It's me again

I have been lazy again when it comes to blogging.  I know.  I say it every time, but I will say it again.  In the summer I'm sure I will be on here more, like I was last summer when I started this, but for now I'm lazy.  I had every intention of coming on during spring break, but I was very busy and the week flew by!  Our spring break was the week leading into Easter so I had a lot of Easter basket shopping to do, crafts and baking to do, and then Easter things to do.  It was also my Dad's birthday.  So I never made it on.  Then my mom fell at work and fractured her hip.  Crazy!  So my siblings and I have been helping my parents with things at their house too.  All of that on top of working all day and all I feel like doing is being a blob on my couch.

Here are some pictures of some of what I was up to, a White Sox wreath I made my Dad and his baseball birthday cake, as well as the Easter Bunny cupcake cake I made (banana split cupcakes, triple strawberry, and chocolate fudge).  

I have also been planning my Disney vacation that I'm going on with my sister, her husband, her daughter, and her father-in-law.  I love Disney so much that I invited myself along and became the planner of the trip (which I have loved!  I'll be sad when it's done!).  So that has been a priority for me too, even though we're not going until the beginning of August.  I've been on the Disney blogs hunting for tips and tricks and deals!

It's that time of the year now when my kids are crazy and can't stop talking.  It hasn't helped that it's been cold and rainy so they have cabin fever because they can't get outside!  I was very happy for this past week to be over let me tell you.  The rest of the month will be the same because it's continuing with work, trying to get stuff done, before May hits and there are a lot of interruptions to teaching (which helps the cabin fever).  As the kids start to get crazy, I start looking forward to next year and a brand new crop of kids.  Now I love my kids, I really do.  However I always get excited near the end of the year, thinking of the new things I can do starting the following year, and the things I want to change.  With going full-fledge common core next year that is my main focus, to get organized and ready for that, along with how I'm going to do it.  I am also thinking I want to start like the Daily 5 Math for my math time instead of doing it how I did it this year.  I think I'll better meet my kids needs that way.  Any suggestions for great common core resources?  I LOVE the SunnyDays assessment packs she has for common core (as well as other resources she has!).  I'll take any help I can get!  Also if you have any great links or ideas for Daily 5/BUILD/math centers, I'll take that help too!  Right now I'm just blog surfing for ideas, which I love to do.

Okay I'm going to leave you with my bulletin board pics since the last time I posted and HOPEFULLY I'll be on again soon!  Happy Sunday!  :)

We did these for Presidents' Day.  We usually have the kids write about what the would do if they were president and then we usually do a silhouette of their head to go next to it, but we didn't have time or any parent helpers to do the silhouettes this year so I modeled this project after the one from Cara Carroll's Pint-Sized Presidential Fun pack.  I thought they turned out cute.

These were a mash-up of 2 project ideas I found a long time ago.  The mug craft came from ThirdGradeBookworm and the marshmallow writing paper came from Mrs. Lirrette's Learning Detectives.  I just added real mini-marshmallows instead of the paper ones, and I let the kids decorate their mug how they wanted instead of putting the face on (I just took her copy and made cardboard tracers).  A trick, let the mini-marshmallows sit out for a couple of days and then they are nice and hard.  This way the kids won't try to eat them and it makes them easier to glue.  :)

I had mentioned this in a previous post and gave the writing template as a freebie on my blog here.  We did this to predict whether March would come in like a lion or a lamb.  This was an optional art project, more students started it, but they didn't finish, which is why there is the 1 lonely lion.  March came in like a lion too, so he was right!  lol

The writing paper and leprechaun came from some teacher resource books.  It's supposed to look like he's holding the paper in front of him (the head and feet should be glued on the back), but oh well.  Then we took the pot of gold craft from A Modern Teacher and had the students write about what they are Lucky to have.  It's a great one for getting kids to think.
Now we're on to Flat Stanley, which was the spring break project.  They are just starting to come in and are due on Friday.  Here's a sneak peak of what they look like so far...

So far Stanley has stayed at home with many and visited Iowa, California, Orlando, and Miami.  One from Texas just came in Friday after school.  :)  I love this project!

February Fun!

