Is it really almost July? This summer is flying by! I'm linking up with Farley from Oh' Boy 4th Grade for her famous Currently. This is my first Currently and I'm super excited. I love reading everyone else Currently and now I'm ready to write my own.
Listening: My house is pretty quiet right now. Both of my boys are sleeping and my husband is at work, he works nights and I hate it! I can hear my 8 month old snoring and his nature sound machine. He doesn't like quiet, so we've found one of the only was to get him to sleep through the night is the sound machine. MAGIC :).
Loving: QR Codes! I made a back to school one earlier and right now I'm working on one for beginning sounds. I'm in LOVE with using them as a station and I know my kids will be too. Here is the one I'm working on right now. What do you think?
Thinking: What I want to do tomorrow with my 2 year old? Today we went to one of his friend's birthday party and he had a blast. I'm thinking of looking on Pinterest to find an inside activity for us to do tomorrow. One of my facebook friends did paint in a bag...maybe I'll try that.
Wanting: I would LOVE to go swimming tonight. There is just something so refreshing about going swimming at night. I use to work at Schlitterbahn during the summers and that was my favorite thing about being a Supervisor. We had nightly meetings on Sunday nights and most of the times we had an activity in the water. People hated them because we would have to swim against the current but I loved it. After we just got to relax and talk in the water, it was my favorite.
Needing: I have a load of laundry in the dryer and a load in the basket that I really need to fold. I hate folding!
Tips: Take time to enjoy all the little things with your family. I do love listening to them breathe when they are sleeping. I also love how my little one can still fit nicely on my chest and I love having tickle fights with my two year old. My boys are growing up too fast and the blogging, creating, and house work need to come after them. That is why I love blogging at night when they are asleep and creating early in the morning.
Well that is my Currently for July. I do wish this summer would slow down...I am LOVING spending time with my two boys.
Happy Friday y'all! I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for the weekly Five for Friday linky. Click on the linky button below to head over to her website and link up your post.
1. On Sunday, we celebrated Maddox turning 8 months old. I can't believe he is already 8 months old. He is crawling, pulling up, eating lots of fruits and vegetables, and saying "hi" and "mama". Oh and chasing after his big brother. He is such a sweet baby and always smiling. I am loving spending the summer with him :).
2. Mason and I have been enjoying reading this summer. One of his favorite characters is Bob the Builder, so we read this Bob's Birthday book. It's one from my classroom library that I brought home when I was packing up my classroom. After reading the book Mason kept singing, "Happy Birthday to ME!!!" Then during bath time he asked, "Mama where is my cake?" I felt AWFUL! His birthday isn't until November! Yikes, how do you tell a 2 year old it isn't their birthday. So the next day we went to the store and he picked out some green cupcake mix and we made cupcakes. He was super excited. Anything to make great childhood memories :).
3. Here is my coupon helper at the grocery store. Don't you just love being able to shop during the week and not have long lines. I DO!!
P.S. That green garbage truck goes with us EVERYWHERE. He even sleeps with it!
4. We have a small fish aquarium at home and my husband bought a snail right before school got out. Today we woke up to find this....a HUGE egg sack. After doing some research online we learned that our snail must have gotten pregnant while at the pet shop. It will take 3 to 4 weeks to hatch and she can have hundreds of baby snails. Anyone want to adopt a baby snail?!?!
5. Today is my 5th wedding anniversary! My husband and I have been super blessed, look at our beautiful family! The blue pinwheel represents our first son Tyler that passed away right before birth. The Lord has truly blessed us with 3 amazing sons. I can't wait to see what the next 5 years has in store for us. I love you honey!
To celebrate my 5 year wedding anniversary, I'm having a 5% off sale on all of my products in my TpT store. I'm working on an ABC QR Code Hunt that I hope to finish today, so I can add it to the sale. Also, don't forget to enter my giveaway that ends Sunday night. Thanks for stopping by and helping me celebrate 5 years of marriage :).
