12.19.15: The Best Things We Did This Week!

Hey, teacher friends! We made it! I am sitting here with a lovely cup of coffee and relishing the fact that I have 16 days of blissful break time. This is one of the times of the year when it's GREAT to be a teacher!

I am really sad, though, because I didn't get nearly enough pictures of all the cutie-patootie things we did this week. I was so busy doing the fun stuff with the kids that snapping pictures just didn't happen. Sigh.

Wednesday was Grinch Day...we read the story, did some character anaylsis, watched the cartoon version, and did some writing. I do have pictures of the writing activity, which I saw over on Mrs. Lemon's blog:

"I feel grouchy when my mommy wakes me up." HA! Yes, waking up makes most of our class grouchy, it seems!

I made the pieces myself but I found a pin on Pinterest that showed exactly what pieces you will need. I used a frame I had in a set from TPT to make the face and then played around with some shapes in PowerPoint to create the eyes and hat.

We also made Grinch ornaments. I don't have pictures of the exact ones the kids made, but this is the one Little Miss made last year:

They are super easy to make. I buy two bags of green feathers at the craft store and clear ornaments. (This year I lucked out and got plastic ones at Michael's for 70% off, which made them .29 each!) I pop the tops off and let the kids stuff the insides with feathers and then stick a red glitter heart sticker on the front. Boom! Easy peasy Christmas craft.

What else did we do? Let's see...I did some things that I've seen on other awesome blogs like the adorable mice from The First Grade Parade to go along with "If You Take A Mouse to the Movies". I found the craft templates that Mary from Sharing Kindergarten posted as a freebie here (with Cara's permission, no worries!). They turned out really cute and I am sad I didn't snap any pictures. :( We also did some snowmen word problems. I was going to be SO ahead of the game and post them in the hallway yesterday afternoon to have ready for January...but then my parent volunteers accidentally passed them out to the kids yesterday when we were trying to get all of their ornaments/crafts/goodies into their goody bags. I didn't realize it until yesterday afternoon when I was getting the room straightened up. OOPS! I will have to come up with something else cute!

Yesterday was party-palooza. We used to spread all of the holiday stuff out a little bit, but now our principal prefers for us to have all of the crazy stuff on one day! Yesterday we watched The Polar Express in our jammies, went to the holiday sing-along, and had our holiday party in the afternoon. I had approximately 17 minutes with the kids aside from all of that, haha! It was a crazy day but a good one.

I hope everyone has a merry Christmas and a fabulous holiday break! January will be here before we know it!

The Best Things We Did This Week (12.12.15)

Hey, hey! 2 blog posts in one month? Yay!

I don't have a LOT to share with you this week. I had grand ideas for this past week, but then on Monday (at about 11 AM) I was told that I would be out for the next 2 days at a workshop. Surprise! It was a little challenging to get 2 days worth of sub plans ready in an afternoon with no planning, but I did it. (Thanks to a wonderful parent volunteer who ran all of my copies for me!)

So, for two days this week I wasn't even in the building...I learned all about PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention & Support) and had a lovely time with my school's team (especially the 1.5 hour lunches!), but I wasn't doing anything fun in the classroom. (And neither were my kids. Bless their hearts, but they had such a fun, WILD time with the sub when I was in California that I left them with zero fun things and lots of worksheets. They were angels this time around...)

Thursday and Friday I played catch-up and we did get to a few fun holiday things. First, let me tell you about one of my favorite teacher store type places; Micheal's! I went in there last weekend to get something I needed for someone's Christmas present and they were having an amazing sale. Their DIY ornaments were 70% off and their foam craft things were 50% off. I bought a class set of the clear plastic ornaments, a pack of Christmas trees, and a pack of foam stockings for less than $20. This is what we came up with:

I know, the fire in the middle is pitiful. My PEC co-teacher found some tissue paper and I am going to work on it on Monday. But the stockings are adorable! I did bust out the glitter for this one...my poor custodian. My para and I split up the glitter supervision and I didn't realize at first that she was letting her kids do their own glitter designs. Ahhh! Puddles of glue. PUDDLES. I am a little too much of a control freak to let them go with glitter and liquid glue!

