Five For Friday- Winter Fun

It's finally time for Five for Friday! 

I'm excited to link up again with Doodle Bugs Teaching. 

Check out the link up here: doodlebugsteaching

I gotta start by saying how grateful I am for the awesome teaching community that I have the privilege of being apart of.  Almost all of the activities/projects I've been working on lately were free downloads offered by teachers on TPT. I'm so thankful for all the generous educators who care about making learning meaningful for all students and are happy to share their ideas and products. It's inspiring me to create some more freebies! :)
So here's what has inspired me lately:

It's been all about the Snow people

We have been having too much fun (not like that's possible in K/1) with our snowmen activities.

I wanted to highlight this writing excerpt because I am SO PROUD of the progress this student has made! He was not writing at the beginning of the year and he just knocked this WHOLE paragraph out ON HIS OWN! 

YEP that's right independent writing right here! I am one Proud Teacher!! :)

Okay so I know they aren't all finished (some of my kindergarteners are still working on writing), but I wanted to give you an idea of how cute they look all up on the board together. 
This activity is a little writing/craftivity freebie I picked up on TPT created by Camping Teacher  Grab yours for free HERE

Snowmen Glyphs and Crafts

 

The snowman glyph was an awesome activity that helped my students practice collecting data and graph it. They really enjoyed this one.

Download your copy Here

This little project was a fun winter activity that turned out to be a fun bulletin board display. This freebie was an awesome find. A big thank you to Funky Fresh Firsties If you want to try it with your kiddos, grab your copy Here

Arctic Animals and Winter Writing We've been studying arctic animals and have used several different writing activities to reinforce what we've learned.

Labeling and Sorting Facts About Arctic Animals 

Arctic Animal Freebie

Polar Bears Close Reading This was such a helpful mini lesson focusing on identifying the main idea and finding supporting evidence in the text.  My first graders were really engaged and were excited when they successfully identified the main idea and were able to remember the supporting facts. *This was definitely a highlight during the week.

And we got a little carried away with measurement

This week I introduced measurement during math and we started with the basics- non-standard measurement using unifix cubes and rulers.

And I decided to join in on the fun, so I had the students measure me! :)

They got a kick out of that!

This was a pretty fantastic mini unit!  I'd highly recommend it for young learners.

And lastly, I recently made a new discovery. I happen to stumble across this website while perusing my Facebook feed and I think the idea is totally ingenious!
Ladies and Gentlemen- I'd like to introduce/share with you the coolest idea= Budsies.
I so want to buy one for all of my students but considering they are $70 bucks a pop, I think I'm gonna need to come up with a new plan. But seriously, isn't this the coolest thing?

Budsies And that's all for now folks.
Have a Happy Weekend!

Keepin Things Organized!

Let's Get Organized! Woot Woot!
I just gotta say, I'm so happy to be back in the school routine and in the blogosphere again- It feels absolutely AMAZING!
So recently, my school did a major clean up/restoration project to our main storage area. We share our school facility with a church so the building we use is a shared space. (The church wanted to turn our huge storage room into a new room for game/worship nights)
We were asked to go through all of our stuff that was in storage and clean out what we weren't using. We then organized what we wanted to keep and moved it to a smaller area.
I don't have any 'before' pics but you can take my word for it- the before was way different than the end result! To sum it up, by the end of the work day, we had filled a dumpster with broken/unusable things and had a huge pile of giveaway items that strangers were happily accepting. AND our finished product looked a little like this :)

It may still look messy to you, but trust me this is a HUGE improvement and I'm happy to report it is so easy to find things now- Hallelujah!

Here is my little area. I've organized each month/theme into colored bins. I don't know why that helps, but I just feel happier knowing my FALL stuff is ORANGE, CHRISTMAS stuff is RED&GREEN, VALENTINES is PINK~ I think you get the picture, and I know it doesn't really matter, but it makes me happy (color coordinated organization really gets me excited and makes me feel energized! Just one of my quirks)
After this awesome revamp, it got me thinking… I realized I could share some other ways I've discovered that have helped me stay organize and I'd love to hear what you do to keep all of your materials/lesson plans/units organized.
Here's a little look into what I've found works best for me:

   I've got a binder for each month of school as well as the main subjects I teach (math, science, social studies, reading workshop, poetry etc.)

This is where I store all my binders in my classroom as well as the books I set aside to use with each unit. 

 Here's a closer look at each binder:

I discovered about 3 years ago that the binder system was what worked best for me.
I found the themed binder covers on TPT and you wanna know the best part?? They are completely FREE!!! That's right, they don't cost a dime :)
Thanks to Brooke Hilderbrand over at Once Upon A First Grade Adventure you can download them for free right here 
So I'd love to hear from you-  How do you stay organized? What's your secret system? 
Let's share/steal/borrow ideas!
READY... SET… GO!

