Crazy Weather and BIG Sales!

We've had some VERY CRAZY weather this January in Utah. For almost 3 weeks we have not been able to go outside for recess because of bad air quality or too cold. Our district has a policy that it must be above 20 degrees and we were in the single digits. We were doing a lot of Adventure to Fitness in our room along with a lot of other creative ideas trying to get the kiddos moving. Adventure to Fitness by the way is very popular in my room. My firsties LOVE it.

Then finally a storm came in and cleared the air and the temperature warmer up to a balmy 25+ but it snowed 15 inches in the last two days. So we still had NO recess! We were hoping for a snow day but didn't get it.
But today was gorgeous!!! Here are some pics from recess. I got to do duty! Yipee!

 This is snow basketball. No dribbling allowed. They just run back and forth trying to shoot the ball. Notice no coats. It was 40 degrees.

 This is one of my students practicing his penguin slide. We have a small hill on the playground and the kids LOVE to slide.

There are BIG sales this weekend.
20% to 25% off most everything in my shops.
Teacher Notebook will be having a 2 day sale (Saturday and Sunday).

TeacherPayTeacher is having a SALE on Sunday.
Enter the promo code: SUPER at checkout for additional savings.

 I hope everyone has a happy Friday!

100's Club FREEBIE

Hi everyone! I hope you all are enjoying your weekend. I had a fabulous time with some of my grandkids yesterday. I took them bowling and laser tagging. It was a blast!

I also want to THANK everyone for the wonderful words of encouragement on my evaluation with my principal. It went really well. He was very nice and complimentary. I don't know what I was so worried about. The Smart board worked like it was supposed to and my kiddos were very good! Glad to have it behind me!!!

With 100's day approaching I thought I'd share a little thing I've done for years. It's called 100's Club. When I first saw a form of this activity I was skeptical. I am not one for 'kill and drill'. But as I tweeked it a bit and was carefully not to over do it my kids, they seemed to really enjoyed it. In October, after some practice with counting and writing numbers, I introduce the 100's Club. I put together little packets of counting sheets for my firsties to work on. When they complete one I give them a little reward, like a piece of candy, and then they start on another packet. The packets increase in difficulty as they go along. I do it as a self start only once a week so my kiddos don't get bored with it. They keep their packets in their desks and are responsible not to lose them or they have to start over and none of them want to do that. I was surprised that they LOVE it so much. I love how they find the patterns on the grid and it's great number writing practice. A few of my low kids need a hundreds chart for a helper at the beginning but pretty soon they don't need any help.

If you want a copy, you can click HERE to download.

If you want to check out what we'll be doing on Thursday for 100's day, here is my post from last year. Click HERE.

Have a great week everybody!

All About Groundhogs!

I hope everyone is having a fantastic day off! I love it when I get to wear my jammies all day.

I have just uploaded an All About Groundhog packet to my shops. I did one last year for free and realized how bad it was. I was just learning how this whole packet thing works so I re-made it and added more stuff.

It has an 8 page Non-Fiction Early Reader booklet in color or black and white. I included directions on how to print it back to back so you can save paper. It has a graphic organizer with a writing shape page. I added a fact or opinion practice page, Fiction or Non-Fiction story practice, and a prediction sheet. You can just click my side bar for a link over to my TpT or TN shop.

I hope you all have an awesome week!

Contraction FREEBIE

The pressure is on! I have my formal principal's evaluation on Tuesday. I don't know about you but these always make me soooooo nervous. I've done them a million times. I've had tons of people, over the years, in my classroom watching me teach from district personnel to other school's principals but it always makes me crazy. I think it's because I'm a perfectionist. I want the perfect lesson and my students to behave in a perfect way.

Well it ain't gonna happen this time.

I have a VERY difficult class! Plus I have a new principal and I'm not sure how he grades. And I'm going to use my new Smartboard which doesn't always work the way I want it to. I think that's what is making me soooo nervous. But the 'SHOW' must go on and I'll just do my best.

This darling frame is a freebie by 'Sweet Berry Patch' over on her Teacher Notebook shop. She has some cute stuff!

I'm introducing contractions. I'm excited about my lesson. I'm going to have the kiddos build contractions with tiles and find them in their reading. I love teaching by the gradual release method so there will be lots of TO, WITH, and BY.

