Fabulous Fall Activities!

Most of these event happened last week, with a couple being more recent, just wanted to link up before I forgot again...I'm linking up with Clutter Free Classroom: Week in Review 

I have been having a great fall in my classroom. I would love to figure out how to have more time for blogging all the fun things I've been doing.

We have been learning about characters & today they got to create a brainstorming web of their own real or make believe characters and illustrate them. I took a few pictures cause I thought they were so cute!!!

We also started squiggle journals (I got this idea from the other 1st grade teacher at my school), which have been so much fun. If I forget to do them my students are very quick to remind me! They each get a squiggle that then they have about 10 minutes to turn into whatever illustration they can imagine, and then they have to write a story about it. So much fun!!! I have one or two students that really struggle with the creative thinking piece, they will just sit there any stare at their paper and say they can't think of "anything" to turn it in to...but overall I get some AMAZING writing!

These are pictures of our writing wall...this week/month's writing was about our favorite thing about fall :-) so so cute! I took a picture of each student writing and hot glued it to a clothes pin and then glued the clothes pin to the board. This was not my idea originally but I don't remember which amazing blog I found it on to give proper credit to....I love the way it looks and gets my students excited about reading!


    

Hope you enjoy my post I hope I can figure out how to post more often...however I LOVE reading all your ideas and seeing what you're doing in your rooms!

Nosey is GREAT!

I just found a website and contest that totally describes me! I love it. I am constantly walking around my classroom listening to my students as they are working and talking with each other. Often I hear little things that help me to tailor their education to each individual student, I learn things about their culture and home life that I wouldn't know unless I was working around them and being close to them while they are engaged and working!

I love sitting down near them with a project, grading or something while they are working, it gives me an opportunity to engage with them while they are working. I so enjoy their conversations, it also gives me a heads up on little issues before they start. I have heard students who won't speak with me (nervous, second language issues & other various things) carrying on full conversations with their friends when they didn't know I was listening it's a great informal assessment of where their at when they don't even know I'm assessing or listening.

I have caught kids doing things and been able to deal with them on a personal basis before it became a major issue and I didn't have to address it in a large format. I have also addressed things to the whole class when they didn't know I knew who had caused the problem and watched the student squirm and squirm until I was done and they had the opportunity to come and speak with me personally about the issue. It was so valuable for them to realize that I do know what is going on in our classroom even when they think I'm not always there.

I hope you've enjoyed reading this and I would love to have the opportunity to win one of these fabulous prizes!

Grand Prize

iPad 2 with Wi-Fi + 32MB, your choice of black or white.

2nd Prize

Bose SoundDock Series II Digital Music System for iPod (Silver)

3rd Prize

Amazon Kindle 3G

One of the requirements to enter was to post this into my blog so head over and check it out. I think this was pretty fabulous!

If you are interested in learning how classroom management software can help you become a nosey teacher and manage students on computers more effectively, check out http://www.netop.com/products/education.htm


Head over and check it out if you are interested in entering yourself! Looks great to me! http://wildfireapp.com/website/6/contests/138031?order=recency&preview_key=fd40dc3b2cad6c05fbe22d2b6b9ea2a6&view_entries=1

Printing on Sticky Notes :-)

Sorry I've been so busy haven't been posting much or getting to blog-stalk much :-(

However a while back I found a fabulous post over at Ladybug's Teacher Files about printing on Post-it Notes (sticky notes) I was so excited because I already LOVE post-it notes and now I can print on them!

I had to make a couple adjustments to the files for my printer settings and I also created one for post-its that are cube size 2x2 so so so excited to be able to print on them.

Here's hoping I'm putting these links in correctly...can't find the tutorial right now...you can print the PDF to have a master, then the word doc you can put in whatever you are hoping to print on them :-) Hope it works.

2x2 Sticky Note Cube PDF
2x2 Sticky Note WORD

Normal Size Sticky Note PDF
Normal Size Sticky Note WORD

Please let me know if my sharing isn't right for these. And someday I'll figure out how to embed them or post with a picture or something...for today I hope this works.

A few days late I'm participating in

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hope you like it I'll try to be on time next week...lol

A sharing post...

I'm really glad to be back to work, my class is great so far. I wanted to do a post to share some of the great resources I've found in my blog hopping...

Over at First Grade Factory Alicia shared a great project called Word Attack. Go check it out...I love it! She has many other resources you should head over and check out...

Oh and she'd doing a giveaway right now too....


Head over and check it out...have a good night.

Busy Busy Busy

Well we are ending week 2 and so far it's been a great year! A very busy year preparing curriculum and lesson plans for first grade, but a great year so far. I love my kiddos and my school is great. It's only 10 minutes away from my house so it's fabulous!

