Five for Friday: A September Shopping Spree!

By the end of week four, I'm finally feeling like I'm getting into the swing of things in the land of first grade. I'm even going to post my Five for Friday on time and on the right day!

I recently succumbed to a bit of a TPT binge. I say "a bit" because it could have been a lot worse.You should have seen the size of my cart as I debated what I should buy/hit myself over the head repeatedly for not taking advantage of the boost sale a few weeks back.

Anyways - I ended up purchasing five items. Which worked out perfectly for this week's Five for Friday.

1. Let's Learn our Sight Words play doh mats by Miss Kindergarten - My firsties love love love play doh. I love love love when they know their sight words. Enter the perfect resource. Added bonus: these cards have room at the bottom to practice writing the words with a dry erase marker.

2. Write & Wipe Alphabet Mats from the Printable Princess - The handwriting. It's pretty bad. Dry erase makers. The kids love them. Another win-win product.

3. Harvest Fun No Prep Packet by Annie Moffatt - My addiction to Annie's products is out of control. Everything she makes is so adorable and so appropriate for my first graders. I own every single seasonal packet of hers and continue to buy the new ones she comes out with. I even have my own binder dedicated to her no-prep printables (am I coming off as a total fangirl right now?)

4. Interactive Math Packet Bundle by Annie Moffatt - See above. I love how this packet is no-prep but adds that extra interactive aspect to each printable. The kids think they are getting to play games! (Teacher Tip #358: Take every opportunity to trick your kids into thinking they are playing games. Watch the level of engagement magically grow!)

5. Interactive Reading Notebook from All Students Can Shine - I really want to incorporate interactive notebooks this year. This product is for reading responses and is exactly what I needed!

Side note - I've now looked at the word "spree" so many times that it does not look like a real word anymore. Isn't it weird how that happens?

Wordless Wednesday: Symbaloo

Happy hump day, everybody! For this week's Wordless Wednesday, I wanted to share with you one of my favorite free resources that I use in my classroom.

This is Symbaloo. And this is amazing. Each one of my little tiles links directly to a learning game appropriate for my firsties. I have reading games in the upper left, word/phonics games on the right, and math games along the bottom. This eliminates the time wasted searching through websites for games to play - an answer to my prayers as I prepare to introduce our "reading with technology" center to my students (something brand new I am trying this year - fingers crossed!) You can make your own for free or search other peoples' Symbaloos. It took a little messing around to get the hang of things :)

What are some of your favorite computer-based resources?

Currently {September 2014}

I am so excited for my very first "currently" with Farley! In my opinion, there's no better way to start my extra day of rest and relaxation :)

Listening: I think I watch way, way too much HGTV. Can't resist a good marathon of people complaining about the fact that their master bathroom lacks two sinks or that they really prefer white cabinets to darker ones. Really - I live for hearing the phrase "open concept". 

Loving: If I've said it once, I've said it one thousand times - the weekend needs to be just one day longer. I'm fine with the week staying the same length. Just give me another day to get things done, please!

Thinking: Pretty self-explanatory. 

Wanting: Allow me to continue to throw my credit card around haphazardly. Oops.

Needing: One of my graduate classes this semester is a remedial reading practicum. I get to meet my student this Thursday and am so excited to start planning for our weekly lessons! Now if I only knew her reading level...

Trips: I've wanted to go to both Australia and Africa for as long as I can remember. That's for the adventurer in me. For the sloth that loves to lie in the sun by the water? Bring me to one of those fancy Bali places I see all over Pinterest.

A Peek at Week #4

We are slowly but surely progressing through the first weeks of first grade. Thankfully, mostly of my little ones have realized that school is here to stay - their game faces are on and they are ready to learn. Now if I could just get everyone on board with this learning thing we're trying to do, that would be fantastic!

Speaking of fantastic - it's Sunday and I'm sitting here in bed with my two kitties. No Sunday anxiety. Praise the heavens for the little gift known as Labor Day. It could not have come at a better time.

By the end of week three, we've built our writing stamina up to almost 20 minutes. I am seriously so, so impressed with these kids! Now if I could only have more time in the day to work on their handwriting (yikes). Our district does not explicitly teach it and I have some very interesting penmanship coming over from kindergarten.

Also on my to-dos for this week is to introduce the overall structure of our reader's workshop. My workshop spells out READ which stands for Read with Technology, Enjoy a Book, At Your Seat, and Discuss with Teacher. The technology component is new this year and I can't wait to see how it goes. I am also going to try out book baggies for each individual student where they can self-select 2-3 books to accompany 2-3 books I have selected for them at their just-right level.

