I'm on Instagram!!

I have been on instagram for a while, but now I have a teacher page.

talesofafirstgradeteacher

I'm linking up with What the Teacher Wants! and Apples and ABC's for #teachertalktuesday

So here's what you'll do:
1. If you have a blog, share your instagram username on your blog and use this image to tell your followers about #teachertalktuesday {just right click on the instagram button and click "save as"}. We are hosting a linky party to kick off our "Teacher Talk Tuesday!"  Link up at the bottom: with a blog post, sharing this image,  your user name, and a couple of your favorite Instagram photos, if you want!
2. If you don't have a blog, PLEASE still join us on Instagram on Tuesday for #teachertalktuesday

5 for Friday ---Never Ending Day!!!

1. As A mom of two, my day never ends at 4:15.
Tuesdays my daughter has dance and acrobatics.
Wednesdays and Saturday my son has soccer.
Thursdays and Saturdays my daughter also does cheerleading.
Not to mention laundries, food shopping, and planning for the week (and making stuff for my class).
Sometimes I am amazed at how much I fit into one day.
Yesterday was especially busy. My daughter's class was having a special FCAT's over party today, so of course, she wanted me to make my "famous cookies" (her words, not mine). Well, as soon as we got home I was:
 emptying lunch boxes, walking the dog, getting a laundry in, marinating chicken and taking butter and eggs out to get to room temperature!  I'm not sure but I may have looked a little like the tasmanian devil!!

While the chicken was cooking, I made the cookie dough batter (from scratch!!) and put it in the fridge to cook when we got home from cheer. Eat dinner, go to cheer....
Fast Forward 2 hours..... Cookies in the oven, get kids showered and ready for bed. Oh, and I almost  forgot the laundry, that's got to go away too!
This is my typical week at home--forget about school.  That's actually a bit more calm.
Here's a few things we did this week--which by the way my students said was "Super Fun"  Can't get better than that!
2. Classroom Chronicles has begun!! We are making our own classroom Newspaper, conducting interviews, writing articles, creating funny pages, weather forecasts and sports pages. We will be putting it all together next week, but I love seeing them work together and learn about one another while writing!! Head on over to TPT I'm having a 15% off sale all from 4/26-4/29 in honor of my daughter's 9th birthday on Monday!!!

3. Number Scroll is on a roll!!! We start by filling in a blank chart (10 x10) from 1 to 100. When they finish and it's all correct, they tape on a 2nd chart and count to 200.  This is great for your students who finish early, need a challenge, or even need practice with counting and place value!  My class loves it!  and it's little to no work for me. As they finish I check to make sure they are writing the numbers correctly. When they make it to benchmark numbers such as 100, 500, 1,000, 2,000 etc... I give them prizes!!!  My son who is a first grade has counted up to 4,650 since this pic was taken!!!

This student is up to 3,600!!

4. Book Binding:  My artist of a sister, taught me how to make and bind books. It's super easy all you need is paper, craft paper or construction paper, cardboard, scissors and glue.
1. Fold sheets in half
2. Glue back to back
3. Cut cardboard into 3 pieces 2 of equal size to the page and 1 skinny rectangle for the spine.

4. Glue cardboard to craft paper or construction paper. Fold the edges over.

5. Glue the paper you folded in half and glued together to the cardboard, And Voila!

Your book is bound.  Now all you have to do is write and illustrate!!

5. Three Little Pigs:  Next week we will be comparing and contrasting diffferent versions of the 3 little pigs. Check out some of these new titles:

Can't wait until next week!
Have a great weekend everyone! And a big thanks to Doodle Bugs Teaching for a fun Linky!

Our Earth and Greatest love of all!!

Don't you just love when you have a brainstorm?
I knew I wanted to make a large Earth for Earth Day--So I started this morning.
Back in February we made a graph for Groundhog Day on blue paper.
I decided to "REUSE" That paper and make the EARTH!  yay!  But it gets better.  I planned on drawing or getting green construction paper to make the land.  But then it hit me!
I had my class trace their hands on green paper instead--I then used their hands to make the land!
I found a map of the Earth on Google and projected it onto my Earth. I traced out the land forms and then started having the kids bring up their hands. I also broke out my much love Dots on Turquoise letters from CTP to make the header!

1.I had them write their names on their hands, so it is really "their" Earth!

2. Can you tell it's S. America?

3. North America

4. We also started our I {heart} Earth Booklet. Monday we will be cleaning up our campus so I don't think we will have time for everything in my little Earth Day Fundamentals Unit!!

I hope you can use some of these ideas in your classroom for Earth day!  In the meantime, I will leave you with an old time favorite of mine Whitney Houston, Greatest Love of All. All this talk about taking care of our Earth made me think of her.  
Have a great weekend everyone!!

Beach themed Freebie and Getting Ready for Earth Day

I'm getting ready for Earth Day with my Earth Day Fun-damentals. I've cut up all the "I's", hearts and Earths for our I {heart} Earth Book. We sent in the packet of writing and activities to the Print Shop and it's all PRINTED!!!  Do you have that in your district? I love that as a grade we can send in what we want copied and it's done for us. (Granted there is a fee, but it's actually less than what it costs to run copies on our photocopier).

