…

*Commenting more. I have a little over 100{ish} teaching related blogs I read through Google Reader every day. I catch up on my phone mostly…while I’m sitting in traffic, cooking dinner, bathing my boys, etc. The bad thing about Google Reader is that it’s made me terribly lazy. I haven’t visited blogs in a LONG time, so I’ve been slacking in the comment department. BUT, I’m changing that in 2012. I’m always so appreciative and grateful when y’all comment on my blog and I definitely want y’all to know that I’m lovin’ reading what you’re posting, too! So…I’m definitely going to get better at that. Will somebody hold me accountable, please?! Rachelle?!?! Where are you?!?! HA!

*Returning emails. I’m not even gonna get into this because my email is a sad, sad place. So unattended. I’m so overwhelmed by emails that I’ve been behind for a long time now. If you’ve emailed me and haven’t heard back, I’m sorry…for real. As you can tell, I’m extremely long winded and way to wordy, so those are the kind of emails I want to send back when you write. If I can’t sit down and send you a “talkative” email, I keep putting it off until I can. Now I’ve dug myself into a hole and can’t get out. I’m wiping the slate clean and starting from scratch. I just can’t get to them all, so I’m deleting my inbox. If you email me again…starting now…I promise I’ll get back to you right away :)

*Updating my sidebar. Like I said, I haven’t visited blogs in forever…mine included. I’ve been meaning to update my sidebar with links to more blogs and I’ve just been so dang lazy.

*Being more consistent with my Wandering Wednesday posts. Darnit! I started off so great, but then I just got so busy!!! This year has been wild, but I’m determined to get back on track!

*Post more freebies. Starting now…

Here’s a little {42 page} freebie just for you :) I’ll need something to keep my kids busy when they come barreling through my door on the 3rd, so here are a few activities I’m using to keep them on task. You can click the picture to download it or head on over to my TpT shop and pick it up there {for free}. Hope this helps get your new year off to a great start!!!

For those of you that have asked about my Winter Math & Literacy center packs, those will be uploaded this weekend!! I’m still visiting with my in-laws up north, so I’m knee deep in family time and trying to savor every minute of this WAY too short vacation. Hope y’all are having a very BLESSED holiday and I’ll see y’all next year :) HA! Couldn’t resist ;)

Merry Christmas From Our Family To Yours!

2011-12-25T08:47:00.001-08:00

Wishing you & yours a blessed Christmas! Hope your holiday season is filled with the love of Jesus Christ!

Reindeer Games

2011-12-14T18:06:00.001-08:00

For those of y’all that have 2 days left until Winter Break, can I get at “Woot! Woot!”?!?!? As my dear friend, Abby, would say, “PTL!!!!!!!” This week has been crazy insane…and the scary thing is that I know I’m not alone!!! Between gift making, gift wrapping, station work, and catching up, my classroom looks like a scene straight out of The Wizard of Oz :)

Reindeer are one of my favorite things to learn about, so this week has been all about reindeer fun & games!!

We’ve started each morning with the AMAZING Word of the Day sheets from Made for 1st Grade.

source: Made For 1st Grade

I LOVE these!! And it’s SO fun to see my kids use these words…spelled CORRECTLY {halleluia!!!} in their writing!!!!

We’re also finishing up the last few activities from my Christmas units {Merry & Bright Math Tubs & Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree Literacy Centers} This season, my kids’ FAVORITE game has been the “Punctuation Present”!! I’m definitely NOT complaining because they’re *finally* starting to understand the difference among these types of sentences! Woo hoo!! Because they’ve played it so much, I’ve had to come up with a few extension activities for it. We made little “punctuation presents” today {I forgot my camera!!!} and the kids loved it! Basically, I cut out a gift template for each of the kids and that was the cover of their book. When you open up the book, there’s a ‘telling’ page, a ‘question’ page, and an ‘excited’ page. The kids had to write & illustrated holiday sentences for each type of sentence. They LOVED it! ANDDDDDDD…they’ve requested another round tomorrow :) You can download a copy for your classroom, too! Just click on the pic below….

I’ve been using Sarah Cooley’s Reindeer Games unit and I’M.IN.LOVE. Her illustrations are DARLING and they straight up make me smile. The kids have loved them, too!!! She always has such original ideas and the kids love her activities! If you’ve still got time left and need more ideas, you need to check it out!!

We made these cute little reindeer to practice reindeer name ABC order. I haven’t scanned the tracers because I’ve been all kinds of busy, so I’m sorry I don’t have that to share!!! I accidentally missed a reindeer, but my kids were quick to solve the problem and make their own corrections.

We read a few fiction stories about reindeer and then the kids wrote letters to Santa telling him why they’d make good reindeer. Their writing has improved SO much this year…especially their handwriting!!! We’ve still got lots to work on, but I’m SO proud of how far they’ve come!

Speaking of reindeer, I made these little “Reindeer Noses” packets for the boys in my oldest son’s playgroup. Of course, I found this idea on Pinterest. Love. I also found the cute little label online. The little brown bags are from the craft section at Hobby Lobby {12 for $1.99} and the bag is filled with little red & green M&M’s. If you’re still looking for a little class gift….and don’t have any allergies in your class…this is the perfect little something to give! Inexpensive and absolutely PRECIOUS!!! They’d also be perfect to give after learning about reindeer, too!!

Now it’s time to get back to baking!!! I’ll be up to my ears in sugar & flour for the next few days!! LOVE IT!!!!!

And everything in my little TpT shop is 20% off through Friday!

HAPPY WEDNESDAY, PEOPLE!!!!!

You Asked, I Answered :)

2011-12-12T12:29:00.000-08:00

A little Q & A...

Q: When do you grade?
A: Ummmm…grades?! HA!! Just kidding. In our district, we don’t technically do grades in K-1. We do a 1-4 numbered system, each number representing their level of mastery with 4 being the highest {mastered}. We enter our grades at the end of each 9-week grading period and I base their “grades” on classroom performance & informal/formal assessment.

Q: How do you stay organized? How do you organize all your units/TpT stuff?
A: If anyone who knows me well is reading this, they’re LAUGHING right now because I am SO not organized. Well…it doesn’t look like I am anyway. I like to call it organized chaos. I think that’s my ADD ;) I write EVERYTHING down, so that helps. I also keep a running to-do list at ALL times!!! I organize all my center/station activities into those big 9x12 tabbed envelopes and store them in my filing cabinets. I organize all my thematic ideas/printables/templates/tracers into labeled file folders in a separate filing cabinet. I keep all of my TpT units {packets} in monthly binders…that gives me quick access to things I need to print and it’s easier for me to see the overall idea of what I’m doing before I start to plan. Everything else is organized on my Pinterest board….HA!!!

Q: How do you make your TpT packets?!
A: I use Power Point to create EVERYTHING!!!! I’ve used it for the last 7-8{ish} years exclusively. I don’t think I’d know how to use Word if I tried! HA! Honestly, it just seems so much more user friendly to me. Also, I'm using a PC {*I think* someone asked me that, too!!}

Q: When do you make your anchor charts?
A: Sometimes I’m really on the ball and I’ll create my anchor charts BEFORE I introduce a concept. Please notice that I said *sometimes*. I always tell my kids that our anchor charts are rough drafts. Sometimes we’re going through the material with a quickness, so tend to write a little sloppy. I expect my kids to always do their *personal best*, so I can’t very well display something that isn’t my personal best. A lot of times I’ll edit the anchor charts and create a brand new version after school and then I’ll hang it up before the kids come back in the next day. Most of the time, I like to remake my anchor charts to be much smaller so that they fit in the classroom better. I do laminate them so that they can be stored easily without getting ruined!

Q: How do you balance school and work? Do you go in early or stay late any nights?
A: Is there really a way to balance?! HA! Seriously though…I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my *job*, but my family will always come first. I have to know that if I didn’t get a chance to finish preparing for the next day, then I just leave it be. IT WILL GET DONE. Sometimes I get to school early, but most times I’m doing good just to get there on time. I do stay late…probably ‘til about 4:45ish…and then that’s that {my boys have to be picked up by 5.} Being with my boys is my top priority, so whatever I don’t finish gets left behind…until the next day. I make the most of my breaks…recess, lunch, specials…sometimes I stay in my room for lunch and work on things that need to get done. My boys LOVE coming to mommy’s classroom, so I’ll occasionally bring them up on a Friday evening {because I have a ROCKIN’ nightlife ;)}, we’ll pick up a pizza, and then hang out at school. It’s a win/win because I get things done and they have a blast. Truly. *Sometimes* I bring things home and work on them when the boys go to bed, but I really love spending time with Mr. Spouse so that doesn't happen too often. I am definitely a night owl and I usually don’t go to bed ‘til anywhere between 11-12. If something NEEDS to get done, I’ll find a way to do it! There’s definitely a fine line you walk trying to keep a balance between home and school, but you have to know where to draw that line! Family comes first and I don’t want to miss any memories!!!!

Q: When do you find the time?