I'm linking up this week with Ashley Reed over at Just Reed for her weekly Ten Pin Linky Party. This week is Math PINspiration. I'm a day late to this party but better late than never ... right?!?
Click on the Linky Button below to link up and share your ten favorite Math Pins.
Now for my Math PINspiration....
1. This next year my district has adopted Math in Focus (Singapore Math) as our curriculum. This is the first year we have had a set curriculum. One of the key concepts of Math in Focus is using Bar Models to represent part,part, whole. They are also used in problem solving to solve the unknown. I found some wonderful pins on how to use them during stations. My favorite one is using Legos to solve. This idea is from All About Legos.
2. I also found that Kimberly Geswein has a Bar Models font. I downloaded it and I can't wait to create some products for math stations.
3. I'm super lucky to have an Activboard in my classroom and I use it a ton in Math. One of the kids favorite things is the Math Illuminations website. They love using it during workstations.
4. These will just make my life so much easier! I'm very OCD and these will work so much better then the Ziploc baggies I've been using. Thanks Bomb-Diggity Classroom for this idea!
5. I LOVE these place value initials from Bishop's Blackboard. I think this would be great for the first couple of weeks of school.
6. The kids are always asking what time is lunch? specials? recess? Now the important times are always visually displayed. Perfect!
7. Did anyone ever play "Guess Who"? My BFF and I did all the time. This is a little spin on it and the kids guess the number. I think you could also do this whole class and the kids could use a 100s Chart to help them guess. This idea is from Classe Grenadine.
8. I think Amy Lemons has several fantastic math ideas. Wouldn't you just love to be a student in her class? I know I would! I just love her math anchor charts. I couldn't pick just one that I liked, so I decided to pick both her Multiplication and Division anchor charts. Her lessons that go with them are great!!
9. My friend Amanda made these two super heros "Addition Allie" and "Subtraction Sammie" to help kids know when to add and when to subtract. I did these with my firsties last year but mine didn't turn out anywhere near as cute as hers.
10. Since I'll be teaching Math twice next year, I've been looking at different Math Walls. I'm in awe of all the work that Reagan Tunstall has done. Have you seen her new math teacher resources...aMAYzing :). I love how she has essential questions.
Ok, well those are my top 10 math pins. I have them nicely organized in my new "Math" board. I use to have them all in one "Classroom" board but this has really helped me feel more organized pinterest wise :).
Make sure you check out my giveaway in the post below this one, it ends Saturday night!
I'm
super excited to be starting a new year in a new grade level. I know
what your thinking .... it's still summer!! Yes, yes I know it is and I'm enjoying
it but I do have Second Grade on the brain and it's exciting to plan a
little at a time.
The most exciting thing about this new school year is that I am getting two things I've wanted for a LONG time. I'm getting a document camera and some iPads ... HOLLA! Am I lucky or what?
So one of the things I've wanted to do with my kiddos and haven't been able to is QR codes. No devices with cameras=no QR codes. Now that I'll have an iPad or two I can :). So I made my first QR code activity and here it is.....
I set this up to be an icebreaker for the first day of school kinda like a getting to know you activity. The kids will read the QR code prompts that will send them to 4 different stations. During their hunt, they will be prompted to find a new "friend" at each station and write down their name. The four stations are favorite color, favorite food, favorite type of books to read, and favorite activity. Here are some examples of each.
My favorite thing about this QR code activity is that I included an "I Can" poster, perfect for those visual kiddos.
And of course you need a good recording sheet to go with the activity.
I'm super excited to make some more QR code activities. This one was so much fun to make! I am so excited that I would like to giveaway two of my "Finding Friends" QR code activity. Just use the Rafflecopter below to enter. a Rafflecopter giveaway
I had so much fun joining the Ten Pin Linky party this morning, that I decided that I wanted to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for her very famous Five for Friday. I've been reading almost everyone's week and I'm super excited to finally be able to link up.