We did these yesterday. My poor door is so beat-up. (They all are, it's not just mine!) Most teachers don't cover their doors at my school, although some did for the holidays. The trees came out so cute, though! More glitter. I figured what did it matter since we'd covered most surfaces with glitter the day before. HA.

That's all I've got for this week. Next week I have a ton of good stuff planned, though! We're going to work it in around the holiday sing-along and AIMSWeb testing and sight word testing and the million and one things that are happening around the school.

The Best Things We Did This Week (12.5.15) & a gingerbread freebie

Hey, teacher friends! I hope everyone is hanging in there these last few weeks before break. I LOVE the month of December...but these three weeks or so seem to stretch on for forever! Being a first grade teacher in December is pretty magical because the kids are SO pumped about Santa and their elves and Christmas lists and Christmas decorations and presents and alllll the things that December brings. It's also pretty exhausting keeping up with their...um...enthusiasm. And energy.

This past week we were working on our story elements standard so I ventured away from the basal (sorry, Journeys) and did some cute gingerbread things. I LOVE a fun week of gingerbread stuff and some may end up spilling into next week because I didn't get through everything I wanted to do.

For starters, we read three of my favorite gingerbread stories. Of course we started with the original! Then we read The Gingerbread Girl by Lisa Campbell Ernst. Last, we read my FAVORITE...The Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett. There are other great versions out there but that's all I had time for this week. We read the stories and then charted the key story elements.

The kids glued their graphic organizers down into a little construction paper folder and added a gingerbread house to the front.

Easy peasy. These are now hanging outside of my classroom. If you want the graphic organizer and gingerbread house template, you can click here or on the pictures to download a free copy! I included a blank version of the graphic organizer just in case you want your kids to compare different texts than the ones we used. I would have liked to outline parts of the house in glitter but I couldn't face the mess that would ensue we ran out of time. (Truth: We are still recovering from the Glitter Pumpkin debacle from a few weeks ago!)

Yesterday we had fun chasing that silly gingerbread cookie around the school. I used this adorable FREEBIE from Teaching Hearts & Minds to create the clues.

We started with the envelope the crafty gingerbread man left taped to our door, then followed the clues all around our school building before we ended up in the principal's office, where he had left us a basket of yummy treats!

Most years I make my class their own set of teeny gingerbread babies that I have decorated, but this year I let Little Debbie do the hard work me. The kids loved this activity and it was a great way to spend the first few minutes of recess on a super cold day! (The day before I was literally running in place on the playground to stay warm. It has been so chilly this week!)

Then I tried a new activity. One of the stellar teachers in our building told me about an easy cinnamon ornament class. I love EASY crafts. This one definitely fit the bill! I found some directions online and I basically followed along with what the lovely blogger at The Kitchen Is My Playground did as my guide.

You need a big jar of applesauce, a big container of cinnamon (I got one for $7.99 at Kroger!), and a little bit of liquid glue. You will also need a rolling pin, big mixing bowl, gingerbread man cutter, and some aluminum foil or wax paper. Here are some basic directions for how I did it with my class. I did have both a parent and my parapro with me while we did it and the extra help was really nice, but I definitely could have done it solo.

1.) Pour about a cup of the applesauce into a big bowl. Add a lot of cinnamon. I started with 6 tablespoons and then shook in a lot more as I mixed. Add in about 2 tablespoons of glue. Start mixing (you can begin with a spoon, but I ended up getting in there with my hands to knead it all together). You're going for a dough that is the consistency of Play-Doh. If it still looks wet and more like the texture of applesauce, keep dumping in cinnamon. If it starts to get hard and clumpy, add in more applesauce and glue. Eventually you will end up with a ball of a dough-y substance. I did this about 3 times to make enough dough for my class of 24.

2.) Use a rolling pin to roll out the dough. I put my ball of dough between two pieces of aluminum foil to keep the dough from sticking to the rolling pin. That worked really well!

3.) Use a cookie cutter to stamp out the gingerbread men. I have a set of cookie cutters for a boy, girl, and a baby so I let the kids pick.

4.) Use a straw to punch out a teeny hole in the top of the gingerbread men. When they dry, we will thread a piece of ribbon through the hole to make it an ornmanet!

5.) Lay the gingerbread men/people out to dry. Before you go home, some of them may start to curl up a little bit around the edges. I mashed them back down flat. We'll see if they curly up again when I check on them on Monday.

