First day of First Grade

Well, I am officially back to school and my little firsties arrived today. As of today, I had 21 on my roster and all 21 of them showed up. I am supposed to get 2 more tomorrow. I guess 23 isn't too bad, but I had 22 as my highest number last year. I would definitely rather them all get in here now while we are learning the classroom procedures and rules. :)

Today my partner and I used our pinterest inspired photo frame that the kids held while we took their pictures. We also introduced our WBT rules 1 and 2 and Class-Yes! So far, so good. I have never tried Whole Brain Teaching before so I am hoping it will work well with my class this year.

Tomorrow we will be making "Jitter Juice" from Babbling Abby's Fun With Firsties! Pack. My kids from last year absolutely LOVED this activity and were even talking about Jitter Juice at the end of the year!  :)

Hope everyone that is back to school is having a great start to their year! I am exhausted and ready to relax!

Must Haves Monday

I love teacher week! It is always so much fun!  Today is the first day, Monday Must Haves. I'm linking up with Blog Hoppin.



Some of the things that I cannot live without are:



My new little laminator! We don't have a laminator at our school and it is nice to have one that can at laminate at least small things.

These are awesome for anchor charts and so much fun to smell! :)

I just bought myself one of these last year, but I have no idea how I ever lived without it! This little baby is amazing!

My ENO board and my AverVision document camera....these make my teaching come to life and so much more engaging for my class!

Well, hop on over to Blog Hoppin' and link up so we can all see what your Monday Must Haves are!



Linking up!

I am linking up with Kelly at Beg Borrow Steal to go on a tour of our classrooms this year.



 I posted my new Smilebox slide show yesterday. Please click here to see a 360 view of my whole room! Just scroll down to the bottom of the post and there it is! :)

Here is a little sneaky peak of the view of my room from my doorway...



 Step inside and take a look at more if you haven't already! And then please stop by Kelly's blog and link up so we can see all your hard work too!

Final Monday Made it and My Finished Classroom!

I'm not officially back to school until next Thursday, the 23rd....but Monday and Tuesday next week are taken up with workshops on PLC's. So, I am linking up with Tara at Fourth Grade Frolics for probably the last time this summer. I'm pretty sure that once my firsties arrive, I will be WAY too tired to create anything. :)



So, my final 2 creations were found on Pinterest and a blog that I follow...big surprise huh?

First up, I fell in love with a Hall Pass sign that I saw at Step Into 2nd Grade with Mrs. Lemons and knew I HAD to have one!

Here is mine...



Bought the board at Hobby Lobby and painted it with polka dots to match my room...



Wrote Hall Pass with a paint pen and then added the ribbon and the colorful clips with my last name. Now students will take a clip and pin it on them before they go into the hall and everyone will know who they belong to. :)



Next, I created a center for my word work station that I found at Life in First Grade. Bought the cupcakes for 88 cents and also the bags to keep them in.

The kids will match the tops and bottom that have rhyming words. On the back I wrote 1 or 2 so I would know which bag it belongs to and there is a 1 or 2 on the cherry of the bag. :)

After about 5 days of hard work from my mom, my daughter, and myself...we are finally done!!! Here is a slideshow to show you all the finished product. Please leave comments and let me know what you think! :)



Personalize a digital slideshow



Classroom Day 4 and a Surprise for Me!

On Friday, I went in to the classroom for just a few hours to try to work on some boards in my room that I wanted to have ready. Here are a few of them:



This one is simple. It is the white board behind my guided reading table. I hung two clips with velcro dots because it isn't a magnetic whiteboard. This way I can attach chart paper if I want to for my groups. I also hung a small pocket chart from the Target Dollar Spot for sight words, vocab words, etc. I hung 2 command hooks below the board and they are holding 2 of the reading bags I created. If you want to know more about them you can visit here.



This is my calendar area. The blue pocket chart is used for word sorts, vocab picture and word cards from our HMH vocabulary program, or whatever I need it for. The red pocket chart is our place value chart. I just still need to add 3 ten-frames for the date.

Below that board and my ENO board I hung my genre posters.

This will be for my word wall. It took forever for me to get the boxes as even as I wanted them. I got those word wall cards with my Bright and Cheerful Pack from Clutter-Free Classrooms. I really like the patterns with them, but I don't like that from far away they just look white. :(

Here is a close up of one of the cards.

This board is right behind my mom's table. I hung 2 clips for her chart paper too and also a pocket chart. You can also see my travel ribbons hanging there. Her area is right by the doorway so I wanted them to hang close to where we would be dismissing.

This board is right next to my mom's area also. You can see her teacher tool box there. :)  This is our math wall with a few cute anchor charts that I found last year that give some strategies for solving math problems. To the left of the picture you see my pocket holder that will hold our Tiger Paws (PBIS).

This is where the students will let me know they are ready for an AR test by putting their number card into the pocket chart in a line.



My mom also worked on organizing our cleaning cabinet too. This cabinet holds cleaning supplies, light bulbs, paper towels, baggies, paper plates and silverware, and a few art supplies.



So, after we did all that we left for the day....and on to my surprise! My husband had told me not to make any plans for the night. He whisked me away around 7 p.m. to head out for our surprise evening after he came home from work and completely cleaned the inside and outside of our truck to make it look amazing! He wouldn't tell me where we were going until we arrived. Now, it is important to know that I have been begging to go to a drive-in movie FOREVER and we finally went! I was so excited! But the fun didn't stop there....when we got there he reached in the seat behind me and pulled out these:

AWWW!! He is so romantic! He also gave me a sweet card and this was for absolutely no reason!

