Get The Egg!

The title of my post is the same as the title of the story we read recently that inspired this project!  It was about Brad and Kim and how they saved an egg that had fallen from the nest.  The companion story to the main selection was How To Feed A Bird.  It gave instructions for how to build a feeder.  So we did!!  They turned out so cute.

All you need is a pine cone, peanut butter, bird seed, and string.  Super easy peasy lemon squeezy!

 I gave each child a paper plate with a dollop of peanut butter and a mini wooden popsicle stick and let them get to it.  They just spread the peanut butter all over.

After that, they brought it up to my table and we dipped it into the bird seed and put them paper bags.

In the bags they stayed until they went home that day.  :-)

Other than the occasional whiff of peanut butter I get still, this was a great success!  You should try it!!

Happy Teaching!

Anchor Charts, Festivals, and A New Book! Oh My!

I have been so busy lately!  Isn't that the life of every teacher though?  I have a few updates to do but I am going to put a couple into one post.

Anchor Charts

These things are all the rage!  And I totally get why.  I LOVE them!  They are such a great asset to my classroom.  My students look forward to the new ones on Monday mornings when I am introducing a new weeks set of skills.  These are just a few of them.  If you use Pearson's Reading Street for Common Core then they will look familiar to you.  I have done one so far for every week, but I only took pictures of these two so far for some reason.

I also LOVED this chart that I saw on Pinterest so I copied it for my room.  I would love to give credit to whomthe original author was but unfortunately the photo I pinned doesn't trace back to a web page.  If you know who it belongs too, please let me know.

Fall Festival

We recently had our fall festival at my school and it was a HUGE success (HUGE Caroline!!....I couldn't resist!). Our PTA raised a lot of money and the kids had a wonderful time!  I was manning the popcorn station for a couple of hours.  My co-worker and teammate was there too.....

This was only 20 minutes after it opened and it was jamming already!!

We had about 8 bounce houses and jumbo slides, inflatable games, carnival games, corn hole, and every kind of junk food imaginable! Such a great time!!!

A New Book

Do you read the Divergent Series?!?!  

 If not, do yourself a favor and pick it up!!  At the urging of two friends, I finally did and killed the first two books in 4.5 days.  Well, on Tuesday the new book and final one of the series was released.  I am having a love/hate relationship with the outcome.  I feel complete but so completely mad.  I hate when authors do this!

Another post coming soon of a bird feeder project we did!  Happy Teaching!!

It's Been Awhile!

Wowzers!!  This school year is banging and I am going from 6:30 am to 6:30 pm on most days.  I hardly have time to think, less let build and maintain a blog.  However I am going to try and be more present with it!  I miss it and I want to use this space as a journal of sorts.  I have tons to update on but I left my camera at school with all of my pictures so maybe I will get it done this week.  

In the meantime, I did manage to snap some photos of my kiddos playing some random math games.  We had a blast.  We totally skipped curriculum math for a whole day and played math games instead.  It was a nice break for them and for me.  

We played subtraction BINGO first...

Next I allowed the kiddos to sprawl out all over the classroom and they went to work.  

Here are some shots from that!

Then lastly, some of the kiddos wanted to play Odyssey Compass assignments.  They love this stuff!

It was one of my most favorite math days.  I can't wait to do it again!

Wow! What A Beginning!

Who ever knew that adopting two new curriculums in one school year would be so exhausting?!    I have had a lot of fun reading all of the new material but trying to figure out what to use and what not use is daunting!  There are so many choices and I want to use them all.  I know however, that is not feasible.  My kiddos seem to be adapting well to the new school year.  We have been in school for a nearly a month and I can say the only thing we really haven't "mastered" yet is the rules part of first grade.  I have a great group of talkers this year!  I do know that it is a learning process and the learning never ends so I am sure I will be working on this until the end of the year.

During literacy centers while going over high frequency words, I notice that many of my students do not know their color words.  I decided to make a game for them to practice these.  This can be done solo or in a group.  I hope you find it useful too.  Please visit my TpT store to get it!

It's a great deal of fun and my kiddos love it!!  Enjoy and happy learning!

Whew! A Day Off!