A: I don’t feel like I do!!! Just remember that when you’re reading this blog, you’re seeing the *highlight reel*. I know it seems like I get a lot done…and sometimes I really do!…but I honestly don’t always find the time!!!! I've gotten really good at time management the last few years, but it's still a work in progress :)

Q: You mentioned you cut things out for your kids to make the actual project go more quickly...when are you cutting these things out?

A: I’m usually cutting these things out during my breaks…recess/lunch/specials. Sometimes I’ll get to school a *little* early and do it then and sometimes I’ll cut things out RIGHT before the activity. Just depends on how much needs to be cut! If it’s a HUGE project, I’ll also enlist the help of some of my moms!!! God bless them!!

Q: How did you revamp your Daily 5 block?

A: Y’all *might* remember me mentioning that I had to revamp that block of time to better fit the needs of my class. I have to be totally honest. While I do love Daily 5, the structure stresses me out {gasp!!!!!!}. I tend to be very structured…I like to know where my kids are supposed to be and I thrive on routine. I think the kids do, too...especially this year's sweeties. I love all the components of Daily 5, but the structure...notsomuch. Instead of doing 3 minilessons and breaking in between each rotation, I do one short lesson before we start our station work. My stations consist of word work, listening, a literacy activity, & writing. When the kids finish their work before the time is up, they can read to self or someone. We also have a D.E.A.R time before our station time, so they can read to self or someone during that time as well. Right now, they work on these things EVERY day. SO...every day they visit word work/writing/listening/literacy AND guided reading. The activities in their stations change every day as well. Some days are VERY simple {magnets for word work...completing a writing prompt...etc.}, but most days are VERY hands-on and include some type of activity I've created that focuses on the concepts we're covering in our curriculum.

Q: I know you do daily five, but how much time do you usually give them and take to teach in between?

A: Technically not *Daily 5* {see above}, but I give them about 15-20 minutes for their station work and then we rotate. I'm sure I'll be revamping this after the holidays! HA!

Q: Can / are there any more monthly math tub ideas you can put on tpt or post on the blog?
A: YES! I’m working on several right now!!! They should be all ready to go by the beginning of next week!!

Q: How many parent volunteers do you have helping during daily 5 and what do they do?
A: None. My class is SO much different this year than last. I had multiple parents helping daily last year, but this year just isn’t the same. It took me a LONG time to get my kids to be able to work independently and meet my expectations. I needed their full attention before bringing another adult into the classroom. Last year, my moms would come in and help the kids work on special writing projects or assist them as they worked independently in their literacy stations. I’ll start asking for more help after mid-year assessments and at that time I’ll have my parents help kids with sight word practice, writing, and word work type activities.

Q: Where did you get that cute red and white striped shirt that you wore underneath the Grinch shirt?
A: Thank you! It was actually a maternity shirt I used to wear when I was pregnant with my last little itty. I got it at the Gap. My husband would tell me I looked like ‘Where’s Waldo'?’ when I wore it. I shoved it into the back of a drawer and never wore it after that. I can’t believe I randomly found it when I was cleaning things out to take to Goodwill the other day…perfect timing for Grinch Day! And he wonders why I never get rid of anything?!?! Seriously...I'm one more piece of junk away from being an episode of Hoarders!!! HA!!

Q: Do you cut a lot of your crafts by hand, or do you have a cricut or silhouette that you use?
A: I do have a Cricut, but everything you see in my classroom is cut by hand! I cut it all myself….or have someone help…because I don’t want instruction time to be taken away from doing too many crafts. Plus, waiting on things to be cut on the Cricut takes WAY too long and I'm *slightly* impatient ;)

Q: Where do you get the borders you use on your worksheets?!?!
A: If you notice, I typically use the SAME dang borders on EVERYTHING!!! For the life of me, I can’t remember where I got them!!! I downloaded them when I was really big into digital scrapbooking. I found them on one of my old digital scrapbook paper CD’s. However, I do know that you can find A LOT of those borders/frames on digital scrapbooking websites and/or Etsy!!! There are TONS out there!!!!! I'm just being a cheapy and haven't bought anything new :)

Q: How do you "license" or whatever you do to be able to use copyrighted graphics on your work?
A: If you plan on selling your materials, you need to BUY a license from the graphic designer. The cost and terms vary by designer and can usually be purchased directly from the website. When in doubt, contact the designer!! Don’t just assume it’s okay to use something if you can’t find the answer you’re looking for!!!

Q: How do you format things so they will show up the same to your users just as they show on your materials even though they may not have those particular graphics?
A: I turn everything into a PDF file. However, this isn’t always compatible with every user. Sometimes my things turn out all icky. They look fine on my end, but someone will email me saying they look all kinds of messed up on theirs. Dangit. I’d LOVE to know how to stop that from happening, so if anyone has the answer, let me know!

Q: Do you have a portable photo printer in your classroom?

A: No! I sure don't!! When I print photos for my classroom, I just send them to the cheapest place I know...Wal Mart!!

Q: What photo softward to you use with your camera?

A: I use Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom 3 to do ALL of my editing. Basic adjustments in Lightroom then I export to CS5 for bigger edits. If you don't have access to this software, I heard that picnik.com is a good online alternative :)

Q: Where do you get your fonts/graphics/borders/etc.?

A: I get my fonts all over the place. My favorite fonts come from Kevin & Amanda, and DaFont.com. I've heard that a lot of people also like Sugar Frog Fonts. I also LOVE Miss Tiina Fonts!!!!

My graphics are typically from Scrappin' Doodles. I also use Digi Web Studio and MyGrafico, too!

Q: Do you ever sleep??

A: I have kids. I haven't slept in the last 4 1/2 years :) HA! Seriously...I average about 5-6 hours of sleep each night. I know that's lame, but I CANNOT go to bed without having some down time first. My boys don't get tucked in 'til around 8:30{ish} and our bedtime routine and prayers can last quite a while. By the time I get back downstairs, it's late and I need some "me" time before heading to bed. Plus, Mr. Spouse and I catch up on all our DVR'd show, so we need time together, too!! I'm definitely a night owl...I can get SO much more done when things are *quiet*!!!

A Little Q&A, Christmas in My Classroom, & GRINCH DAY!!!

2011-12-09T08:05:00.001-08:00

I’ve recently had A LOT of people email me asking a couple of things. Just incase y’all are wondering too, I thought I’d write about it here!

Q: “What kind of camera do you use?”

A: I shoot with a Nikon D700 {IN.LOVE} and also have a Nikon D90 {also in love}. The D700 is a full frame camera and the D90 is a crop sensor. If you’re just looking for a DSLR to take better pictures than your regular ol’ point & shoot, you’ll want a crop sensor…you won’t need to go full frame. I’m 100% a Nikon girl, but both Canon & Nikon make EXCELLENT cameras. I would HIGHLY suggest you visit your local camera shop and hold BOTH in your hands. Sometimes one just *feels* better than another. Most DSLRs come with a kit lens {typically an 18-55mm lens}. I would suggest adding a prime{fixed} lens to your shopping cart OR just buying the camera body{no kit lens} and a lens. I LOVE my 50mm 1.4 {amazing prime lens!!!}. The 35mm 1.8 {prime} is also amazing and if you want something that zooms, go for the Tamron 28-75mm…super versatile & produces some pretty fantastic images. Instead of pulling your camera out of the box and just turning it on Auto, I *HIGHLY* recommend learning how to shoot in manual!!!! It’s a definite learning curve, but I’ve been shooting manual for 2 years now and the quality of my pictures are SO much better!!! I can’t imagine going back to auto!

Q: “Where did you get those plates that you used for ‘There’s Snow Place Like Home’ Christmas gifts?”

A: If you’re wondering what this question is all about, read about it HERE. Y’all. These plates came from the DOLLAR TREE!!!!!!!!!! TRUE story!!!! Talk about inexpensive!!! We painted the plates with regular ol’ acrylic paints, wrote the words in sharpie markers, and then sealed it with a clear, acrylic sealant. Cheap, easy, and CUTE!!!!!

Now I’ll go ahead and leave the comments open for more questions. If you’ve got anything you wanna ask…ANYTHING at all…just leave it in the comments and I’ll answer them in a post on Sunday :)

Christmas is in FULL swing in my classroom, so I thought I’d give y’all a little peek. It’s nothing spectacular, but it’s really beginning to look a lot like *Christmas* {cue the music}. We’re only in school for 3 weeks between Thanksgiving break and Christmas break, so it’s hard for us to do *too much*. Sweet Rachelle over at What the Teacher Wants was telling me she’s in school up until the week before Christmas. How many of y’all do the same thing!?!?! CRAZY!!!

You might remember these mice from the activity I made last year. I’ve been doing a “If You Take a Mouse to the Movies” unit since I taught Kindergarten and I love it more and more every year!

The writing prompt was, “If you take me to the movies, I will ask you for some…”

I made the template for the mice last year, but I haven’t scanned them, so I don’t have them for you!!! Sorry!!! If you want to read more about the activities I do for this little unit, you can check it out HERE. I didn’t take any pictures of our mouse day this year…I left my dang camera at home! You can also find more printables and activity ideas!!