1. On Monday, my husband and I finished moving the last of my school stuff to my new classroom. I had been in that room for 4 years and had some great times and some pretty low times. It was hard to turn in my key knowing that I wouldn't be back in the same room next year. I am looking forward to next year, a new grade level, and finally being in the main building. I've been at 2 schools and 3 different grade levels and I've ALWAYS been in an outside building. Isn't that funny! Now I'll finally not have to worry about leaving my keys in my room and being locked out. Plus my new room is bigger!! Here are some pictures of my empty room.
2. I took a really neat class this week called iCreate on a Mobile Device. It was a class that my district held but the instructor was an educator who works for Apple. I know dream job!! I learned about this new app that I can't wait to use with my Second Graders. It's called Haiku Deck. The kids can create slide presentations on just about any topic. I was also thinking they could use them to publish their writing and since I'm teaching in the Dual Language program the kids could make slides of vocabulary words in either language as a tutorial for others. It would have the picture and then the word in both English and Spanish.
The app lets you add your own pictures or you can search for pictures in the app. Really great and simple for our primary kiddos. 3. This little guy learned how to stand up in his crib. Yikes!!
He's been pulling up for a few weeks now but this week was the first time he did it in his crib. So we had to lower his crib (sad face)...they grow up too fast!
4. This year my next door teaching neighbor retired (super duper sad face). She is the one that encouraged me over and over to join TpT until I finally did. I owe her a lot! Anyways, I got to see her this week because she is borrowing our bumbo for her niece that is visiting. She gave us a gift card to Chick-fil-a as a thank you, so we took our boys today. Mason was really excited, he kept saying nuggets almost all the way there. Poor Maddox all he got were some cheerios. Here are my two little boys.
5. I spent a lot of time creating and working on my blog this week. It's been a ton of fun meeting new teaching friends and learning new things. I added a pinterest hover over button and a new "add my button" button!
Thanks for reading my very first Five for Friday! Check out my last blog post for a classroom management freebie.
Today is the first day of summer y'all! I can't wait to hit up the pool with my two little cuties. Well as soon as we kick these sniffles that we've been having...YUCK!!
It's so fitting that today is the official first day of summer because today is technically my first day of summer vacation. I'm completely moved out of my old room and yesterday was my last day of training (well until the end of July). I went to Singapore Math training, new Math TEKS update (Texas equivalent to Common Core), Learning.com training camp, and a super cool iCreate on a mobile device training. So cool that I hope to have a tutorial up soon of some of the apps I discovered.
So I decided to link up with Ashley over at Just Reed to start her Ten Pin Linky, I'm new to the party and late but I am super excited to link up. Just click on her super cute Linky button below to link up as well.
This week I'm sharing 10 of my favorite Classroom Management Pins and let me tell you I had a "different" year this year. Yes "different" is the word for last year. Things that normally work great for me I had toss out the window and things I thought that would never work, worked like magic. I was gone on maternity leave for 8 weeks and the truth is no matter how great your sub is, they aren't you and they don't manage your class the way you would if you were there. So here are some things that worked for me last year and a few that I wished I would have found earlier.
1. Class Dojo worked like MAGIC for my kiddos this year. It's super easy to start an account and it's free to join.
The kids can earn or lose points depending on their behavior during the day. It has a few options set up for you like staying on task, completing work, and helping others. I added a few of my own like being a bucket filler, good lunchroom behavior, great hallway procedures and of course the opposite bucket dipper, silly lunchroom behavior, and silly hallway procedures. The kids hated getting those!
The site even has a super cute introduction video that you can show the students. Here it is so you can see it.
Also check out Mrs.Wills' Kindergarten, she has an awesome Class Dojo certificate that you can grab. I wish I would have seen it in time to use with my kiddos this year but I will definitely use it this next year!
