Four Footed Friends

So... I gave in and got a class pet. I was a little hesitant at first, but figured, what the heck! I got an email about a free guinea pig that was in a home with 2 young kids who'd grown bored with their little pet. They named him Jelly Bean, because the Easter Bunny brought him, and I don't have the heart to change his name! He's actually the sweetest little thing and is VERY good with the kids!

I'm curious.

Do you have a class pet? Do you allow it to go home for weekends and/or the summer? Still trying to figure out what I'd like to do! Open for suggestions!

Ideas?

Yesterday was MUCH better than Thursday! Don't get me wrong, I have a WONDERFUL bunch of firsts that are almost ALWAYS on the ball. I think that because of that, when they're not on the ball, it makes me even more frustrated than it should. Yesterday was a good day.

The highlight of my day...

Me: "Student, you're such a smart cookie!"
Student: "I know! I'm not a cookie though."

These moments make my heart smile.

ANYWHO.

I'm about to embark on my St. Patrick's Day centers unit, and I'm looking for input.  What skills would you like to see addressed?  What do your students need the most practice with, both math and literacy?  I look forward to your input!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend - hopefully it's not rainy and miserable where you live!

I Need a Hall Pass!

I don't even know where to begin. Today was terrible. To start things off, today was our 4th indoor recess in a row. We aren't allowed to send the kids out of it's less than 20 degrees. If it's between 20-25, they get 15 minutes in and 15 minutes out. This week, I think the high "feels like" temperature in beautiful, central Pennsylvania, has been 19. UGH. My kids are really well behaved during indoor recess, but I really like that 30 minutes of precious ME time to get ready for the afternoon.

To top things off, we had a math test today. Here's why I hate math tests and first grade. Our math series is super language heavy, and most of my kiddos can't read the problems on their own, so I read all the test questions to them, and we go through every test one problem at a time. It's fine for the first few problems, then I'm about ready to rip my hair out when half the class is working ahead, a few are right with me, and there's a few that forget to raise their hands if I'm going too fast. It's usually fine, and I try to remain calm.

Except for today.

While walking around the room and monitoring progress during the test, one of my firsties raised his hand and snapped at me to get my attention.... I had no words.

Which brings me to my post... Do you ever feel like you need a little break to breathe? A hall pass, shall we say?  Today, I wish I had one. I'm linking up with Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits for my hall pass!  Check out her post, and join in the fun!

P - PRODUCT
My favorite product in my TpT store right now is actually a FREEBIE! If you haven't downloaded Ka-Pow!, my nonsense word freebie, check it out! I'm quickly turning into a clipart junkie, and my favorite pack is the Super-hero pack I found from Digital Bakeshop.

A - AREA
Here's a picture of my favorite area of my classroom. There are SO many reasons that I love my carpet area. (Sorry for the terrible picture, I snapped it on my phone as I furiously rushed out of school this afternoon!) I LOVE my carpet that I found at Target. I just wish I'd had it from the beginning of the school year, because I know my low reading group could have really utilized it to practice letter sounds. I've got tons of Christmas lights in my room, because I love leaving the overhead lights off while the kids are working - keeps them super calm! Did you see the fun ladybug and star lamps on the wall? IKEA! (My home away from home. I could literally live there).

S - SIGNAL

I've got a handful of go-to signals that I use for transitions. One of my favorites is "put your finger on your nose, so I KNOWS you're listening!" Forces them to drop what they're doing. Love it. My ALL-TIME favorite signal isn't technically a signal, but who cares. I can't stand when my kids put their heads down on their desks while I'm teaching. Drives me nuts. I'm learning to deal with it. I've found a way to make light of the situation. (Actually, my wife, who's an AMAZING 9th grade English teacher, dreamed this one up. I know. 9th grade. English. I'd rather die). You know that song "Keep Your Head Up" by Andy Grammer? I've taken to singing a kid's name in the song if they've got their head down. It goes a little something like this... "Bradley, pick your head up" and the whole class goes "Whoaaaa!" Makes me smile instead of getting angry!

S - SANITY

I would die without my coffee. No lie. I have a one-cup Keurig in my classroom that's kind of hiding on the counter by the sink beside a really big box because I'm not sure if I'm even allowed to have it in my room but if it gets taken away I'll cry so I'm hiding it just in case. What I love most about my Keurig... my students know the sound it makes when it's done brewing. Someone will usually come over to me to let me know my coffee is done. They're angels, I swear.

If you're not a blogger, please share some of the things that keep you going! I'm always looking for more transition signals and ways to stay sane! 

Also, pick YOUR head up, it's almost Friday!

Valentine Fun

So, I may be a little last minute, but here's some Valentine things that are going on in my world right now... I made these crayons for my students last year, and they were a HUGE hit! Very inexpensive. Very easy.

I went to the local Dollar Store and bought a few boxes of crayons. After practically bruising my thumb from scraping wrappers off of crayons, I found a MUCH easier way to peel them. Plop those suckers into some water, let them hang out for a short while, and the wrappers literally fall right off. Who knew?!

Snap the crayons into little chunks, OR use an old pair of scissors to cut them up. Using a silicon muffin pan, I baked my crayons at 320 for about 15 minutes. Take a peek, you'll be able to tell when they're totally melted through. I let them rest on a wire cooling rack so they would harden faster. BE CAREFUL, because the silicon mold is VEEEERY flexible, and the wax will be super hot. Pop them out when they're hard again, and voila! (I just typed viola and had to fix it. I'm such a musician). Easy peasy. 