 I LOVE this song and wish I knew who wrote it so I could give credit.

 If you'd like to download the anchor chart, practice sheets, and song click HERE.

Linking up with Rebecca's FREEBIE Linking Party. Go check it out. There are some GREAT FREEBIES!

I hope everyone has a great LONG weekend!
Thanks for stopping by.

Snowball Fight!

I think I will try just about anything to motivate my class to be good this year. I have a difficult class and I am doing everything I can think of. I got a great idea last week and it worked pretty well- A SNOWBALL FIGHT! If your school is like ours then snowballs are against the rules. They can be dangerous. But what about paper snowballs? During the week, at the end of each day, we review what we've been working on. So this week, when someone could give me the right answer, a good example, or spell a word right, they got a paper snowball to throw in the trash bin. They LOVED it!

My kids thought is was lots of fun and tried hard to answer and win a snowball. So then I decided to bribed them for the whole week. If they could be really good all week long, we would have a snowball fight on Friday. Now let's just say that they were not perfect. But they really tried hard. So at the end of the day on Friday, (it had to be the very, very last 5 minutes of the day otherwise, well you know why) I gave everyone 3 snowballs (I used scrap piece of paper, left over worksheets etc.) and told them it was a game to see who could defend their 'fort' (table). I set the timer and said go.

The team with the least amount of snowball at the end was the WINNER! But we all were winners because it was soooo much fun.
Now my only hope is it will carry over to next week. We'll try it again and see if it will help them be good for another week. Just one day, one week at a time. That's how I'm getting through the year!
I hope everyone is having a great weekend!

No Recess, Math Stations, & Polar Pals

I think I might go crazy if we don't have a recess soon. Since we've been back from Christmas break it's either been too cold or poor air quality to have recess. Four days straight without a recess is torture for first graders as well as the teacher. We are praying for a recess tomorrow but the weatherman is not giving us much hope until Friday. But even then it's supposed to snow. Oh well, more blocks, coloring books, checkers, and Blink. Blink is a really fun card game that my firsties love to play. You can find it at Target, Wal-Mart or Amazon.com

Here are a few new pictures of our math stations. I didn't have them up and ready the first day when we got back from the break and my kids were a little impatient.

They LOVE their math stations.

 We LOVE doing math games on the Kindles!

My kids love the site- ABCYa.com

 These previous 3 games are in my Winter Fun Packet.

This Subtraction Bump game I posted about last year. You can find it HERE.

These 3 clock games are from my new Star Wars telling time packet. My boys go CRAZY for these games. You can read about them HERE.

I posted a new packet called Polar Pals. There are 2 non-fiction booklets in color or black & white. One about Penguins and another about Polar Bears. We did compare and contrast, fact or opinion, and lots of vocabulary activities. Then with the information we've learned, we will write about both animals.

 You can check the packet out by clicking on my sidebar for a direct link to my shops.

I hope everyone is having a great week! Thanks for stopping by.

January Books!

BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS!

We L.O.V.E. BOOKS in my room.

Here's some of the books we'll be reading this month.

If you want a great read aloud that your kiddos will never forget. Then "Stone Fox" by John Reynolds Gardiner is your book.
It comes with a warning though- it is a tear jerker!

The next chapter book I'll be reading this month is a Magic Treehouse book by Mary Pope Osbourne. My firsties LOVE this series. And since we will be talking a lot about the Arctic and Antarctica, this is a great book.

Another favorite for January is "Balto". There are a few books written about this famous dog from Nome, Alaska but I like this one by Natalie Standiford best for my first graders.

I'm sure everyone is familiar with "Snowflake Bentley" by Jacqueline Briggs Martin. But if you're not it is an absolute 'must read'.

We are doing a lot with Penguins this month and this is one of my favorites by Martin Jenkins called "The Emperor's Egg".

"The Missing Mitten Mystery" by Steven Kellogg is a fun one about playing in the snow.

And what would January be without Jan Brett books? I love "The Mitten" and "The Hat" has to be my favorite of her books.

TACKY, TACKY, TACKY! 

My kiddos love him as much as Pete the Cat! Helen Lester has created such a lovable, funny penguin. There are several in the series so you'll want to read them all!

Well, that's a peek at some of the books we'll be enjoying this month.

I'd LOVE to hear what you're reading in your room this month.