Dr. Seuss’s {Read Across America Week}

What great week when you’re a first grade teacher!  It is just what we needed after coming back from a six day work week.  The kids are pumped about reading and learning all about crazy words like Zeed and Wump!  Hello, do you know what they mean?  If not join in the Dr. Seuss fun and head over to whattheteacherwants and down load the awesome unit that is already done for you!  Along with the unit I have added my unit day by day lesson plans complete with AL course of study objectives.  Click on the picture below to download the day by day lessons.

When Two Become One

So as any good Southern Christian Girl would do Carter and I are not living together before we get married… but we are taking the “moving in” in stages.  WE HAVE LOTS OF STUFF! It’s a good thing that Carter is super handy with tools.  So for Valentine’s Day…along with a pack of sharpies!  Carter redid the closet in the master bedroom. It only had two shelves with two small rods on the sides of the semi walk in closet. Carter opened it up with two long rods and shelves on the long wall a short tall shelf for dresses and a wall of shelves for shoes!  It is AMAZING! I am thrilled with it… He made fun of me because I wanted to paint it a pretty color (maybe even put up some super trendy wall paper)!  That got vetoed. Now we can’t decide if all of my clothes..summer and winter will go in the closet or if carter is going to take the top shelf. Decisions Decisions.  This one is just one on the the list of about 1000 left to make.

Before: It is usually more organized.

{Top-shoes that don’t fit on the shoe rack on the bottom in picture two. Bottom- Jewelry chest, bags in the floor, sweatshirts, sweaters, scarves, skirts hanging.. dresses had already been taken out. There was no extra space in the closet.}

  

   

After: {top: 1.top shelf..still deciding summer clothes or carter’s clothes? 2. all of my winter clothes on one shelf, organized by color :) bottom: 1. I tried to get a complete view, but couldn’t really.  2. dress rack with a basket full of CHS softball sweatshirts! 3. side shelves for my shoes!}

 

   

Love It. Can’t wait till two actually become one under the same roof. I’ll post my President’s Day activities soon. Plus a wedding weekend update.

Did I mention we are making up a school day THIS SATURDAY!!!!!!!?????? Saturday school whooo hooo get excited.  I have a softball tournament so will be taking off 1.2 day but school…. on Saturday. {sigh}

Loving my CrAzY Life

Laura

MIA

For those of you wondering… I do still remember that I have this little thing called a blog!  I have been crazy busy with wedding planning and the beginning of softball.. Hopefully things are going to get back into a routine here in my life and I will be back to blogging soon! (like tomorrow!) Now I am being summoned to print an updated guest list….which is growing by the min… 454, 455, 456….and it goes on and on. Check back tomorrow.

Place Value Lesson

Remember this great find:

These plates came from target and I thought they would be perfect for a pv lesson.  I had already taught place value so I thought that I would put a center together for this week.

I modeled… very specifically how to do this on my elmo before we started centers.  Students were given a baggie with valentine’s m&ms, which contains red, white, light and dark pink candies.  The students were instructed that no matter what pink… pink is pink!    The students poured the contents of the baggie into the big slot and then sorted  by following directions on the worksheet.  One example problem was the reds were the ones, the pinks were the tens, and the whites were the hundreds. Download the recording sheet below… this could easily be done with a math mat instead of the plates.

Contractions and Valentines

The weekend felt like it was about a minute long. It was so pretty here.  I don’t feel like I got a lot accomplished but looking back at the list it seems like I should have an Olympic gold medal!  Friday and Sat we had spend the night company which we loved!  Carter also had a “little” project that he started and finished this weekend.  I will be featuring the “project” on What I Want Wednesday. Yay!  I went to Savannah, TN  with my mom and sis, then carter and I grilled for our company, and I made home maid Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry icing. …they were just okay.  I am ready to have a stand mixer (hint hint… wedding gift anyone?) with a paddle attachment. Then Sunday, I cleaned up the mess, did a little but of school work, worked at school for about and hour and a half (NOT NEARly enough time!) practiced sb for two hours, went to Cullman with some of the greatest girls ever, came home and made Valentines for my cuties. {whew}

