Christmas in July

So I'm joining everyone else and celebrating Christmas in July!!

To make this sale even more exciting I've made a North Pole Breakfast pack which is going to be LOADS of fun for you and your students at Christmas time.  If you are not familiar with the Elf on the Shelf or a North Pole breakfast you are missing out!  I did a breakfast with my sweet son who was celebrating his first Christmas this year and I did one for my students as well.  I have to say it was 2 of my favorite days during the holiday season last year. Their faces just lit up!  Yes...even my 6 month old sons' face lit up as well! ;)  Well anyway a North Pole breakfast is the kickoff of the Elf on the Shelf season.  Basically Santa visits your classroom/house and drops off a special holiday themed breakfast (with super cute decorations of course) along with your class/family Elf on the Shelf.  He leaves sweet notes for your students/family letting them know that he is watching them this holiday season and his elf will be watching and reporting back.  If you'd like to incorporate a fun North Pole breakfast in your classroom this year then this pack is for you!  Included are fun writing activities for the kids, Letters from Santa templates, holiday themed banner materials, a North Pole breakfast menu, and so much more!  Click on the picture below to be directed to my TPT.

                                 

Chevron Clip Chart Freebie

This year I plan to use the clip chart behavior system that EVERYONE AND THEIR MOTHER uses!! I know...it's not creative, but I did create a new, modern clip chart with chevron print and KPM Doodles safari  clip art that I am using in my safari themed room this year.  If you'd like to grab a copy for yourself click on the picture to be directed to my TPT store to download it for FREE!!!  Hope everyone is enjoying the end of their summer vacation.

Liebster Blog Award

Sweet Amanda over at Hoppin' into First nominated me for the Liebster blog award.  It recognizes new teacher bloggers who have under 200 followers.  Thank you so much Amanda!!  Now my job is to find 5 other new bloggers and let them know.  Here are the rules:

1.  Copy and paste this award onto your blog
2. Thank the giver and link back to them.
3. Reveal 5 other bloggers and let them know by commenting on their blog.

Here's 3 bloggers I'm nominating: (I'll have to find 2 more later when I'm not so tired! )

1. First Grade Hip Hip Horray!
2. There's no Place Like Second Grade
3. T is for Teacher

Must Have Picture Book Linky Party!

Lindsey over at The Teacher Wife is having a linky party about favorite picture books.  Just like her and many others out there, I LOVE picture books!  One of my favorite things to do during the day with my students is pull out cute books.  I often send my students on little errands to neighboring first grade teachers to ask "Can we borrow a cute book?"  I LOVE to read a cute book.  Here are a few of my favorites...but first...I found all of these for 1.75 at one of the Goodwill locations in my town. 35 books for 1.75!!!! Can y'all believe it???!!!

1. Super Completely and Totally the Messiest-  It's a SUPER cute book about two sisters who are completetly opposite.  One is super organized and "perfect" and the super messy and clumsy.

2.  Chester's Way- A classic Kevin Henkes book!

3. I Love You Mouse-  It's a super cute book by John Graham with classic illustrations by Tomie dePaola.  I mostly love it because it reminds me of my husband and son.  The little boy tells everything that's special to him how he loves them and the dad was following him the whole time and says he loves him at the end.  Super cute!!

4.  Sloppy Joe- Just plain cute!

5.  Ping Pong Pig- Just plain SUPER CUTE! haha

Back To School Safari Pack

This year I plan to do a safari theme in my classroom and incorporate my love of primary colors.  I really don't want it to be dark colors with lots of zebra and cheetah print everywhere.  I plan to keep the main vibe of the primary colors and throw in accents of giraffe print, and safari animals/pictures/posters.  For Meet the Teacher I plan to have a safari themed "Welcome Back" banner.  I also will have a safari themed bulletin board outside my classroom in the hallway that will be titled "We Are Wild About Learning"  The title will be a banner as well.  I'm super excited and can't wait to take pictures to show y'all!  If you'd like to purchase my Back to School Safari Pack. Click on the elephant below to be directed to my TPT store.  Included is:

- "Welcome Back" safari banner
-"We Are Wild About Learning" safari banner/ bulletin board title
-Safari themed name tags
-Safari themed team signs
-Safari themed classroom labels
-Safari themed subway art

PS- I wanted the subway art to not only be a decorative fun piece for my classroom, but also something that the kids could read.  I always think the subway art is a little difficult for my first graders to read so I made mine with a little chunkier font and larger spaces between the words.

Safari Book Freebie

So I am officially a bad blogger.  I knew I probably would be but at least I have lots of good ideas for this year that I hope to share with everyone!  In honor of my blog return I made a freebie for anyone who has a safari/jungle theme in their classroom.  I love the idea of the responsible communication binders/notebooks some of you use in your classroom.  I plan to do a safari theme in my room this year but I couldn't find a cute enough safari binder cover that I liked.  Since I'm obsessed with using primary colors in my classroom I designed a primary colors S.A.F.A.R.I binder cover to go with my theme.

