Five Favorite Things- April Style

Happy Monday!

I'm linking up with Jodi from Fun in First with 5 Things I'm Loving in April!

1.)  I am LOVING that next week (April 26th) is my birthday! For two reasons: 

a) It's my bday- duh!   

b) I am taking off on Friday in my own honor. Hehe! It will be my first personal day of the year! 

2.) There are only 24 more days of school! I cannot even begin to express the joy in my heart! I LOVE teaching, don't get me wrong... but summer is the best part of the year! Beach, lake, books, shopping, sleeping late, laying out but the pool, basically having NO PLANS. Heavenly.

3.) Vampire Diaries! I know I probably like this show a leeeetle too much, but what can I say. We all have to have our guilty pleasures, right? :) And there hasn't been a new episode in a couple weeks and I am in serious withdrawal right now. Thursday can't get here fast enough! (PS- I think it's gonna be a reeaaalllyyy good Delena episode!)

4.) I've got to say I am really loving some books I bought to get myself all prepared for next year. They are: 

• Debbie Diller's Math Work Stations
• Debbie Diller's Literacy Work Stations
• The Daily 5 
• CAFE
• Debbie Diller's Differentiating Small Group Instruction
• Kathy Collins Growing Readers

I spent a BOAT LOAD of money, but I am LoVinG what I have read so far!

5.) Hmm... And I guess my last thing is all of the teacher blogs I stalk. I can't express how much everyone has helped me this year. And how much you are all helping me prepare for next year. I have made more notes and written down more ideas than I can find paper for! I even started my very own blog. :o) I know it's not great, but I still haven't figured out how to balance work, blog time, and free time. I'll get it eventually. Also, I need to get the commercial license from Scrappin Doodles, cause I would LOVE to share some cutie freebies I have made! 

*And I feel like I need to add a couple of other little things: I'm also loving Pinterest, Netflix, Partials by Dan Wells, and the fact that I was chosen to be a part of our school's Instructional Leadership Team and we have $72,000.00 to spend for next year! What?!? I am so excited- 98% sure we are getting iPads for our classrooms! Oh, and also- two second grade teachers and I started a "Teacher Morale Booster" club type thingy in 'sorta-secret' to try and get spirits up at our school. We have a lot of downers on our staff. We just got started redecorating our HORRENDOUS teachers' lounge, and have a lot of other stuff in the works. (coupon books, jokes in boxes, random candy-grams, and monthly dinners) We hope it will improve spirits at our school and flush out some of those Negative Nancy feelings that float around ALL THE TIME! 

Anyway, good night! And I hope to be back soon with something good. 

PPS: PLEASE follow me if you read this post! I just started this blog last month and I would LOVE some followers. Right now, my only follower is my sister. Haha! This is also my first link-up and my first time contacting the blogging world. Help me! :o)

Quickie

Just gonna make it short and sweet tonight. Grades are due tomorrow at 5pm and as of this afternoon, I had ZERO grades entered into the online grade book system we use. Zero. And to top it off, there were "technical difficulties" with the system and I was unable to log on until about 9:45 this evening. Suffice it to say that I was a nervous wreck for two hours trying to get my grades in before the system kicked me off. Thankfully I am DONE and can sleep well knowing my grades are in!!

And I am loving the fact that we get a holiday on Friday! I needed a four day week really bad. And, Spring Break is in about 10 days!! Can't believe it! This year is flying by and it's awesome!!

Anyway, sorry to bore you, I just wanted to unload a little. I'll be back with a freebie soon!! Have a great Wednesday tomorrow!

Lesson Plan Templates

So here are two of the lesson plan templates I created. Our principal addressed the information we should include on our plans at the last faculty meeting. Apparently a lot of people were being lazy on their plans. My current ones were fine, but they were Board issued and I thought they were U.G.L.Y. So, I made sure to cover all the necessary information on some cuter ones and voila! Here is the result. They will look way more complete with actual plans included! Ha.

Feel free to steal. If you would like the Word version I can post that as well. I used the fonts DJ Jumble and DJ Light from DJ Inkers. :)


ELA Plan Template
Math Plan Template

Look What I Bought!

An iPad 2 !!!!!

With the upcoming release of the iPad 3, the price of the iPad 2 went down to $399. I knew I wanted one to use in my stations, and for other school related endeavors, so I went out and bought it! I am so excited to start downloading apps and stuff for it! Any suggestions?

I got the white one.... 

With this cover I ordered from Amazon...

Share Time

So, how about a little giggle. My TA was correcting homework during Morning Meeting yesterday and she stopped me in the middle of a sentence to hand this to me. The kids' assignment was to write ten nouns with adjectives before them. (ex. purple dress) You'll know the one I'm referring to when you see it. My TA didn't even correct it because she thought it was too cute to fix!