6.) On Monday I will flip them and make sure they are dry. Later in the week, we will paint them with puffy paint (which will then need to dry) and add the ribbon.

So there you have it! This was our week of gingerbread fun! If you snag the freebie, I would love some lovin' in the comments! Hang in there friends...just a couple more weeks! We can do this!

November Currently

Oh, bless it. I just am not good at keeping up with this blog, am I? Ha! Oh, well. Here's this month's currently from Oh' Boy 4th Grade!

Listening: This is my current situation right now...

The struggle is real, people. The only reason I don't have more to cut out is that I ran out of laminating sheets. (Not only that, but my grade level buddy texted me two seconds after the last thing went through the laminator to ask if I had some she could borrow. Pretty sure we are keeping the Amazon suppliers competitive when it comes to these laminating sheets! I go through soooo much!) I just uploaded a brand new set of November math centers to my TpT store and now I want to prep them all so I have my centers set for the month. Oh, the life of a teacher! (Random side note: I used to think it was SO COOL to watch my teachers cut out laminated stuff. I was amazed when I was little how they could take the scissors and slide it through the lamination like magic without even cutting. The awe has definitely worn off over the years, LOL!)

Everything else is self-explanatory...except the NEEDING! I am going to Cali this week for a conference and I am sooooo excited! At least when I'm not stressing over a thousand details (sub plans, packing, leaving the house in order-yikes!) I am excited. I am going to Costa Mesa for the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers conference-I hope it's a blast!

So that's my November Currently. I am really going to try to do a better job of updating, but I keep saying that...maybe I need to resign myself to the fact that I am a lazy blogger!

a little peek at my room (2015)

Hey, blog world!

This week has been NUTS. Absolutely nuts...quite possibly the craziest pre-planning week I have ever had. We had to do the usual back-to-work meetings in a building that wasn't yet complete (construction & cleaning were still taking place). My room was 'finished' Thursday morning and guess what? We had Open House Thursday afternoon! CRAZINESS. For the last 9 years, I have always been done with my room at the beginning of pre-planning...this year I went up to school on a Saturday to get it all finished up.

Here are some pictures from my classroom! A lot of it is the same as last year, but you'll see some changes. 

Here is a picture taken from the door! You'll see I went back to tables this year...although I may have to add another one, since my class roster has 27 names on it. (GULP. It was soooo nice last year having only 22...that's probably not happening this year!) Do you see the tall shelf over by my kidney table? It's amazing...I bought it from a teacher who was leaving our school. There's storage on the back side, too. I love it! (And the blur to the right is Little Miss...I was so desperate today to get some work done I took her to school with me. She was actually a pretty good little helper, aside from wanting to color the first day of school coloring sheets that I put out yesterday!)

Calendar. I will do another post about calendar later...I am doing some things differently with it this year! The white bulletin board to the right is going to display my learning targets, but I haven't made those posters yet. (I'm telling you, it's been a race to the finish!)

This is quite possibly my favorite place in the whole classroom. I LOVE my classroom library. It, too, is a work in progress (there are some bins that need labels because I added more) but it is overflowing with books and it just makes my heart happy! Aren't those chairs cute? I got them at Kroger for $8 each. (PS: The neon dish tubs are the ones I got from Dollar Tree. They are alllll over my classroom because I bought as many as I could find. So cute and so sturdy, too!)

The front of the room. I made new posters this year. All of my polka dotted classroom stuff is in my TpT store here . My board is super empty because supposedly we're getting SmartBoards soon! Whoo!

School starts Monday. Ready or not, here they come! I feel much more ready TODAY than I did even YESTERDAY, and since my furniture was still in a pile on Thursday I think I've done well. I am so tired, though! Here's hoping the rest of the weekend crawls by! :)

assess me! week 1

Mrs. Lamb is hosting a linky party! How fun! Here are my responses:

I am going to have fun reading what other people have to say. I gotta say...#3 sends shivers up my spine.

visual plans for the first week of school

I thought I would blog today a little bit about what I plan to do with my firsties the first week of school! The other day I mentioned that I planned out the first week (due to NOT being able to get into my classroom-yikes!). The document I created is a detailed daily plan in a Word document, but today I saw some visual plans posted over at Swimming into Second and I thought it might be fun to put together my own! Here's what I came up with:

It looks so...manageable...in chart format! Haha! You'll notice that the first day is jam packed. That is DELIBERATE. We don't usually have specials the first day of school and I do NOT want to run out of stuff to do. (Going into year 9 and it hasn't happened yet!) Usually I get to just a teeny tiny fraction of what I intend to do the first day and so I move some things around to make room. It usually works out because in week 2 I will suddenly discover I have oodles of TIME because the routines that took approximately a thousand minutes to accomplish in the first week suddenly begin to run like clockwork.

