School starts tomorrow!!

Tomorrow is the first day of school! I am excited to meet my new class of little people! I am also excited to be working with an educational assistant this year! Yay! An extra set of hands (eyes, ears and other parts) is always welcome.
I have been working in my classroom since mid-August; setting up and copying and decorating. Now I am into shoving and hiding things away! The first day crept up way too fast!!
Oh well...Good-Bye summer, I will think of you fondly!
Hello fall and back to school! Hello new friends and old.
It's goning to be an AWESOME year!!

Dollar Tree and Michael's crafts!

I admit it...I am a Shop-a-holic! I love me some shopping! It's the thrill of the hunt and the satisfaction of the cool find! I could shop for hours! 
I also love to make things for my classroom. (I think I said that in my last post!) Well the creating continues! 

I went to Michael's craft store. Just inside the door, there was a clearance table. Clearance tables have a way of calling to me! I found some bottles of coloured sand! Yay!

I know you are thinking...What? why would anyone get excited about jars of coloured sand? 
Well let me tell you! 

I instantly thought, "Hey, this would be cool with SIGHT words inside!" So that's what I will be doing! I will place sight words inside the jars. Then the kids can turn the bottles and find the sight words and then write them on a sheet, and for a challenge they can write a sentence with the words! One centre- four kids, done!

Then I had some plastic bugs, from Dollar Tree. (Love Dollar Tree!!) I wrote sight words on the bugs. The bugs have between 1 and 4 words on them. I put the bugs in a plastic tub and covered them with the sand. Then to use the centre the kids can dig into the sand and find the bugs and pull them out and then write the words they find on the bugs. 
I think it will be fun!

It is funny because one of the blogs that I love to read had some of the same ideas as me! I even emailed her and told her that I think we share a brain or we are somehow on the same wave length! She emailed back and said that we should go "Dollar-treeing" together sometime! Her blog is fabulous and she has been doing it a bit longer than I have. She even has her own Teacher's Pay Teacher's store. Her blog is called     firstgradeandfabulous.blogspot.ca
I love her idea for pool noodles! Check it out! I am making that one too! 


Her pool noodle idea, sparked my own pool noodle ideas!

 I went to Dollar tree (again!) and bought some paper towel holders and pool noodles. I even found STAR shaped pool noodles! I bought them! Then I cut the pool noodles into little donuts or little flat stars with a hole in the middle! The kids can use them to build PATTERNS! Yay! Pattern centre activity! I can also add a worksheet to it where kids can show on paper the patterns they created. 

Making things for my classroom is so fun! I'm already thinking ...Hmmm...What's next? 

Making things!

I love making things for my classroom! Summer is the perfect time to do it because I actually have the time! 

Ahhh, time...so precious and lovely! In summer, I can actually afford to "waste" some time! This summer I have been a little self indulgent! I have been going to yoga, playing in my art room and playing on Pinterest! AND the best part...I can eat when I want to and go to the bathroom when I need to! Things I rarely get to do during the school year. 
I remember someone saying to me when I first started teaching, that is what summers were for...going to the bathroom! Who would have thought going to the washroom would be such a luxury! 

Sorry...every once and a while...SQUIRREL! (I can get easily distracted!) 
Anyway...

Back to the Making things for my classroom! 

SO... Cruising around Pinterest, sparked the idea for these little "Pattern-a-pillars" made with wooden spoons. I already had the spoons in my art room "stash" and when I was at Michael's craft store I found these little foamy ring things on clearance. They came in a bag full of different colours, perfect! 

I think she turned out kinda cute! I ended up making 4 of them, so two sets of kids partnered up, can visit this centre activity. I will also create an accountability worksheet to go with the hands on activity of this centre. I think the kids will like it! I know I liked playing with it! 

I found these "monsters" at Wal-Mart and I think I squealed, because I remember people looking at me wondering what was my problem? I just smiled and grabbed two of them and quickly left the aisle! 

Anyway, on to what I want to do with them...

I was thinking they would make really cute "Math Monsters" and I will put them into a centre tub with flash cards and some math manipulatives. The kids can have the monsters "EAT" the cards they figure out correctly by unzipping the zipper and tucking them inside. 

I think they are funny and cute! 

I also found these french fry containers and thought of a fun game to make to put in them.  So I took some wooden tongue depressor sized craft sticks and put the pre-primer Dolch sight words on them. They will be the "fries"! On the ends of some of the fries, I coloured them red. If you pull out a "red" fry, you have to put back ALL your collected fries and start over. 

I called the game, FRY FRENZY! 

I actually made one for EACH child in my class, to put in their "literacy kits"...

more about those later!! 

I also made WORD WALLETS from plastic folders, that I found at Staples for ten cents!

