Shop Till You Drop!

Anyone else having a particularly busy week? We had our annual Patriotic Program for first grade today. Parents came to hear the kiddos sing Yankee Doodle, Star Spangled Banner, and This Land is Your Land. We were supposed to walk to the nearby rehabilitation center to perform for the residents, but it started to rain just as we got out to the sidewalk. Go figure! California's in a terrible drought, it's hardly rained in a year, and it rains today! Oh well. We stayed at school and make and wrote about bald eagles instead. Because of all our practicing recently we've been VERY out of our routine. One of the boys today said, "When are we going to do Daily 5 again?" 

Me: Tomorrow sweetie, I promise. Your teacher misses routine as much as you do.

So, after dance class #2 (we get 3 one hour sessions total) tomorrow morning we'll get back to normal. Dance class should have been Tuesday, but we had singing practice so I switched with someone else. I didn't think I'd crave our regular routine this much, but Daily 5 and math groups here we come!

I'll come home tomorrow and see what I can purchase off my TPT wish list. Be sure to take advantage of the big sale to shrink your wish list. Have fun shopping!

Thanks to
for the sale image.

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Sunday Wrap-Up

Well, it's Sunday night. Laundry is in the dryer so I have something to wear tomorrow, lunch is in the fridge. And I'm trying to deny that I have to go to work tomorrow. I love my class, it's just that my bed is comfy and it's cold outside... you understand.

A friend and I spent a couple of hours today working on a district project. We both signed up to be on these new "think tanks" our district is trying out. We're tasked with putting together a curriculum map for the first grade common core standards. We're almost done with ELA and will share it with some other teachers at a meeting Thursday to see what they may want to switch around. Hopefully it helps other teachers feel more comfortable jumping into the CCSS.

This evening I wanted to play around on my computer, so I made these thank you cards with some ice cream clip art from Ruby Slippers. I'm going to leave for my aide tomorrow. She's so wonderful and is working with my highest readers on a book study project right now. Just click on the pic to grab them for yourself.

This week's going to be busy. Wednesday is our first grade Patriotic Program for parents and we'll walk to the nearby Rehab Center to perform for their residents as long as it doesn't rain. Tuesday night I'm meeting some of the first graders and their parents at the school board meeting to perform their songs. With that and the Thursday meeting, this week will probably go by fast!

I've got to go get more laundry going. Sunday night rituals... 

Have a great week!

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It's Garden Class Time! (freebie too)

It seems like I should have some witty way to say why I haven't posted on my blog in a while, but one isn't coming to me. It's just been a very busy month. I agreed this year to be the Student Council advisor at my school. The 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students on SC are so wonderful! It's been fun to work with older kids. A few were even in my class in first grade. I also said that I would change the display cases in the two hallways. I was so tired of looking at the same thing for 6 months at a time or nothing at all. So I changed one to an Olympics display. First it was a countdown to the Olympics, now I'm posting photos from the newspaper. In addition I'm on 2 district committees. One of them I'll get paid for but we're developing a first grade curriculum map of the CCSS so that's going to take some time. It's just been a busy time and I haven't been creating until recently (meaning last Thursday).

Once a week for February and March, my class gets to go to Garden Class for 20 minutes. We have a fabulous parent who plans activities for kids to explore, cook, and harvest veggies from the garden. She's fantastic! She even brought in tree stumps and had upper grade kids paint the tops of them so they could be used as stools for the kids to sit on while she's teaching. I don't have a picture of those, unfortunately, but here a couple pictures I snapped on our first visit.

So I decided that after each visit I'd have the kids write something about what they learned. After the first 2 classes I just handed them an index card to write it on. Last week I thought a garden class journal might be nice that way they could draw a picture as well and have a keepsake when our classes end. Here's what they look like:

During the 2nd garden class they kids got to explore dirt from the worm bin and search for earthworms. Our garden teacher/parent had one child stand still while another moved away from him. The kids were supposed to stay STOP when they thought the student had gone length of the longest earthworm. It turns out that the longest earthworm ever found was over 20 feet long. Can you imagine? Yucky! I thought more kids would write that they learned that, but this was the only one.

Here's another one:

Love that the person is even holding a magnifying class!

If you'd like any of these garden freebies, just click on the picture below (one click gets you everything). It's also on TN- just click here.  Feel free to pin it too!

cute polka dot background from Ruby Slippers

Does your school have a school garden?

I'll leave you with a picture of Selena who can find fun in the ordinary things.

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