You might remember these little Santas from last year. We made them again, only this time we switched out the color page of bricks for some brick themed scrapbook paper! MUCH cuter ;) I actually saw this idea in my TL’s classroom and thought it was super cute and I wanted to add a little flair to ours, too! We did this little craftivity as an extension to reading the book, “Santa’s Stuck”. The writing prompt was, “If Santa got stuck in my chimney, I would…” We brainstormed lots of ideas and some of them were downright clever. LOVE the way their little minds work!!

As soon as we got back from Thanksgiving break, we made these little scrapbook Santas {similar to last years}. I basically just set out a ton of Christmas themed scrapbook paper, my own sample, and then they went to town creating their own. LOVE how different they all turned out!!!

I also had the kids fill out an elf application. I told them I was sending it straight to the North Pole. You should’ve seen their faces. Ohmiword. I’ll tell you what, though…they sure did take their time and do their BEST work!! HA!!! We did this activity last year and this year I tweaked the elf just a bit. They came out A LOT bigger than I was anticipating, but they still turned out pretty darn cute ;) If you want to download the elf application, you can find it HERE.

We had a “Mooseltoe” day this past week and it was SO much fun!!! The kids adored the book and we were engaged in some pretty fun activities all day. We even made “Moose Munch”!! {Chex cereal, chocolate chips, and pretzels} FUN!!! All of the activities we did came from my little Mooseltoe unit. The kids LOVED it!!

We celebrated *Grinch Day* yesterday and had a blast! The kids were SO excited!! Most of our firsties came to school dressed in green and wearing Santa hats. Kinda precious. The teachers joined in the fun, too!

{Just incase you’re wondering, the shirts came from Wal Mart…$7.50!!!!}

We had our first annual Grinch Day last year {you can read about it HERE}. I really didn’t do much different this year, just added a *few* new things. I found the idea for this next little writing craftivity HERE. LOVED the style of the Grinch, so I went ahead and made my own template. {I used a little paper punch for the white on the hat.} The writing prompt for this craftivity was, “I feel like a Grinch when…” The writing on the right says, “when I’m sassy to my sister.” HA!! LOVE that!!!

We made Grinch Punch/Seuss Juice {sprite & lime sherbet} and the kids LOVED it. Another idea that my TL had was to make Who Pudding {vanilla pudding with green food coloring}. We didn’t get around to that though…it was a BUSY day!!!!

We brainstormed some *Grinchy Adjectives* to describe the Grinch and then followed it up with a little simile writing.

We finished up the day watching the classic, cartoon version of The Grinch and then passed out Grinch licked candy canes! HA!! One of my sweeties was VERY concerned that they were really licked, so I spent the better part of dismissal trying to convince him that they weren’t! Bless his heart!!

If you want to download the tag, you can find it HERE. I found the candy canes at Target, but I know most places carry them. They’re the Starburst brand….they come 12 to a pack…6 red/6 green.

Okay…that was a massive update. Kudos to you if you’ve made it this far! HA!

More Brain Potpourri & An Announcement for Texas Teachers

2011-12-04T20:45:00.001-08:00

1. Texas Teachers…are y’all ready for another lunch date?! I AM!!! Time to get this party started…again. We’ll be meeting here in Dallas on December 20th. Location and time TBA. If you’re interested, email me at texasteacherblogmeetup@gmail.com. You can also get updates on my little FB page! Can’t wait to see some of y’all again and finally meet the rest of you!

2. I enjoyed EVERY.SINGLE.MINUTE. of my Thanksgiving break. Why did it feel like I blinked and it was over?! LOTS of QT with the fam…tons of way too good food…and lots of shopping :) Now the countdown to Christmas break is on…10 more days!!!

3. I was out of commission for a few days this past week. I had a SEVERE allergic reaction to JALAPENOS. Yes friends. True. I’ve NEVER been allergic before, but apparently things can randomly develop as you get older. Just another perk of going gray! So, I was cutting up 4 jalapenos for chili I made last week and I guess it soaked into my hands pretty good. I was coughing something awful as I was cutting them, but I didn’t put two and two together. A few hours later, I got my first ever migraine. I went to bed around 10 and woke up around midnight. My hands were on FIRE. I swear I thought they were going to burst into flames. It felt like someone cut my hands up with razor blades and then proceeded to pour salt and lemon juice into my wounds. They were red and swollen and the only thing that helped was ice cold water. The pain lasted for FOREVER. The doctor put me on Zyrtec and hydrocortisone. Eeeks. I’ll never cut those suckers without gloves again!!! DARNIT!!!

3. I’m officially obsessed with these…

This is my new favorite snack. CAN’T.GET.ENOUGH. I’m basically obsessed with anything cinnamon, but these take the cake.

4. My student teacher is officially a college graduate in a week. She spent her last day in my classroom last week. I’m SO sad to see her go. So were my kids. I mean, crying and all. It was a sad day. We showered her with gifts and cards and my sweet team treated her to lunch. SO bittersweet…

A few of y’all asked me what I was going to do for her and I apologize if I didn’t respond. I bought her an Erin Condren planner, got her a little gift card, and then we made her a class book. She loved it!!!! And the kids LOVED making it!!!!

5. Speaking of responding to emails…if you emailed me sometime in the last two/three months and haven’t heard back, I apologize. I promise I’m not ignoring you. I read each one I get and I appreciate them all!!! Between school, my 3 boys, and my domestic duties, I’ve gotten really behind. Email me again or leave me a message on FB. I’m so sorry if I haven’t gotten back to you!

6. My kids have been keeping pretty busy and they’re *finally* in a groove!!! YAY! This month we’re working like crazy on graphing, editing sentences, adding adjectives to our writing, and SO much more!! It’s going to be a BUSY two weeks!!! Praying we can fit it all in!!!!

7. My little family starting our RACK’s this week. Y’all…it was amazing. On the first day, we placed about 65 candy canes on random cars in store parking lots. My boys did the majority of the work. I didn’t want anyone to see us doing it, but one lady caught us in the act. She picked up her candy cane, read the message, and had little tears in her eyes. She looked up at Landon and said, “Did you do this for me?!”. Landon had the biggest grin on his little face and said, “YES!!!!” She said, “Thank you! I really needed this. This made my day.” Then I started tearing up….crying, actually…and told her I prayed for that! LOVE this time of year!!!!

Our list of random acts of kindness has been changed just a bit, but we’re rollin’ with it and loving every minute :)

8. I’m sure y’all have started the Elf on the Shelf with your families. Our little elf… “Elfabet” {named by Landon last year}…is back! He brought the boys a little North Pole breakfast on Saturday. Definitely one of my favorite new traditions! We’ll surely be doing this EVERY year! {Thank you, PINTEREST, for this fabulous idea!!!}

9. I’m NOT a fan of cold weather. Not by a long shot. The temperature has taken a turn for the worse here and the high isn’t supposed to be above 40 tomorrow. Not my idea of a good time. For those of y’all living in the cold weather states, God bless you. I don’t know how you do it. I’m sitting in the living room bundled up in about 5 layers of clothes, fireplace is on, and I’ve got the blow dryer out trying to warm up my toes. LAWD. This Texas girl isn’t cut out for this stuff.

Alright. I’m sure that’s all the randomness you can take from me. I’ve got some freebies to share with y’all, but I left my EHD at school!! I’ll be back with lots to share! Hope you have a VERY happy Monday!!!

Happy Cyber Monday & 3 New Units!

2011-11-28T00:50:00.001-08:00

Okay, so as much as I love shopping in the stores on Black Friday, I *almost* love Cyber Monday even more!!! Shopping from the comfort of my living room…pj’s and junk food A MUST…LOVE it! By now I know you guys are FULLY aware that a whole bunch of fabulous bloggers are throwing big sales in their TpT shops. Today TpT is offering an additional 10% off using the coupon code CMS28. I’ve got several things in my shopping cart and I’m about to stock up!

If you’re looking for some fun Christmas related activities to keep your kiddos busy and engaged, I just posted three new units to my little shop! Here’s a little preview…

A little Mooseltoe Mini Unit

15 Math Tub Activites & 20 Word Problems

12 Literacy Activities

For more details you can check them out here:

Mooseltoe Mini Unit, Merry & Bright Math Tub Activies, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree Literacy Activities

You can grab everything in my little shop today for 30% off!! Don’t forget to use the TpT coupon code CMS28.

I’ll be back later this week with lots of freebies and some fun ideas!! Christmas Break countdown is ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jingle Jingle & Ho, Ho, Ho!

2011-11-24T19:57:00.001-08:00

I’m teaming up with my sweet friends Abby {The Inspired Apple} and Kelly & Diane {Made for 1st Grade} to bring you a fabulous sale to kick start the Christmas season! Starting at midnight tonight, you can grab all of the items in our stores for 20% off the regular price! On Monday, you can combine that discount with the TpT coupon code {CMS28} for even more savings!! Happy cyber shopping :)

Quick links to our TpT stores:

I hope you all had a blessed Thanksgiving! I know we certainly did! There’s nothing I love more than spending time with my sweet family :) Hope you were all able to be with the ones you love. I’m thankful for all of you guys…your sweet emails and comments and all of your support. THANK YOU!! And thank you SO much to all of you sweet bloggers who awarded me with the Sunshine Award…y’all made me smile :) I promise I’ll participate, but I’m off to snuggle with my boys!

