Have You Heard? and other things

If you're like me, and I know some of you are, you're always exploring new blogs and ideas. If you haven't been there yet, you might want to stop by First in Maine. It's Kimberely's blog and she's got a great one started. Kimberely is a great teacher with a big heart and she's looking forward to having 100 followers. She's really close. Please stop by and help her reach that exciting landmark!

She also has a beautiful blog design too! It was designed by none other than Barbara from Grade Onederful and her new venture Ruby Slipper Blog Designs.

On a personal note (and these are the "other things")... this was an awesome day at school! One of those that just goes right start to finish. The kind that is the reason for teaching. My students were right on in everything today. Our educational consultant came through today and when I asked questions about the assembly we'd just been to, they were incredible! The assembly was called "H2O: Where did you go?" and watching these two guys was like watching Greg and Steve! There from Songs That Teach and are based out of Los Angeles. If your school is looking for an assembly idea, I highly recommend them. The kids and teachers had a blast! It's one of the 2 best assemblies I've seen in over 12 years. Really! There are clips on their website you can check out too.
The rest of the day continued to be wonderful. My kids love Read to Self in the afternoon and we did a pinterest inspired project from If You Give a Cat a Cupcake. I'll post pictures soon.
I'm headed off to get some sleep and hoping for another terrific day tomorrow. It's supposed to rain... hopefully not until after recess. Have a good one! And don't forget to check out First in Maine.
Good night!

 Chrissy

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New Weather-themed + and - BUMP games (freebies)

I love Saturdays! And it was sunny too- my favorite kind of weather. Funny though, I spent it inside. I went to school to get "caught up" (do you ever get caught up?). I changed out my math work stations that had been there a while and rearranged my library a bit to create a featured area of non-fiction books. Since Common Core pushes reading more non-fiction, our sweet librarian is gathering lower level non-fiction AR books for me to put in there. Another blogger had posted that she gives the kids double credit for non-fiction tests so I thought I'd do the same. I really think the kids will be excited! I also got out my weather unit and that inspired me to create some weather-themed math BUMP games. You can grab them by clicking on the picture below. There are 5 games all together. Have fun!

I'm going to keep this short and sweet, as I'm getting tired. I stayed up really late last night and my two kitties were hungry early this morning. Have a wonderful Sunday and start to your week! If you're on Spring Break, good for you. Stay in your jammies Monday for me. I have one more week before break.

 Chrissy

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Interview update

Yesterday I posted about being nervous and worried about my interview today. There is a school in my district that I really want to move to. And I hope so much that this works out. I interviewed today with the principal and 5 teachers and they seemed pleased- head nods and smiles at things I said. I felt good about it so it's just time to wait and see now. Thanks for the encouraging comments and positive thoughts. I appreciate it so much. I actually haven't told anyone at my school about it. Just like they (as far as I know) don't know about my blog. So thanks for letting me share that with you.

As for my day with my kiddos, it was great! This is such a nice class. For math they did greater than >, less than < for the first time and just got it! We did Daily 5 and during reading groups I heard such fluent reading! Woohoo! I love it!


Thanks for letting me share. Have a great Wednesday!

 Chrissy

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I'm so nervous... with a freebie and a "shout-out"! (update)

I'm so nervous. I've got butterflies in my stomach. How will I make it until 2:30 tomorrow afternoon? I have an interview at another school in our district for a potential transfer opportunity. And I'm actually kind of scared. I haven't interviewed since 1999 and I want this so much. The school I'm interviewing at has a positive atmosphere and the teachers I know really enjoy their jobs. There isn't the same drama as at my school and I'm ready to be without drama. For the last few years I've felt that my school has gone downhill. There just isn't much excitement about teaching anymore or teachers spending extra time.We've gone through a few principals and the school has just stayed "blah." And we're getting a new principal next year who I'm not sure is really great. So I'm really ready for a change.  I'm just so nervous..... If you don't mind, could you cross your fingers for me?
To take my mind off it I made this quick worksheet for math. My students had a hard time putting 3 numbers in order from least to greatest, so I thought this might help them. Feel free to grab it if you want to.

 Off I go to make some notes and try to organize my thoughts for tomorrow.  Wish me luck!

I also have to add that Barbara over at GradeOnederful is starting her own blog design business. If you've seen her blog, or Kimberely's design at First in Maine, then you know that she does beautiful work. Her new business is

and she's having a giveaway you won't want to miss so pop on over there and check it out!
Have a great Tuesday!
 Chrissy

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Leprechauns and a St. Patricks Day Freebie!

Woohoo, tomorrow's Friday! And we're celebrating St. Patrick's Day! I hope the kids won't be too crazy. They've been telling me stories all week about the leprechauns that came to their kindergarten classrooms and turned chairs upside down, pulled all their cards to red, and left little green footprints all over things. They're so excited! Now I don't always do much for St. Patrick's Day. It's been a few years since I did the green footprints, but after school I thought about the kids and how great this class is and I decided to go back tonight and put out the footprints. Each student will have some Rolo candies (pieces of gold, of course) on their desk in the morning and I think our little leprechaun, Timothy O'Malley will leave them a little note on the board. They should like that.