During the first week we tend to not start with "The Curriculum" right away because we have all of that fuuun baseline testing to get out of the way AND kids keep trickling in for hours and days after the bell on the first day! (There was one year when I had a student sitting in second grade all morning before they realized she as actually supposed to be in first-ooops!) But we can't just sit around twiddling our thumbs and playing games all day (although we will have fun). I do like to introduce some comprehension strategies and begin with story elements very early, plus spend oodles of time on rituals and routines. I also start launching the math workshop in week 1. I want them to get used to working in groups pretty quickly and that first week is fun with math tubs of manipulatives to explore.

If you want your own copy of the plans, click on the pictures and they are yours! I made the pictures in the plans clickable if the activity relates to something I've gotten off of the Internet or TpT. One of my files is in there on several days. Feel free to hop on over to TpT and take a peek, it's brand new!

Please leave me a comment if this was helpful for you-I might do a week 2! ;)

back to school planning and why I DON'T stress over copies anymore

I'm back from St. Louis. I realized this morning that this is the first time in WEEKS that I did not have somewhere to be at ALL today. Amazing! I WISH I could go up to the school to work on my classroom, but alas...not only is there no air conditioning at the present but this is my classroom's current situation:

It looks baaaddd. NO ceiling. Floors haven't been done. I'm trying not freak out because there's no point. But-we go back to work next Tuesday and there will be kids in this room in a week and a half.

YIKES. (On the plus side...even if I do minimal decorating it can only get better from here!)

So, since there won't be any setting up the classroom anytime soon, I've been working from home on lesson plans. I have the first week planned out (yay!) and I'm really excited to use some new things I've made as well as some of my old favorites. I had the presence of mind to go ahead and order extra toner when I had a little bit of school money to spend back at the end of the school year, so I've gone ahead and started printing my stuff for that first week, too. That way I won't have to hang out in the copy room with the rest of the staff praying that there's not too much ceiling tile dust kinking up the copier or risograph! Here's what I've done so far:

I have a few more things to print but mostly I just need to make some flipbooks now and do some tracing to get a few craftivities ready! Since I have several days before I can get in the building, I should have everything all prepped. This is totally not how I usually operate, but this year I guess I'm doing it backwards.

In case you're curious, I do have an amazing laser printer that I bought last year. Here it is:

It's a Brother wireless laser printer and I love this printer so, so, so much. Anyone else but a teacher would probably think it's a little weird to have such intense feelings for an office electronic but this sweet little printer has changed my life. It can run copies crazy fast and the generic toner is dirt cheap...it runs about $11 on Amazon and one of those cartridges goes for about 3,000 copies. That's a lot of class sets. I've only purchased 3 toner cartridges since I bought it last summer and I've run lots and lots of class sets (and coupons, which is what I originally bought it for!) on this baby. Now, some people may say that it's ridiculous that I am running this stuff at home and not at school where copies are "free." I can see where those people are coming from, but the reality is...there is one copier and one risograph at my school. We're not supposed to use the riso for less than 30 copies, which means I can only use it for grade level stuff. The other copier is pretty decent BUT it is very tempermental. It seems to know when I need something ASAP and that's when it decides to jam up-isn't that always the case?! So the system I came up with last year is to gather as much stuff as I can on Thursday for the following week. I run what I can during my (limited) planning time and in a few minutes after school. Everything that doesn't get run on Thursday gets printed at home (which is actually faster since I don't have to baby-sit my printer the way I do the copier). This year I am truly going to try to work smarter, not harder, and I consider $11 every few months to be more than worth the time saving aspect!