So as usual things have been busy and I haven't been on blogging.  It's weird, obviously in the summer I have tons of time to blog, but I'm not in my classroom so not much to blog about.  lol  In the fall, I have tons to blog about, but no time.  Oh well.  I do my best.  lol
So this month has been busy as usual.  February is the shortest month and the most jam-packed!  So we started out with 100 Day.  In my school, kindergarten and first grade do a big thing for 100 Day, but that's it.  I still think it's a fun thing, maybe because I taught kindergarten and first grade, so I still do a little something.  The kids have a fun coloring sheet to do when they come in and they have a snack waiting for them: a pretzel rod to be the 1 and two mini donuts (a chocolate and a powdered) to be the 0s to make 100.  We also read 100 Day books as well.
Then we moved on to learning about Abraham Lincoln and Black History Month, which really tie in well with each other.  We had learned a little bit in our social studies book and with Martin Luther King in January so now we are learning more.
Then it was student-led conference week and Valentine's Day, with Valentine's Day falling on the half-day conference day.  So I had conferences all week, a couple a day before and after school, and then it was time to celebrate.  When our long conference day falls on Valentine's Day, I do a breakfast theme for our party.  I bring in a toaster and ask others to bring in toasters and we have eggo toaster waffles with fun toppings (strawberries, blueberries, whip cream, syrup, chocolate sauce).  This year I also asked for pop-tarts and one of my student's aunts also brought in pigs in a blanket which was a HUGE hit.  Then of course milk or orange juice.  Much better to me than having candy and cupcakes in the morning since the students got out at 11:45AM.  While we were toasting things I had the students do a great Valentine ABC hunt and Valentine Linking Verbs hunt from the fabulous Christina Bainbridge.  So the students walked around the classroom and hallway with their clipboards and found the words and followed the directions.  It kept them busy and moving around and learning at the same time!  Not bad for a party.  lol  As the students finished, they went to get food and start eating.  As they finished eating I had them do conversation heart math.  When they finished THAT, then they were able to start going around and pass out their Valentines, which is all they want to do anyway.  It was a nice, low-key party, which is what I like for the last big holiday party.  Halloween is the craziest and then it goes down from there.  We made these Valentine holders during the week as part of Art of the Week to collect the valentines in.

They were an idea from Michaels craft store's online page a few years ago and I make them every year.  I think they are great to hold everything in because they are big and have the handles.  The bags come in a pack of 13 and I use my 40% off coupon to get them.  I go in 2 times so I can use 2 coupons.  In the past I have also put them on my donation letter to the parents as well.  I cut the mouths in the bags beforehand, and made a cardboard tracer for the students to use for their heart faces and then they just match it up to the mouth on the bag and make any creature they want.  Mine is the last one, it's a love bug. :)  I get the fun foam shapes for the students to add to it too.  They love it.
So after the party, it was time to clean up, eat lunch, and do my last 16 conferences.  That's the night we have to be there until 8PM.  It was a good day though.  The kids were great during the day and made me feel loved, we had fun, and the conferences went well.
With all of the extra hours we put in for conference week we always get the next day off and then we had Presidents' Day off as well so it was a nice 4-day weekend.  I baby-sat my niece Josie and worked on 2 more packs for TPT and TN stores.  Then we started learning about George Washington too.  The class this past week did an art of the week on what they would do if they were president and it turned out cute.  I'll take a picture this week once everyone is finished to show you.  It was an idea from The First Grade Parade and I just modified it a bit.
This week we are doing a paper plate craft of the lion and the lamb.  We haven't done it in a couple of years and with March coming on Friday, it works out well to do it this year.  The students predict whether March will come in like a lion or a lamb and they either make a lamb head (with cotton balls) or a lion head (strips of brown paper) as their prediction and then they have to write what they chose and why (as we do Art of the Week as a Work on Writing choice, so we always adding writing into it).
Here is a freebie of the writing paper I made to go with it:

We also have a new evaluation system and a big thing with it is making sure that students are reflecting and assessing themselves on their learning.  This can be a hard thing with 2nd graders.  They did a good job at conferences because I made sure to tell them that they would be sharing their reflections with their parents and me.  This sparked me to create a rubric for them to use during Daily 5 as my team mates and I were talking about it.  At this time of year the students have been doing Daily 5 so long and they start to get spring fever that they don't do as good of a job as they did when it was newer.  There are a lot more people wandering or talking.  My kids do better at this because I bribe them with prize coins for students who do a good job, lol, but I still thought I'd make a rubric for them to use as well.  The rubric contains the statements we wrote on the I-charts for each Daily 5 center.  So if they do everything that we wrote, they earn a 3, if they mostly did it but had some trouble with focus or chattiness, they get a 2, if they are one of the wanderers they get a 1.  I put it in my tpt shop as a freebie if you are interested.  Click on the pic below to take you there.  