Happy Black Friday, sweet friends!!

Brain Potpourri and Christmas at my House

2011-11-21T20:33:00.001-08:00

I’m sure there’s lots of teaching related items I could blog about tonight, but I’m just not feelin’ it. So here’s just a little brain potpourri for the night…

1. I went and had my hair done today. First time in TWO years. For real. Actually, 2 years and 3 weeks, but who’s counting?! It was LONG overdue. I even got some color. First time my hair has ever been colored! I’ve got a nice crop of gray hair that I color in each morning with dark eyeshadow & a brush :) I figured it was time to get something a little more “permanent”…or at least something that doesn’t brush off by noon. I LOVE IT.

I know the difference isn’t TOO noticeable, but my LAWD. I can tell a difference and I guess that’s really all that matters?! But now that I’m looking at a side by side, I’m wishin’ I would’ve gone about a shade or two darker…with some light brown mixed in. I’m thinkin’ that coloring your hair is like the tattoo effect. When you get one tattoo, all of a sudden you want about 5 more. When you get your hair colored, you want to go about 5 shades darker…or lighter…the next time you visit. Does that even make any sense?!

2. I had two little photo shoots scheduled for yesterday and today. I was rained out BOTH times. Did I mention that it NEVER rains here?! As in, we’re in a Stage 3 water restriction right now. Serious drought. And then both of my sweet families were totally rained out as we were shooting! Thanks Texas.

3. I started the South Beach diet about 2 weeks ago. Not necessarily to lose weight, just to make more room in my Thanksgiving pants :) Actually, I’m hypoglycemic and I’ve been suffering from serious dizziness and bouts of lightheadedness in the last few months. Scary. The South Beach diet is a low glycemic diet and I swear it’s cured me. Symptom free for the last few weeks and I haven’t felt this good in forever!! An added bonus is that I’ve lost a few nagging pounds of baby weight that wouldn’t go away since baby #2 was born. {By the way, can I technically call it ‘baby weight’ if my “baby” is already 2 1/2???} I’m ready to gain it all back on Thursday…CAN’T.WAIT.

4. Does anybody else brave the crowds on Black Friday?? My mom and I do every year. It’s a tradition. We wake up late, go eat lunch, shop around, go eat again, shop a little more, and eat another late night “snack”. Can you see a little pattern here?! Our Black Friday is all about eating and getting good deals, but we don’t necessarily get any Christmas shopping done :)

5. I used to be one of those people who liked to celebrate one holiday at a time. And I swear I still am. But I’ve now turned into the person who takes down Halloween on November 1st and immediately puts up Christmas {Christmas music included}. My house is officially…and *almost* completely decorated for Christmas. And it has been for the last two weeks. Annoying, I know. But we don’t have any lights put up outside, so it doesn’t make me feel as bad.

6. Mr. Spouse made me put up a “fun” tree this year. He said our living room tree is too formal and the boys needed something for themselves. I didn’t argue. I’ve had this “extra” tree since college and I like to call it my Charlie Brown tree. It looks pretty scary right now…still got some work to do!! HA!

My boys pick out their own ornaments every year {I want to have a collection to give them when they get older}. This is one of the ornaments my oldest picked out this year…

Ummmm. Really?! Trust me when I tell you that he had a great reason. The dang donut in the middle. Little stinker.

This is my living room tree. Nothing fancy, but I loves. And I tried a spray on the top this year instead of a star. Does it look wretched?? Too much?? Tell me, please. I *think* I like it, but I could just have my mommy goggles on :)

7. I have a serious Santa obsession. I can’t stop collecting. I’m like the crazy cat lady, only with Santas.

Speaking of Santa, this is my FAVORITE picture of all time. This was my boys with Santa two years ago. BEST.PICTURE.EVER. I totally made this into our Christmas card that year. I still have it hanging on the fridge :)

8. My favorite Christmas decoration is this nativity. This is NOT Mr. Spouse’s favorite. Not because it’s a nativity, but the Willow Tree figurines creep him out because they’re faceless. Bless him. I think he’s slowly warming up to it a little bit more every year.

9. My favorite Christmas song of all time is “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” by Leon Redbone & Zoey Deschanel. It has to be THAT version though. Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” ranks a VERY close 2nd. I’ve recently discovered Justin Bieber’s “Mistletoe” and let’s just say that it’s quickly climbing the charts. Mr. Spouse is NOT impressed.

10. My favorite Christmas movie is Elf. Ohmiword. Absolute favorite. It makes me cry EVERY.SINGLE.TIME I watch it. Let me also tell you that I can’t start the season withouth Miracle on 34th Street {the newer version}, Family Man, and Home Alone. Oh, how I LOVE Home Alone. My sister is obsessed with A Christmas Story. Can I tell y’all that I’ve NEVER watched that movie the whole way through?!?!? Am I really missing out?!?!?!

I’m sure this is more than you ever wanted to know. Kudos to you if you made it this far! HA!

Thankful.

2011-11-20T23:09:00.001-08:00

I could go on for days and days all about the things for which I’m thankful, but for your sake, I’ll keep it simple. Sweet Rachelle & Natalie over at What the Teacher Wants are having a little “I’m Thankful” linky party so I thought I’d link up and say my thanks :)

1. What are you most thankful for in your classroom?

My student teacher!!! She’s AMAZING. If something happened to me and I wasn’t able to make it in, I’d have NO doubt in my mind that she’d know just what to do and my kids would be in great hands. She’s helped me SO much these last 6 weeks and I swear I don’t know what I’ll do when she leaves me!!!!

2. Who are you most thankful for?

I’m thankful for EVERYONE in my life…past and present…because I genuinely feel like each person has had a little hand in making me the person that I am today. I’m most thankful for my sweet boys…all THREE of them {husband included ;)} God has blessed me beyond measure. These boys are my everything :)

3. What 3 blogs are you most thankful for??

Ummm…IMpossible to narrow it to three because I’m genuinely thankful for so many! I’m super thankful for these blogs because they’ve all directly impacted my teaching and the way I approach instruction and creating fun & meaningful activities for my classroom. They’ve changed the way I look at curriculum and inspired me to become a better teacher in so many different ways. I’m blessed to “know” them!!

Of course, I’m so thankful for my dear friend, Abby, over at The Inspired Apple. We virtually met around this time last year and we became fast friends. When we finally met for real, we couldn’t.stop.talking. I knew we’d be forever friends. I’m sure our husbands are grateful we don’t live closer ;) So grateful for her friendship, her sweet personality, and her DARLING ideas!!! Love ya, girl!

Of course, sweet Rachelle at What the Teacher Wants. We started blogging around the same time last year and I remember that she was one of the first bloggers I ever “met”. If we lived closer, I know we’d be great friends…I feel like I know her! I love her sweet & giving spirit!!

The ladies at Made for 1st Grade….Kelly & Diane…have been LIFESAVERS. Truly. I’ve emailed them a GOBzillion times with endless questions and am so very thankful for their time and advice. They’ve been such an inspiration to me and their ideas and activities are out of this world!!!!

Sweet Michelle at Fabulous in First has the kindest, most giving heart. I just adore her darling personality and ALL of her adorable ideas!!!! I’ve learned SO much from her and am so grateful to call her my “friend”!!! I’m sure we’ll meet soon, right?!?!

The fabulous Sarah Cooley over at First Grader…At Last! was the reason I started blogging. She’s innovative and original and I LOVE her ideas. I found her at a time when I really needed inspiration and I’ve been hooked ever since. She’s an endless source of cuteness and inspiration.

Of course, Deanna Jump was one of the first blogs I followed and TpT sellers I bought from and I swear her ideas totally changed the way I look at curriculum and classroom activities. She’s inspired me and taught me so much this last year!

And sweet Kathleen at Growing Kinders. She’s such a darling person and has such a sweet heart. Her activities and ideas are amazing. I wish I would’ve known her when I taught Kindergarten!!! I’m so grateful to call her a “friend” :)

I’m thankful for ALL of the wonderful blogs out there that inspire me everyday!!!! I’d love to highlight each and everyone of you!

4. What guilty pleasure are you most thankful for?

Would y’all think any less of me if I said Rap and R&B? Because that’s the troof. The other guilty pleasure Mr. Spouse wishes I’d forget about is Pinterest. I’m sickeningly addicted.