I am most nervous about introducing the "At Your Seat" component. This includes everything from hands-on centers to fun printables that incorporate a variety of reading skills. It was very rough during the first few months of school last year - I have such a huge reserve of activities and the kiddos come in really lacking the independence needed to pick up an activity and tackle it without teacher guidance. 

Short /e/ makes its entrance this week. We will also spend time practicing the word work activities that I have already introduced to the students. This has worked out so much better than it did last year (hooray for little teacher victories!)

Next up for math is understanding subtraction. This was a tricky topic for some of my kiddos last year who still struggled with understanding addition. We are really going to dive into my Fun with Number Bonds pack to give my visual learners a chance to really see the part-part-whole relationship!

Last but not least, we will wrap up our living/nonliving unit of study. Students will get together in groups and create posters using images found in magazines. This activity was a huge hit last year and I am so excited to introduce it to my students this week!

Alrighty, you know the drill - head on over to Mrs. Wills' Kindergarten and share your week with us. Huge shout out to Deedee for keeping us all accountable :)

Wordless Wednesday: Unexpected Responses

There's a reason why the old show Kids Say the Darndest Things existed. Kids truly do offer the most unexpected and oftentimes hilarious responses! There are a number of times when a rough day at work immediately became better after reading something one of my firsties came up with. For example, the last response below - most kids said something along the lines of "It was hot" or "They were happy". I think "Because they wanted to rock and roll" is a perfect response!

My question for you is: What is one of your most memorable unexpected responses? 

If you're interested in linking up for Wordless Wednesday, head on over to Christina's blog, Sugar and Spice! She has included guidelines for first timers like myself :)

Parent Orientation Night

I feel bad for Mondays. People are always hatin' on and complaining about Mondays. And I get it - it's difficult to come off of the weekend. But for some reasons, I've never really been anti-Monday.

Tuesdays are a different story. I'm not sure what it is, but I am always beyond exhausted on Tuesdays. This Tuesday, in particular, was extra busy. After a long day at work, I had to run errands, get my books, purchase my parking pass, and pick my little munchkin up from the vet. I had class at 4:30 and then zipped on over to school for parent orientation.

Thankfully, I thought parent orientation went really well. I can be a bit nervous when meeting parents for the first time since I do not know what to expect and hope that they are going to support me as I work with their children. I was much more at ease this year than I was last year (second-year teacher win). I even put together a packet of information for my parents to make things easier.

The first thing parents saw upon opening their folders was a contact sheet. I wanted to make sure parents know that I believe strongly in the parent-teacher partnership and that they may contact me with any questions or concerns. I also included a list of fun sites students can visit at home to practice math/literacy skills.

I also wanted to include some ideas to incorporate math and literacy in the home. Primary Junction has a bunch of free handouts to choose from. I got the awesome reading handout from Valerie at All Students Can Shine. The last picture is a parent volunteer form - if anyone knows who to give credit to, please let me know!

Finally, I had to include some teacher-y cheesiness. I provided water bottles and a little treat for those who attended :)

Time to reward myself for a night well done with some Bachelor in Paradise! Talk about a guilty pleasure...

One Week Until Labor Day {Monday Made-It}

Four more days. Four. More. Days. Then we've got a glorious, much needed three day weekend. Can you tell I'm excited? I'm definitely excited.

Tara at 4th Grade Frolics has announced that this is the last of the weekly made-its. While I look forward to them every week, I am a bit relieved - I am so busy that I am running out of things to share each week! Hopefully I'll deliver more quality ideas once we are back on the once-per-month schedule :)

Today I got to try out one of my newest products - Cookie Addition! I was a bit nervous having the kids try it out today, since today was the very first time I explicitly taught them how to write addition number sentences. I was very happily surprised when I saw how well they picked up on this task! It is great for practicing addition and writing number sentences - my tactile learners liked that they could "tap" each chocolate chip with their pencil when seeing how many there were in all. And the best news? Cookie Addition is free at my TPT store!

These aren't new. Nor were they my original idea (however, the person who first thought of this deserves some sort of medal or something!) Love my weekly organization drawers. I am sad that some of the letters are starting to peel off (darn that Midwestern humidity). When I redo them, I'll probably type the labels onto the paper so I don't face this problem again. Regardless - Love. These. Drawers.

Okay, so I didn't create these. Credit goes to Reagan from Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits. But technically I did make them. With my glue stick. And a fancy piece of black construction paper. I even laminated them. Awful attempt at a made-it but hey, if you didn't know about Reagan's fantastically free workshop posters, you do now!

I promise to save up some better made-its for next time around!