I am going to leave you with some pictures from our contraction surgery.  The students got to be drs with patients (word pairs) and they got to “cut” the patients and “stitch” them up with the apostrophe.  THEY LOVED IT!  They took it so seriously.  I posted the sign below on the door, and our reading coach came in and one of my students said.. HEY did you not read the sign?!  hahaha. They reminded each other to be sure to put the stitch in or the patient would bleed to death!  GREAT activity… I saw the original idea somewhere in blog land.. please let me know if it was yours… I will give you credit.

          

Then today was Valentine’s Day….probably deserves a post of its own but… I’m too tired. Just gonna post some pictures of the crafts I made, activities, and 100% pure joy of being a kid!

First was a “store” that I set up.   Students got to earn money throughout the morning by doing various things. Then during math/valentine’s day centers they got to spend their money on the items in the pictures.  {note: most students had a $1… If you do this, lower the price of icing and make them pay 50 cents for the cookie..other wise be prepared to dish out lots of penny items! ONE AT A TIME!}

 

 

tooo cute with their finished products.

These are the valentines I gave my students: the bird is from www.thelongthread.com. The straw is something that use in small group reading for tracking and the kids love them, so I decided to get them one they could take home.  I just added the original saying:

      

Some more pictures from the mess day of fun:

after four hours at the softball field… I loved going home and getting happies from my parents, grandparents, and sister and then coming home to already purchased Chick-fil-A and these wonderful gems:

 

I am one happy and blessed little girl!

Remember…”Love is the GREATEST of All things!”

Laura

Groomsmen's Wear and Such

I knew since I was using pink I didn’t want to use black tuxedos.  My ZTA room in college was pink and black and while I loved it I didn’t really want it for my wedding.  To me it screams BACHLORETTE PARTY…not what I want the day of the wedding. Brown was also out because it is the middle of the summer.  The choices left were gray/silver, tan, or seersucker.

{All images from this post are from Style Me Pretty}

When I showed Carter the options, he was 100% on board with the …..TAN!  Which was fine with me. I like the laid back feel it gives groomsmen, but still looks great in pictures and goes well with a church wedding.  Also, after working in the wedding retail business I am not a big fan of the rented vest and tie.  Something seems to always go wrong that is out of anybody’s control and I wanted some uniqueness.  This seems extremely odd coming from me because I want the bridesmaids to look exactly alike from their hair to their shoes.  Carter and I thought that it would be neat if all the groomsmen wore different ties!  I LOVE IT!  We actually picked them out this weekend.  They are for the most part all different, but all in the pink family.  Now if I can talk him into wearing pink socks we will be on a roll!  {Probably not happening!} As for the rest of their attire they will be renting the tan tux, white shirt, and shoes (I’m thinking brown? What do you think?) They will be wearing a boutonniere that looks similar to the picture below it is an orchid but with more flowers and greenery.

I have made some decisions that aren’t really blog worthy.  Like I picked my caterer, which I am super happy with, but not much to blog about.  We are going to heavy appetizers instead of a meal. whooo hooo decision finally made.

I have also looked at every pink high heel on the internet.  I still can’t make a decision.  It seems like if I really like it then it cost too much, its too high, or if it meets that criteria then it is U-G-L-Y!  Right now these are my top pics from Zappos.com

   

My favorites are the one on the end.  When I picked them out they were on sale and of course they aren’t now. *Sigh* Story of my life!

I am going to have two ring bearers and one flower girls. My ring bearers are two precious boys 7 and 4.  They are going to wear linen pants, a white button down, and a pink seersucker tie.  My flower girl is the sweetest thing ever.  I had her in kindergarten and again this year in first grade.  We haven’t decided on a dress for her but I really like this dress from daydreamheirlooms.com

  I love the ribbon details. If we do decide to get this one I want to have her initials monogramed on the chest.  So Sweet!  We are waiting to see what comes out for Easter this spring before deciding.