2. My old teacher partner, who I miss terribly, came up with these awesome DeBug System steps for kids to follow. It's been five years since we started teaching together and I still use it. Check out her site and grab her DeBug freebie. I put it in the front of my student's Getting Organized "G.O" binder that they take home everyday.
3. I also use this Conduct Form that I send home in the student's G.O. Binder. I put it behind the DeBug System. My friend Amanda has one that you can grab. Just click on the picture to pick it up.
4. I also just started to use the Too Loud app in my classroom. I did have a few students that would like to make noises to make it go off but nothing that Class Dojo didn't fix :).
5. The Desk Fairy was my kids favorite...although she only visited a few times "teacher fail"! Maybe the kids' desks just weren't up to her high standards!
Check out Sarah Cooley's blog First Grader...at Last! to hear more about The Desk Fairy.
6. I think this would be a great "whole group" incentive. The kids have to work together to earn the parts to complete Mr. Potato Head. They could earn the hands for helping others, the mouth for using inside voices, the shoes for showing great hallway procedures, and so many other options. I'm definitely going to try it next year.
7. I have a terrible time getting kids to return books that they check out and take home after guided reading. I pinned this app that allows you to scan your books, import your student roster, and check the books out to your students. I can't wait to use it!!
8. I had an awful time last year that student would take other student's materials or spot while the student was in the bathroom or in small group. I found these reserve signs that I am totally using next year. I hope it will save me a lot of tears!
9. No matter how hard I try my class still gets a little noisy during stations. Not bad noisy, just engaged and sharing noisy. Reagan Tunstall has these awesome "Quiet Phones" that her students can wear if they want to not be distracted by the noise. I think it's the perfect way to reuse old broken headphones.
10. It was hard to pick a last one but I think I like ..... this "I Can Be a Good Listener" from Christie at First Grade Fever! I love how it has a visual of each step. The "Look" is my favorite :)
Well those are my Top 10 Pins for Classroom Management. Sorry it was so long but I hope you found some of them to be helpful. As a thank you for staying with me this long here is a freebie for you for next year. I got the idea of making a punch card from Amanda Richardson. My kids loved eating lunch with me, so I decided that was a super reward. The kids earned hole punches on their card and when they filled their card they got to pick two friends to eat lunch in the classroom. Click on the picture below to grab my newly updated :) "Lunch Bunch Punch Card". Thanks Amanda for the inspiration.
I've been in the process of moving rooms over the last week and it's caused me to do a lot of rethinking in a lot of areas. I'm moving to Second Grade and joining the Dual Language program at my school. I have been teaching self-contained First Grade for four years now and I felt like it was time for a change. I think this is the most excited I've been to start the new school year. Don't get me wrong I'm more excited to spend the summer with my two little boys but I'm also looking forward to a fresh new start in Second :).
One of the first changes I looked into was labeling. I'm always the teacher with the cute name labels and tubs but it takes me too many hours each August y'all :(. Plus with twice the number of kids (44...two classes in the DL program), I just don't have the time. So I decided to label my math tubs with numbers instead of names this year. That way each group of kids can share tubs and I don't have to find spaces for 44 math tubs :). Right now my room is mostly polka dot with stick kids and I'm in LOVE with Ashley Hughes' kid bundle and I picked it up during her Deal of the Day...check it out if you haven't yet.
So I came up with this set of number labels. I made two different sets one is a color pattern and then one is a solid color every 6 numbers. I also included blank labels for you to write in student's names if you are still interested in labeling with names :).
I also added two features that I think are pretty neat. I added a student number chart in 6 different colors for you to post your student's number and I also included a black and white version for you to print on your favorite color of cardstock.
I also made the same version in a separate chalkboard version. I love it so much I might have to rethink my polka dot decor and change to a chalkboard decor :).
So I am super excited to host my first giveaway and it ends tomorrow, Monday, at 8pm central standard time. Here is how you can earn three entries and I'm giving away three copies (your choice of polka dot or chalkboard).
