Why hello house...long time no see!

Ahhh, home sweet home.  Such a long week, but man we had fun!  We were definitely ready to wrap it up and head home though.  I was strictly a passenger on our little return voyage, so stuck to my word, and worked away to finish my alien themed reading and math unit.  I finished after about the first three hours of our trip.  While scrolling back through to check those tricky margins that always like to jump around on me, my lovely little laptop decided to restart itself to install some updates.  OH...MY...WORD!!  I have never come so close to tossing a piece of junk out a moving car window in all my life.  When this little beauty restarted, my 40 page document had been reduced to 23.  Are you kidding??  Nothing I, or Mr. IT Hubs, could do would bring back those missing pages.  I quietly closed it up and swore not to even think about it for 24 hours, until the tossing urge receded.  Soooo, back on the road Sunday, I took a deep breath and did it all again...obsessively saving every two minutes.  Tada!  All done! So now this cutie little unit is posted in my Teachers Pay Teachers store and I am printing away on it myself.  I'm mixing it in with my study of the solar system for the next two weeks.  I hope you like it as much as I do, and your sweeties have tons of fun with it!

-Beth

Slainte!

Well hoo-ray y'all!  I am on Spring Break and loving it.  I am currently at my brother-in-law's house in Orlando and so ready for some awesome fun at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter tomorrow.  Can NOT wait!  I fully intend to completely ignore anything school related for the next five days, but couldn't resist adding a bit about our last day celebrating St. Patricks' Day in class last week.  I super-quick made this little hat and beard (which came out way better than I'd expected) and snapped a pic of all my sweeties.  

Then I attached their photo to this little writing piece they did. (click the pic for the link) 

 

I added a few sweet little shamrocks around the page, and tada!  Cute!

My plan for the ride all the way back home is to finish up the new TPT unit I've been working on and get it posted.  It's the cutest little alien themed pack full of literacy and math goodies.  I plan to start teaching a unit on the moon and planets next week, and want to sprinkle some cute little alien friends in for fun.

Fingers crossed for short lines and happy toddlers tomorrow!

-Beth

What A Trip!

Wow!  I should definitely go out of town more often.  The fam and I were in Baton Rouge and New Orleans for our last weekend of gymnastics for this season.  We had a great time, took my sweet daughter for beignets for breakfast at Cafe Du Monde, and found the perfect gift for my mother's birthday in the French Market.  Loved it!  Then when we finally made it home, I checked my email, and OH MY GOSH!   I found that my number of followers had completely doubled, I had some wonderfully sweet and encouraging comments from some of those followers, and had been given the Lovely Blog award by two new friends!  I've just been typing away on this little 'ol blog, but honestly assumed I was mostly entertaining myself and not really reaching anyone to share my classroom activities and such.  It feels amazing to know that there are now 14 dear friends out there who are looking in to see if they can use anything I've done in my classroom.  (Well, actually, one of those followers is my sweet hubby who works in IT.  He's not looking for classroom ideas, but, bless him, he reads it anyway!)

So...thank you very much to Vicky at Traditions Laughter and Happily Ever After and Andrea at Cheers to School for giving me the Lovely Blog Award!  I promise to pass it along just as soon as I get all caught up.

Thanks VERY much to Amy at The Resource(ful) Room for adding me to the new blog linky party at set the circus down!  It's my first linky party, and I didn't even have to do anything!

Thank you to ALL of my new followers.  And to celebrate, how about a St. Patrick's Day freebie?  We're out next week for Spring Break, (woot, woot!) so we're celebrating St. Patrick's Day this week.  Last year, the aforementioned sweet hubs spray painted some beans gold for an activity I used in Kindergarten.  Well I dug out those little bits 'o gold today for some measuring with non-standards units.  If you're using enVision Math, we're on Topic 14, and following the 2nd lesson up with this activity.  If you're not, well it meets CCSS too. 

The kiddos used their pieces of gold, that of course I got from a Leprechaun I met, to measure items around the classroom.  They were in groups of three and traveled from object to object as they finished.  If you'd like the recording sheet we used, you can get it here.  I'm leaving in it word so you can change items as needed.  Have a super Wednesday, all!

-Beth

And the nominee is.....