Just in case you don't know what a Safari binder is let me briefly explain.  It's basically a binder to help your student and families stay organized.  I've never used one in my classroom.  I've always had the basic home work folder, reading log folder, and daily take home folder all separate.  I really liked the idea of having all of these folders in one place.  If you search on the internet you can find many other acronyms for various themes such as the F.R.O.G binder.  The SAFARI binder stands for Students and Families are Responsible and Informed.  I really like that this binder also has a zipper pouch for money and notes.  That way I don't have to see checks and envelopes on the floor anymore that have fallen out of folders and backpacks.

PS I DID NOT COME UP WITH THIS IDEA MY SELF.  I just made a cuter version of the binder that I wanted to use in my classroom.  I used KPM Doodles Zoofari clipart and her Primary Alpha clipart for the title.  She is fabulous!

Click on the picture to be directed to my TPT store where you can download the cover for free! :)

3rd Post in One Night!

Ha!  Whatev....I need to thank sweet Katie at First is a Fairytale for nominating me for the One Lovely Blog Award.  I'm loving the new blogging world and I'm so lucky to be able to find fabulous ideas on the fly when I need something different and quick for my ever energetic class this year.  I don't know what I'd do without you ladies!  You've all been a blessing and you probably didn't even know it :)  Thanks Katie and thanks to all my new followers.  I'm supposed to pick 15 people to pass the award on to but I'm not sure I even know 15 bloggers.  They probably already have the award too so I'm sorry to say that 4's all I got!

 1. Glitter and Glue- Kristen

2.  Kindergarten is A Hoot!- Sara

3.  Crisscross Applesauce in First Grade- Holly

4. Mrs. Plant's Press-Vickie

Thing 1

Isn't this Thing 1 just precious!!!!??? He stirred up a lot of excitement a few weeks ago for Dr. Seuss' Birthday when he made an appearance at my school :) 

You've Been Egged!

So I decided to make the cute idea that's all over Pinterest called "You've Been Egged!" into a fun activity for my students, but in an educational way of course!  If you're not familiar with this activity just search for it on Pinterest.  Basically, it's like being booed at Halloween.  You hid a bunch of eggs in someone's yard in your neighborhood and leave a cute note saying you've been egged.  They get to have a mini egg hunt and you pass the basket of eggs on to another neighbor!  Cute huh?  Well I'm going to do the same.  The Easter Bunny himself is going to egg my students ;o!  He's going to leave a note that explains what he did and how he has a special project for the kids.  They have to solve some addition problems for him and make a poster with a partner showing their work.  When he returns the next day to check their work he will leave a surprise!  I'm going to leave a word problem in each egg though that the students have to solve with a partner.  I've turned this fun activity into a mini pack that I'm selling on TPT.  I included some writing activities into it as well, and some crafts.  I'm super excited for the Bunny to come and egg my students.  I'm really lucky because my classroom leads right outside to our courtyard so I'm going to hide the eggs in there. :)   

Book Report/Book review Freebie!

I am so excited about doing a book study next week.  We will be reading Dr. Seuss books as a way to extend all of the Dr. Seuss fun from last week.  I am turning these recording sheets into a book for each student.  You can use the book report templates with any book you choose.  I also made Dr. Seuss themed posters as teaching aids.  All of this is FREE! at my TPT store.  Check it out!  It's a pretty good freebie if I say so myself. :) Click on the picture below to be directed to the freebie and my store.

Seusstastic Week!

 So last week in our reading series was the story If You Give a Pig a Pancake so we started a two week Laura Numeroff author study.  The kids are loving it and we're writing book reviews this week on our favorite book.  I can't wait!  Well since Friday is Dr. Seuss Birthday/RAD at our school I won't be able to do Dr. Seuss themed things all week.  We are definitely going to have a Seusstastic blast this Friday though.  My son is going to make an appearance as thing 1 and my husband is going to read a story.  So I had so much fun with our Laura Numeroff author study that I decided to do the same thing with Dr. Seuss next week.   So we will be completing my mini Dr. Seuss book report pack.  Here's a preview.  I'm super excited because the recording sheets I made can be used with any book at any time during the year.

Dr. Seuss Giveaway Winner!

I did the random number thing and number 1 won!  

Dr. Seuss Freebie

I created a class recording sheet for my students to fill out after we taste test green eggs and ham and graph the results on a large class graph.  Click on the picture to grab your free copy!

Dr. Seuss Day Giveaway!

