Five for Friday and a Special Announcement

I have been loading photos to IG almost daily and have neglected my blog. I am 9 days away from the last day of school and I'm so ready to hang out with my babies! Here's a roundup of this week's shenanigans.

The military has a special place in my heart. My class had a blast writing friendly letters. We wanted to include something small, but meaningful so we created these flags from our handprints. 

We are just days away from the last day of school and the kiddies can get off the chain. Enter GoNoodle. It's so nice to do a few energizing videos to get our sillies out and then a couple of calming ones to get us back to business. If you haven't used GoNoodle you need to start!
It's a sanity-saver!

We had field day this week. Yes, I am 30 years old and yes, I participated with my students. It was so fun! I especially like the water activities! Here's a photo I took from my place in line.

I love that so many of my littles came in reading a level 3 {or lower} and are now reading level 24 and above! Here are some of my readers during Daily 5. {Excuse my messy classroom!}

Reading miracles happen in first grade folks!

 

I got some news about my placement. {If you recall: I asked to go back to second and then started to feel sentimental about first so then I asked to stay in first, but I hadn't gotten any word on that.} I'm happy to announce that I will be looping up with my 26 firsties to SECOND GRADE! I love this class and I am excited I get to keep them for another school year! I know a few will be moving away or placed in other classes {it happens!}, but I am so excited to be their teacher again. I like that I already know what challenges lay ahead so I can do what I do best...plan ahead. 

We only have 9 days left and only 3 of those are real "instructional" days.

Link up with so we can know your Five for Friday. 

Five for Friday (March 7th)

It's been a while since I linked up. 

Life has been busy and I've been using IG to post updates about my class.

This week was a fun, but a busy one. We celebrated a certian Doc all week and embedded some doc related activities into our curriculum. We covered soil, goods and services, procedural writing, following oral and written multi-step directions, and time to the five minutes.

Here are 5 photos that sum up my week! Enjoy!

To start off our week we had Crazy Hat day on Monday. 

Most kids didn't bring hats so we made these by following multi-step oral directions. 

What are they working on? They're making puppets so when we wrote a "How To" this week they were able to rely on what they did to create their own how to writing. 

So we read a Dr. Seuss book story everyday and completed a following directions activity I created based on the story. I have most Dr. Seuss books, but I just love this APP and pressing auto-play. 

It's like magic. The kids are like moths to a flame and you can literally hear a pin drop. 

(Most stories were 99 cents in honor of Dr. Seuss' Birthday.) 

 One of our following directions activities was to create a Horton Hat. I just love that this cutie colored her ears rainbow. One of my written steps was to: Color the ears any color you choose.  

We are a no homework policy school, but from time to time we like to send home take home projects. We asked parents to help their child decorate a posterboard cutout as a community worker or whatever job their child would like to have when they grew up. 

The kiddies had to answer a questionairre about it too. 

I'm on Spring Break so this is how I rolled out Friday at 3:00 p.m.

Hope you all have an amazing week!

Five for Friday (Dec. 6th)

So I admit. Sunday night I was in no way ready to return to school. 

The week had went by in a blink! I was out for 5 glorious days. 

I did ZERO teacher related things on my break. It was AMAZING!

To my surprise I had the BEST first week back. EVER. 

5 days down and 10 more to go until Christmas Break. WOOT! WOOT!

My Monday was awesome. I got to get some really awesome CYBER Monday deals. I won't bore you with what I bought my home or my kids. This is what I had to have from the TPT sale :D

 Like a lot of you my Social Studies curriculum calls for some Holiday and Traditions learning and I've had my eye on this since Ms. Kuster put it in her shop on tpt. Check it out! 

I also adore all things from Graphics from the Pond. So I had to get these items. 

    

I swear if I ever win the lotto I will buy everything from Mel's tpt stores. Her graphics and products are too cute! 

Guilty. I really was expecting my students to be off the chain, but those little sweeties suprised me. I was ready to pull out all my tricks to help curb their behavior, but there was no need. Other teachers were just going on and on about how her their students acting like it was a full moon or being already too excited for Christmas. I am so flippin' proud of my 25 firsties. 

They really are the bomb diggity!

We learned about main idea and how to search for details. We made paper plate snowmen and wrote a How to Build a Snowman. We represented numbers to 60. We learned how technology has changed and used timelines. We continued our weather unit and made rain gauges (and it acutally rained)! My firsties totally rocked everything. To top it all off, I benchmarked most of my students reading levels and so many of my firsties are reading J, K,L, M. . . 

We were so busy learning and having fun I have ZERO photos to share! 

I know I am just awful! I need to post photos because their work is getting so CUUUTE and my lil' friends handwriting is looking so much better these days too!  

This happens sometimes. I swear they are doing so much better to stay on task and not do this. This week someone came to my classroom. He just walked right in. He had an iPad in his hands and an official looking badge so I went right on teaching. I figured he was doing a walk through and my admin was fully aware of it. They have a tendency of sending people my way and I've just decided to go with it. 