Now, this printer ONLY does black and white copies, so it's not my only printer. I could do a whole separate post about my new color printer that I am equally obsessed with...maybe another day. If you are also searching for a printer and are interested, here is a link to a similar one on Amazon. Right now it's $120 and that's a little more than I paid for mine. I checked a price history site and it looks like it jumps around a good bit, probably to match sales at stores like Staples and Office Depot. So, if you're also in the market for an awesome b&w printer you might want to keep an eye on the sales ads over the next few weeks.

I'm off now to go take a nap and to NOT think about the fact that my poor classroom looks like a construction zone! LOL!

PS: I don't work for Brother and I don't get anything from hyping their awesome printer-although maybe I should because I've gotten several other teachers at work to buy one due to mine's awesomeness! Haha! I just really like this printer and figured other teachers might, too.

ILA 2015 (when all the reading teachers took St. Louis by storm)

FIRST, a very important announcement! f you are here from Bibb's new teacher orientation....WELCOME! Have fun, poke around, and follow me here, on TpT, and on Pinterest (here is a link to my profile). So glad you found me and I hope you are PUMPED for the upcoming school year!

Now on to your regularly scheduled programming...:)

I am going to do a post-and-run today...I am in St. Louis for the last day of the International Literacy Association conference. It's been a whirlwind of a weekend (and yes, I know it's Monday)...but so much fun! Here are some of the highlights:

The first picture is of the gigantic (I mean gigantic) signs that are outside the presentation rooms...that first one on Saturday? Yeah, that was us! (SUCH a thrill to see something I wrote in the program!) Our presentation went well. It was fun to present and to make connections with other teachers and reading experts. I've had MORE fun, though, going to other presentations...there are lots of really smart people here and it's pretty cool to hear what they are working on.

St. Louis is not my favorite city (the nightly news is pretty scary) but it is neat to see The Arch! We ate last night practically underneath it.

And now...the best part. The FREE STUFF. This is the hottest freebie by far-everyone is sporting a new fancy Scholastic tote! I am kind of in love with the red and black (GOOO DAWGS!) and it's a nice size, too. The exhibitor's hall here is gigantic and every major publisher is here! I also got matching Pete the Cat t-shirts for Little Miss and me and a set of FREE books signed by the author. Also, more tote bags than one person could possibly need. If you know me, you know I have a little addiction with tote bags. Love'em, can't have enough...so it was pretty fun getting handed bag after bag after bag. Don't worry, though-I have a plan for them. I'm not keeping ALL of them. That's a post for another day, though. :)

Speaking of Little Miss...we have one more session to go to and then I am ready to get on a plane and head home! I won't get to see her until tomorrow because she is staying with her grandma, but I cannot wait to give her a big hug and a squeeze. I actually have to do work tomorrow-new teacher orientation!-so I'm not sure when I will get to recover from this trip. Maybe not at all, since I go back to work for real next week!

going bananas over GoNoodle...or, "how GoNoodle saved my sanity"

Do YOU GoNoodle?

If you don't, you SHOULD. It's amazing.

GoNoodle is awesome. If you don't know what it is...basically, it's a site of exercise and brain break videos. It's SUPER fun. Here is a link for you to go check it out: GoNoodle!

My kids last year LOVED it. I mean, LOVED it. We did GoNoodle on days when it was too rainy, humid, or HOT to go ouside for recess. (Yes, "too hot" is a valid excuse here. The heat index can climb into the 90s and even the low 100s-not the best climate for little people to be running around.) I set it up on my laptop cart during lunch so that all we had to do when the kids came back from indoor recess was pick our recess playlist! (You can pick individual videos-but the recess playlists are my favorite. You can pick one that fits the time you have for your indoor recess period and it will play several videos in succession.)

But this summer...GoNoodle has been a lifechanger here at HOME. How, you may ask? Well, Little Miss is very...um...shall we say...active? She is prety good at entertaining herself for the MOST part. But everyday...around 4:00...she hits a whiny patch. I am positive it stems from the fact that she refuses to nap anymore, which is her own fault really, but yet it makes us BOTH miserable. Nothing suits her-she doesn't want to play with any of her toys, she's bored with everything on Netflix or Amazon Instant Video, and forget about laying down for a minute to rest her eyes. That's a big fat "NOPE." Combine that with the fact that my patience is worn down...and that I am usually about to start cooking dinner...well, it was not a fun time of day.

