I'm going to the Phonics Dance Workshop!

I am going to the Phonics Dance Workshop in Austin this Monday, April 2nd. Anyone else going to be there?

Whew!

Boy, oh boy! I administered STAAR test today and yesterday and I am so exhausted! (STAAR is the state test here in Texas. I know, the name makes me want to gag. No lie- the power point introducing this new test was called A STAAR is BORN)

But I rewarded myself yesterday and saw Hunger Games with some girlfriends! OH.MY.WORD. It is FABULOUS!

And speaking of fabulous....Peter Brown, who is one of my most favorite authors and illustrators, has a book called The Curious Garden. It's about a boy named Liam who stumbles upon a garden that isn't quite making it. He decides to help the garden. And the garden gets curious about the city and starts growing. It's so sweet! Perfect for Earth Day and how we can all make a difference. It can lead to discussions about seeing the beauty in things, perseverance, etc. And, I just saw this on Peter Brown's website, that this story is based around the High Line in New York City. The High Line is an abandoned railway that is overgrown with flowers. There are some great photos to show your class here.

I. Am. OBSESSED

I heart Grade ONEderful and she posts picture books every Friday. She participates in this completely fabulous weekly linky party hosted by Susanna Leonard Hill. The party is called Perfect Picture Books. If you follow me in Pinterest you see that I've been posting tons of picture books lately. I'm always on the look out for a new book to add to my library. At Susanna's site you can find books by subject and age. Each picture book posted to the party has a great description, information about the author, etc. You MUST check it out!

Five Egg-cellent Ideas with plastic eggs!

Ok, ok....I'll admit it. I went a little nuts buying plastic eggs this year. I was really ok with it until I found a box of plastic eggs that I bought last year! So I really had no choice but to create some EGGCELLENT center ideas! I've put all of my eggs into different baskets so students can choose which center they want to do.

1. Writing Prompts in eggs. I created just a few fun writing prompts and printed them on Avery 5160 labels so that my firsties could stick them into their journals. You can grab a copy of my writing prompts here.

2. Synonym activity- I had my students give me a list of synonyms. They just love to be involved! Students match up the top and bottom words to make a pair of synonyms.


3. Antonyms activity- My students also gave me a list of antonyms. Students match up the top and bottom words to make a pair of antonyms.


4. Scrambled words- I put several Scrabble tiles into eggs for students to use to make words.


5. Fact Family Center- I used bottle caps so my students would have some kind of manipulative. I Mod-Podged numbers onto four bottle caps. Three of the bottle caps make a fact family. Students have to figure out which three numbers make the fact family and then record the number sentences as well.

Grab your set of recording sheets for each of these games by clicking the picture below!



Easy Center Idea

Hey all- for those of you who are back this week from Spring Break are you as exhausted as I am?! This whole not wearing sweats and talking all day thing is wearing me out! Ha!

So, this morning after I hit snooze for AN HOUR(!), I finally made myself get up and shower. As I was spending a lifetime drying my hair (It's so very long) I checked email on my phone and saw that I won the giveaway at Cheers to School! OH YEAH! I won't lie, I broke it down in a very hip and cool dance while still blowdrying my hair!

Yesterday afternoon I went to Target and found these cute placemats. Too cute not to buy and so inexpensive!
I decided to turn them into bingo boards for word work. I wrote sight words in each egg and added them to cards.  I chose words with spelling patterns that some of my kiddos are struggling with. 
I left them big today and ran off two sets of cards to see what my kids thought. they loved it! I may cut them down to smaller boards in a few days after everyone has had a chance to play and make it a blackout game.

How's that for an Egg-celent idea?! 

Circus Vowels!

I purchased this A-MAZING book by Jodi L. McMaster called Circus Vowels. It's a super cute book that explains to your students when vowels sound short or long. It's really precious!
The author, Jodi L. McMaster, is a first grade teacher so this book is perfect for your firsties! Click the pic to head straight to Amazon and snag your copy! And be sure to check out her blog for some freebie goodies related to this book here!

Blogger Meet up and a Winner!

I can't believe it's Friday and my last day of spring break. Waaaaaaa! On Wednesday I drove to San Antonio to meet up with some other bloggers- IT.WAS.A.BLAST!
Farley from Oh Boy Fourth Grade, Reagan from Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits, Swersty from Swersty's Swap Shop, Patty from A Series of Third Grade Events, Jessica from Glizty in First Grade, Becca, Kristina, and Barbara.
Reagan has her house on the market so I brought her a St. Joseph to bury in her backyard.
I bought one for myself too and my husband WILL bury tomorrow morning when our house officially goes on the market. In case you haven't heard this before burying a St. Joseph statue upside down in your backyard is supposed to help you sell your house. Certainly can't hurt!

