Cyber Sale!

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!  Is it me, or does that come and go very quickly?!  I have 15 work days that I have to survive.  I CAN DO IT!  :-)

Tomorrow and Tuesday there is a sitewide sale at TpT.  Come and check out my store and buy a few things.  I make special requests too.  Just ask!

TpT Store

Already The End of 1st Quarter

Wow!  Just blink and the school year is a quarter of a year over!  And I just realized today I haven't updated my blog since summer.  :-(    Let me show you around my classroom finally and introduce you to my team this year!

This is my hallway bulletin board for the beginning of the year.  Our theme this year is "Game On" so everyone created boards based on games that kids play.

This is my desk area and the bathroom/wash area.  Above my desk I have the number line that I purchased from Rachelle Rosenblit @ Sweet Kindergarten.  You can buy the product here.

 This is my computer area and the cubbies back there house all of my math manipulatives.  I have them all in nice colorful baskets for better organization and visual appeal.  My desks just got rearranged this past week.  We needed a fresh start to 2nd quarter.  In the middle though, there are plastic drawers that house their interactive journals and extra supplies.  On the desks were the open house packets for the students and parents.

The cubbies to the right side house language arts, reading, science, and social studies manipulatives.  The horseshoe table in the middle of them is where I do my teacher center during center time.

The front of my classroom.  The board in the front here is my "I Can Statement" board.  We have to put up kid friendly versions of the standards every week/day.  My teacher cart with Curious George is the main station I work from.  It houses the computer that controls the smart board.

The alphabet line at the top is AMAZING!!  I love it so much!  It is made by Maria Manore Gavin @ Kinder Craze.  You can buy it here.

This is a panoramic view of my classroom this year!

Now let me introduce you to my team.  They are amazing and are really the only reason I am able to survive this year!

Mary Folger, Heather Adams, Michelle Wiegand, Wendy ANderson, Amy Anfinson, Me, Cindy Pan, Cathy Best

Teachers Pay Teachers Sale!

Don't miss out!  August 3-4, there will be a 20% off sale in my TpT store!  I hope to see you around!

A New Product!

Who doesn't like chevron print?!  I know I do and I can't get enough it.  It is so versatile and really goes with any theme in a classroom.  You can make it any color you need!  Today I am putting into my Teachers Pay Teachers shop these adorable chevron nameplates.  I will be using them this year and I am so excited that you can too!

I mean guys!  Sooo cute!  Just click on the image and it will take you to my TpT store!

Thank you so much for taking a peak.  I really do hope you like them!  If there is anything you need changed or just maybe you need a different color, just ask.  :-)

My Other Favorite Thing to Do

I have a secret!  I used to be addicted to scrap booking!  In fact I was on a digital design team for a major online scrap booking supply company!  It was my favorite "job" while going to college.  The best part was that I got access to the digital kits in the store for free in return for using them in a layout and blogging them!  Sometimes I miss it so much and then other times I am so thankful that I had the opportunity because I just don't have time.

Today I received an email from a designer named Kim Hill.  If you don't know her, she is AMAZING!  I have designed layouts with her kits for over 7 years now.  I am so grateful that she still contacts me occasionally to help out.  It is such a privilege.

The kit she has recently created is titled "Maine".  It is everything the name indicates!  I.am.in.love!  Take a look at the layouts below.  These are just the two I created with it tonight!

Layouts can be done with only journaling.  Photos are not necessary!

Also, you don't have to use the kit for what "it is intended".  Sometimes it fits more than one thing.  On this layout I used it with my Yellowstone Photo.  It went along with it perfectly!

Click here for a link to this scrapbook kit. (Link coming soon!)

Check out Kim's store on Etsy!  She has so many wonderful products for digital scrapbooking.  These files can also be printed on your home printer and used for so many different things!

Interactive Notebooks for Go Math

I am having such a great time creating these and I can't wait to try them this school year.  If your school uses GoMath these will look very familiar to you.  Every day in the student workbook there is a whole group activity.  I have taken those activities and turned them into interactive notebook pages.  If you guy them let me know what you think.

You can visit my store to purchase them!  Don't forget to "leave me love"!

Chapter 1
Chapter 2

Summer of Color!

You guys!  I found out about a really fun website/blog today that will keep me excited about creativity this summer!  I am so happy. It's called Twinkle, Twinkle - Sparkly Things and Such.  The girl in charge is named Kristen and she is mad talented!  

