So . . . What's Up?

Well, hello there! I wonder if anyone else is feeling like my little guy was, when it was time to go back to school.  Maybe you didn't want to face the music?  Or maybe you just wanted to hide in the lockers??

I was able to get him out of the locker and reassure him that when he gets to middle school he won't get pushed into a locker.  (fingers crossed)  And we even got a few smiles on the first day of school.  We bought a new house this summer.  We always took pictures in front of the fireplace in my other house.  And boy do I miss it!  This fireplace is just, eh.

Not only did we buy a new house this summer, we also got a few new animals.  First, but not least is our new dog named Spot.  We got him from the shelter, and he is just a perfect dog! He was all potty trained.  Which was perfect since we have brand new carpet in our new home.  I absolutely love this picture!  Everyone is so stinking happy! 

 

My favorite pets are our chickens!  There is no funnier sight than seeing my kids chasing the chickens in the yard trying to get them in their coop.  And everyday is Easter around this place!  The kids love going to the coop to get the eggs.

The first day in class finally arrived.  Our first day of school this year was on August 11th.  Can you believe that?  We start super early.  This year I made my first grade back to school chalkboard sign.  I'm pretty proud of myself, if I do say so.  Each student took a picture with the sign.  Then we used a little math about themselves paper and a little pencil craft.  And viola, back to school bulletin was complete.  I'll save the pictures and print them for the students memory book to take home on the last day of school.  I'm always so amazed by how much my firsties grow during the school year. 




I was so happy to have a student visitor from my classroom last year.  This sweet little student gave me a rocking chair for my classroom.  I painted it Makinac blue, my favorite color.  It reminds me of my favorite family vacation, Makinac Island. It makes a perfect chair for the helper of the day to sit on when we do class work on the carpet. 

After our first fifteen or so days of school we had the daily five mastered! We were able to begin reading groups, and things are going very smoothly.  One of my favorite apps to use during guided reading is educreations.  It's an interactive whiteboard.  So instead of dragging out the good ole' dry erase boards, markers, and erasers, we go onto the ipads and click on the educreations app. And boom.  That's it.  I love it. Not to mention my students love to use technology during guided reading. 

And speaking of reading groups, we read a book about technology.  It's in the above picture. After we read the book, I put a little bit of a critical thinking, comprehension twist to the book.  Each student drew a model of something that could be used in the future.  Then I sent home modeling clay, and they made their drawing into a model.  Boy was I blown away by their creativity! This little guy drew a futuristic model car.

This is his drawing and model.  He did an amazing job, and even told me about the type of fuel that it would use to make it go faster. 



Then we had this model.  It is a machine that will compact trash so that it will take up less space in the landfill.  I think we will definitely be using this in the future.

And this little guy is cool.  It's the whole drone concept, but on steroids.  This machine will deliver all mail and packages to everyone's home.  Except it will fly.  How neat.  Right?

The last model was an amphibious invention.  It will be able to go through land, water, and air.  It will be able to fly into a volcano and do research in there.  How cool??

After a couple of weeks with successful daily five sessions, we began our math daily five.  The concept is so similar to daily five, that it enables the kids to do an amazing job, and learn how to do everything so quickly.  The picture below is one of the math journals.  My students use math journal for the "Write About Math" portion of the math daily five. Most of my journal entries come from Reagan Tunstall.



Another piece of the math daily five is "Work With Someone."  Here is a simple little activity students can do together.  I did a lesson with the magnetic ten frames and modeled how to use them.  Then I put it into one of the math tubs, and it becomes something students know how to use to get some continued review of ten frames. 


 

Here is another activity we used for "Math With Someone." It's a game from Cara Carroll's tpt store.

These are the posters that I made to use in my classroom for math daily five.  They are available on tpt, with different options for the backgrounds. 

 

Click here to preview the Math Daily Five posters on tpt. 

Students also dove into their science journals.  During our apple unit, I introduce qualities of scientists.  I teach them about using their five senses.  We use apples to make this a tangible lesson that they won't forget!

Of course when you do an apple unit you gotta add a little bit of excitement!  We had a little bit of fun mixing baking soda and vinegar. Then we added a little red food coloring for an added effect. My students went crazy over it.  And I'm talking about a good kinda crazy.  They absolutely loved it!

I incorporated our apple unit into our math block.  During math daily five students worked with a partner to add with gummy worms.  Adding with gummy worms is a great form for firsties to use something concrete they can learn to add.  It's amazing how much it helps kinesthetic learners.  They even got to eat their candy at the end of the lesson.  This apple freebie is from Jess Ross on tpt.

Last, but not least is a food lesson.  We made cute Johnny Appleseed hats, and students ate all kinds of apple food. YUMMY! I got the idea from First Grader at Last.