5. What are you most thankful for?

I’m thankful God has blessed me with two HEALTHY boys. I’m thankful for my sweet church family and our pastor…he inspires me, challenges me, and encourages me to live in God’s word every day. I’m thankful for ALL 22 of my firsties and my sweet school family. I’m thankful for my family, my friends, and my sweet husband….I swear I don’t deserve that man. I’m thankful for this blog and all the opportunities that have come my way because of it. I’m thankful for the blogging community and all of the sweet people I’ve met…both virtually & in real life…and I’m thankful for endless sources of inspiration and ideas. I’m thankful for TpT and everyone who’s supported me along the way. I’m thankful that I serve a God who shows me mercy when I least deserve it and for blessing me beyond measure. And I can’t forget to mention that I’m thankful for Sonic cokes, Starbuck’s red cups, the kindness of strangers, Chick Fil A, and my favorite sports radio station, 1310 The Ticket.

I know I said I’d keep it brief, but dang. That was hard. Story.of.my.life. Now go on and link up with Rachelle!!!

In the meantime, I’ll be enjoying a weeklong Thanksgiving vacation :) Not that I’m tryin’ to rub it in or anything, but y’all…I couldn’t be happier :) I’m waking up early to get my hair done. I haven’t been to the salon in TWO YEARS people. TWO.YEARS. Who does that?! Let’s not talk about the split ends. I’m getting’ a little chop…as in taking of the split ends and maybe adding some layers…and I’m getting some color, too!! I’ve NEVER had my hair colored!!! I told Mr. Spouse I needed to get my “edge” back. HA. As if I ever had any to begin with. If you don’t hear from me for a while, please just assume that I’m mourning over my new ‘do. Eeeeks…SO nervous!!!!

Have a GREAT week, y’all!!!!

Thanksgiving Threw Up in My Classroom

2011-11-17T21:04:00.001-08:00

OH.MY. Pretty much sums up how I feel when I walk into my classroom. I’m greeted by dangling turkeys, pilgrims galore, and kid work all over the place…and I LOVE IT. Y’all…this last month…3 weeks, I guess…have been a total whirlwind. I didn’t get a chance to do half the things I wanted to, but I’m okay with it because the kids got JUST what they needed! We’ve been furiously preparing ourselves for our annual Grandparent’s/VIP day tomorrow. It’s our biggest event of the year! The kids get to invite the special people in their lives to come watch them perform the most darling little musical routine. This year the theme is 50’s. LOVE. After the performance, all the families are invited back to the classrooms to browse around and take a look at all the fun things the kids are learning. We’ve been learning SO much and we’re so excited to show it off! Here’s a little peek at what our V.I.P’s will see tomorrow….

This past week we read the story, “I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie”, by Allison Jackson. Of course, the kids loved it and there was SO much we could do with it!! We created a little reader’s response writing craftivity to go along with the story. LOVED the way these turned out!!!

Their writing prompt was, ‘If I were the old lady, I would swallow a…’. They had to write their choice of Thanksgiving fare :) I got pumpkin rolls, turkeys, yellow cake?!, green beans, mashed ‘butatoes’, rolls, etc. SO fun! After they wrote their sentence, they made a little old lady with googly eyes and a hand drawn picture of the food of their choice.

Last week we read “The Amazing Turkey Race!” and did this little craftivity for a readers response…

Loving the one that says, “Eat more loins.” Of course, it’s supposed to say “lions”. Makes me chuckle every time I walk in the room :)

Of course, we’ve also been talking a lot about being thankful and what that means. We created these little pilgrims to hold our ‘thankful writing’ {inspired by First Grade Blue Skies :)}. The kids were thankful for the funniest things…corn dogs, Christmas, biscuits?!…TOO cute!

I noticed that this poor little pilgrim lost his head :( Oooops!

We did our “How to Catch a Turkey” writing {printable from Deanna Jump’s Thanksgiving Math & Literacy Unit}. We read “Run, Turkey, Run!” before our writing and I LOVED the way the kids made the connection between this how-to and the how-to we wrote when we made root beer floats on the 50th day!

The kids get to take home their placemats tomorrow before they leave for the break. We had our Thanksgiving feast the other day and it was PRECIOUS. A whole buncha pilgrims and Indians just feastin’ away :)

SO…the room’s all ready for our VIPS…

And I’m SO excited for my kids to show off ALL their hard work!!!! It’s been a BUSY 3 weeks!!!

**I get lots of questions asking, “How do you fit EVERYTHING in?!?!?”. Ummm…LOTS of planning! HA! Seriously…most of the writing you see is either completed during our Writer’s Workshop block {followed by draft book} OR they complete it at the writing station during our Daily 5/literacy block. All the craftivities are pre-cut {BLESS my sweet student teacher!!!!}, so all the kids have to do is assemble the parts. This usually takes a total of maybe 10-12{ish} minutes. We can fit that in while they’re eating snack or when we get back in the room from lunch. It’s just a matter of planning it and making sure that it all fits with our objectives. We made our placemats during our Social Studies block of time because that took a lot longer!!!Hope that answers your questions!!**

Let’s Go RACK’ing!

2011-11-12T09:36:00.001-08:00

I have been SO inspired by all the Random Acts of Kindness ideas I’ve been seeing {& pinning!} on Pinterest. The boys and I had our very own RAOK day a few weeks ago and we delivered homemade cookies & muffins to the fire station, friends, and neighbors and did a whole lot of other kind things that day, too. Hands down, one of my favorite days ever. I was especially inspired when I found the idea to start a Christmas advent calendar counting down the 25 days of Christmas by performing a different random act of kindness each day.

I know Christmas is still over a month away, but the holiday season is quickly approaching. According to the majority of major shops and stores, holiday season has been here for a few months ;) When I saw THIS and THIS idea for Random Acts of Christmas Kindness, I knew this had to be a new Christmas tradition for our little family of four. Even though my boys are still really young, I want them to see how much better it is to give than to receive. I don’t expect them to fully understand the concept, but it never hurts to plant the seed :)…and what a FUN way to grow in kindness & compassion as a family!!

I’ve been compiling ideas from different sites {you can find the links to different ideas on my “Serving Others” Pinterest board} and thinking about the different things I want our family to do and I came up with our kindness advent for this season…EEEK! I’m SO excited!! I plan on spending Thanksgiving break preparing our advent calendar and organizing all of our activities. I’d LOVE for you to join us and start a kindness advent of your own!! Just incase you want to plan ahead, I thought I’d share our RACKs with you.

Day 1: Leave happy notes & candy canes on cars in parking lots. You can download our card by clicking on the pic below.

Day 2: Surprise Mrs. Wendy {our sitter} and her girls with hot chocolate and cupcakes

Day 3: Make a donation to the food pantry

Day 4: Pay for donuts and coffee at church

Day 5: Surprise Mrs. Liffey (our other sitter) with a Sonic drink and cupcakes for her family and little Christmas treats for all the kids that stay with my boys.

Day 6: Visit our neighborhood grocery store and help shoppers load grocery bags into their cars; leave little Christmas treats in the carts for the next shopper.

Day 7: Tape coins & candy canes to vending/soda machines at various stores in the area.

Day 8: Deliver poinsettias, treats, and cards to the local assisted living center.

Day 9: Deliver Christmas treats to the local post office & postal workers.

Day 10: Go to a grocery store and hand a (grocery store) gift card to someone standing in line.

Day 11: Visit the hospital and deliver balloons to the patients and snacks to the nurses station; leave stuffed animals/silly bandz/coloring books & crayons/holiday books on the children’s floor

Day 12: Deliver hot chocolate to the Salvation Army bell ringers {and if it’s too warm for hot chocolate, we’ll deliver Sonic limeades :)}

Day 13: Deliver homemade cookies & cards to the local fire station/police station

Day 14: Deliver Christmas treats to neighbors

Day 15: Visit the public library and pay for someone’s overdue fines and deliver Christmas treats to the librarians

Day 16: Leave holiday books in the mall play area

Day 17: Go into Starbuck’s and hand out gift cards to people standing in line (I buy coffee for the car behind me every Friday…that’s the only day I treat myself…but I thought this would be so much more fun!!!)

Day 18: Adopt a family in need

Day 19: Anonymously pay for someone’s dinner

Day 20: Leave a gift for the mailman in the mailbox

Day 21: Make and deliver “blessing bags” to the homeless

Day 22: Clean out ALL of our toys (we’ll be getting plenty from our families & Santa!) and clothes and donate them to a local homeless shelter

Day 23: Leave a “Christmas tip” for a server at a restaurant

Day 24: Deliver little Christmas treats to people working late on Christmas Eve (drugstores, gas stations, hospitals)

Day 25: Deliver Christmas treats to the people working at the airport {we’ll already be there, so we’d like to say ‘thank you’ to those spending their holiday helping others get to their families}

Of course, there are a GAJILLION other ideas that would be awesome, too!! I’d love to hear if you have any other great ones!!

I plan on stocking up on gift cards starting now. I’ll probably do $5 Starbuck’s gift cards and $25 or $50 grocery store gift cards, depending on if we give out one or two. I’ll be doing a lot of baking and handing out lots of treats, but I have some really EASY recipes (like this one) that make a TON! Plus, I found a TON of fun {inexpensive and practical} ideas on Pinterest. You can check out my idea boards HERE and HERE. I’ll be making most of my things in bulk and preparing a lot at once so that afterschool delivery is easier. I’ll also be handing out these little RACK cards with every delivery of kindness. {Disclaimer: this is NOT my idea or my wording!! TSJ photography made these cute little cards when they went RACK’ing, but I couldn’t find a download so I made a template for us to use.} You can download a copy by clicking the pic below.