Until I realized I could pull up GoNoodle through the Internet Explorer browser on our XBox. LIFE CHANGER.

She is obsessed with GoNoodle. Obsessed! I am sure part of the magic is that she ONLY gets to do it at this time of day-but man, oh man. She loves it. Her favorite songs are Pop-See-Ko and Hey, Joe. She also likes to see the little monster avatar transform as she earns more credits. It's amazing and allows me to prepare dinner in peace-I call that a win win!

So if you don't GoNoodle at school...you should! And if you have kids or grandkids or work with kids in any capacity outside of school, you should also GoNoodle. It's amazing!

back to school shopping (or, "why teachers have no money in the summer")

I feel like summer is flying by. :( I have two weeks left and then it's back to work! It's been a great summer, though. June was a super fun month with lake time, a beach trip, Vacation Bible School, a birthday, and an anniversary! July has been more businesslike...I'm workshopping it up to get an endorsement and next week I am going to St. Louis for the International Literacy Conference (where I'm PRESENTING! Yay!). Then...new teacher orientation and bam! time to set up a classroom. (A special note: I am very stressed about my classroom situation this year. I heard from a good source-okay, the principal-that the school is looking pretty gnarly right about now. There is no ceiling. No air. And dust and dirt EVERYWHERE. Yes, I am stressed about this! We are going back to work very soon and kids will be there soon after that and I NEED TO PUT UP MY CUTE NEW THINGS.)

Oh! Cute new things! So...one of my favorite things to do in the summer (besides sleep, and swim, and read, and work on TpT projects, and catch up on TV) is to shop for my classroom. Most people not in the teaching profession (such as my husband) think this lunacy. They are probably right. However, all of the teachers I know are like this, so at least we're crazy together, right? Haha! Now, this year I have show tremendous restraint. TREMENDOUS. Mostly because my classroom is pretty well equipped. Still, I have acquired a few things. Just a few!

First of all, the books. I have a confession to make-these aren't all the books I have purchased this summer. No, not by a long shot. I have a whole TUB of books waiting to go back to school. These are just the books I've acquired RECENTLY. One of our Goodwill stores here has a coffeeshop/bookstore and the children's section is marvelous. Those Dr. Seuss books were .99 apiece. A first grade teacher can never have enough Dr. Seuss books! I never know what I will find when I go in there-but I rarely leave empty-handed!

Next...these baskets. Oh, these baskets. I saw them at Target when we were on vacation and put them in the cart (sometimes I do that when I'm shopping-please tell me I'm not the only one-I say that "it needs to ride around in the cart for a little bit" and then I decide before I check out whether or not I should keep it), then took them out. And then I was in Target today and these were the last four. I had to get them. I am going back to tables this year after having desks last year and I am so excited about it. These will become table caddies for group supplies.

While we're on the topic of containers...here are some new book baskets I got at the Dollar Tree. They are actually dish pans, but let's face it-those neon colors were destined for a classroom. I bought 9 and I will probably go back for more. Some of the pretty baskets I bought last year are broken and I think these will hold up nicely. 

These were also acquired in the Dollar Spot at Target. You might be thinking that I spotted them, knew instantly what I was going to use them for, and purchased them with a plan in mind. Nah. I bought enough for the class so I will probably store their Open House treats in them...but I haven't decided yet what I want to do this year! I did glowsticks and Tootsie Pops last year-not sure if I want to go that route this year. I'm still thinking.

Now. Disclaimer about this pocket chart. It was $2.99 at Target...but I have no idea where it came from. It was sitting on an endcap with a bunch of clearanced stuff. I scanned it with my phone and the price was right, but it told me it was "out of stock" at my store. Clearly that wasn't the case. I am going to use it to store important masters and paperwork that I shouldn't have to hunt for. Not sure how I feel about the file folders, but I do love those neon labels! 

And that's it! All that I've purchased SO FAR anyway. I've done pretty well compared to years past! I will also say that I have purged some of my old teaching stuff this summer. A local teacher set up a Buy/Sell/Trade board for local teachers on facebook and I've unloaded some things I wasn't going to use anymore. (And I'm already thinking of a few things at school that I could probably part with for some money.) I think this is great-get rid of things I'm not using, then use that cash to fund new purchases!