 
 It doesn't get any cuter than this! I absolutely love my classroom!

I got my craft on and made a cute Fall chalkboard sign to decorate the entrance of my classroom.  It sure is a beauty!
 

Well I hope you have had an amazing back to school this year.  As for me . . . I'm off to enjoy my favorite season. Fall! 

February's Pinterest Linky

Happy February!  The best month in winter!  It brings us the renewed hope of love, and the reminder to demonstrate our love to our loved ones.  Every year I love to give my children Valentine goodies.  They are all getting older, but it's something that they look forward to. I love that my husband buys my teen daughter flowers.  It's a reminder to her that she is special, beautiful, and loved.


So enough of my home family.  Time to talk about my family at school.  The children in my classroom.  I wish I could spoil them on Valentine's Day too! I'm linking up with Lisa from Pawsitively Teaching and Marssa from The Inspired Owl to share three pins that could be used in your classroom during the month of February.  So here we go . . .

 A super cute and easy Valentine heart bouquet for mom and dad.
 How stinking cute and easy!

  

                                              Click on the image to view the original Pinterest link. 



Valentine's Day Color paint samples

Ok, so here is my idea on how I would use this.  I would punch the hearts.  Then I would write the letters to their sight words on each heart.  Then we could practice spelling them during our guided reading lesson.  How fun would that be?  I might even write numbers on each heart and, have students make addition and subtraction sentences or number patterns.

                                             Click on the image to view original Pinterest link.

 And my favorite pin.



Valentine's Day Bunting
I love to find pins and morph them into a use for my classroom.  For this pin I would use the same book background.  Next, I would print light pink colored hearts.  Then students would write on each heart about a Valentine book.  They could use three hearts and write the beginning, middle, and end. They could also use one heart and write a summary. Or use more hearts and write about characters, setting, plot, etc.  The possibilities are endless! Last, I would place a light colored pink heart on the book page back ground. These buntings could be hung around the classroom and strung together. How cute, bright, cheerful, and educational!

 Click on the image to view the original Pinterest Link.

If you decide to try any of these pins let me know!  Or share some of your pins and link up with Pawsitively Teaching. and The Inspired Owl.

Gingerbread House Fun

I hope everyone is having a fabulous start to December.  I'm not sure what it is, but it seems like there is magic in the air during the Christmas season.  Everyone is so cheerful and full of the Christmas spirit.  I have been blessed with my students this year because they are not portraying the "hyped up" Christmas spirit that is sometimes displayed by students during the month of December.  They have such a great attitude and disposition.  They work hard and I try my best to make sure we have fun while we are learning. Last week we did my "How to Build a Gingerbread House" unit.
 

We began the week by making making a real gingerbread house.

I must have forgotten to take a picture of the finished product.  Every student got an opportunity to decorate it.  I called a few students over while the rest of the class worked on different centers. This made it very manageable for everyone to add their own touch to our little gingerbread house.

Then we wrote about the process together on chart paper.

  Then I released students to their seats, and they wrote their rough draft.

After they finished their writing we had a conference about their writing.  Then they finished their final draft and completed their craft.

 Have a happy writing, crafting, gingerbread makin' kinda week!

Classroom Pictures 2014-2015

Well, here it is.  A new school is once upon me.  All of those late night firefly catching, tent sleeping, pool swimming, park play dating, roller coaster riding, fish catching, chalk writing, bike riding, movie watching, and sleeping in moments have come to a close.  Sigh . .

But with another ending of a season, begins a new one!  A new excitement stirs in me.  The longing to see the spark in students' eyes when they have learned something new is so rewarding! I am extremely blessed to love all of the teachers that I work with.  I believe it doesn't get any better than that! 

And with that being said . . . drum roll please! 

Classroom photos of my first grade classroom for the 2014-2015 year. 

My classroom theme is a mixture of different things.  It is owl/chevron/vintage.  Here is a picture of the front entrance of my classroom.

To the left of my door, I have a cute little art piece that was a gift to me from a former student.  I added a little fabric and some chevron border to tie it all together. 

This is my back to school owl bulletin board.  The background is a turquoise/tealish color that you will see throughout the classroom. It is my favorite color.  It reminds me of my favorite place. . . the beach. I bought a pad of scrapbook paper, and used it to create different frames, and then inserted my little owls inside them.  The border is a roll of gift wrapping paper that I bought at Wal-Mart.  I cut the paper and scrunched it for a 3-d effect.

 And here is a close-up of the title for my bulletin board.  The last couple of years I have used the same title, so I wanted to change it up a bit this year.  My daughter and I thought of the title. Don't you just love it? 