Now to announce the winner of my giveaway! Drumroll please.....
I'll send you an email with your gift card info! Thanks to everyone who participated! 

A couple of quick questions answered

How do you make blog buttons rolls? Click HERE for a tutorial. Super easy and a great space saver.

How do you create your items that you share and sell? I have a Mac so I use Keynote. (sorry, I wrote Keyword at first. Duh.) (It's the Mac version of Power Point) It's SO easy to use. The Mac version of Word is Pages and I use that too although it isn't as user friendly as Keynote. Mac makes it very easy to save things as a PDF as well.

Where did I get that cute t-shirt I posted about on Monday? I got it from Etsy off the Bouncy Bumble Boutique site. If you do a search for Hunger Games you will find a ton of cute t-shirts. Etsy is a dangerous place! I love shopping there!

If you have any other questions be sure to email me! I'm sitting here at home ALL day while painters, window washers, etc. come through our house!


A Big 'Ol Thank You!

Howdy all! I wanted to send a big ol' thank you to several FABULOUS bloggers who have awarded me with the Lovely Blog Award! Thank you to Becca, one of my dearest bloggy friends, at Teaching First, Jenn at A Pirates Life for Us, Sarah at The Fabulous First Grade, and Lory at Fun for First. (Lory is having a super fun Linky party too so go check out her blog!) Y'all truly make me feel so good! And I hope you will forgive me for NOT following the rules. I'm a bit overwhelmed with everything trying to get our house up on the market by next weekend. We have painter, a stager, window washer, extra landscaping, etc. going on this week. I do want y'all to know I really appreciate the award. For those of you bloggers who aren't' familiar with these blogs please check them out!

A few edits and sending the love

Well... I had a couple of errors on my Roll a Picture unit so I've fixed those errors. If you have purchased my Roll a Picture Unit from either TPT or Teachers Notebook be sure to upload the latest version.

AND I was missing an "s" on the end of one of my shamrocks on my March math centers. To get an updated version of March math centers click on the picture below.

Last, the picture below is for my whole team. If you were to walk into any of our classes today you would have wondered if you were in the Twilight Zone. We had kids packing up and putting their bike helmets on HOURS before the end of school. Mind you, EVERYONE ELSE was still working. Strange things happened all day. ALL DAY. One of my teammates had a child with a birthday and the parent sent in a cookie cake UNCUT! Seriously?! She couldn't find a knife so she cut the thing with popsicle sticks! That's right y'all. She cut the cookie cake with popsicle sticks! She said she was so upset at that point with everything that had happened all day that she couldn't even think of asking another teacher if they had a plastic knife. Ha! At 2:10 a teammate called me with "What is going on today?!" People. I just don't know. But I do know we only have two more days before spring break. 
Hallelujah!


I cannot go to school today...

Said little Peggy Ann McKay....We've been reading funny poems in class and I just love Shel Silverstein. But I really couldn't go to school today because I have a nasty case of strep. But the silver lining is that I was FINALLY able to view everyone's presentations at the Everything Primary Expo! No interruptions either since hubby was working at the office today and not from home!  AND I finally got to catch up on all my blog stalking. Aaaaah!

*I also started created a FB page for my blog. But I can't figure out how to get my blog feeds to automatically feed in to it! Apparently that feature was disabled in September. Does anyone know how to do that?

Also wanted to mention a FAB giveaway going on at Grow Up Learning for a cute spring unit! Head over there to enter!




A March Math Center

Have you been to your local craft store lately? I picked up these cute St. Patrick's Day items from Michaels!
I thought they would be perfect for a nonstandard measurement center! 
I put together a few pages for this center. Click the picture to download your freebie!

Almost Friday

So thank goodness it's almost Friday because I have been exhausted alllll week. Maybe it's because starting Monday I, along with the rest of my team, believed it was Thursday. Seriously. I've thought it was Thursday EVERY day. It's been very disappointed every day when I realized the ACTUAL day.

I love Dr. Seuss's birthday! Truly. Usually I decorate my classroom and draw characters from his books all over the room. I make pencils to go along with Horton Hear a Who.....but this year....I just haven't had the energy. Granted I'm cleaning up my house so we can put it on the market, but still....I feel bad about it. Or at least I felt bad about it until I discovered a teacher bag in the closet of the very messy guest bedroom I mentioned yesterday. Inside this teacher bag were gift cards to Starbucks from students I had two years ago! (Please don't judge me. I'm not a hoarder, I swear!) $45 dollars worth. I did a "Woooohoooo!" to myself and made a note to get my tired booty up early so I can make it to Starbucks!

I have several things to post so check me out this weekend! And cross your fingers that my husband has to travel next weekend so I can take a break from this awful cleaning business and spend an ENTIRE evening catching up on my blog stalking! Happy Friday y'all!