Well hello weekend!  I am so glad Labor Day is here.  It has been a stressful school year so far!  I do have some good news to report though.  I gave my students their first math assessment and all but two students passed it.  I was quite pleased considering I felt like I was flailing and floundering when it came to actually teaching the content.  Yippee for small victories.

First Full Week and a Center Activity!

Whew!  I have survived the first week!  And by survive I mean "holy wow why do school districts adopt new reading and math curriculum in one school year"?!  I am beat.  And feel like a first year teacher all over again.  Eesh!

On a positive note though, I am IN LOVE with my kiddos.  They are so much fun.  And funny too! 

TRUE STORY:  We have begun our first fundraiser of the school year and it's selling Otis Spunkmeyer cookie dough.  I know right?  :-)  Anyway, I told all of my students that if they all sold 1 tub of cookie dough, I would give them a pizza party.  (Hello $5 pizzas from Little Ceaser's!)  This morning I had a student open her bagproudly and announce to me that she did exactly what I wanted her to do last night with the cookie dough.  I told her "yay, you sold a tub already?"  She looked at me puzzled fora second and said "No!  I brought in the cookie dough so we could have a pizza party!"  She proudly handed me a roll of dough.  It was SO hard not to crack up but I held my composure and said "Does mommy know you brought this in?" and she said "Yeah, she took me to buy it last night!"

FACE PALM!

It truly gave me a Friday morning giggle!

I know some of you are going back to school just now so good luck with your first full week next week!  I will be thinking about you all!

Now for the new goods!  It's a great center activity for practicing nouns.  :-)

Go to my TpT store to see more images and a description.

Also, look what I did last night!  So much fun! I went with a couple of friends from work to a canvas painting class and had a blast.  It was FSU vs. UF night!  I was totally painting Osceola!

I am on the left standing right next to the "Gator Lover"!  :-)  My painting has FSU going down the canvas.

If you ever get the chance to do this with your friends, GO!  It's so much fun!

New Product on TPT!

I have a new product out today.  Labels!!  What teacher doesn't like labels?!  These labels can be laminated and then written on with a sharpie.  Need them for something different?  Erase the writing with a "magic eraser" and write something else!  Very versatile and most importantly, only $1.00 for the rest of the month!

The First Two Days!

Well, I have met all of my students and it went amazingly well!  I have some adorable little kiddos.  It has been very fun getting know a little about these tiny humans but it has been enjoyable.

Like everyone else, the first couple of days of school we spend going over procedures and rules and such and doing some fun activities.

This year on the first day, we read First day Jitters  and David Goes to School.  Jitters was a fun book, but I don't think my kids quite "got it".  We did have a great discussion about what gives us the jitters though.  David is a great book about a little boy who is a complete handful.  He disobeys the rules quite regularly.  I read this as an introduction to classroom rules and procedures.  Here is a picture of the book cover.

I found an adorable activity idea on none other than Pinterest so I decided to recreate it.  I found the idea at The Kinder Cupboard blog and fell in love with it.  We read the book, and then I we talked about being "peacemakers" and "peacebreakers".  The kiddos loved it and they really got into the activity.

Afterwards, we made the "Davids"and they really loved this!  I have a few pictures of some of their samples.  Do you see mine hanging on the board at the bottom of the picture up there?  Hehe, their creations look nothing like mine but they are cute anyway.

On the second day, we read the books Chrysanthemum and Wemberly Worried.  Kevin Henkes is a wonderful author!  For Wemberly, we listed on post-it notes all of the things that made us worry on our first days of school.  We gave the worries to Wemberly and kissed them goodbye.  The kids thought this was fun.  Here is our poster I created (just by looking at the cover of the book) with our worries.

Afterwards we read Chrysanthemum.  For this book we talked about how unique each of us are.  I was also able to involve a math concept with the book so I a two-for-one deal with it.  :-)  Each of the students were given a slip of paper with their name on it.  They had to cut apart the letters and count them.  Then they had to glue them onto construction paper and we attached it to the chart.  Here is our activity below. 

I would say the first two days were good.  We didn't lose a 1st grader this year going home and my activities rocked!  I would say overall it was a success!