I am very blessed to have cabinets on two of my classroom walls.  I have a ton of storage.  This is the wall to the left when you walk into the classroom.  My Daily Five & CAFE posters are hung here. 

When you walk in and look at the right, I have a spot for transportation notes for my students.  The canvas board and tree are from Hobby Lobby. 

This is the front of my classroom.  To the right is my library, and gathering area. I have my calendar on the right side of my smart board, and my objectives are posted on the left side.  I have a small desk up front that I use to put some of the technology I use to teach. 

Here is a closer look of the right side of my classroom.  I do all of my guided reading groups at the table in front of the window. 

This is a picture of the back of my classroom.  I don't have name tags on the desk yet, because I will have students pick where they want to sit during open house. 

Another view of my classroom.  The door on the right side is our bathroom.  We are so blessed to have a restroom and sink in our classrooms! I have a small fridge, microwave, and my Keurig on the counter by the sink.  The table by the front door is where I will have my listening center.  This year my team and I are planning to purchase the Reading Rainbow app to have students listen to books on the ipads.  This year I will have seventeen ipads in my classroom!

This is the counter between my student lockers and my desk.  This is my writing center.  I bought those cute little buckets hung on the wall from IKEA.  The white paper tray is also from IKEA.  I am going to have different slots for different types of paper.  To the left of the paper sorter is where I am going to put different colors in its own can.  As I am using cans when I am cooking, I am covering them with different colored vintage paper.  I made a little white sign with directions for my writing area.  I am going to make posters that contain ideas for different things to write about.  I just haven't gotten to it yet. 

This is a picture of my word wall.  The word walls words contain Fry first one hundred words and are available on my tpt store. 

Here is a closer view of my desk area.  I covered the front of my desk with more wrapping paper that I bought at Wal-Mart.

I have two small, inexpensive book shelves from Wal-Mart.  This is where students store their book boxes when they are not being used.  I will use the bottom shelf to have students store their student binders.  Those are also available on my tpt store. 

This will be my word work area.  I bought this adorable cart from IKEA.  When I saw it, I knew I had to have it!  I am going to put more word work materials in the other shelves as I introduce them. 

Here is closer view of my objectives board.

And boy am I in LOVE with the way this frame turned out!  It was actually free!  Someone bought the frame from Good Will, and gave it to me.  The frame was bronze?!  Can you believe that?  It looks so much more beautiful in white. I just spray painted it to give it an amazing look. I made the student work poster, added some string, and a few cute clothespins. 

The white book shelf on the left will contain my math centers.  The little numbered tubs are from IKEA. The shelf on the right contains materials for students to use.

And here is my calendar area.  It looks a little plain, but with time we will add different math concepts to it as I teach them.  I made the posters on the top, and the numbers for the calendar.  The calendar was at the teacher store, but it didn't have any cute matching numbers, so I made my own. 

I love my objectives board.  I am going to insert the paper with the objective inside the clear plastic sleeve on the paper. 

Here is my science bulletin board.  These posters are also on my tpt store. 

Here is my vocabulary board.  I made my own sign.  I tried to make it a little bit unique by making the letters out of scrabble letters.  The boarder is the same scrunched up paper from the bulletin board outside my classroom.  It is used throughout the room. 

And oh do I love my new map! Sometimes, life is 2-d not a big round globe. I made my own social studies title.  The postcard on the bottom of the map is from California.  We are going to pen pal with another class, and they have already sent us a postcard.  I can't wait to show them on the map!

This bench is beside my library.  It is also from IKEA.  My mother-in-law made the cushion for it.  I still need to find big containers to put inside the shelves.  I am going to put all of my animal books in there.  I have way too many of them.  This is the perfect solution. 

Here is a close-up of my library baskets.  The labels are from School Girl. 

And here is my guided reading area.  My mother-in-law also made the bucket seats.  The material on the bucket seats are from two years ago. I use the bookshelf and baskets on the left of the table to store my guided reading materials.  On the wall to the left of my desk is a little spice rack I bought at IKEA.  Are you tired of hearing about IKEA yet?  Sorry, I absolutely love this place.  I live two hours away from it!  So sad.  Anyways, I placed colored mason jars in it.  I am going to store all of my writing utensils inside the jars.  This allows me to have more space on my table.  Last year I had a basket with lots of writing goodies on my table, and it.drove.me.crazy! I like for my students to have more space during our guided reading time. 

These are my student lockers.  The owl name tags are also from School Girl. 

I also put vintage scrapbook paper behind my emergency procedures to spruce them up a little bit. 

And this is the view from my desk.  I hope you enjoyed the tour of my classroom.  Please leave me some comments and let me know what you think!