January Morning Work (Flash Freebie!)

January being my favorite month of the year, and my birthday being 6 days away, I decided to change things up a bit this month... Morning work is FREE for the next 6 hours only!  All I ask is that you follow my TPT shop, leave some wonderful comments, and DON'T say anything about it being free, as the price will go up at 8pm Eastern Time...

Enjoy, and don't forget to leave some TPT love!!

Happy Holidays!

Long time, no blog, sorry not sorry. I left school at school and I'm loving it! I hope you are all enjoying your time away from school... We're off visiting my family in the middle of nowhere (also known as Western PA). Lots of relaxing, and lots of catching up on Dexter. Seriously, we're addicted.

I'll be wrapping up my January morning work this weekend, so stay tuned - there's bound to be a few freebies handed out!

No matter your beliefs, no matter your traditions, I hope you enjoy these few precious moments with your family... Happy Holidays, everyone!

Snow Day!

So. My morning went a little like this... Woke up, roads were bad-ish, but had no call from the school. Went to school. Walked in the door, principal said "hey, don't you know we have a 2-hour delay?" Then my phone rang. I was there, so I got some work done. Then they cancelled school. BLAH.

BUT. The best part? High school and middle school had already gotten to school by the time ours was cancelled, so they put in a whole day even though we didn't go at all, which means we don't have to make the day up!! Woot! So, I went home, played in the snow with my pup, and finished up me 3 hours of video training on how to recognize and report child abuse. We even had to take a quiz. I passed. Hooray?

Anywho, here's some of what we've been up to in first grade the past few days... I finished my Christmas door, which if you remember from last year, we all tend to go a little over the top. Well, this year we're not going QUITE as over the top, since there's literally like 2 days of school in December. Hard to be motivated to put up door decorations that will be ripped down the next week. I know, I'm a Scrooge. We had to pick songs, so I went with "We Are Santa's Elves" from Rudolph, and turned my door into Santa's workshop.

It looked REALLY lame and boring, so I added a nice list with all my kiddos' names, and a Christmas countdown. Super low key, but it's still fun. I'll try to take some pictures of other doors in the building this week!

If you follow me on instagram (@mrfirstgrade) you've seen what our elf, Mistletoe has been up to! Here's what he's done the past few days...

Hope you're enjoying December with your kiddos!

Mistletoe is Here!

Well, this PA teacher finally went back to school today... Apparently people went hunting yesterday? I wouldn't know. It was good to be back in the swing of things! I had mentioned to my kids that "we had an elf last year" and "I wasn't sure if he would come back or not" because "classroom elves follow different rules than house elves..." Oh my gosh. They're eating out of my hands. So, today, they all came in asking if the elf had shown up, since theirs had all shown up at home. I mentioned that last year, the elf came AFTER I read the book to the class, so they were immediately begging me to read the book. Love love love the book. I'm such a sap.

Anywho, here's what Mistletoe did on his first day back in first grade! Got the idea on instagram! If you elf, use the hashtag #elfintheclassroom for some fantastic ideas!

Our elf tends to be very mischievous. Stay tuned. I also wanted to share this AWESOME pack I found on TPT a while back and had waiting in my cart for the big sale. If you have an elf in your room, you NEED A Cupcake For The Teacher's Elf Magic pack. There's loads of fun stuff, but my favorite part is the elf tracking journal. Today, we filled in the first part together, but starting tomorrow, they'll be filling it in on their own as a "must do" work on writing activity during Daily 5. Check it out...

I love that they'll have a little keepsake to take home before Christmas to remind them where we found our elf all month long... Great pack!! Highly recommend.  Stay tuned to see how I used her elf project for my door decorating this year!!

Just in time for Cyber Monday!

Just finished up my December Morning Work, JUST in time for Cyber Monday on TPT!

Here's a sneak peek at what's in the December Morning Work pack...

AAAAANNNDDDD, I'm going to start working on more "I Can" statements RIGHT now, to hopefully post really late tonight or sometime tomorrow.  I think I'm going to start with 3rd grade, then move on to K standards... Happy shopping, ya'll!