Happy, Happy Friday!

Well, this was our first 5 day week after break ( and even before break) and I felt every minute of it! So, I am thankful for the weekend and some time to relax! ( Although not too much relaxing for me, we have plans for the next 3 weekends. Geesh, it makes me tired just thinking about it!)

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for the Five for Friday linky party AND Teaching Maddeness for The Friday Flashback. And look at me! Actually getting to it ON a Friday! :)

1. Tuesday we had our Christmas party after having to reschedule it three times. It felt very anti-climactic to me ,but the kid's had a good time. At Christmas time I like to stick with lights and gingerbread men as I feel they are very uncontroversial. I mean who doesn't love a good gingerbread man. :) I found these foam gingerbread men at the dollar store in October and bought them and some foam stickers to decorate with. I thought they would be a fun craft to do at our party as the kiddos could be creative and independent. We did a turkey glyph at our fall party that required WAY too much direction from me. 

 Aside from all the little paper backs to the foam stickers it also fulfilled another party requirement of mine...little mess! :)

 Aaaaannnnnd then I broke that requirement by frosting and sprinkling cookies. The kids had fun ,but our poor janitor! :)

2. I recently purchased Swimming Into 2nd Grade's Winter Wonderland Literacy Centers for use during station time. You can check it out HERE AT TPT. This is one of my peanuts at our pocket chart station matching up synonyms.  

 3. Speaking of station time, one of my Literacy Work Stations is the computer station. Our school has purchased a subscription to Reading A to Z for the second year in a row. I really love using it for my guided reading groups. One of my teaching partners started using the Raz Kids portion of it this year and then showed me how to set my kids up on it. Let me tell you, they are OBSESSED! I will admit it's pretty cool. They listen to and then practice reading leveled stories. Then they take quizzes on them. For each listen, read through, and quiz taken they earn points which can be used to " purchase" things for their spaceship. 

This is one of my peanuts listening to her story. I thought I had gotten a good picture of the spaceship to share and I did. However, I got her name ( first and last) in it and didn't want to be posting that! So I'll add that to next week's Friday post. :) 

4. Today we finished the last of our Christmas-y festivities. When they came in this morning they each had a present to open at their seat. I always get my kiddo's books for Christmas. I order from Scholastic so it's a double win for us. They get an awesome book and I get bonus points to get more awesome books for our room!

Isn't this wrapping paper ADORABLE! I used it last year too and I think I have enough to use it again next year too! :)

Then this afternoon we combined the 3 classes and gave them a choice of watching The Polar Express, Finding Nemo, or comfy reading. We usually do this on the Friday before break but the darn snow days kept us from it. It is always so magical to be in the library, with the twinkling lights on and the kiddo's in their jammies, watching The Polar Express on the last day before break. Watching it today was still fun but lacking some of its magic. I really feel like I should be going on Christmas break again! 

5.  This is what I am working on this weekend. I got a bunch of picture frames for Christmas and have a HUGE pile of pictures I want to frame. My goal is to turn my dining room table back into a place for eating and get all of those pictures framed AND hung. 

PS: If you are wondering why there is a knife on my table it is for opening and closing the little backing tabs on the picture frames. :)

There are my 5. Link up HERE and HERE and have a GREAT week! 

                                               

5 for Friday and I'm Back!

Well! Its been a LONG time since I posted. As you know (because I mention it in every other post), I super LOVE Christmas and I get really involved in decorating at home and in my classroom, planning fun activities for my family and my " teaching kids" as my 3 year old calls them, and lots and lots of wrapping! Needless to say, the blog got put by the wayside in all of that. I meant to at least do Farley's Currently, buuuuut obviously didn't. :) Several of the blogs I follow were doing this fun linky about our week's and while it is now Saturday and not Friday, I thought I would link up too. :) You can link up HERE. 


Last week was our first week back after our Christmas break. I was preparing myself for a lot of behavior and rules review but my kiddo's came back like they had only been gone for a weekend! It was a great way to come back! Before break we had 2 snow days, so we missed out on our Christmas party and our PJ day/ Comfy Reading day. They were both scheduled for yesterday ( Friday) BUT, we had ANOTHER snow (ice) day. Poor kids. :( Hopefully we can reschedule all of that stuff for next week and it can ACTUALLY happen!

Thing number 1 I HAVE to share is that I got a laminator for Christmas! I am SO excited. My super awesome hubby ALWAYS does a good job with my gifts and this year was no exception. I squealed so loud when I opened it, and then promptly made him take a picture of me with it to brag about on Facebook to all my teacher friends. There was much jealousy. :)

This is me and the peanut with our piles of loot to open. :)

2. This week we have been hard at work on adding 2 digit numbers with regrouping. Our curriculum really covers it hard for several days but I purchased Amy Lemons' DOUBLE DIGIT ADDITION PACK as an extension activity to use my kiddo's. On Friday we were going to do a sort of " write the room" with math problems instead. Buuuuuuut, see the above, that didn't happen. I'll post pics of it when we do get to it. :)

3. I am also working on finishing my very first FREEBIE!!! to put on TPT. Technically it is ready, but I wanted to "juj" it up a little bit so I am going to put a couple of cute borders around them and then I will post them. They are for summarizing/retelling and story elements.  Hope to have those ready by this Friday. 

 4. Thursday we went on a scavenger hunt that we were supposed to have before break. I got the idea from Fun in First Grade. It was supposed to be a back to school activity but I modified it. I used the clues that she came up with but used a different book. You can see the clues HERE. I used the book Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett since she was the author that we were studying for the month of December. 

FIFG said that Little Debbie made a gingerbread man cookie. The store that I went to did not carry them, so I decided to just use my gingerbread man cookie cutter and sugar cookie dough that I flavored with cinnamon and nutmeg. 

After we got done reading the story I told the kid's I had a gingerbread treat for them. Then I had them each get a napkin and put it at their seat. They were salivating. :) I made a big show out of getting the tin from my desk and opening it. Inside of it was the first clue. Their eyes got SO big when I had that in my hand instead of a cookie for them. Our first clue took us to the library. I had it worked out with Mrs. V, our librarian, to take the tin that actually had the cookies upstairs and put them out at their seats (hence the napkin) after we had visited her. The clues took us all over the place and they very quickly got each clue. I had our principal, secretaries, lunch ladies, and specials teacher's in on it. When we got back to our room Mrs. V. had crumbled one up a little leading into our room. It was great. The fact that I was with them the whole time made it quite magical for them. They kept saying over and over " How did these get here!?" It was so great and I am glad I did it. We will DEFINITELY be doing this again next year. 

5. And last thing,  today I got my hair cut. It was driving me nuts and I love me a good stacked bob. :) 

So, there are my 5. I am hoping to be more on top of things now and post more regularly...maybe even get to a Fab Five on an actual Friday! :)

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