Five for Friday - Back to School Edition!

Does it feel like a Friday to you? It definitely doesn't feel like a Friday to me. Summer Fridays are just like any other day, as opposed to school-year Fridays which are the holy grail of all work days ;)

It looks like I'll be back to valuing my Fridays pretty soon! Tomorrow is already August 1st. We return for inservice on the 17th and our students report on the 18th. I am supposed to get my class list this upcoming Monday and I am itching in anticipation!

In the meantime, I've taken on a few little projects to help me get ready for the upcoming year. Check them out below in my Five for Friday post {hosted by Doodle Bugs Teaching}.

One thing I decided to do is update my classroom newsletter.  After reading a bunch of articles about reasons why parents might not be reading the classroom news, I opted for a bolder look that is broken down into more distinct sections. There is room for a brief teacher message at the top, followed by important dates, learning targets, and questions to ask students throughout the week to review content. At the very bottom I have my contact information listed. I love how it turned out and can't wait to use it!

Okay. I saw this shirt and I just couldn't resist. Pete the Cat fanatic for life.

This year I really want to implement math journals within my math workshop rotations. I love the idea of having smaller math journals because first graders definitely do not need an entire page per math prompt. I had heard that stores will cut notebooks in half for you but I guess I was always too nervous to ask (does cutting notebooks in half make me look like a crazy person?) I'm so glad I finally bit the bullet and went through with it! Each notebook was only 50 cents at Staples. Although the women at the copy center had never heard such a request before, they were super helpful and even packed my little notebooks into a cute little cardboard box for me.

After ordering a bunch of decor from School Girl Style, I realized I neglected to order turquoise borders that I wanted for my classroom.  Stubborn me did not want to pay almost ten dollars in shipping for a few feet of border, so I grabbed a random color from my local Staples and decided to attempt spray painting!

In the middle picture, you can see my man helping this first-timing spray painter get an even coat onto the borders :) I love the color - the pictures do not do it justice! The paint only cost me a bit over three dollars at the Home Depot and apparently works on a bunch of different materials and surfaces. 

Although my students' folders are all color-coded by subject, labeling them makes everything so much easier (and cuter!) I can't tell you how many times I had to remind certain students which color their writing folder was or which folder held their reader's workshop materials. Hopefully this solution will alleviate some of those issues! To save space, I printed two subjects on each label and plan on snipping them in half when the time comes. I'm now realizing I could have just purchased smaller label sizes...maybe next year!

What kinds of things are you doing to prepare for back-to-school?

Five for Friday! {July 17, 2015}

It's been too long since I've done a Five for Friday post! I think mainly due to the fact that I've been up to nothing interesting this summer besides grad school, struggling hard at the gym, and napping like it's my job ;)

Throughout it all, I still haven't really been able to turn my teacher-brain off. Today officially marks the "one-month until it's back-to-school" countdown. Summer flew by but I am so ready to get into my classroom and prepare for the upcoming year!

'Tis the season to spend all my money at Target! Wait, I think that's true all of the time. Regardless, everyone has been sharing their Target dollar spot hauls and I thought I'd post a picture of mine! Sorry that the lighting is so terrible. Here's a quick run-down:

• On the left, I grabbed a bunch of sentence strips and some lined whiteboards. The whiteboards I got are fun because they look like a piece of paper ("portrait" style rather than "landscape") so I thought that would be fun for the kids!
• The "creative me" books looked like so much fun for indoor recess and early finishers. Each page has a different activity that allows the kids to be creative. 
• I got the glowstick bracelets as a back-to-school gift for my kids.
• No trip to the dollar section is complete without some plastic storage (mini and larger chalkboard-colored bins).
• LOVE the sum puzzle game! A total steal for $3.
• Also can't go wrong with some chalkboard buntings, big dice, and owl accents.
• I also found the cute birthday bag and told my mom I wish I had a use for it because it was so cute. Luckily my mom is also a teacher and apparently a genius because she recommended cutting it out and using it on my birthday board. Done and done!