*SCARY PART* Later, I learn he did not have permission to observe my class and that he was someone from another school district! Apparently, he had been visiting other schools in the area without permission as well! The secretaries now have to be more thorough when issuing vistor's passes. . .

Lastly, I have ZERO voice. No, I'm not sick. I sang all week with 4 of our first grade sections (92 kids) to help us prepare for the our annual Winter Production. We will sing "Up on the Housetop" and "All I want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth". Acapella. I led the students and we sang over and over. Good news is they got the words down and the moves we came up with. 

They are adorable and I just know their parents will love the production. 

That's it for me. Stop back by so you can see when I update with photos! 

Five for Friday on a Sunday and a Freebie!

So the last 3 weeks have been h-e-double hockey sticks! Just so busy. Too many deadlines and not enough hours in the day. I haven't been getting much sleep. If you're a teacher I know that you know exactly how I feel. Some weeks are just like that. So here are some highlights. . .

A student left and my class was down to 23 again, but then 3 more showed up and I'm up to 26 kids. No aide or intern teacher yet. I'm actually liking it. I have 12 girls and 14 boys and I just love them to pieces. My classroom is getting a mini makeover to accommodate everyone. Pics coming soon.

I got a grant from Pets in the Classroom. Now I need to get my fish. I did this one on a whim and I'm so excited to get this.  I have had other animals in my room that I purchased on my own. I feel so happy to not have to do that this time. I'll have a longer post when I make my purchases and after my kiddies have seen them.

Our PE staff is excellent. They are always finding ways to keep us moving. As a school we participate in Fast Feet Friday. Each section competes against the others in a grade level for trophies 2 Friday's a month during our students' PE time. To get our community involved families are invited to participate and help us win one the trophies. And the competitive teachers like me join their students. We have team names. My class is Chickadee Jubilee because my theme is Boho birds. I used to use Winged Wild Things when my classroom theme was Where the Wild Things (Learn) Are.
Anywho, we won the "guest" trophy again. My little ones were ecstatic!

Our Dyslexia Staff put on a competition this week. They gave clues about a different famous person who has dyslexia every morning during the announcements. Teachers were to send in their guesses in on paper everyday this week by 9 a.m. We were very excited to find out that we won! We were treated to a movie and popcorn. Here are 24 of my 26 kidlets enjoying their popcorn and movie. 2 of my littles were at speech so they got to go later.

Lastly, after 9 week benchmark testing in all subjects all day, Friday night was our annual fall festival. Each grade level had to man 2 game and 1 food booth. We had a "pin the nose on the pumpkin booth" and "bobbing for apples." Our Fall Festival is a way to fundraise for our field trips. Overall, we had a great turn out. Our teachers looked like zombies after a 12 hour day. Hopefully, we have earned enough for our first field trip. Here's a pic of our posters before the Festival began.

That's it for me. Be sure to check up on my TPT store. Check this little diddy out.

I have started to post freebies there. I plan on adding more products. I'm inputting grades and uploading freebies sounds like a funner thing to do. . . 

I can't believe the first nine weeks is over.

Five for Friday

Time for my favorite linky party. I'm sooo exhaustipated though so I'll be brief.

Anyone else feeling this week?
I think I went to bed early everyday all week and if you know me you know that this is NOT normal! I usually run best on 4-5 hours of sleep. I've been getting 7-8 hours all week! WHAT!?

I finally finished TPRI testing (right after WRAP testing) my 24 kiddies. I am so ready for testing to be over. Can I get an AMEN!? I love teaching, but if we could go without testing that would great! Wednesday we test our littles our district math benchmark. . . BLEH!

My students are just too precious. We got to change matter this week with heat. They have LOVED every minute. We also melted crayons, chocolate chips, and butter. . .  Pretty much anything we could make a mess with.

I need to get better at remembering to take photos during the school day . . .

We made sensory poems and my students totally rocked them! It helps that we had already covered our 5 senses in science. I literally gave them one example and they WANTED to try it.
My example:
                            June is yellow.
                            It looks like fun in the sun.
                            It smells like fresh cut grass.
                            It tastes like popsicles. 
                            It sounds like kids laughing.
                            June feels like sliding down a water slide. 
My little firsties chose their own month and their ideas were so creative. This one brought tears to my eyes. . .

I dislike having a sub with a capital H.  .  . but there was no way around it. I was invited to attend a math workshop with the one and only, Kim Sutton. I know most people usually love her or hate her, I love all the loot I get when I go. 

Ha Ha I use it all in my classroom and I got to go with most of our vertical math team so it was fun. The sub, by the way, did not follow directions. At. all. (UGH)

And lastly, my oldest will be 8 years old on Monday. (SIGH) 

Wish I could keep my little princess little for longer. 

We are celebrating tomorrow so I better get some sleep. 

Don't forget to link up!

-Sandy