This will be the cover of the book. The inside will look just like this in a black line master. I added lines to the I and the Heart. In the Earth students will draw themselves taking care of the Earth.

I made some long strips of the same "I {heart} Earth, for the kids to make into bracelets or book marks.  I have some boys with big wrists so I made them long enough that it would not be too tight. In all actuality the students could actually cut it in half and make both.

I mounted this on construction paper to make it more bracelet like.

There are a few more activities in this unit as well that will keep us busy all day long.

Our school has also put up a sign up sheet for our classes to go around and clean up our campus. We will walk around and pick up litter and so forth. Does your school do anything for Earth day?

I'm also sharing this rubric I made for a friend of mine in 3rd grade. I'd love to know how you have your students rate themselves.
Beach themed Student Self-Assessment rubric Freebie

FCAT, PB&J, Fractions and Freebies

I'm linking up with Jodi at Fun in First --Come be a fly on my wall. Even though, today wasn't totally typical, I have a lot in this showing  the things we have been working on in writing and math.
 
So, today was my daughter's first year taking FCAT. She was so nervous she wrote a whole book about taking it!  I have to say, it is very creative --no bias right?  She's a third grader, and in Florida if students in Third grade do not pass we have mandatory retention. So needless to say, no pressure right?  She really is a smart kid and has nothing to worry about.  Still she has the perfectionist personality  (like her mother, hehe) so she always wants to do her best!

Due to FCAT, the whole schools schedule is flipped and turned and askew.
So I needed to plan my activities to take up more time than usual.
I started with  an art project with our story this week. The Dot.  It's a wonderful book about a young girl who does not think she can draw.  Her amazing art teacher, changes her perspective with one small act of hanging her painting in a frame on the wall.  This whole week, my class will become artists and we will create our very own art gallery.

For writing, we finished up our PB and J activities with a How To Make PB and J. I got some PB and J and we were snackin'!

So I picked up some supplies while food shopping. I made sure to bring both grape and strawberry jelly.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Compound Words Center

Peanut Butter Making Words Center

Synonym Sandwiches

We wrote about the Main Character and made a connection of Text to Self.

We wrote this today--How to Make a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich.

They wrote about their favorite food and what they would like to eat all day like the main character in my story!

In math we made some fraction-pillars to explore more with fourths.

I had them glue the circles onto a "branch". Then they used construction paper and cut out different shapes for each body part. (we did not include the head in our fraction) Common Core Standards 1.G.3. states first graders must know halves and fourths or quarters.

We did these last week--Paper plates and index cards. Eazy Pizzy!

Freebies
Fraction Pizza freebie

Fraction-pillar freebie

Dentist-Schmentist!

Have you ever been to the Dentist so many times that you feel like you live there?
Well I can totally relate! I have been to the dentist so many times in the last 4 months that I have lost count. And guess what? it's all for the same stinkin' tooth!  Ahh.  Monday was supposed to be my last visit. However when they took of my temporary cap, something else I needed to stay on--came off. So I had to go back today. I thankfully got a sub (who is wonderful)! Dropped my kids off at school at 9:15 and went straight to the office. (Thank goodness, I can bring my kids to school with me. It is such a relief knowing, while I am away--My kiddos are so comfortable at school.)
3 Hours later!!!! I was able to leave!!! seriously?  Can you imagine having a 3 hour parent teacher conference with your mouth open and drooling?  yuck
I am going to pick them up from school in just a few minutes--thankfully I know my room will be in good shape and my class was in good hands today.  What do you do for sub plans?  I have a template that I can just type into whenever I am out. It follows my schedule and routines to a T. There is no room for error, and of course I always leave a few extras, just in case. I left her these to do along with a writing and center pack to go along with it.

Well, on a positive not, I was able to finish up my Earth Day Fundamentals pack. Now I am all set for Earth Day!

Peanut, Peanut Butter....

... and Jelly! Today we began our week of Peanut butter and Jelly activities!! We have a field trip this week and won't be doing a story from our basal. I am using the short story I wrote and the literacy activities along with it for my reading/writing lessons this week. I started by cutting out some bread, peanut butter and jelly for our PB&J books.  (These are in my PB&J Pack)

Students described what jelly looks like, feels like and tastes like.

They also described Peanut butters, look, taste and feel.

On the last page, the bread, they wrote 2 ways they would like to eat a P B & J sandwich for a little Text to Self connection to the short story.

More PB & J to come tomorrow!  Yummy!!!

Crazy for Fonts!

So I've decided to try my hand at font making.

I have to tell you, it is so much fun!!

I've ALWAYS been a doodler. A-L-W-A-Y-S!

I've only just started, but I got the first set done so I wanted to share it.

(take a look over on the right and click the picture)

I'm making them for personal and commercial use on your classroom materials, blog, and resources. When I first started out it was really hard to find fonts that I liked or that I wanted to use. I hope that these fonts will be able to help some of you all out. I've already made about 4 more, that are not shown here. I will be adding and updating soon.  If you buy these fonts now, you will get the next 4 fonts for free when I update the file. Have a wonderful font-filled Sunday everyone!!!