I am still soooo thrilled about my Liebster Blog award, but even more thrilled to pass it on.  I am presenting the next Liebster to Pamela at First Class Teacher.

She has some really cute ideas.  Check her out!

-Beth

Plants, Plants, Plants, AWARD!!

Tomorrow is a really big day for my little class.  Our school is hosting an open house/project learning extravaganza, and community members come in to check out projects all of our kiddos have been working on.  Some of those community members even volunteer to judge the projects.  It's a pretty big deal, and we've been working our little fingers to the bone.  Our theme in first grade this year is plants.  I am used to going home covered in marker, glue, and the like, but this week it's been potting soil...definitely different!  Well we are finally finished!  We've got a few different projects all revolving around our plant theme, and they are so stinkin' cute!

My bulletin board is in bloom!  Here are some close ups.

This sweet little flower was a pinterest find.  Love it! 

 And some lovely fact family flowers are sprouting across the bottom of the board.

These beauties are our seed mosaics, and they are my fave!  Every bit of that is some type of bean or seed.  They look amazing, but I will be finding beans in my room from now until next December!

 Then of course, our actual plants, accompanied by a plant life cycle.

And last, but not least, our wonderful art teacher even got in on the act with these huge color wheel flowers.  They are lining the hall leading down to my room and make me smile every morning!

NOW, drumroll please..........can you all hear it?  Okay, good.  I have been nominated for a blog award!!  For real!!

  

Thank you SO much to Marie at The Hands-On Teacher!!  She nominated me for this awesome award and I am super thrilled!

What? Oh, you have no idea what I'm talking about.  Well, "The Liebster Award is awarded to blogs with less than 200 followers. The award is passed along from blogger to blogger and highlights up and coming blogs. Liebe is the word for love in Germany, which is where the award originated."

 Here are the rules:  Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog. Link back to the blogger who presented the award to you. Copy and paste the blog award on your blog. Present the Liebster Blog Award to blogs of 200 followers or less who you feel deserve to be noticed. Let them know they have been chosen by leaving a comment at their blog.

Soooo, now for my choice.  There are so many amazing blogs out there that inspire me every day.  I've got to narrow them down to only blogs with less than 200 followers and then make my choice.  I promise to announce it here tonight.  

Oh, and obviously that little Mardi Gras unit didn't make it!! AH!  Fat Tuesday really jumped up on me and it wasn't quite ready in time.  I'll finish it up and remind you all about it next year. :)  

-Beth 

Hooray and Oops!

Note to self: do not try what are simple tasks on my trusty laptop with my very not-so-trusty school computer.  That little document in the last post that you could have for free?  The formatting went all screwy when I uploaded it.  Sorry!!!! I'm home now and it's all fixed.  If you got the wonky one, try it again here.

And note to everyone else:  I started this little 'ol blog not that long ago and haven't made that many posts.  I've sold a handful of items on TeachersPayTeachers, and am pretty proud of that.  But let me tell ya', logging on to the blog tonight and seeing 5, yes that's 5, F-I-V-E followers on my blog wowed me for sure.  And then, to see that my new follower is neither family member nor co-worker?  Floored, I tell you!! So dear, sweet Fern, thank you so much for making me feel like an official member of the blogosphere!

And oh, for those sweet family members following, trip for a check-up at the doctor today to renew Madi's allergy meds.  Easy right?  Apparently Brady's got a sprained ankle and Madi has mild scoliosis.  Seriously??  They're both fine, but certainly a very random visit with Dr. Hanson.

...contemplating a Mardi Gras mini-unit to correspond with Scott Foresman and enVision Math...stay tuned!

-Beth

Punxsutawney Phil and Madi!

Thursday was Groundhog Day, such an overlooked little holiday.  Not in our household though, since my sweet firstborn arrived on Groundhog Day exactly 11 years ago!  She still has grandparents call to ask if she saw her shadow.  Of course, now she's very mature and rolls her eyes at such silliness.  But in honor of the two most famous groundhogs I've ever heard of, my little group of sweeties and I did some lovely groundhog activities last week.

We did some nonfiction fact gathering and writing.  Did you know a groundhog and a woodchuck were the same thing?  I did NOT!  Ya' learn something new every day.  Or at least once a week. :)

We also read a cute little fiction story "Geoffrey Groundhog Predicts the Weather." 