So, you can imagine I was a happy girl already. Well, as I was working the other day on preparing some center activities for Word Work, my little trusty buddy broke...

My little sweetie daughter passed this information on to my dear husband and suprise!! He had this new baby in the truck that night too!!

I am such a lucky girl!! If you're reading this...Thanks Sweetie!!

Well, I am not planning to go to my room tomorrow. My student teacher from this spring got a job and I am planning to help her for a bit in her room and then I have an RTI summit to go to in the afternoon. Good luck to any of you who have your first day of school tomorrow!









Classroom Day 3

Well, today was completely spent on organizing my classroom library books. I wanted to put out 6 baskets for student choice based on AR level. The rest of my library is sorted by theme, author, or genre. I have a lot of books that I like to use with our units and things and I always say to myself, "I have the perfect book....where did I put that?" So, I tried to come up with a system that will help me stay organized. :)  Here is what I accomplished today...



Still need to add labels to my tubs...

I am storing extra books to trade out the books in the bins.

Here are the books for my monthly themes and units.

Going back tomorrow to see what else I can accomplish. :-)



Classroom Day 2

Yesterday I had training for  6-Traits writing all day, so I didn't get to go into my classroom. But, today I went back in to work for about 4 hours. I already had my furniture placed around the room, so today I tried to unpack some of my tubs and set up a few areas around the room.

 

This is the area between my teacher area and my mom's small group area. You can see my mini-fridge with a lamp and my scentsy on top. The pink polka dots are those wall stickers that are dry erase. And I plan to keep extra supplies and small group supplies in those sterilite drawers.

 

I plan to write our daily "I Can" statements on these polka dots. I originally was going to use the large poster frame I found, but I didn't really have a good space for it. You can also see my tattle monster there. :)

Here is my teacher area. I still have some organizing to do but I did bring my teacher tool box and I have my those folders on my filing cabinets to put in my daily work.

This is my ENO board area. My laptop will sit on the tall shelving unit and my document camera is there on the small desk. Under the desk is my crate of clipboards I decorated last year. You can learn more about them here.

This is the other end of my carpet meeting area. To the left you can see my calendar area with the place value chart and a pocket chart. I haven't finished this area yet. On my cabinet doors there are 2 blue small pocket charts from the Target Dollar Spot. These will have my daily schedule in them. I have my easel and a new stool I got at Walmart, but I don't think I'm going to keep the stool there. I also found a new pink chair at Office Max and I think I might use it there instead.



This is my math tub shelf and the student supply boxes next to it. I still need to make new labels to put on the supply drawers.

These are my student mailboxes and their book bins.

Here is my word work area. Different activities will be in the sterilite drawers. The little table is where a couple students can choose to work during Daily 5. And the book shelf has more materials for Word Work. The green tub holds our pillows for Read to Self time. But, I am hoping to get something new to hold my pillows. :)

Here is our computer area. We use this for our listen to reading station during Daily 5, although I am hoping to get a listening center this year. :-)

My final picture for you today, is my mom's area. I've told you all before that my mom is my personal volunteer all day everyday...yep I'm SUPER lucky! She is retired and enjoys spending the day with us. :) She will have some of my lowest students sit with her while we complete table work and she will also take 2 small groups during our Daily 5 rotations. You can see she made a teacher toolbox too. :) Also, my jewelry pocket holder that will be used for our PBIS Tiger Paws.

I plan to go back tomorrow and start working on some of my bulletin boards and things. I do plan to leave a few blank until the kiddos get there to help me, but I want to do my word wall and calendar area and maybe a couple others. I will be back with any updates!

Maniac Monday

What a day! It all began at 10 am this morning when 3 of my friends came over for our 2nd Pinterest day. Two of my friends still needed to make their teacher toolboxes. I had a few projects that I wanted to finish up so we had a busy morning! I am linking up again with Tara at 4th Grade Frolics for the Monday Made it!



First, I saw this awesome little tattle monster at KinderGals and decided I had to make one of my own. The idea is that my firsties will learn the difference between tattling and reporting. Then if they decide that they need to tattle on someone they will have to tell the tattle monster. If they tattle they must remove one of the tattle monster's pieces. At the end of the day, they will earn warm fuzzies for all the pieces they have left.



Sorry my computer wouldn't turn it the right way!

Next, I found this cute attendance system from Teri at A Cupcake for the Teacher. I bought the pizza pans from dollar tree and we spray painted them black (for my tattle monster too). Then I printed, laminated, and used magnetic tape on the back of the numbers. I thought I could also change the tab at the top after the kids check in to the at the bathroom tab so I would know who left the room. :)

My computer is acting crazy today!!

My partner and I bought some tissue poms from an Etsy store. I have all 6 colors of poms so I made some table signs to hang with them for each of my tables. The circles came from the Bright and Cheerful pack I bought from Clutter-Free Classroom. Then I attached them to bright cardstock to match the table colors too.



Finally, I made these cute little birthday balloons that I found at Once Upon a First Grade Adventure. They turned out so cute! I found the crazy straws 6/$1.00 at the Dollar Tree. Just tape the balloons on, find a cute little pot and ta-dah!!

So, after we finished our Pinterest creations around 2 p.m. a couple of us decided to head into our classrooms to check it out. I spent about 2 hours in my room. I will give you a little sneaky peak to see what I accomplished today. :-)

This is what I walked into today...

Here is what it looked like when I left...



I plan to go back Wednesday to continue my work. :-)

I then came home and got ready for my Thirty-One party that I had this evening! So, I guess overall it was a Maniac Monday but very productive!

See ya soon,