Also made some Valentine's garland that's draped all over the room. Again, SUPER easy. Our die cut machine has a heart that presses out a heart AND an outline at the same time. Our school was using the hearts for a school-wide fundraiser for the Heifer Project, and I stole politely asked for the outlines. Make a cut at the bottom, slide another heart in, then tape it shut. Repeat this process a bazillion times and VOILA! (accidentally typed viola again).

AND, last but not least, I can't WAIT to make these Splat the Cat's with my kiddos tomorrow!! (If we don't have a delay...)

Happy V Day!

Techy Tuesday - Valentine Version!

Happy Tuesday, ya'll! I found it VERY hard to get out of bed this morning. I had my alarm set for 6:00, hit snooze until 6:30, then my wife finally came in to ask me if I was getting up for school around 6:45. OOPS! I have a theory. Yesterday was the ugliest rainy day ever. Rainy Mondays are the worst. I feel like I never recover the whole rest of the week. Upside? No school on Friday! Anywho, on to the post...

Linking up with Katie King from Queen of the First Grade Jungle to share some things I found for my kids to work on! I wrote a project on Donors Choose for 2 iPad Minis that was funded and they arrived in our classroom on Friday! It was like Christmas. Right now, I've got them out as a center while I figure out other ways to use them. I went searching for Valentine's Apps to go with my Valentine centers unit, and here's 2 that we're loving right now...

First up, First Words Valentine, which is FREE lets students spell a variety of Valentine words. What I like about this app - it allows you to change tons of settings. You can allow students to spell in any order, or from left to right. You can decide whether or not you want them to see how the word is actually spelled, or if you want the slots to be blank. Not a huge list of words, but my students have been enjoying it nonetheless!

Another one we're loving right now, less of an educational value though, is The Memory Game Valentine's Day Edition.  Just a simple memory game, but you can choose how many cards you'd like (12, 24 or 48) as well as how many are needed for a match (2 or 3). The game also allows 1, 2, 3 or 4 players. This was a hit during indoor recess!

Off to grade some math tests... Hooray! Have a good night...

100 Days Smarter!

Long time, no blog, and I have one simple excuse... it's conference week. They went fabulously, but I'm always so exhausted at the end of conferences. If you're conferencing right now too, I hope they're going well!

First of all, I can barely believe that my first year of teaching is half-way over! My little firsts have come so far in 100 days. I am falling in love with first grade every day. I have seen the light bulbs go off, and I get to see them burn brighter each and every day... It's the most wonderful year to teach!

Anywho, we had a BLAST on the 100th day of school! I started off by having them make 100th day glasses as their seat work in the morning, so they'd get a chance to dry. They turned out SO fun, and required no effort on my part. Definitely an easy and fun project for the kids, and even my "too cool for school" kids were fighting smiles :-)

We just finished up some winter centers, and I wasn't quite ready to start Valentine's centers, so I found this really fun 100th day freebie on TpT that lets students build as many words as they can using the letters in HUNDRED DAYS. They really enjoyed this one, so I'm definitely using it again next year! We also had lots of 100's fun in math!  I found another super awesome 100th day 100's chart freebie on TpT.  My students LOVED doing this... They had to use the cards to find out which blocks to color on their hundreds chart. It ended up saying "Yay 100," and my little firsts got a big kick out of that. It was excellent practice for today's math test, since we're using our hundreds charts to do ten more, ten less, one more & one less!

And since Valentine's day is just around the corner, I slapped all my centers on the laminator this morning, fully intending to cut them out this weekend. (I greatly despise cutting out lamination, so I tend to do it on the couch). I'm getting my day started and I hear the voice of an angel, AKA my amazingly-wonderful aide, asking me if I wanted her to cut them out for me. She managed to cut out everything while I did calendar time and the spelling test, and was ready to roll for reading groups. Ohmygosh. She's the best :-) And if you don't have any Valentine's centers yet, check mine out on TpT -- I'm super excited about these ones, especially the 100's chart puzzles!

Have a nice weekend!

Sunday Super Sale!

Be sure to stop by my TpT store tomorrow to snag my Valentine's centers unit at a CrAzY price!  My whole store is 20% off AND TpT is giving an extra 10% off if you use the coupon code SUPER.

Enjoy!

Super Bowl Fun

Happy Friday, everybody!!

I hope you all had a wonderful week! We started things off with a "snow" day on Monday (which was lovely because I was totally unprepared for the week). My wife's school cancelled too, but she didn't find out until she'd already gotten there. Huge bummer! I don't know about you, but these short weeks can sometimes be worse than the normal ones! Anything out of the ordinary schedule just drags on and on... Am I the only one that feels this way??

Anywho, I totally forgot about 2 very important things until the very last minute. There's some groundhog that's going to look for his shadow tomorrow morning. Oh, and apparently there's a big football game on Sunday. How could I forget about BOTH of these events!? Since I only remembered last night, I realized I would only have time to have fun with one of these events. I chose the Super Bowl, remembering something I'd seen on Pinterest AGES ago. Here's the original pin.

Check out these bad boys.

My kids had SO much fun making these!!  I have 24 kids in my room, so I figured I should have around 16 of each color ready to roll just in case.  Would you believe that I had 17 kids want to make flipping Ravens players?!  Luckily I have an aide, so I quick zipped across the hall to run off enough pages to make one more purple player.  Ugh!  Also, I need to share what's making me smile right now... I swear, we have the cutest puppy in the world.  He's saying "Daddy, get off your blog and come love meeeee!"

Have a super weekend!