January Currently

Hey Y'all! 

So I realize January is almost over and I'm super late to the game, but better late than never right??

I'm linking up (super late) with Farely for the January Currently.

Here we go  :)

Listening

To Parks and Recreation which is in its final season. 

I can't think of a show that has made me laugh so much and I'm super bummed it's ending this year

 :(

Leslie Knope will forever be one of my favorite characters of all time! And Andy, and Ron Swanson and Ben! They are all awesome characters whom I will miss very much!

Excuse me a moment while I drift/laugh out loud down memory lane.

Aaannnnd Moving on…..
Loving Yoga! I can't believe I'm actually saying this because for years I've been a huge proponent of the cardio workout (you know the painful, make you sweat, panting for breath kinda work out?). I always thought you had to sweat and jump around for the work out to actually be effective and make you feel sore- NOPE, wrong! I tried yoga for the first time recently and I was so pleasantly surprised.  It was incredibly relaxing and I actually felt a little sore the next day, which is awesome since that means it was challenging but also lowers blood pressure. I gotta say as a teacher, I can use all the stress relievers I can get and this was a wonderful discovery.
Thinking All about science! I gotta tell ya, this year has been so fun and I'm absolutely loving all the fun and engaging science projects I've tried with my kiddos. Last week we studied phases of the moon and wrapped up our space unit. Take a look at how these projects turned out:

 

 These two videos were extremely helpful and peaked my students interest before we jumped into our project: The Lunar Cycle and Flocabulary- Moon Phases which is an awesome song to help kids learn the moon's phases. My kids loved it!
I used this space unit:

Solar System: An Interactive Notebook Unit on Astronauts and Space by Creative Classroom Core

I couldn't recommend it more highly! It was an amazing unit and my kids learned so much!!
Wanting I am wanting to purchase a whole slew of TPT units, but I'm having to restrain myself. It's….Not….Easy!!!
Needing To start compiling all of our tax documents.  Wow do I feel like a super old person right now! But alas, tis the life of an adult. Am I right?
And finally this year: I'm saying YES to contentment. I take so much for granted and with social media (Facebook, twitter etc.) it's really easy to fall into the habit of comparing your life to others and wishing things were just a bit different. This year I'm saying NO to comparison and YES to contentment. I've decided to be happy with where I am and who I am called to be. And that's good enough.
I'm thinking about MAYBE journaling on a regular basis. I'm not resolving to write every day cause I know that's not realistic, but I think it's reasonable to try and jot down mental notes at least once a week.  And finally, my wish would be to actually write a children's book. I've had a bare bones idea in the back of my mind for awhile and I think it would be pretty cool if I actually did something about it!
We shall see :)
Happy New Year people! What are you saying 'Yes' to?  What is something you 'Maybe' consider doing this year? What do you 'Wish' for this year?

Finally Back and Hitting the Ground Running!

Well after a much long (and very good) break I'm back and excited to share with you what's been going on in my world as of late. 

The holidays were very busy and full of great food, family time and of course lots of traveling.

Here's a tiny recap of our winter escapades (please excuse the personal side note, I'll get to the school stuff in a quick minute).

I had a blast enjoying family time with my sisters!

And another highlight was going to a Packer game at Lambaeu (it was so amazing! and definitely a bucket list item)
I'm so sad they lost yesterday, but these pics bring back happy memories so I'm gonna focus on that instead of the very painful game we just suffered through!

 

We actually got a picture with this guy! Pretty silly, but he is kind of a celebrity since he is at every Packer game.

The other highlight was learning how to make jam. It's actually not very hard, just time consuming and it tastes so delish, that it's so worth the time! I feel very accomplished now.  

Okay- now on to school stuff

 We kicked off our new year with setting goals and resolutions. 

I found this awesome FREEBIE on TPT and it turned out to be a great guideline for helping the students set goals in different areas.

It's hard to read but here's what is says under each of the numbers:

2: I have two new goals for the year
0: Something I want to stop doing
                                           1: 1 thing I would like to get better at
                                           5: 5 books I would like to read

                              

 We talked about goals we could set to help our bodies, brains and hearts grow this year.
I think they came up with some pretty great goals!

Some of the goals I read that were my favorite were: drink more water, be nicer to their siblings, learning their math facts and getting better at spelling. These were just a few and it inspired me to make some of my own resolutions.

My Resolutions:

I've decided this year I am resolving to be present in each moment and strive to be gracious to all people I encounter. I'm also resolving to be content and grateful.

I know that's quite a bit and I may be biting off more than I can chew, but I'm just gonna take it one day at a time. 


So what are your resolutions this year?

I'd love to hear them (or in this case read them) :)