Today we did a directed drawing of a leprechaun and they loved it!  So I decided to post pictures of a few of them. They turned out pretty cute.

About the brown building... Jesse explained in detail that it was the shack the leprechaun keeps his gold in and the small rectangle at the bottom is the door he goes through. I'm so glad he has some imagination!

This afternoon I quickly put together a paper for my students' desks tomorrow of some St. Patrick's Day Fact Families. If you'd like to use it, just click on the picture. There are actually two pages- one with the larger number at the top of the shamrock and one with the numbers in no particular order. Most of my students got really good at fact families but I'm concerned they're just following the pattern of the top number being the largest in the whole/part charts, so I thought mixing up the numbers might challenge those kids a bit. But those who still don't get it will have the easier one.

Hope you have a fun day too!

 Chrissy

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Teachers Helping Teachers

My heart goes out to all of you affected by tornadoes recently and to those hit by other natural disasters. I can't imagine having my home or school wiped out. I can't even come close.
Just as you probably do, I have thousands of dollars of my own money tied up in my classroom and don't know what I'd do if it was suddenly all gone. Thanks to Crystal at Kreative in Kindergarten there's a linky party set up to allow teachers to help other teachers in need. I'm linking up and I hope you will too. Just click on the heart for more information.

Thanks!

 Chrissy

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Top 10 Award! and Medallions update

Kaleigh at Kaleigh's Klassroom has given me the

This made my day! If you haven't stopped by her blog yet, you definitely should. She's got so many great ideas. I love her latest St. Patrick's Math Stations freebie.  Be sure to check it out.

The Top 10 award was designed to encourage teachers who blog. There are 10 other bloggers I'm passing the award on to. If you haven't checked them out, please do. They're so creative!

http://misswteaches.blogspot.com

In addition,
Trisha at First Grade Frosting was so sweet also and gave me the 

This award is supposed to be passed on to 15 other bloggers. I hope it might be okay if instead of listing 15 more blogs,  I encourage you to check out all the blogs in my sidebar. I enjoy looking at these lovely blogs every day.
Thank you to everyone who stops by my blog. I feel such support from your comments and reading your blogs. This teacher blog community is exciting and inspiring to be a part of.


As for my Medallions update....

 our staff development day today was good and "ugh!" We did Write From the Beginning refresher stuff this morning. Our trainer was upbeat and has high expectations for writing. She got me jazzed about the program, which I haven't been in the years we've had it. But the Medallions part was "ugh". It turns out that it's the update for Houghton Mifflin reading only in California. It was designed to meet the state requirements for more fluency and vocabulary instruction. It uses the same anthologies and phonics library stories to save money compared to a whole new adoption. Personally I think the vocab component could be good. It has mini-big books (weird, huh? But they're bigger than a regular book an smaller than the usual big book. So I came up with mini-big book). These have a story like the read alouds and a picture to launch a week of vocab lessons. The fluency component isn't much in my opinion. It also comes with stuff for reading groups and independent centers, but I don't care for those much. Think I'll stick to Daily 5 for that part. But it dropped "Universal Access" and goes back to the idea of reading groups which they call "Differentiated Instruction." It was interesting but I left feeling overloaded. A few hours have gone by and I'm feeling better about it now.

Boy, this was a long post as it turns out. Thanks for sticking with me. Hope you have a wonderful weekend!
 Chrissy

5

What a Day! and a Freebie, and Medallions

Oh my today was a challenge. I feel the need to talk about it whine a little. There's a freebie and some pictures a little further along. The kids in my class had so many troubles today. It began right away when we started our district math assessment and "R" began to pout. He refused to try (even though he ended up getting 16 right out of 20). So he sat off to the side and moaned and groaned the whole time. Aw, geez. After recess, "J" came to me shouting about "C" scratching him on the upper lip.
"C": We we're just playing vampire."
Me: "You still don't need to touch other people on the face."
"G" comes running crying "R" said he was going to tell on my and I wasn't doing anything."
(Okay, GUILTY!)
Me: "If you weren't doing anything, then don't worry about it."
After lunch, "G" again is crying and clutching his side like his ribs are broken and he says "C jumped on me when I was laying on the ground."
Me:" Why were you laying on ground letting him jump on you?"
"G": I wasn't letting him."
Me: Here's your note to go see the nurse. (Me thinking "What time is school over?")

After school I was talking to another first grade teacher who said her day was like that too. Then I come home and check my blog and it sounds like kids across the country were like this today. At least it's reassuring to know it wasn't just me. It actually makes me glad we have a Staff Development Day tomorrow. Things should be better Monday. Thanks for listening.

I took some pictures today of some Dr. Seuss projects and a math project we did recently.
I told the kids they were going to draw the Cat in the Hat and it was so cute- they looked at me like "Your crazy, lady." and looked at each other  like there was no way they could do that. Here's how they came out. The kids were so surprised that they could actually do it.