Well I hope you have a great weekend and week!  Hopefully I'll be back on soon with pictures of bulletin boards and projects!  :)

February!!!

Here it is February.  I haven't blogged in a month.  Broke that resolution really fast.  lol  This is why I never make them...
So we went back to school on the 7th, things were busy trying to get back into the swing of things and I didn't take time to blog.  We also have a new evaluation system going on state wide and I had my formal observation the week we got back from break and I had to get ready for that.  Then things started getting down to the wire with us maybe going on strike and I was trying to get a lot of stuff done before that happened because I was going to have turn in my laptop.  Well we did go on strike and I had to say good-bye to my laptop until it was over.  Thank goodness I got an iphone last year so I at least I had a tiny computer to keep up to date on things.  We were on strike 3 days in the January cold.  I don't know if any of you have ever been on strike, this was my first time.  Now it's not something I enjoyed, or would want to do again, but let me tell you I bonded with all of the teachers in my district and I didn't know that would happen.  It was amazing how close we all became.  We also had great support of most of the school families so that was wonderful and helped to lift the spirits too as we were bundled up in 20 degree temperatures.  We were back in school by the Tuesday after MLK Jr. day, so that is when I got my computer back.  We were very lucky it was over by then because it was frigid around here with highs of 11 degrees.  I was happy to be back in school and to have my laptop back, but I was behind on things because of it.  One of those things was my post-observation reflection write-up.  Then I had to have my meeting.  Luckily it all went well.  Also thrown in the mix was NWEA testing that my students had to do!  lol  So now I'm finally caught up on everything and I am able to blog again!!  Hope everything has been going well with you for the last month!
Both of my stores (teachers pay teachers and teacher's notebook) are joining in on the Super Sales that they are both throwing.  Luckily I was able to finish up Unit 4 today for my Treasures packs and those are posted on there too so people can get them on sale if they'd like.  I have tpt set up for 20% off sales and then of course you get the extra percentage off by using the promo code.  I can't wait to get some of the things on my wishlist on sale!

For teacher's notebook, all of my items are on sale for 25% off.  

It really is going to be a SUPER Sunday!!!  I hope everyone has a fantastic day and if you're into the actual game, hope whoever you're rooting for wins.  lol

:)

Friday Freebie! :)

Hello again!  Look at that!  Another post this week!  Amazing!  lol  Maybe that will be my resolution this year, to try to post at least once a week!  lol

So today I'm linking up with TBA's Friday Freebies (which I have not done in a long time).  My freebie is something that is part of my new packet on TPT.  It's graphic organizers for the students to use to write an animal report.  Just click on any of the pictures below to take you to the page you'll find it on and click on the "Download Preview" button.  I hope you will find this useful.  We have used something similar to this before and I think this will help make things even easier for the students this year.

In other news, today I'm taking down all of my Christmas decorations.  Always so sad.  I love the light of the Christmas tree.  My eldest sister and her kids (teenagers) come over to help me put it up and to take it down, so at least that makes it better.  I'm also hoping to make another packet for TPT today, but we'll see how that goes.  I wanted to do that yesterday too and ended up spending the whole day with my dad after I took him to his doctor appointment, which was nice, just didn't get a lot done.  lol  We'll see what happens today.  Have a very Happy Friday everyone!  :)

Happy New Year! :)

So I've been slacking again with coming on here because with everything going on with the holidays there was no time!  My winter break started on Christmas Eve :( .  So there was that, then Christmas, then my birthday (the 26th), then it was cleaning up from all of that and worked a bit on school stuff, and then it was New Year's Eve.  It's just been crazy.  I did get another unit done for my tpt shop so that made me happy and I have a ton of stuff to share for the Monthly Monday Made-It, next Monday.  lol  Just haven't been on here.
We go back to school Monday, January 7th.  That is also when the kiddos come back.  So today I went into school to get it ready for January and their return.  Took all of the holiday decorations down, put Elfie away until next year, switched the monthly book shelf and calendar to January, put up my schedule for Monday, wrote my daily message, got homework packets ready (Welcome back to school, have a homework packet lol), morning work ready, name tags switched over to cursive so we can start learning it, an old bulletin board down and a new one up.  That was pretty good for 3 hrs I felt.  I don't plan on going back again until Monday now, so I have a couple more days of break left, however that involves putting away Christmas decorations at my house and working on some more things for school.  lol
Here is one of the bulletin boards that is still up, our Gingerbread glyphs.