Teacher's Pay Teachers

I am so super excited to debut my TPT store tonight!  Right now the products are free.  Please visit my store and take a look!  Maybe I have something you could use!

Word Wall Labels

Book Bin Labels

Classroom Task Cards

Open House and My Classroom!

Well another success open house and official beginning to a new school year.  I really enjoyed meeting my new kiddos this morning. It is so exciting to see their smiling faces and experience their enthusiasm with them.  I have so many hopes and dreams for what they will accomplish and for what I too will learn along the way.  

Every year, my team takes a photo minutes before open house it to begin.  This is the shot from today!

Cathy, Mary, Amy, Michelle, Mrs. Flock, Me, Jenn, & Jaime - Best Team Ever!!

I also decided to take some photos of my classroom today too.  Show off some of the things I have been working on lately.

This is my "Centers" corner.  All of the math manipulatives are on the red shelf.  The math centers
and the literacy centers are in the cubbies.  On the two desk are the supplies fir a writing center.

The view of the front of the class.  Notice the posters to the left of the SmartBoard.  That
was a Pinterest find!  I talk about them here in a previous blog.

This is my "Jobs" board and my birthday chart!  Can't wait to fill it in now that I have my class list!

I LOVE this set up for a desk group of 5.  It makes the 5th not seem so left out.  Genius!!  My
co-workers came up with this idea!

Computer center and my favorite thing in my room...my READ Owl Posters!!  LOVE THEM!

Just a nice view of the side of the room.  The door on the right side is the door to the bathroom.

I am nowhere near finished with the room, but I got it "open house ready" for now.  Thanks for checking it all out!  I hope your open house goes smooth and you enjoy the time!

2013-2014 School Year Begins Tomorrow!

While I am a bit sad that summer is ending, I am very excited and anxious to get into the new school year.  I have so many ideas trampling around in my head trying to find a way out so I am glad that I can finally release them.  

Our first week and a half of school is for training, meetings, and time in our classroom.  I am most definitely not looking forward to the the first two but I am the last because my room is practically ready to go.  I will be able to focus on curriculum.

So this weekend, I have been working on some more anchor charts and I thought I would show them here.  **Disclaimer: I have no idea what wonderful teacher had these on their blog.  I sadly didn't save that info.  I did find these ideas elsewhere and if anyone knows where, please let me know so I can be sure and give them credit.

I love them!!

Happy "first day back" tomorrow for my teacher friends!!

One Weekend Left!

Yes, you read that right!  We have one weekend left until we start the new school year.  Thankfully us teachers get a week and a half before we see students, but it will go by increasingly fast!

I am down on my back  this week which has really slowed the completion of my classroom, but I was able to at least begin work on some anchor charts.  There are so many good ones floating around Pinterest and while I think I am very creative I look at them and longingly think "wish I had come up with that idea".  Well I did the next best thing and drew my own versions of some.  This is the only one I have a picture of, but I will post more later as soon as I get a chance.

This poster was seen on 2nd Grade Smarty Arties and I fell in LOVE!  Here is my take on it.

I can't wait to make more!!  It's so much fun!

Back to School Shopping

I finally went to our local school supply store today and did a little shopping.  Well maybe more than a little...$75.00 roughly.  I told the lady I was waiting to hear my total and she goes "oh it's not that bad".  Her idea of not so bad is clearly different than mine.  It's all good though, I am in LOVE with my purchases.  Here they are below.  I took them with my iPad so they aren't the best quality but they will do.  :-)

Random Borders - Chevron Print with have magnetic tape adhered to the back for the white board.  The Street and Green Glitter ones will go to complete the "Reading Street Focus Board" I am creating.  The Owl border is still being debated.  I am thinking it will go on my Spalding Board.

Owl Posters - I am obsessed with them!  I can't wait to laminate them and decorate!

This is a ginormous wall banner that reads "READ".  It is of course owl themed which just excites me!

This is my Jobs Board set.  I love this black and white stuff.  So simply stated.  Can't wait to get it done.

Not exactly sure what I will use these cards for but I loved them.  The pencils will be in my open house goody bags. 

I am going in tomorrow to laminate them and decorate.  I will post photos of all when I am completely done.