I need to post about my search for invitations, music and the singing, the ceremony, the reception, favors, and what in the world to throw/have when we are leaving.  So many decisions.  At least the big ones are out of the way.  I’ll keep you posted hopefully more frequently than the last time I posted. 

What do you want to know about the wedding?

Target Finds

Yesterday school let out at 1:30 because (wait, you’ll never guess?!) SNOW was heading our way.  Sure enough right around 3:30 it started.  As much as I hated to see it, it was so pretty.  It was the steady, medium sized flake kind that doesn’t go away very quickly.  It snowed a good 4-5 hours and the ground and roads were covered.  I prayed for a delay, but to no avail school was cancelled.  Most of the time we would say YAY! but this means Saturday school and my Saturdays are already pack with softball tournaments. So that either means no school or no softball, unless the Saturday they pick just happens to be the ONE Saturday we have off between now and the end of school!

Well after an amazing appointment with the chiropractor, I headed into Target for 1. water and 2. Dt. Dr. Pepper. Did I go directly to the beverage section…. NO!  I walked around that entire store! I did get the drinks but also some pretty awesome stuff for my room.  I’ll be turning this receipt in to PTO!  Thank goodness for them.

These are all of my finds:

My favorite Valentine’s Snack is red and pink funfetti cake mix.  I will be whipping up a batch for Monday’s “Special Snack!”

Also for Monday I bought the necessary Conversation Hearts, but they are the Sweetheart kind and they are Sparkly. YAY!  Maybe they will taste a little better than the chalk kind.

   

These little gems were in the dollar section for $2.50.  Not only will they help decorate my cupcakes, but they will be Brain Sprinkles for my kiddos. This idea cam from Sarah at First Grader… At Last.  She uses confetti, which I love but right now we are loving to eat our brain sprinkles when we are Super Thinkers. I love the different colors and the kids will be excited for some new sprinkles.

{note: I realize, a photographer I am not!}

I bought 2 packs of these blank note cards.  I’ve got an awesome project in store for these that I will post after V-Day. I didn’t want to get snowed in without the necessities so I picked up a new pack of markers and crayons. Is there anything better?  

PAPER, PAPER, PAPER!!!

I found the clip board in the dollar section …. it was the only one.  I bet some other teacher gobbled those up in a heartbeat. The scrapbooking paper was also a $1.  I picked up a pack of cardstock… and my FAVORITE find of the day was: The HOTTEST pink notebook ever and inside………………………………………………..>

GRAPH PAPER!  AMAZING! It serves soo many purposes. I love how neat it keeps your handwriting and how your drawings always look so much better.

We just started learning about money, so I picked up these bowls for a whopping $1.99 for 6 for students to store their play coins in during lessons.  Its so much cuter than a baggie.

Another find I was super excited about were these plates:

Are they not perfect for place value? Ones, Tens, Hundreds? and then the big slot would be for putting the number back together or to break it apart!  I can’t wait to incorporate these into my math stations.  Of course I had to get one for the girls and one for the boys. These were around 2.50.

I thought it was a extremely successful random shopping trip. Its amazing what you can find when you are thinking out of the box.

Happy Snow Day Y’all!

I will prob. be posting a LLLLOOOONNNNGGGG overdue wedding update where in a bit.

Laura

Reading Street Review Week

PRINTABLE UPDATED…silly contractions…I forget all the time. I am not sure how I expect my firsties to remember.  I will fix the poster tomorrow at school.

After six stories in our reading series, we have a Theme Launch/Review Week.  It is also a week to test benchmarks, sight words, and skills that were taught in the unit.  We reviewed –dge words today with this badge activity.  I made a poster and we found all of the –dge words together.  EAch student got a chance to underline one of the words.  Next I passed out individual “invitations” and we read it by using the strategy, “I DO! WE DO! YOU DO!”  After reading, students took highlighters and highlighted all of the –dge words. Then they sorted them by vowels and recorded on the sort sheet.

{Click to Download}

{Click to Download}