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!