Ok Ladies I'm going to do a Dr. Seuss giveaway!!! Get excited!!! I'm going to give one lucky winner my Dr. Seuss Birthday Party Planning and Activity pack away this Wednesday!  All you need to do is post a comment with a cute idea that you're doing for Dr. Seuss Day to share with everyone else.  You can enter as many times as you want.  The winner will be announced Wednesday!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Valentine's Day came and went and it was over the top this year!!!  We had such a great time.  I did my Secret Class Friend Valentine's Day hunt around the school in my TPT pack. The big prize that our "secret friend" left us was a big huge red tub filled with their pajamas for a Valentine's Day pajama day.  My fabulous parents were so helpful and sent in their pajamas throughout the week before stapled in paper bags and told their child they were supplies for our "very important teach meeting."  The kids were actually so honest and none of them looked.  It was precious to see their faced when we got back to the room.  They were honestly so calm and a little apprehensive.  Unfortunately I can't post pictures of the kids on our hunt, but here's a picture of our pink treats donated by my fabulous parent volunteers and a small gift/craft we made Valentine's week.  It has a poem in the middle, we painted the popsicle sticks pink, glued wooden hearts, and the kids decorated them with markers- simple and easy peasy!

Right now I'm working on coming up with fabulous cute ideas for Dr. Seuss' birthday/Read Across America.  I've made a fabulous new packet that I'm selling on TPT and Teacher's Notebook.  It's a mix of party supplies and activities.  I'm 100 kinds of excited about it y'all.  

Here is my party decorating inspiration y'all! 

I plan on decorating the room and going all out!  I'll probably get some red and teal balloons and make some teal and red pom poms.  My teacher friend and I are going to dress up like thing one and two with red t-shirts and blue bows.

I'm going to give the kids these invitations the week before, that are in my TPT pack. If you purchase the pack I also made an invitation with a blank spot for bring incase your class doesn't want to do the pillow and blanket thing.  

We may have some sort of teal and red snack.  We will make thing 1 and thing 2 from Kimberly over at Creative Teaching and complete my adjective label me page in my Dr. Seuss Birthday pack

We always let the kids bring a pillow and a few favorite books.  We have special reading time throughout the day where the lay out their pillows, blankets, and read their books with a buddy. I think we'll make these for the kids to snack on while they're reading with their buddy.  Cute ideas from pinterest are awesome!  I'll probably make a cuter back top.  No offense to whoever made this ;)

I'll probably have a parent make these for later also via pinterest

Another fab idea that we may rap up the week with via KinderbyKim

I really, really love this idea I found on pinterest.  I could put some sort of math problem in each balloon and the kids have to solve their problem after they get one of the balloons off the dart board.  I'm a little nervous about this in a classroom though.  We'll see...

At the end of the day I plan on handing out little party bags with bookmarks and "this book belongs to" labels that I've made as prizes.  You can find these in my TPT Dr. Seuss Birthday Party pack.

I want to give out a Dr. Seuss freebie but I'm not sure how to add a document to my blog.  I'm super behind and new with this blogging world.  Anyone wanna help ladies?  Thanks in advance!

Valentine's Party Ideas

So apparently you're not supposed to blog twice in one day but I'm new and don't care ha! j/k  So just thought I'd share some ideas I'll be doing in my classroom for Valentine's Day.  I got permission from my principal to let the kids have a pajama day.  It will be a complete surprise!  We are going on a scavenger hunt with cute clues, and the last clue will lead them back to the classroom where their new Valentine pjs or just as fun old pjs will be waiting for them as a surprise! We are going to have one healthy and one not so healthy pink valentine snack along with pink punch.  We'll pass out our valentines and eat our pink treats.  All the snack ideas are from Family Fun.  Click on the pictures to go to their page.

What Have We Been Up To?

It's been so much fun doing Valentine's Day activities because they're PINK!  If you don't already know...now ya do!  I love anything pink!  It's such a fun happy color.  Here's a few of our latest projects.

Here are the puffy valentine hearts we made.  The girls had a bow for their "hair" and the boys had a bow tie.  This is the "puffy heart craft" at the end of my Secret Valentine pack for sale on TPT.  PS We will be making lots of puffy things this year!  I'm loving all the puffs! ;) Check back for more cute puffy ideas...

This is our hall display for February/Valentine's Day/Grandparents and Special Friends Week.  I used the KPM Doodles "Love Shack" clipart to make house covers.  Under the houses are their FRIEND acrostic poems.  They turned out so cute!  This project idea is also in my Secret Valentine Pack.  I made puffy hearts as well and drew a chevron print in pink because I'm obsessed lately.

Here's a view of the entire display.  As you know I'm obsessed with the "Kid Drawn" line by Carson Delosa (sp?) The trees are from that line.  Each month I change the decorations on the trees with foam shapes from Michaels or AC Moore.  This month heart, last month snowflakes, next month shamrocks?

This is not a new idea but we made "Bee Mine" valentine bees!