What about you?  Have you scored any great finds this summer?

summer vacation and a freebie

Happy Summer! I am officially on break as of yesterday and let me tell ya, it feels GOOD. My summer is going to be shorter this year than normal so I plan on soaking up every sweet drop of summery goodness! This summer my goal is to have a balanced summer as possible and to be intentional about spending my time on things that rejuvenate me. (And spend lots and lots of quality time with Little Miss!) And in case that sounds too hippy dippy and New Age...today those things happened to be free doughnuts at Krispy Kreme (today is National Doughnut Day, in case you didn't know) and a shopping trip to Target. Priorities.

Although...to be honest...a good bit of my summer always revolves around prepping my classroom materials (and classroom) for back to school time. I don't know why it is, but there's something so nice about pinning cute things for the classroom on Pinterest and shopping for fun back-to-school items! Before we left for the break, my team and I started to map out our year for next year. We're almost done (we're meeting next week for coffee to add the finishing touches) and were even talking about Open House before we left on Tuesday. Are we crazy or what?! (In our defense, our school already had "Save the Date" fliers for Open House printed and posted before school let out. Our front office is amazing and ahead of the game at all times.) Last year, I posted about the Open House goodies we had out for our sweet families and kiddos. Our team did the "ready confetti" envelopes and they were a huge hit! (If you don't know what I'm talking about, pop over to Sunny Days in Second Grade and read all about it.) We used the printables from her blog last year and the kids loved getting a special surprise the night before first grade. I decided, though, that I wanted to change it up a little for next year (a little birdie may have told me that another grade decided to copy us, which is fine, but I like to be different!). I wrote my own poem just for first grade and we will attach them to the ready confetti. Here's what it looks like:

The teeny tiny bag holds the magical confetti, which is actually sequins (you could do glitter, but we just happened to have sequins last year). The confetti and the poem go inside an envelope with the cover sheet stapled on top. As a precaution, I also told the kids that they couldn't take the confetti out because it would make the magic go away. We actually had a parent volunteer last year put these together so it was low prep on my part!

If you would like your OWN copy, click on either picture above!

Our plans for the rest of the day include a little bit of lounging around and heading out to the lake. Don't you just love summer?!

June 2015 Currently

It's the first of June and that means it's time for a new Currently hosted by Oh Boy 4th Grade!

1.) Listening to...Little Miss practicing her VBS songs! Somehow I ended up agreeing to lead the preschool music for our church's Vacation Bible School. I have the DVD that I'm supposed to be watching to learn the songs from...but so far Little Miss has watched it more than me. Thinking seriously about letting her lead and teach everyone the choreography. She's totally got this. (At three and a half.)

2.) I bought some vanilla syrup for our coffee and sodas and I have made myself a vanilla Coke Zero every night this week. Almost as good as Sonic and I don't have to leave the house.

3.) Tomorrow is my last day of post-planning! We've had three whole days this year to take care of end-of-the-year business and it's been nice...and much needed. Our school is getting new HVAC units this summer AND new ceilings so our entire classrooms had to be boxed up. If you remember, I just did this last summer. Luckily that means I don't have that much stuff-but it's still a major job. I have no idea what happened to the beautifully-arranged closet I had at the beginning of the year. It basically looked like a junk heap.

4.) Due to spending the day interviewing candidates for an open position, going out for a district meeting, and spending the afternoon packing as much as possible, I am one tired teacher. I know if I lay down on the couch I'll be out for the count...and then wide awake at 9 PM....so I'm trying to power through.

5.) See #3. Still soo much to do. I have a load of things to take to the media center, a pile of stuff that's coming home with me, and furniture stacking ahead of me.

6.) So excited about this summer! I've been in grad school for the last two summers so I haven't had a relaxing summer in a while. We are going to the beach in June and I am going to a conference in St. Louis in July. Plus, we're going to squeeze in as much lake time as we possibly can around all our other summer fun! Little Miss is at a fun age and I think we're going to have a good summer.

And as always, summer is the time when I catch up on reading! So excited about reading some good books this summer!

what we did this week...learning about Dr. King!

We had a lot of fun this week learning about Dr. King. I was impressed with how deep my students took our conversation...take a look at some of their writing!

Isn't this awesome? 

Can you tell that we had an ellipsis in our Focus Poem for the week? Funny how that starts to show up in their writing! 