Every week there will be a color scheme and you have to create ANYTHING using those colors.  Or just post a picture with those colors.  Then enter your name and the URL where your image can be found and boom!  That's it!

This is her blog link: http://twinkletwinklelikeastar.blogspot.com/

Go there and check it out!

It is officially summer!!

Ahhhhhh!!!!  Do you hear that?  It's the chorus of cheers as I celebrate waking up today with nothing to day!  SUMMER IS HERE!  Finally!  It is so important for us teachers to have this time off.  Well, if that is what you want to call it.  I have already begun working on next years things.  Bus this gives us the opportunity to recharge, refresh, and rethink.  It gives us a chance to reflect on the past school year and allows us to dream about why we got into teaching in the first place.  

I am looking forward to so many things this summer.  Most of all I am excited to be traveling to see my family! This crazy family!  This picture is a few years old but these are nieces and nephews.  My world.

I also look forward to painting.  

I look forward to maybe making it to the beach once or twice.  Not too much though because I am not really a beach person.  I just live in Florida.  ;-)

I will also celebrate a birthday as I turn another year older. 

Surely I will see a movie or 10.  We LOVE movies around here!

The summer will be filled with endless possibilities!  I can't wait for the adventures to begin.  But for today and probably the rest of this week, I will be a bum.  I will just enjoy not having to work for the next 9 weeks!  Oh the the glorious possibilities!

Getting Ready for Next Year

Technically, this school year isn't over until 3:30 pm tomorrow, but I just can't help myself!  I think every teacher begins thinking about the next school year before the current one is over.  I have been pouring over blogs the last few days and I have so much more to see but these are some of the my favorite things so far.

These can be found at Teacher By The Beach!

   

I also found this AMAZING brochure at First Grade Blue Skies.  What a great idea!

I have made my own and here is what it looks like.  The very first page is similar, but that's where it ends.  I love the finished product and can't wait to pass them out.

I also downloaded this First Grade Helper last year and I am finally going to use it this coming school year.  It is such a great thing.  I have some now that I made about 3 years ago and I realized last week when I was collecting them from the students to put away that they were pretty word down. 

That's all for now!  I will have so much more to tell you about because I have slacked so much this year.  I am uploading about 250 pictures into my DropBox account so I can do blog updates.  THanks for reading!

Teacher Appreciation Week

It's teacher appreciation week ya'll!  What teacher do you know who doesn't like to be appreciated?!  We work so hard everyday to make sure our kids get the best education possible and it's exhausting but we wouldn't trade our profession for anything in the world!

This week at Teacher's Pay Teachers, there is a sale!  And my store is 20% off!  Follow the link below and see what I have to offer!

Click Here

Happy shopping!!

Life Cycles and Frogs

I love spring time!  I also love teaching science.  The good news is that our life cycle standards fall into this part of the school year!  I love teaching the kids about life cycles and they think it's hilarious to learn about frogs...especially after I tell them I am terrified of of the pesky amphibian!

We sadly don't have much time to teach science and social studies these days but I try to cram it in whenever possible because I enjoy it more than math.  ;-)  We began our discussion by using an archived version of Scholastic Weekly News (1st grade edition).

We then continued our lesson by watching a video on Brain Pop.  Ya'll, isn't BrainPop the best?!  Moby is so darn smart!

Then we followed it up with an activity that was so much fun!!

This precious activity can be found here:

It is titles "Frog and Life Cycle Facts" by Lita Lita on TpT.

The World's Best Pencil!

This is no joke folks!  I am a true believer in Ticonderoga pencils!

These really are the worlds best pencils.  Our school, which is a Title 1 school, provides school supplies to all of our students every year with the help of community donations.  Because of this we tend to buy the cheaper made Dixon brand pencils, and us teachers are just not fans.  I broke down and bought my own supply of pencils from Amazon.  

With the help of the "Great Pencil Challenge", my students have done a phenomenal job with keeping up with their pencils this year.  If you don't know about the Great Pencil Challenge, check it out immediately!  It will change your life in the classroom!  Hopefully every time I sharpen pencils now, they won't break!

Happy sharpening!

Coming This Week...

Lots of compound word learning!  More info coming on where I found this great idea and what else I have found over Christmas break!!

This Is Real Ya'll!

I cannot believe it but this is true!  As a joke for my brother-in-law we were looking for chicken images and happened upon this story.  This is a great science fact you can share.

Seriously though, it's the best story I have heard all year.  ;-)