FINALLY, a hopeful solution for all of my crayon-storage woes! And it only cost me a little over $10! I bought these guys at the dollar store and they fit a 24-pack of crayons so perfectly! No more tattered boxes, plastic baggies, or crayon hoarding!

Clearly I'm on a roll spending money lately. With my man moving in soon, we are in need of more storage space (sorry not sorry for hogging the entire walk-in closet and two dressers in my master bedroom...) Anyways, saw this at one of the consignment shops in town and fell in love. Even better - it was 20% off! We are going to pick it up in his truck tomorrow.

Speaking of my man, our mini-vacation to southern Illinois was absolutely perfect. For me, the highlight was definitely zip lining through the trees. We will definitely need to do it again someday!

I've heard a lot of great things about this book and I finally got my hands on my own copy. So far I am really enjoying it! Teaching writing is definitely my biggest challenge so I am excited to learn from this book and put those things into practice in the fall. Is anyone else reading it this summer?

Five for Friday {May 15th, 2015}

Are you counting down yet?  (Have you been counting down since, like, the end of February?)  In my land of first grade, we have just ten more school days to go!  In celebration, I thought I'd get my Five for Friday on.  (Confession: I actually started this post on a Wednesday because some little sweetie decided to share his/her pink eye with me and I was home from work all day - yikes!)

Although the official Teacher Appreciation Week was last week, my school celebrates it this week so that it can align with our half day so the PTA can provide us with a luncheon (nom nom nom).  Here are a few things my students blessed me with this week (besides the pink eye, of course).  

Speaking of teacher appreciation, I became extra motivated and decided to order next year's Erin Condren planner ahead of time, since she was having a 25% off teacher appreciation sale last week. Needless to say I was jumping for joy when I saw the fun, tell-tale packaging on my front doorstep after work today.

This past year, I had the chalkboard planner.  For the upcoming year, I decided to lighten it up a bit and go with this fun design. I could not be happier. Totally worth the splurge, in my opinion!

And no Erin Condren product is complete without a little bit of inspiration!

Have you seen those cute, oh-so-organized teacher toolboxes around Pinterest and the blogging world? Well my little organized self finally decided I just had to have one.  I ordered the drawer from Amazon and purchased some adorable labels during TPT's teacher appreciation sale.  This product fit in perfectly with my woodland-y, camp-y classroom theme and it was editable so I could customize it to fit my needs.  I love my new drawers and how everything has its own place!

I also took this time to update my sterilite drawers that hold my weekly activities.  I love how everything matches!

One of the silly things I really pride myself on is frequently displaying different student work out in the hallway.  I knew we needed something cute to wrap up the end of the year, so I grabbed this cute craftivity from First Grade, Blue Skies.  I love how creative my kids got with their little cars and loved hearing about how much they enjoyed first grade even more :)

Happy Friday!

Five for Friday {April 3rd, 2015}

Prepare yourselves for the randomness of this post! Just one of the many reasons why I love Five for Friday!

This week, we began writing to inform.  When I introduce a new style of writing, I like the entire class to work on writing about the same topic so that we can brainstorm together.  Initially, I had trouble coming up with a topic that I knew all of my students knew enough about, but then it hit me - ME! Here we are brainstorming things we know about Ms. Nordland :)

 The warmer weather we've been having called for a new, spring-y craft in the hallway. I did a quick TPT search and found this adorable freebie from The Learning Junction.  We brainstormed spring adjectives and -ing verbs together, but the kiddos did the rest with their cinquains - I was very impressed!

My "masterpiece" from family art night - one of my favorite nights of the year!

Too cute not to share! This little boy is pretty much obsessed with one of the cuties in my class.  Excuse the blurry photo - I had to stealthily run after them to seize this photo op!

Last but not least, I came home yesterday afternoon to a handwritten thank you note in my mailbox from our assistant superintendent. Who knew this could happen?! I was on cloud nine!