A Week of Giving Thanks: K is for...

My week of giving thanks would not be complete without giving a shout-out to the little guys who fill my heart with such joy each and every day - my students! While they have the potential to frustrate me, annoy me, and drive me absolutely crazy, I adore each and every one of them with my whole heart and cannot imagine my life without them!

It's not too late to join in and share what you are thankful for!

A Week of Giving Thanks: N is for...

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! After indulging myself in the most delicious Thanksgiving meal, I am already in my pajamas, in bed, and ready to fall asleep! Today I have been thinking of all the things I am thankful for (and there are many, many things). One of those things is the new friendships I have made since moving for my job. I do not think I would have lasted more than a year in my current location if I did not work with such a supportive and fun group of people. While it is easy to become lonely in an unfamiliar place, these people have given me a reason to stay where I am and to continue loving what I do.

Click the image below to join the link-up!

A Week of Giving Thanks: H is for...

Today, I am thankful for anything and everything home-related.  Because it's Thanksgiving break and I am currently snuggled up in my mom's bed at home without a care in the world. When I got my current (and first) teaching job, it required me to up and move three hours from my hometown to a much smaller town that I had never been to before. Never. My interview was over Skype. A year and a half later and I am pretty well-adjusted to my central Illinois living. However, I am so thankful that I will always have a home up north with my family and that I am always welcomed home when needed.

If you are wondering what the link-up is all about, click here to join in the fun!

A Week of Giving Thanks - T is for...

Today, I am thankful for my much-needed teacher time-out, otherwise known as Thanksgiving break. This year, we get the whole week off and I could not be happier about it. While I love my students immensely (and - dare I say it - am sort of missing their faces already), I feel so fortunate to have some time to relax, regroup, and prepare for the chaos that is the weeks leading up to winter vacation. I feel that Thanksgiving comes at the perfect time each year, and for that I am so thankful!

If you are interested to share what you are thankful for this week, check out the Thanksgiving link-up presented by the ladies of Blog Hoppin'. I am excited to challenge myself to post each day this week and share something that I am thankful for! I can't wait to see what everyone else shares as well.

Black Friday Wishlist

Black Friday is a perfect example of something that I hate to love and love to hate. Love? The craziness of waking up early and finding great deals. Hate? Bad drivers and fighting the crowds. Which is why the beauty of online shopping is the best of both worlds when it comes to the holidays. I am linking up with the girls over at The Primary Pack to share my Black Friday TPT wishlist and to share some products of my own.

On my Black Friday wishlist this year are the following products from these amazing sellers:

Camp Number Sense by Reagan Tunstall
Read and Retell by Tara West
Vowel Teams by Haley O'Conner
Inferencing Investigation by Babbling Abby
Center in a Minute by Babbling Abby

Here are two of the best sellers and most-wishlisted items from my store: my Ezra Jack Keats author study and my primary genre study pack. My whole store, including these two items, will be on sale for y'all during TPT's big sale.

Visit The Primary Pack to add your wishlist to the link-up and to enter their awesome giveaway. Happy Thanksgiving Break!

November Currently

Okay, so I definitely almost titled this post "October Currently". Where has the time gone? While I enjoyed getting into the Halloween spirit with my first graders, I am glad that the craziness is over and that I can look forward to Thanksgiving and a week at home.

Listening: Love me some Ed Sheeran.

Loving: I don't know what it was about this week, but it was the most tiring week by far. Even though I was going to bed early each night, I still felt like a walking zombie by the end of the school day. Thank goodness for weekends!

Thinking: I'm like Buddy the Elf when it comes to Christmas. I could not be more excited. I love buying gifts for my family and need to start getting some good ideas in the works!

Wanting: Last weekend I managed to misplace my trusty Wayfarers at my college homecoming :( Currently going through separation anxiety and lusting over a new pair.

Needing: Seriously, this laundry has got to go. It's been sitting in the basket for over a week. Oh, and I should probably decide what I am going to teach come Monday morning.

Reading: Gotta love grad school research! I am planning my action research project around sight word acquisition, retention, and transfer. Coming to you Spring 2016 (try not to get too excited).

Check out Farley's blog to join in on the Currently fun!

Franken-Pudding Fun!

I'm not usually into Halloween. It's just not my thing. But for some reason, I've been getting pretty into it this year when it comes to teaching. And let me tell you - my firsties are absolutely loving it! So I guess it's really not all about me and what I like...imagine that!

So with that being said, I introduce to you - Franken-Pudding Day! A new Ms. Nordland tradition. Or so I hope, seeing as it's only happened once.

I know instant pudding is far from rocket science, but with my horrendous cooking resume and extended list of easy things I've messed up, I was still a bit nervous that things wouldn't turn out! Especially since we were making a quadruple-sized batch.

Luckily, our pudding-making escapade seemed to go quite smoothly! In order to get all of my students involved in helping, I wrote down different roles on slips of paper. I had sixteen different "dumpers" (to dump in pudding mix and cups of milk), four different "stirrers" (to stir after each round of dumping), and four "colorers" who each added some food coloring to the mix. The kids loved watching each other contribute to our class Franken-Pudding. Their excitement and energy was infectious!

Seriously, could these be more adorable?! So worth the extra ten minutes before school spent on drawing on little monster faces :)

Next up was describing our Franken-Pudding! This adorable flapbook was just perfect for our current study on adjectives. We took turns brainstorming different adjectives to describe our pudding using the five sentences. When we finished, students got to add some color and creativity. I don't think I've ever seen them so excited to bust out their crayons and markers!

The entire reason why I did this activity with my kids was to introduce procedural writing. When all was said and done, we put the steps down on paper. I am hoping that next week when we dive into our procedural writing unit students can look back on this memorable activity to help them remember how to write a how-to (see what I did there?)

The above activities came from Cara's FrankenFUN freebie pack. Have I mentioned how much I love everything she does? Fabulous lady is 110% fabulous.