And if you haven't seen it, Amy Darley's Dr. Seuss Activity Set on TPT is great! My friend Rachel purchased it for me. Thanks, Rachel! And we made Amy's Thing 1 and Thing 2. Aren't they adorable?

And we did this math project to wrap up place value. The kids made their initials with tens and ones. I am pretty sure I saw it this summer on Hayley Bishop's blog Bishop's Blackboard. (If I'm wrong about that I apologize.) She has super math ideas. It was hard for some to count the tens and ones , but most did fine. They were excited to get to make their initials.

And last night I made this math game. Doubles plus 1 is in our math and I thought this would be fun practice. Maybe you can use it too. Just click on the picture to grab it.

After all the kids stuff today, we got our new reading curriculum after school. Well, it's not entirely new. It's called Medallions and is for use next year with all of the same Houghton Mifflin stories but with a new writing component. We go over it at the Staff Dev. Day tomorrow.

I can't believe we have to think about new curriculum already! How could it be? It seems like I just got these kids a couple months ago. They're so smart and most days they're really wonderful. Now it feels like they'll be leaving me soon. What will next year bring??????

On that note, have a great Friday and a nice weekend. I'm off to blogstalk some more. Thanks for listening. Hope you like the freebie.
 Chrissy

3

Currently in March

I sure have enjoyed blogging and blogstalking this weekend! I got back on Pinterest after taking a break for while. Now I've got so many great ideas in my head! My husband and I had a relaxing weekend. He's in the wine industry and we went to a Pinot Noir tasting yesterday and a resort hotel. We tried a few wines, talked to some interesting people then went to dinner at Chile's- someplace we don't go often but really like. Today we did a little yard work and  stayed around home. Tonight I made a doubles plus one math game I'll do with my students tomorrow. If they like it, I'll post it as a freebie.
In the meantime, I stumbled on Farley's March Currently linky party, so here's mine. Have a super week!

 Chrissy

4

Hey, Hey, There's a Giveaway!

"Hey, hey, there's a giveaway we're the monkees" Did you hear that Davy Jones passed away this week? I liked the Brady Bunch episode where Marcia had a crush on him. Oh my, that probably really makes me sound old doesn't it? Unless you remember too......
I was up at 6:30 AM this morning. Woke up, no alarm. How come that doesn't happen much on days when I have to go to work? Oh well, it gave my extra blogging time here on the couch in the peace and quiet. While I was blogstalking I discovered some great giveaways you may want to check out!
Have a fun Saturday!

Mrs. Nunley at First Grade Magic has reached 100 followers! You can head over there, congratulate her, and enter her giveaway to win a $25 Amazon gift card. Who couldn't use one of those, huh?

Melissa at DillyDabbles and teamed up with Michelle, The 3AM Teacher for a giveaway also. Melissa (who's reached 100 followers) has some Common Core packs you can win including one that's for telling time. And Michelle (who's at 300 followers) has an awesome place value clip art set that you can win.





And Lori at Little Priorities is having a giveaway of her new unit "If you Give a Mouse a..." and it looks wonderful! If You Give a Pig a Pancake comes up in my Houghton Mifflin reading really soon, so I hope I win. She's giving away 2!


 Chrissy

11

Math Game Freebie and lots of "Lovely-ness"

I'm so jazzed about my new 3-column layout! With some help from Dani at Blog Designs by Dani, it worked. It's fun for me to have it looking different. The only problem is that I can't remember how to get the title moved down. It seems silly that I can't figure it out, but... if you know how, could leave me a comment?

I made a quick math game tonight. I play it with my students each year when I'm teaching place value and they always really like it. We'll play it for the first time on Monday. It's here as a freebie if you want to play it too. Just click on the picture to grab it. Please leave me a comment if you do. Thanks!

 Also...
A heartfelt thanks to Barbara at Grade ONEderful for this "lovely" award

 In case you haven't checked out her blog yet, it's fabulous! And she's working on the design herself.

The rules with this award are to:
1. link back to the blogger who gave you the award
2. pass the award on to 15 other lovely bloggers
3. follow the person who sent it you you

The 15 Lovely Blogs I'm passing this on to are:
1. First Grade and Fabulous
2. Teach It With Class
3. Teaching First
4. Swinging Through Second Grade
5. Ms. Rachel's Room
6. Just Teaching...Kindergarten Edition
7. Just Reed!
8. First in Maine  (her lovely blog looks like it's from Blueberries For Sal)
9. Empowering Little Learners
10. A Cupcake for the Teacher
11. A Teacher's Bag of Tricks
12. Swimming into Second
13. Soaring Through Second
14. Heather's Heart
15. and last, but never least, I'd like to pass this back to Barbara. The "lovely" part of this blog seems so appropriate for the beautiful new design changes she's made to her blog.
Grade ONEderful

And I will add too that you don't need to feel like you have to pass this on to 15 bloggers. Just enjoy some fun blogstalking and leave some lovely comments for folks. Everyone loves that!

Have a wonderful weekend!

 Chrissy

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