This one is mine, my example.  The students were then able to write a story about their gingerbread person or a how-to on how to make one.  They turned out cute.  Notice all of the green hats?  Those are elf gingerbreads.  Once one made one, it was a ripple effect.  The red one is Santa and the boy who made that one said all of the other ones are his elves.  lol  Definitely creative!  

We had a nice winter celebration party.  The kiddos got to come to school in their jammies and bring a pillow, blanket, robe, slippers, stuffed animal, and board game.  The morning was work time, but not really.  They were mostly finishing their presents for their families (the kids make/decorate calendars to give.  I print out monthly calendars and we glue them into a bound book made with construction paper, and then the kids add pictures that they draw for each month, so when you open it up it's like a normal calendar with picture on top, calendar on bottom).  Then after lunch they were able to play their board games they brought in, then it was time to go to art, and my parent helpers came in and helped me pass out the supplies for the Rudolph windsocks we were making and start the hot chocolate.  They came back from art, we made the art project, and then moved on to the snack craft.  

Which was inspired by this pin on pinterest,

I don't have any peanut allergies this year, so this is what we made.  The top one is a student's version.  lol  Still cute and yummy.  As they were making those groups were called up to get their other goodies to eat and hot chocolate.  Then I put on Garfield Christmas while they were eating.  Nice and laid back party, it was great!  

Now I'm also linking up with Swimming in Second Grade for her 

I agree that most of my boys love and gravitate towards the non-fiction books, but I have other books that they love as well.  :)

 

These are by far the most popular books in my room right now!  It's crazy.  I've had these books for years.  They were one of the $5 Kohl's Cares for Kids books at one time.  I also have Dog Train, but it's missing in action.  They are books with these silly songs and come with CDs.  When I first got them, they just sat there.  No one ever "read" them.  Last year and this year, they fight over them!  I actually had to take them away before break because the same boys would hog them.  They love them. 

Since I have taken the above away, this is now the most popular book in my class.  

Very silly book and of course, they love that it has the "s word" in the title.  lol  I personally like the Little Red Hen in the book, she makes me laugh.  

Other popular books right now are the Pete the Cat books.  I have 2 in my room.  The first one and this one.  

Again, there is music so that's probably a draw for it as well.  

All of the above are picked again and again as part of Listen to Reading.  The following books are put in their individual book boxes a lot.  

 

These books have been to the book hospital a lot over the years.  I think every single page inside the books is taped in.  lol  If you don't know the books, they are very fun.  They star Dav Pilkey's real pets.  He took photos of them and created fun stories based on Godzilla and King Kong.  They are fun and creative.

I think I own every single Fly Guy book and even have multiples of a couple of them and they are read a lot too.  Nice easy reading, cute story about a fly and a boy.  

This one is only seeing a little bit of love right now, but I use it to teach alliteration (as each superhero has a name with alliteration and does superhero things with their letter as well).  Once I read this book to the class, again it's non-stop love and wanting it for the book boxes.  The pictures are really fun in this book as well.  

I have a few Phonics Comics that I picked up a couple of summer's ago (the above being one of them), but I also have other comics too.  I have the ones from my youth, which actually aren't read as much and others that I bought at the same time as the Phonics Comics (Mickey Mouse and other ones) and those are read quite a bit too.  

I also LOVE these books.  They are very fun and really is there a kid out that that doesn't like them.  I love them even more because it's getting some of my boys to read with expression while reading the stories aloud.  

My boys also enjoy Dr. Seuss books and of course right now The Lorax is very popular.  

The last piece of "boy" literature I'm going to share are the Lego Magazines.  I subscribe and get one I think once a month and it's completely free.  The boys get so excited when a new one comes in the mail.  

So those are the books my boys love, but all the kids enjoy them.  Hope this gave some of you ideas.  This may be a dangerous linky for me to look through as I'm a bit of a children's book addict, but it will be fun!  :)