We made these little display folders for their work. My co-worker and I are planning a "We <3 Writing!" celebration for February and I'm going to save their Dr. King pieces for that celebration.

We also made timelines of important events in Dr. King's life.

These turned out awesome and we will be hanging them in the hall! (PS: If you like any of these projects and want them...they are part of my "I Have A Dream" unit on TpT.)

Next week after the break we will be doing a couple of weeks of penguins. We will read lots of books about penguins and the kids will make their own books to put in the writing exhibit next month. We also will celebrate the 100th Day on Thursday. This is such a fun time of year for first grade!

Speaking of Teachers Pay Teachers...if you purchased my "Booklets for Black History Month" set last year ya need to go re-download. It has been given a make-over and now has TEN famous African Americans included. There's a booklet for each hero (in black and white AND color, so you can project a teacher's copy), webs and graphic organizers, and writing paper. I spent a bit of time over break getting it ready for next month. You can grab it here if you want it!

what we did this week...Jan Brett fun!

Popping in for a late night Friday night blog post. :) I hope everyone's had a chance to ease back into their routine! This week we had two days of pre-planning and three days with our sweet kiddos. Having two days of planning was great...we could do that every year and I'd be a happy camper. I was out of the building half a day for training, but other than that we were free to work in our rooms and meet with our grade levels. Productive planning days-how about that!

I know a lot of teachers in other parts of the country got cold weather days this week but not us...even though the temps here were very cold for us.That's fine with me because I'd rather NOT make up any bad weather days during our February vacation!

This week was all about getting back into the groove and doing mid-year assessments. Does this look familiar to anybody?

This week I spent some time doing DRAs with our kids to get an idea of where they're reading now. For most of them they're about where they were when we left in December, but I have some kids who've shot up. I have several who are reading above grade level now and I'm going to have to split my highest group because it's getting too big. What a good problem to have, right?! I will definitely be revising my scheduling for my groups as soon as I'm done with these DRAs to make sure the bulk of my time is going to the kids who really need me. We also had to do a bunch of AIMSWeb testing (groan)...but it's good data, so I can't complain too much.

Now on to the FUN stuff...our Jan Brett mini-unit! Since it was a short week we didn't do anything out of our Journeys series, so we decided to do some winter-y books. I LOVE Jan Brett's work-her artwork is amazing and the stories are so well done. On Wednesday we did a full day of activities centered on The Mitten.

I LOVE reading their writing at this point in the year! It's come so far! We talked about story elements with each of the stories we read this week and did a story map for each one. We've done a good bit of story mapping before now, but mostly as a large group...now I'm easing them into doing their maps on their own.

We also made retelling mittens for the story for the kids to take home. They had a lot of fun decorating their mittens and then remembering the order of the animals that squeezed into the mitten.

We also made a little booklet about the animals from the story. I think I've mentioned it before but I have a lot of English Language Learners in my class...I knew many of them wouldn't really know the names of the animals in the story, especially since badgers, hedgehogs, and moles are not that common around here! 

On Thursday we did work with The Hat. We did another story map and then some writing. Here is the finished product hanging in the hall outside our classroom:

This was a great chance to do a Reader's Response piece and get away with a little craft while we were at it! And they are so cute hanging outside our door!

Today we worked with the text Hedgie's Surprise. I didn't snap any pictures, but we did another story map.If I had more time, I had a cute hedgehog craft to go with some character webs. Maybe another day or next year. :(

If you liked what you saw, all of the graphic organizers and templates are in my Jan Brett pack that's in my TpT store! There's also a set of activities to go along with the book Armadillo Rodeo. That book is nothing like the other three I've mentioned (The Hat, The Mitten, and Hedgie's Surprise) but it's SUPER cute and I just had to do some cutesy stuff to go with it, too! 

So what's up for next week? Well, we're jumping back into our reading series...the text is about Animal Groups so we'll be talking about animals for a bit. I'm going to try to work in some extra stuff on penguins and arctic animals, too. :) For Social Studies we'll be doing some things out of my Dr. King unit...which reminds me, I need to go find my Dr. King books! My read-alouds are still scattered all over the place from my classroom move! I keep saying I'm going to get that organized but it hasn't happened yet...and somehow I continue to acquire MORE books!

Stay warm, everyone!