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!

January 2015 Currently

First time linking up with Oh' Boy 4th grade's Currently in a LONG while! Fun!

1.) Listening: Kelly & Michael. I have always loved Kelly Ripa. I don't know why...maybe it's because she's a fellow shortie. I couldn't care less who her co-host is...but watching her show is one of my simple pleasures of being on break!

2.) I hired a cleaning service 3 years ago when Little Miss was born because I had ZERO TIME to clean. That's the best money I spend every 2 weeks. A crew of sweet ladies comes in and cleans my house top-to-bottom in less than an hour. We can't keep it that way-it descends into clutter and chaos in about 36 hours-but it sure is nice while it lasts. Also, it keeps me from having to mop floors. I HATE mopping floors.

3.) Self-explanatory...I have a list of things to do today! This blog post is one of them! I also have a long list of projects for my TpT shop. Some of my older stuff needs updating and I have some good ideas for new products...I just have to find the time to CREATE!

4.) We need new couches in the worst way. I have terrible luck with living room furniture...I have bought 2 sets of couches in the last 8 years and neither have lasted. Our current set looks great but the springs are starting to come loose and it's painful. This time I guess we'll drop some big cash and maybe get a warranty.

And a new blog layout...I will be spiffing it up around here soon. One of my New Year's resolutions is to be more consistent about blogging! I love it, I just have to make the time for it! (And remember to take pictures in the classroom).

5.) I got some fancy organizing containers for the refrigerator as a Christmas present and I want to get my fridge nice and organized for the New Year. (This was, of course, inspired by a picture I saw on Pinterest.)

6.) YES: to getting healthy. Grad school was hard-there was no time for exercisising-but now I'm done so there's no excuse for not eating right and working out! DH is joining me. I know WHAT to do, it's just the sticking-with-it part that's hard. The YES part is related to the MAYBE part...before we think about another baby I need to get in a healthier routine. Thinking more and more these days though that another one might be fun! The I WISH is probably not for 2015. I JUST got done with a M.Ed, but I'm tossing around the idea of a specialist or even doctorate. We'll see. Both would be big time commitments that I'm not sure I could undertake anytime in the next 3-5 years. Maybe when Little Miss is older!