I'm gonna add a few pictures of some of the things I'm working on for organization for this year, it's still a work in progress but I wanted to share something before I forgot again & ran out of time.

This is a picture of my table (desk group) boxes in progress. Today I put stickers on pencils that match the color of the group in hopes that it will stop students from having the excuse "I don't have a pencil" I've also included reading sticks, in hopes that the students will start using their finger or pointer stick to help them keep their "eye" on the word. It seems like they didn't learn this in kinder and it's really been a struggle when we are reading with staying with us & following along.

:-( I have more pictures I wanted to share but the silly computer isn't reading my card :-( so I can't share them right now I guess.

And I need to go read how to upload a document so I can share those...we shall see...

Have a good day all

202 unread emails and 642 unread blogs in Google Reader...

After a lot of struggle...I don't know how to get my blog to post! I have a 'wonderful' blog written that I can't get to copy and past over with links.

I had it all ready to publish and my blogger decided to give me an orange 0 at the top of the page and not do anything!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Here is the blog post with no links :-( I don't know how to get them to come over :-(

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And after one dead computer battery, two stops for snacks, two bathroom breaks, lots of reading, downloading, bookmarking, saving and deleting emails here's what we have, a sharing post that is long over due...here's to hoping I can be a bit more consistent when I'm back to school.

WOW, I've done a lot of reading...and with the email situation a lot of deleting...

When I started today my Google Reader have 642 unread posts...I'm was wondering if I was going to make it through them today or not...well I did...I don't really recall what time it was when I sat down but, its been at least 2 hours...

Random Question:  Is anyone having issues with Google Reader today? It's not downloading things correctly, when I try to download original so I can save it to my Mac it's messing some of them up and just plain not opening others....I want my resources *stomps foot like two year old*

Here are a few giveaways I found in the mass amount of unread posts...

1. Over at In The Teacher's Lounge she's having a fabulous giveaway for her celebration of 200 followers.

She has partnered with Leslie of Kindergarten Works for a fabulous literacy center. Head over and check it out.

2. Over at First Grade Escapades she is hosting a giveaway for reaching 100 followers, head over and check it out. Looks AMAZING!


 3. On Mrs. McCumbee's Blog she's hosting a 200 followers giveaway till sometime this week so hurry over and check it out.




And then here I'll blog about some fabulous things I've found going through my Google Reader!! Love great resources!

1.  Tanya over at First Grade Fabulous - posted a video that Teacher Tipster shared on Facebook. Head over and check it out! It's amazing! Do we BELIEVE in all our students!

2. Over at Pocket Full of Kinders she posted a fabulous list "You know you're a teacher if...." go check it out!


Hope you've enjoyed my rambling, feels good to be back. However I still don't have internet at home so I don't know when I'll be around to get all caught up again. Thanks so much for being a great resource!

BUSY BUSY SUMMER!

I am so so happy, but so busy! I logged on and my google reader has over 500 posts I need to read...

Well why am I so busy you may wonder, we got the keys to our house on Saturday :-) and started moving in immediately. So I've been busy moving in and unpacking and moving in! I don't have internet at my house so currently I'm at my mom's house so I have a few minutes but I do need to get back to my house soon!

I hope to post pictures of my house soon, however I don't have a working camera right now so they are all on my phone...and blogging from my phone is kinda a pain. Well I just thought I'd share the happy news with all of my friends in blogger land :-)

Also on a separate note....I START SCHOOL IN 19 DAYS....where has my summer gone?!? I have got to get my classroom set up! And get ready for the year! Well I doubt I'll be on much next week either because we're going on vacation...anyway love y'all have a great rest of your summer!

Lookie what I got :-)

I entered a contest from Mrs. Lemons a while back for a t-shirt from Claire Lynn and guess what I found in the mail today! Uber excited!
Added this post from my phone I'll have to come back and add links later, thanks so much Amy! It's awesome!
Links have now been added...enjoy!

"Moose" Binders

Well in my blog stalking tonight, I found an idea I have been hoping to implement over at Primary Perspective called "Moose" Binders. There is a website with a lot of acronyms, however my school has a very unique mascot...it's a gecko :-)

So I'm trying to come up with an acronym that will work, I have a couple ideas but I'd love some feedback. Also if anyone does use a binder similar to the "Moose" style I'd love any tips you can offer!

Here are my two ideas so far, I don't really like either of them completely but I'm drawing a blank as to what I can do better.

Getting
Everything
Complete &
Kept
Organized

Goals
Each
Child
Keeps
Organized

I'm hoping to create a binder similar to what Mrs. Perry did over on her blog, I hope she doesn't mind me sharing a couple of the thumbnails here...