It was a hit, and just perfect for our skill this week:  character, setting, and plot.  We made these cute little burrows with Phil's or Geoffrey's (or Madi's) head popping up to look around.  They worked quite nicely to display our information from our story.

  The template I made for our character/setting/plot headings would be great to use for any story when you need to find those three biggies.

You can grab it for free right here!

Have a great week ya'll!!

-Beth

Back To Class

Well after all the excitement/injuries of the weekend, we're back up and running!  Ha!  That was funny because I actually made it to the park to get in some running yesterday.  Now that, too, is really funny because there was WAY more walking involved than running, but I went.  That's what counts, right?

So anywho...a couple of weeks ago we actually had a few snowflakes fall from the sky.  In honor of our favorite kind of weather, we did a little impromptu graphic organizer and whipped out a sweet little writing/craftivity about snow. 

Here's out little bit of fact gathering, and no, my classroom is not crooked!  It's hanging toward the end of my clothesline where it arcs up toward the ceiling. :)

And just a few samples of what my sweeties put together.  They totally remind me of the page about snow in "The Important Book" by Margaret Wise Brown.

We have seen not a single snowflake since then, and today I was outside without a jacket.  It's been irritatingly warm.  I would like to enjoy it, but I can just sense the crazy cold front we've got to have coming any day now.

But on to math, we've been working with fact families, so we threw in a quick little craft today to make fact family houses.  Some of them would have spent half an hour decorating these, but I'm afraid I had to call time and move on. :( 

We've also been doing some work from Deana Jump's Arctic Animals unit.  We'll be wrapping that up this week.  Pictures will follow!!  Have a great hump day tomorrow!
-Beth

Success!

Hooray!  Can you frame your first virtual dollar?  After posting about putting some freebies on my new TPT store yesterday, I actually finished a forest critter/Valentine's Day themed pack of literacy activities.  I added that to my store last night.  Woke this morning to find I had sold ONE!  I have officially made my first $2.70!!  Don't laugh, I'm thrilled!  I had put off selling my wares online for quite a while because I assumed with all the awesome stuff already out there, no one would ever make their way to my page.  Well ONE person did!  So to whomever my mystery buyer is, you've made my day.

In honor of that wonderful purchase, I'll add a little math freebie to coordinate with my mini-unit.  You can pick up Forest Friends - A Balanced Literacy Unit right here. 

You could be lucky buyer number 2...you know you want to.  :)

And  here's the freebie...a little counting by two's.

Forest Friends - counting by two's

Wow! I've been gone too long!

Well I suppose there is indeed a silver lining to every dark cloud.  I was going about my lovely Saturday, ya' know, letting the hubs cook breakfast...watching Sponge Bob with the munchkins...taking Brady-man to the potty.  That last one was what got me.  I must really be getting old, because while bending over to help little man pull up his Thomas undies, I threw my back out.  That's right people, there's you mental image for the day.  Me sitting in the bathroom floor yelling for help while Brady stands over me with undies around his ankles, "Mommyyyy...pull my undies up!  Whassa matta wif you?"  

So, Madi took Brady to play, I drug myself off the floor, and sweet hubby fixed me up with some Aleve, a heating pad, and a laptop.  That silver lining I mentioned?  Since I can't do anything remotely constructive today, I've uploaded my first items to my very own TPT store (click here for my lovely two free preview items!), changed the look of my long-abandoned blog, made a new post (yep, you're reading it), and finished all kinds of lesson plans!

Unfortunately, today was the day I planned to re-enter the world of wannabe runners.  I had been putting it off far too long, as my hiney could attest, and was all set and ready to go during nap time today.  Alas, we are postponed once more.   Hmmm, not too sure if that's a loss or more of that silver lining.

Now, hopefully not to depress you all too much, a local young lady named Avery was tragically injured during a practice session just days after their first competitive meet this season.  She belongs to a gym that often competes with Madi's and has known many of Madi's teammates for years.  She is currently paralyzed below the pelvis and is looking at lots of recovery.  You can check out her story here to offer your support and prayers.  

Now cheer up!  I wish you all your own silver linings today, and failing that, lots of laziness!

-Beth