Just incase you’re wondering about Day 23, here’s a little backstory... When I was student teaching in college, my car broke down one day. I had NO money and was freaking out about the cost of fixing it. I waited tables at the time and when I went to work that night (after a sweet friend let me borrow her car!), I was put on the patio. The weather was TERRIBLE. FREEZING cold and NO chance of me making any money that night. I was SO upset. Shockingly, this sweet family of 4 came and sat on the patio right underneath the heaters. They were my only table that night. I was chatting it up with them like I normally did with all my tables and they knew my entire life story within the first 5 minutes they were seated :) I figured I’d get a pretty good tip…at least $7…but I wasn’t expecting what I got. When they handed me the cash to pay, they told me to keep the change. The change was $100. I started crying. God knew EXACTLY what I needed and he provided it to me under the craziest of circumstances! HE never fails!!! I said thank you about a million times and even tried to give their money back! I was sure they weren’t serious!!! I told them they were my angels because I had NO money to fix my car and I was sure I wouldn’t make any that night. They said that each year they give a “Christmas tip” to a server and I just happen to be the lucky recipient. I’ll NEVER forget that as long as I live. I’m SO anxious to pay it forward!!!!! I absolutely CAN’T.WAIT!!!!

I plan on starting each day with a prayer for God to lead us to the people that need our kindness the most. I’m SO excited to start this tradition!! I’d love to know if you’re planning on doing something like this with your family this year!!!!

Let’s go RACK’ing!!!!!

Let's Give Thanks!

2011-11-11T09:10:00.000-08:00

I'm CLEARLY technically challenged. After about 3-4 days of unsuccessfully trying to upload my latest unit to TpT, it's FINALLY added. Praise the Lord. My word. It was TOTALLY user error and I won't bother to mention what I was doing wrong because it was pretty lame....and *maybe* a little embarassing :) HA!

I know we only have a few days left before the break, but if you're interested, here's the latest...

Clipart courtesy of Scrappin Doodles and Jessica Weible Illustrations

This 120 page unit is filled with 10 activities {and recording sheets} for math tubs...plus 10 word problems...and 10 literacy center/station activities {and recording sheets}. You can check it out HERE.

Here's a little freebie for all you Thanksgiving lovin' people who need a little something extra :) Just click on the pic for the download.

I'll give this WHOLE unit away to the first 3 people who comment :) Just PLEASE remember to leave your email!!!!

Happy Friday, y'all!!!!

The Littlest Pilgrim, Symmetrical Turkeys, and Scarecrows…OH MY!

2011-11-08T20:33:00.001-08:00

You guys *might* remember these little guys from last year…

We made a whole new set of symmetrical turkeys today and the kids were SO intense! We talked a TON about the concept of symmetry and then I sent the kids off to make their own symmetrical patterns {for turkey feathers}. LOVE how different each one turned out!

I forgot to mention that we did our fun little pumpkin adjective/simile activity last week. It went along perfectly with Abby’s recent pumpkin activities!

{The purple words describe the OUTSIDE of the pumpkin and the green words describe the INSIDE.}

There’s nothin’ cuter than scarecrows this time of year and we made the CUTEST scarecrows to hang in the halls. This cute little craftivity was the brain child of my team leader. LOVE. First, we read this book…

We talked about character/setting/problem/solution and then I had the kids write about each story element on a large piece of construction paper. When they were finished writing, they turned their paper over and turned it into “The Little Scarecrow Boy”!!!! Too stinkin’ cute!

One of our literacy/reading objectives this week is to describe characters in a story. First, we read this book…

And then we filled a little character chart with words describing the main character, Mini.

It was a little challenging to get the kids to think about words to describe her…they immediately wanted to talk about how she looked {brown hair, peach skin, girl, she wore a bonnet, etc.} After talking to them about WHO she was and now HOW she looked, they were able to come up with some really great descriptions!!! Once we filled out our little character chart, I had the kids make a little pilgrim peekover and write three complete sentences describing Mini {the main character}. They turned out so cute!! The kids did a GREAT job on this little writing project!

Now we’re busy getting ready for our 1st grade Thanksgiving feast next week!! If you need some fun Thanksgiving activities, check out what we did last year…HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE. You *might* find something you can use!

And if you’re in need of some Thanksgiving themed math tub & literacy center activities, I’ve got a unit ready to go! However, my dang computer is throwing all kinds of hissy fits right now and I CAN’T UPLOAD it to TpT!!!! Darnit! It contains 10 math tub activities, word problems, and 10 literacy center activities & writing prompts. I’m *hoping* to have it up by tomorrow if I can get things to start working!!!

A Classroom Update {iPhone Style}

2011-11-03T20:28:00.001-07:00

I’ve been TERRIBLE about remembering to take my camera up to school. Terrible. I think I’m sleepwalking in the mornings before I get to the gym because I rarely remember to bring what I need. If it’s not packed in the car and ready to go the night before, then I will…inevitably…leave it at home. Lunches included :/ The one thing I never forget…because we’re super attached at the hip…is my trusty little iphone. So here’s a little classroom update iphone style.

Halloween was SO much fun! My cute student teacher read this story to the kids…

Talk about old school ;) Ha! Seriously though…it’s a cute little story about a mysterious person who goes around the town and smashes pumpkins on Halloween. We had the kids draw their own pumpkins and while they were at specials, the “pumpkin smasher” ripped them up and left a little surprise on their desk. She even left some caution tape on our door :)

Of course, the kids weren’t convinced that it was the pumpkin smasher, so my student teacher and I had to do some pretty serious acting to get them to buy our little story. 99.5% of my class eventually bought it…hook, line, and sinker. Kinda cute. Before they believed, we had them piece their pumpkins back together on a big sheet of construction paper and then write about who they think “smashed” their pumpkins while they were gone. Bless their hearts. Their writing was SO funny!!

We also did a little riddle writing this week. We’re getting into describing characters, so I decided to introduce this concept by having the kids write riddles to describe themselves. Their prompt was, “Trick or treat, smell my feet. Guess who’s hiding under the sheet.” They had to write a few sentences describing themselves using only clues. Then they had to draw a picture of themselves and “hide” it under the sheets :) They did SO well with this!!!

Now, these DARLING projects aren’t mine, but gosh darn…they are PRECIOUS!!!! My sweet friend who teaches next door had a mom who wanted to come in and make these with her kids. Ohmiword…SO adorable! And simple, too!!

As if Halloween wasn’t enough this week, today we celebrated our 50th day! It was a non-stop day completely full of chaos & learning and we had a BLAST! Our morning was filled with 50th day math games & activities.

We searched the web for pictures of games, cartoons, tv shows, clothing, hairstyles, cars, malt shops, and LOTS more from the 50’s. We did a little Kids in the 50’s/Kids Now venn diagram and then we made this little poodle skirt/rolled jeans writing craftivity.

We celebrated our 50th day with a round of root beer floats and did a little how-to writing craftivity to follow it all up.

Our little “How to Make a Root Beer Float” organizer.

The kids made their own float shaped how-to’s and took home all their work in a little 50th day fun pocket.

All of these activities came from my little 50th day unit. You can check it out HERE if you’re interested.

It was a BIG day! I’m DYING that we’ve got 2 weeks left until Thanksgiving break. Where’s the year going?!?! I mean, I’m definitely not complaining, but ohmiword. FLYING.BY.

I’m so looking forward to waking up to my favorite little red cup in the morning.

Oh how I LOVE this time of year!!!

Wandering Wednesday…on a Thursday :)

2011-10-27T18:06:00.001-07:00

Alright, so last week I was immersed in “World Series Wednesday”. Mr. Spouse threw a little Texas Rangers watching party, so I was otherwise occupied. Last night, I decided to fall asleep…fully clothed {shoes & all}…on the couch at 9:00. Did I mention the laptop was in my lap and my fingers were on the keys when I passed out?! WORN right the heck out! So, I’m here tonight to bring you a little Wandering Wednesday action on a Thursday night.

First up, I had a lot of sweet friends recently email me to ask about our little Pumpkin Journal we used for our Pumpkin Day last year, so I posted it to TpT. You can grab it for $2.50 if you’re interested. Here’s a little sneak peek…

Now let’s get to tourin’ before I fall asleep again, shall we?!

First stop, Allison over at Climbing the Monkey Bars.

Allison is a Kindergarten teacher from upstate New York and recently started blogging back in August. Even though Allison is *semi* new to the blogging scene, she’s got some precious ideas and fun activities to share!

One of my favorites is this darling Rhyming Dust Bunnies activity. This craftivity goes along with a darling little book and I seriously LOVE this!!

I also love this printable little packet she has {for free!} all about bats & owls.

And I’m pretty sure I’ll be decorating my classroom with these sponge painted leaves her class created! Adorable!