Here are some other photos of things that have been going on over the last few weeks:

One of our Friday activities that wrapped up Dinosaur Week:

First we used our paleontologist tools to excavate dinosaur bones from a block of dirt.

Look! We are finding bones. This one kinda looks like a Ruffle! :)

Then, we took turns searching for dino eggs and fossils. Some of us found fossils, and some of us found dino skulls!

What a fun day! I was told numerous times that I am the "best teacher ever!" 

**big grin**

We all know that February was Black History Month. Our school required each teacher to choose an African American to honor for the month. We were to decorate our door and do an activity with our students in the classroom. I refused to pick some boring individual that the students are going to learn about sixteen more times before they graduate. So, I chose one of my favorite musicians. 

Alicia Keys!!!

The kids LOVED it! So did our principal and everyone who walked by and saw our door and projects. Look below and what we did. 

I love Alicia and I had NO IDEA how perfect of a choice she was until I started to research her! She was a wonderful role model to introduce to these students!

Our door:

Please excuse the HORRIBLE quality of these!

  

 A close-up of the top. Don't have one of the bottom. Well, I do I just can't find it!

And yes, that is my reflection in the window in my crazy polka dot hat I wore for Hat Day!

For our follow-up activity, I played Alicia Keys on my iPod all day one day as we made these cutie-patootie guitars! (And I know, she plays the piano not the guitar...)

BUT 

a) guitars are way cuter than pianos

b) I couldn't find piano cut outs

c) Alicia Keys actually can play the guitar almost as well as the piano- so it's OKAY.

So, I let them decorate the guitars with whatever random art supplies I could get my hands on. Scrapbook paper, ribbon, felt stickers, foam stickers, pipe cleaners, etc. Then on the back they had to choose three or more facts about Alicia that I had on the Promethean Board, write them down, and glue them to the back. 

Sorry this writing pic is sideways!! Couldn't fix it. 

Lastly, I am going to post a couple pics of our science fair experiment we did for the Science Fair this year. Our project won first place!!

We called it Rainbow Milk. 

I'm sure you've seen it before. I got the idea from Cara at the First Grade Parade!

 First we put the drops of food coloring in the middle of the plates of milk. 

 Then we dunked the Dawn coated q-tip in the middle of the food coloring. 

It was so cool!

 This was our favorite!

What a fun experiment. We were having a really bad storm on this day and our electricity kept flickering. I was so upset. I cursed and threatened Mother Nature and she held off until after school let out to take the power away.

Whew, long post. But I had lots to catch up on being new and all. 

Thanks for reading :)

What I Love Wednesdays!

Let's see... what do I love today? Well let's start with the obvious.

1. My lifeblood: 

I'm drinking one now ;)

2. Also my four newest purchases from B&N:

3. I also REALLY wish I had endless funds to purchase the entire MathStart series!

4. Any and every single post from the following Blogs:

The First Grade Parade

The Inspired Apple

First Grader... At Last

Kinder Gals

Mrs. Lee's Kindergarten

Mrs. Jump's Class

I know there are SO many more, but those were the ones in the front of my brain :)

5. My brand new MacBook Pro. (well I bought it at the end of January and I LOVE it!) 

    *But I have an issue, I just bought a font from DJ Inkers (Crazed) and it won't install on my Mac. It says something about the name table structure... blah blah blah. Also does it with CK Handprint and like 6 or 7 more of my favorite fonts! Errr. Any solutions?

6. Other than that:

 My new paper puncher thing from Michaels, Bic pens, Colored card stock, glue dots, my ca-yoot wallet from Handpicked, my Jury Duty check in the mail, my chihuahua, cheesecake, my kiddos, Sara Bareilles, The Hunger Games (can't wait for the movie), blue jeans, earrings, and Oh Yeah!.......

THE VAMPIRE DIARIES!

How did I not watch this show until a couple of weeks ago?!? I decided to sit down and "give it a try" (in my own words) and I L.O.V.E.D. it. I zipped through Seasons 1 and 2 on Netflix in about 10 days. Then I bought the first part of Season 3 on iTunes and knocked 'em out in about 3 days. I am literally addicted. I never thought I would like it, but I now I probably consider it one of my favorite shows! Give it a chance if you haven't already. It comes back March 15th!!! I am predicting it will be the best day of the semester for me!

Post-ito Numero Uno

Just wanted to put up a test post. I'll be posting much more once I get a little more into things, but lemme tell YOU, I have a super duper busy summer coming up what with getting Debbie Diller math stations and literacy stations ready, as well as the ten thousand other things that I want to implement that I just wasn't ready for my first year. My blog-stalking repertoire/recipe book is FULL of amazing things to try out in the 12-13 school year. I cannot wait! Happy Blogging and Happy March!