Boys had bow ties, girls regular bows :)

Here is a shot of one of other projects from my Secret Valentine Pack.  The kids picked names from our bug basket and wrote a letter to their secret friend.  They also made heart shaped covers with construction paper and heart tracing templates to go over their letters.  This idea with all the templates are included in the pack.  

Here is the collaborative project from my America the Beautiful American Symbols pack.  I had the students work in groups to create a small poster about one of the American symbols we've studied.  They worked together to write various facts and then I made it into an additional hall display to present at Grandparents and Special friends at our school. 

Tag!!

Melissa at DillyDabbles tagged me in the fun chain going through the blogging world a few days ago and I'm just now getting around to it!  I'm excited to answer the questions and hope I come up with some fun ones as well by the end of this post!  So here's the rules:

1. You must post the rules.
2. Post 12 fun facts about yourself on the blog post.
3. Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post, and then create 12 new questions for the people you tagged.
4. Tag 12 people and link them on your post.
5. Let them know you've tagged them!
 
So here goes:

*I LOVE to decorate- my house, classroom, for parties, whatev!  Here's my newest project for my best friend's baby shower Sunday

*I LOVE my two sweet boys-

*My new LOVE is to plan for parties- So that whole love to decorate thing...yea I've already planned my sweet baby boy's first birthday, made invitations, food labels, dessert table decorations, etc.  Oh yea it's been planned since he was 6 months old and his birthday isn't until June! ha! Can you guess the theme? 

*I LOVE the idea of completely re-decorating our house with a little help from these cute ideas from pinterest- My other half...not so much! ;)  haha j/k he actually totally agrees because we just bought our house in February and haven't really put our own touch on the house. 

*I LOVE to craft- always have! always will!  Future projects-



*Did I mention I LOVE burlap- just a little, super tiny bit! ;)



*I LOVE grey and yellow-

* I LOVE thinking of future ideas for my sweet son- when I say future I mean like things that aren't coming up in the next two years. ha!



* I LOVE photography- alway have-always will- but my newest obsession is obviously taking pictures of my little man!  He's just so stinkin cute!  We used to have daily photo sessions, I've tried hard to limit it to every few days or even once a week. :)

*I LOVE skirts and dresses- I pretty much never wear pants- I think they're too boyish- I know I'm weird!



This is definitely not me! ha I wish!

*I LOVE smocked clothes for my son- The other half...not so much! I may have just bought a million of these for summer and may be sneeking some more into the house soon!







*I LOVE finding things at a cheap price- I AM A HUGE CHEAPSKATE (sp?) I will not buy things full price and I usually find a way to make things. 

Now for Melissa's questions-

1. What is your favorite food/drink to de-stress? - everything? haha I love sweets, bread, glass of wine or root beer
2. What is your favorite book to read to your class?  OMG I can't name a favorite- Too hard- I LOVE cute children's books- by the way that's all I read- I don't really enjoy reading for myself- I love Pinkalicious and The Wizard of Oz

     3. What is your favorite book to read yourself? Oops anwered that on the last one
4.   How far do you travel to get to your school? 20-25 minutes depending on traffic
5.   How many students are in your class?  17
6.   Do you exercise? How often and what types? Use to- cardio, zumba, and personal training- Since I got pregnant haven't picked it back up because I'm too lazy and too skinny- I need to gain weight. and no I don't want to go to the gym to gain it...i'll just eat and spend time with my son instead :)
7.  What is your favorite topic or unit to teach? I love to teach reading and I love to do crafts with my kids!  I always find cute things to make with each topic we study.
8.  What behavior plans/rewards do you have in place in your classroom? I use a money system as a postive reward and they pay "fines" if they need to.
9.   What do you wear to school? (slacks, skirts, dresses, jeans, types of shoes)-  Oops answered that earlier too.  Don'ts like pants!
10.  How old/new is your school? Really old?
11.  What technology do you have available/use in your classroom? promethean boards and computers
12. How do you spoil yourself? SHOP!

Ok and now for the tagging and questions! My questions are:
1. Do you have children?  How many?
2. Where do you shop for deals? Any suggestions for everyone?
3. What is your fashion style?
4. What do you love about teaching?
5. What would you be if you weren't a teacher?
6. Favorite dessert?
7. Can you show us a picture of your classroom to get cute setup ideas?
8.  Favorite store?
9.  Favorite holiday?
10.  Do you have short hair or long?
11.  Favorite thing to do in the summer?
12.  What's the farthest place you've been on vacation?

And now for who I'm tagging- I can't tag 12- I'm not that cool yet to even find 12 bloggers...especially since everyone's been tagged already haha
1. http://theinspiredapple.blogspot.com/
and
2. http://msrachelsroom.blogspot.com/

I'm a new blogger- I have no more energy haha