Stop by Allison’s little neck of the woods, say hello, and don’t forget to follow!!!

Next up, Johanna from Fanatically First Grade.

Johanna is a first grade teacher who is sharing some really fantastic things on her blog! You gotta check it out and see for yourself!!

I LOVE these {free} Common Core math vocabulary cards…perfect for posting on your math word wall or bulletin board!

This fun little “Ana Log” clock game is awesome!! Just downloaded my own {free} copy, thankyouverymuch.

I’m also lovin’ this fun little pattern game board!! ANOTHER free download!

Head on over, say hi to Johanna, and don’t forget to follow!!

Last stop, sweet Ffion over at The First Grade Jungle!

Love this girl! Ffion is a first grade teacher FULL of fabulous ideas! I swear every time I see one I get this “DUH!!!” moment goin’ on! I’m all, “why didn’t I think of that?!” HA! The last few ideas she’s posted make me smile! Like this one…

Y’all…it’s a flippin’ Doubles Fact Ipod! LOVE! {TOTALLY “borrowing” this idea!}

This is such a super cute anchor chart! Love it!!

And I LOVE the way she does her fix-it-ups! Awesome idea!

If you haven’t stopped by yet, you should. Stop in, say hello to sweet Ffion, and don’t forget to follow!!

Hope y’all enjoyed the tour! Now it’s time for some Ranger baseball! Sorry all you Cardinal fans…I’m thinkin’ our little Rangers *might* have to bring home the WIN tonight!!!! GO RANGERS!!!!!!!!!!!

Cloudy and the 50th Day

2011-10-24T19:14:00.001-07:00

So, my plans to post last week were thwarted when I was thrust into becoming a CSI detective. Let me just tell y’all that I would make an EXCELLENT investigator should anyone ever need a private eye. For real. I successfully caught someone impersonating someone else & TOTALLY trying to scam one of my friends on Facebook! I SO felt like I was living in a Lifetime movie last week!! I had NO time for anything other than sleuthing. Now that that whole saga is over…*I think for now anyway*…I’m ready to play catch-up.

We learned all about clouds and the kids had a BLAST!!! Actually, I think I might’ve had a *little* more fun than them :) I don’t know why, but I LOVE teaching about clouds and the weather! SO fun!!

I was inspired by my sweet friend, Abby, to make these fun little cloud guys. These were such a great visual to get my kids to understand what kind of clouds are high/low in the sky.

We also made little cloud anchor charts that my kids used throughout the week for writing.

We described clouds…

And we even made little cloud flip books…inspired by the fabulous Anna Brantley over at Crazy for First Grade …and practiced labeled them, too.

For word work, we practiced writing our popcorn & spelling words in the clouds :) This was definitely a class FAVORITE!! I thought of my grandpa ALL day…the classroom smelled JUST like him ;)

The activity that had the class talkin’ for DAYS after it was over was this great little craftivity we did after we read the book, “It Looked Like Spilt Milk”. The kids did a little writing… “Sometimes clouds can look like...” and then we followed it up with a little “get-your-hands-dirty” kinda craft. We just mixed equal parts glue and shaving cream together and painted it in the shape that we wrote about. When the mixture dries, the cloud stays puffy and it gives a little when you touch it. It was the COOLEST thing!!!!

This was the cloud my sweet student teacher made…

And this is one from one of my sweeties…

We made our “Very Busy First Graders” spiders and hung them from the ceilings. Last year we put them on the door, but I’ve yet to touch the door since the school year started :)

We also learned about bats!!! I didn’t take pictures of most of our work, but here’s our little “bat cave”. I made a big giant bat full of bat facts we collected as we read several different non-fiction bat books. I had the kids make little paper bag bats and then write two facts on the pink strip {we did this for writing one day}.

We’ve definitely kept ourselves busy these last few weeks! Now we’re getting SUPER excited about the 50th day next week!!! Woo hoo!!!! I’m pretty sure I lived in the fifties in my former life {ha!!} because I SOOOO love anything and everything poodle skirts and cuffed jeans. We’re excited about celebrating our halfway to the 100th day! I’m getting all my fun stuff ready for next week when we enjoy the 50th day festivities!!! Here’s just a little sneak peek…

If you’re interested in incorporating some of these craftivities into your 50th day plans, you can check out my newest little mini unit on TpT… “Cruisin’ Through the 50 First Days of School”. I included the templates and directions and several other fun little activities…

It’s usually $5, but you can grab it for $4 until Thursday! EVERYTHING in my little shop is 20% off ‘til Thursday. I’m giving away this little mini unit to the first person who leaves me a comment and correctly guesses my favorite 1950’s artist and/or song. WOW…that covers A LOT of ground ;)

Alright now…time to watch my boys WIN!!!!! GO RANGERS!!!!!!

Rewind.

2011-10-16T18:31:00.001-07:00

These last few weeks have been moving in fast forward, so it’s time to stop down and rewind just a bit :) To sum it all up, we learned about apples, made applesauce, learned about all things moon, and know more about spiders and arachnids than we ever cared to know. My student teacher started on Tuesday and I love her big. She was observing in my room 2 days a week during the Spring, so I’m SUPER excited to have her back. She’s a natural, so that makes me happy. And, she’s the most helpful, sweetest person EVER. In a year where I’m facing more classroom challenges than ever before, I’m feeling SO very blessed to have her on board with me :)

Now, let’s get down to business. Here’s a little ABC order apple activity I put in my stations a few weeks ago.

While I’m down with Daily 5 and all, I had to make some SERIOUS changes to the way my literacy block is structured. I’ll tell y’all more about that in a different post. In the meantime, you can download the ABC order activity, activity sheet, and a few more literacy activities by clicking on the pics below.

I was inspired by my dear friend, Abby, to introduce labeling and talking about Johnny Appleseed and apples seemed like the perfect time to throw it in to the mix! We made construction paper apples and then labeled the parts.

This past week, we learned all about Spiders, Fire Safety, and Clouds. I’ll share all of our cloud activities in a separate post because there’s lots to include!! I used the Fire Safety Unit from the ladies of Made for 1st Grade and the kids were in LOVE!!! Such a GREAT unit, so you definitely wanna check it out!!!

As for spiders, we had lots of fun with those little arachnids, too!!

We started the week with a little spider labeling and thinking maps.

Grab the printables here…

My kids worked on matching subtraction sentences during math tubs this week and they did an awesome job! They used buttons and spider rings for counters. The download is included in the “My Spider Brace Map” printables.

We also did a little spider syllable sorting and a stamp-a-spider {stamping chunk words on spider legs} during our literacy block…

You can grab the spider syllables below. I don’t have the stamp-a-spider template, though. I used Power Point to create them though…just added a circle for the body, two little dots for the eyes, and then created a table of 8 rows to cut for the legs. I typed the chunks inside the spider body so the kids would know what kind of words they had to create. Does that even make sense?!?! HA!

We also worked on graphing and problem solving this week, too. After talking to some of our 2nd grade teachers, I really want to make sure my kids know how to read and interpret graphs and answer some of the questions that go with them. The longer we work on them and practice, the better!!

Alright. There we go. A nice little rewind of the last few weeks learning! I’ll be back on Tuesday to share some of our cloud activities with y’all! In the meantime, have a GREAT Monday!!!!

Wandering Wednesday

2011-10-12T18:43:00.001-07:00

Sorry for missing my little regular Wednesday feature last week. I was busy bein’ a momma. I just needed a little time away from the wonderful world of blogs, but now I’m back and ready to get down to business. Let’s not waste any time.

First stop tonight, sweet Alessia from Mrs. Albanese’s Kindergarten Class.

Alessia has been a Kindergarten teacher in Canada for the past 6 years and says she can’t imagine doing anything else! Of course, with a few years of teaching under her belt, Alessia definitely has a lot of ideas to share! Here are some of my favorites…

LOVE the idea of a Playdough Club where parents volunteer to make playdough for the classroom as it’s needed! I TOTALLY could’ve used this when I taught Kindergarten!!

This bulletin board idea is PRECIOUS. I mean seriously. Crayons out of water bottles?! GENIUS.

And this “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” felt story makes me smile!!

There are definitely some fun things goin’ down in Mrs. Albanese’s Kindergarten Classroom, so head on over and check it all out! And while you’re there, say hello and don’t forget to follow!!

Next on our stop, we’re visiting Allyson over at Stickers & Stars.

This busy momma of 3 is a first grade teacher, but she formerly taught 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades. Of course, first grade is her favorite :) A teacher after my own heart. HA! Allyson has some fun things to share like this CAH-ute crayon wreath she made…

This cute Solar System hat will be on my list of “to do’s” when we get to our unit on Space. Presh!!!

And I seriously LOVE this idea. She assigns each “rule” to one of the kids in her classroom. This is one of those, “Why didn’t I think of that!?” kinda ideas! LOVE!

Stop by Stickers and Stars and leave sweet Allyson some love. And while you’re there, don’t forget to follow her so you can keep up with all her fun ideas!

Last on our list tonight, the sweet girls from The Lemonade Stand Teachers.