I cut the folders and taped them with fancy duct tape. Then on the inside I wrote the word, YES on one pocket and NOT YET on the other pocket. Then I put sight word cards inside the wallets. Each child will receive one of these in their literacy kits.

So as you can see...I've been busy! 

I will share more about the literacy kits that I am making up for each child in my class!

I am hoping to give the literacy kits to the families at Meet the Teacher night!

My intent is to make sure the families have some things to help their child to become a reader! 

Plus, then there are no excuses! LOL! 

Summer! I love summer!

Ahh! Summer! I love summer! I love being able to stay up late and watch movies. I also love sleeping in when I can. Although this summer sleeping in usually means I'm up by 7:30 at the latest. Lots of times, I'm up with my hubby at 5:30am, as he gets ready for work. I am finding I can get so much done when I get up earlier.

I'm back from my Vegas trip and it was fun! I met lots of interesting people and spent way too much money on more stuff for my classroom. I met some of my favourite bloggers and I must say two of them really stood out! Their sessions were fabulous and they were so funny! I did get to meet Todd Parr and he did not disappoint! He is so sweet! I chatted with him and he even gave me an autographed poster! I was so thrilled to meet him!
Here is the picture of me and my best friend and Todd Parr.

I did so much shopping for my classroom! Here is a picture of the "pile". It was super fun! I am a shopaholic at heart! 

This is me and my bestie waiting for the show to start

This was the show we saw. It was so fun! Everyone was singing all the 80's hits! It was a blast! 

There was a photo booth at the conference and they took my picture. There were props you could choose from and different signs. It was lots of silly fun!

Target!! We took a cab to the closest Target store and it was great! Made me miss the Target stores here in Canada. I wish they were still open, but the American version of Target is so much better! 

All in all it was a very fun few days! 

I learned lots, made some new friends and shopped!! 

School's out for summer!

School in our area is finally out for the summer holiday break! YAY! I have so many things to do this summer. First, I am off to Las Vegas for the "I teach 1st!" conference! My best friend (who also teaches grade one) and I, plan on shopping and hitting a show while we are there! Plus we are both super excited to attend a Blogger meet up, so we can meet and greet with some of our very favourite First grade bloggers! Some of these ladies are ROCK STARS in our eyes and we can't wait to meet them! Plus we will meet Todd Parr! He is a wonderful children's book author and artist. I really want him to autograph one of my books and hopefully I can get a picture too!
Before I go and enjoy my holiday, I wanted to share something simple that "saved" my end of the year! Most teachers know that June is crazy for kids attention and behaviour. Well, I brought in a "friend" to help me out! Her name is "Clucky" and she is one FUNKY Chicken!
As soon as I introduced her to the children, they were in love with her and listened to her whenever she had something to say. She's quite sassy, but very fun! She always started her day by having the children do "The Funky Chicken Boogie" (her very favourite song!) Then she would say rather loudly, "Guess what?!" and the children would respond, "Chicken Butt!" And she would dance around! Then we would all laugh and then Clucky would "teach" the lesson and she kept those kids attention!! The kids even invited her to come to our school sports day. Kids would hold her little wing and run the various races. "Clucky" would cheer for them at other events. "Clucky" is by far the most fun way I have kept the kids attention right to the end of the school year! The children loved her and would ask to sit and read to her or ask to play at centre time with her. "Clucky"is probably the best puppet I have purchased! The kids know she is a puppet, but that's the beauty of teaching grade one, that line between fantasy and reality is still a bit blurry and they love to play along!

3 Pigs and stuff!

We have been learning about the different versions of The Three Little Pigs. My students LOVE this story! I also made some story props so they can act out the story. Let me tell you when they acted it out, it was HILARIOUS!!

We made piggy pies from a follow the directions picture recipe by Deanna Jump. So fun! The kids loved it and ate it up!

Long abscence...sorry!!

Hello, Friends!
I have not been posting in a really long time! Basically due to the fact that my life suddenly got SUPER busy and I felt I didn't have 2 seconds to breathe! I had a bit of a health scare and had to take some time off from my work in the classroom. I am so happy to be back in the classroom again to finish off the school year with my kids! I do have a lot of photos to post and I hope to get to that as soon as report cards are all finished! the end of the school year is fast approaching and there is a mountain of things to do! Plus I am already thinking about how I want to change things up a bit for next year! I have furniture rearranging plans in my head and ideas swirling around about how I want to change things up for next year! It is hard to keep myself focused and almost impossible to keep the kids focused! Everyone has play outside in the sunshine on the brain! I have a brand new deck in my backyard and I really want to be laying on my deck with a cold drink in my hand and blank paper to write down all the ideas!
So check back and you will se more pictures of our fabulous and VERY busy year!