If y’all haven’t visited yet, y’all are missin’ out!!! This blog is FULL of fabulous ideas! Tiffany, Holly, and Rayann are so creative and I’m LOVING their fun ideas! I’ve even implemented several of them in my classroom already this year!! Here’s a DARLING activity we’re doing tomorrow {in honor of Fire Safety week}…

PRECIOUS, right?!?! LOVE it!!! And you’ve gotta see their version of Even & Odd Street. I mean seriously…such an AWESOME idea!!! SO creative!

And I think this poetry activity is SO stinkin’ cute!!

Like I said before, if you haven’t stopped by yet, you’re seriously missin’ out!! Head on over, say hello, and don’t forget to follow!!

Hope y’all enjoyed tonight’s little wandering adventures! I’ll be back next week with three more!! If you’re interested in being featured on Wandering Wednesday, just shoot me an email at thefirstgradeparade@gmail.com.

Hope y’all are having a FABULOUS Wednesday! We’re halfway through the week and it’s time for me to catch up on Modern Family!!!

It's BAAAAACK!!!!!! Another Erin Condren Deal!!!!!

2011-10-11T09:14:00.000-07:00

For those of you who missed it before, One Kings Lane is offering another killer deal on Erin Condren products!!! From today until Friday, October 14th, you can grab a $50 gift card for $25!!!!!!!

You might remember me blogging about this back in August. I ended up spending way too much money, but I got myself a life planner, one for my mom, and several gifts for Christmas!!! THEN, I totally took advantage of the steal on address labels and gift labels. Right now, One Kings Lane is offering ANOTHER deal on those, too!!! With Christmas right around the corner, you seriously CAN'T PASS IT UP!!!!!!

If you didn't get to take advantage of the $25 gift card {worth $50 of Erin Condren products}, do it NOW. I mean it. Don't pass Go. Don't collect $200. Just GO THERE NOW!!!! For real. The life planners {& teacher planners, too!!} are $50. You can grab a $50 gift card for $25 at One Kings Lane and get a planner for HALF the price!!! OR you can shop her fabulous store and select anything else that catches your eye :)

The sale ends Friday, so start shopping!!!!! I know where I'm doing all my Christmas gifts this year :) LOVE IT!!!!!!

Fly Me to the Moon

2011-10-08T09:56:00.001-07:00

Happy weekend, sweet friends!! We’re in Houston celebrating my grandparent’s 55th wedding anniversary. They are SO dang cute! They’re treating the family to a murder mystery dinner cruise around the bay tonight :) A night without the kids?! Yes please!! So sorry for my recent absence on the blogging scene lately…and I’m especially sad about my lack of Wandering Wednesday this week. Y’all…life is crazy and I needed to devote my nights to being a mommy :) And I don’t regret it one bit! Anywho…these last few weeks have been jammed packed, so I’ll be updating quite a bit in the days to come. Over the last two weeks, we’ve been observing changes in the moon and we’ve had SO much fun!!!!

We started our study using Abby’s Over the Moon Unit…making a Moon Facts book, making Mooncake, creating Moon Goons, and launching spoons! The kids LOVED it!! I’ve been slacking on taking pictures, so I don’t have any to share, but y’all…it was fun! We also incorporated tons of activities from my newest unit, Moon Mania, that the kids really enjoyed, too!

When we introduced our moon study, we made a fun little moon anchor chart to hang in our science center.

The kids used the facts we collected to add to their Moon Facts Book {from Abby’s unit…keeping in our Science journals}. We also made a little “Moon Matter of Facts” craftivity that the kids AH-dored. The kids had to write 3 facts and then watercolor a moon. We used glue to make the craters, let it dry, and then painted over it.

The kids kept themselves busy during our “dailies” this week with lots of hands-on moon themed literacy activities. We put space themed pictures & words in ABC order, recorded them, and used those words to create sentences.

We labeled a space scene using word cards as a spelling resource…

We also sequenced the phases of the moon and then made moon mobiles & labeled each phase to reinforce what we learned.

The kids did a little handwriting craftivity where they copied a poem and then made the Man in the Moon with aluminum foil.

In Math, we made craters on the moon with addition facts…

We also sorted even & odd numbers, played fun moon-themed math games, and did a little moon measurement activity, too! {no pictures :( BOO}.

We talked about compound words and learned new vocabulary, too! We made these fun little flip books to show what we learned.

One of our fun Sci Fri activities was making moon craters!! SOOOO much fun!! The kids LOVED it!

We also started sending home our MOON BAG!!! My class is OBSESSED!!!!

All of these activities…plus lots more…are in my newest unit, Moon Mania. If you’re interested in reading about what’s included in the 76 page unit, you can check it out HERE.

In other news, I broke down and started a little Facebook page for The First Grade Parade. I figured it would be a fun way to get to put a face with y’alls names :) I’m not promising I’ll be great at updating it, but I’ll try!

Falling :)

2011-09-30T18:21:00.001-07:00

Hey sweet friends! Hope y’all are having a great day! In honor of the falling temperatures here in Texas, all the prices on my little TpT items are falling as well!! Through midnight tonight, you can grab anything in my little shop for $3!!! Hope you find something you “fall” in love with :)

TGIF!!!!!!

Direction, Position, & Maps

2011-09-29T18:27:00.001-07:00

Do y’all remember this oldie?!

Sweet little Rosie. Just a walkin’ along, singin’ her song. Leavin’ behind that pesky ol’ fox. We were recently learning about positional & directional words, so we read Rosie’s Walk to review position. And then we did this cute little craftivity to reinforce what we learned.

How cute is she?! Pretty dang cute, I think! The kids LOVED her!! I’ve been TERRIBLE…absolutely TERRIBLE…about taking pictures in the classroom this year. I’m gonna echo Abby when I say that this year’s class has been pretty challenging, so I’m left with little time to document our day. Trust me when I say that their sweet little Rosie’s were PRECIOUS! I let them pick out their own feathers and they had SO much fun!! It was a great way to reinforce what we read!!

We also read this classic…

…and then followed it up with this awesome little hands-on activity inspired by Jenn Bates over at Finally in First.

Photo via Finally In First

Again, no pictures, but the kids loved creating their maps!!!

We also talked about legends & symbols on maps. I showed them different examples and then we made our own…of the great state of Texas, of course!

We used the heart stickers to symbolize our city and the little star stickers to symbolize our state capital. I cut out the Texas shapes…found the outline online…and had the kids put it altogether.

I had SO much fun teaching these concepts this year!! Thank you, sweet blog friends, for all your inspiration!!!

Wandering Wednesday

2011-09-28T18:14:00.001-07:00

Hey y’all! I’m just poppin’ in for a little Wandering Wednesday fun and I can’t wait to introduce you to the sweet bloggers we have lined up for tonight’s little tour! I’m not gonna lie when I tell you that I’m SO excited it’s the middle of the week. Almost time for a 2-day break and ohmiword…I NEED ONE, STAT!!!!

First stop tonight, sweet Marcy from Buzzin’ on Cupcakes in First Grade.

Marcy is a first grade teacher who loves cupcakes and her kiddos! She taught Kindergarten for 3 years and now teaches first…and she LOVES it! She loves teaching through project-based learning and she’s got some fabulous ideas!! I LOVE this one about being a C.E.O.

And these student drawn flamingos for a fellow teacher’s birthday are DARLING.

And those self drawn portraits that stay up all year long make me want to start a new project in my classroom!

Stop on in at Marcy’s, say hello, and don’t forget to follow her first grade adventures!!

Next up, we have Amanda over at First Grade Garden.

This is Amanda’s first year teaching first grade and she’s ready to share the awesome things in her classroom with the rest of the blogosphere. Amanda is pretty new to the blogging scene, but ohmiword…she’s sharing some awesome things!!!

Like this cute little weather umbrellla.

And her downloadable season book…

I also love the idea of the All About Me bag!

Stop by Amanda’s garden and check to see what’s blooming :) You won’t be disappointed! And while you’re there, leave a little love and don’t forget to follow!

Last on our stop, Kelly & Diane over at Made For 1st Grade!

I’m sure you’ve heard of these ladies before. And if you haven’t, you should!!! Lawdy! They have more creativity in their little pinky than I could ever think to muster up. I so want to visit them and watch them in person!! Their activities make me smile!

My class used their darling Pete the Cat writing template {after doing Deanna’s Pete the Cat Unit} and turned it into a class book! LOVE!

We also just finished up with their Shake the Beans activity! My kids LOVED it!!

They’ve got some amazing teacher created materials for purchase at TpT, too!!

Stop by Made for 1st Grade and say hello! While you’re there, you can also check out the links to Kelly & Diane’s personal classroom blogs…both oozing with darling ideas!!!! Don’t forget to leave some love and follow along while you’re visiting!

That’s it for our little tour! Hope you enjoyed wandering around as much as I did!!!

If you’re interested in being featured on Wandering Wednesday, shoot me an email at thefirstgradeparade@gmail.com.

Have a WONDERFUL night!!!!