I have a confession...

I'm joining the linky party at Living a Wonderful Life and posting about my obsessions. {Oh boy do I have a few} But I only picked my top four.


1. C'mon....don't lie. You know you're hooked on it too! Pinterest is awesome! What a great way to organize your "wants!"

2. Jeans. I love jeans. If only I could wear jeans and high heels EVERY day!
Citizens of Humanity are my favorites! (They totally make me taller and thinner...I think.)

3. Thursdays. Weird, right? Thursday is wine night in our house. Wine and VAMPIRE DIARIES!

Mmmmm......

4. This may make me weird, but when I laminate something and cut it out I HAVE to have the amount of laminate film the same on all sides that I trim. A couple of years ago when I took my letters for my word wall to be laminated at Kinkos the guy helping me started cutting the letters out and he sliced the "H" all wonky. There was like a 1/2 inch of laminate on one side and a millimeter on the other! There was an audible gasp.  No lie, I had to have a mental pep talk with myself that it would be ridiculous to reprint just the letter H and re-laminate it.

I would love to know your obsessions! Join the party!

Head on over

to Journey of a Substitute Teacher to enter her massive giveaway! I've donated an item as have many other bloggers!

Now...off to the pool!

End of the Year Readers Theater

The end of the year can be madness trying to finish up your end of the year testing and get your room packed up. But it's also the time of year when I bust out some readers theater. My kiddos LOVE it when we do this and love it even more if we can perform for other classes. Our district uses the Journey's series for reading. Last year I turned one of our stories out of the book into a readers theater. You can grab your copy here. In a pinch the "You read to me, I'll read to you" books work great too!

What readers theater activities do you do?

Countdown!

Whew- 10 days left people! I'm exhausted. I won't lie. I love my kids and I will surely miss them, but man would it be nice to sleep in and have a cup of coffee on the couch instead of in the car or whilst drying my hair!

Last night I had some blogger troubles. My whole Reading List was gone! I got a little freaked out so I watched the season finale of Hart of Dixie...again! Team Wade all the way.

If you're searching for an end of the year book First Year Letters is a great one! It's the sequel to First Day Jitters. It's the end of the school year and students are writing letters to Mrs. Hartwell reflecting on their school year. It's absolutely hysterical! And of course you could even have your students write you letters!
 

Don't forget to enter my giveaway- it ends tomorrow!

Let's Celebrate!

About a month ago Learning Resources sent me a couple of products to try out. One of them was the HearALL Assessment Recorder.
The HearALL is this small recorder that records students reading. You can upload their recording and send it via email to their parents or add it to an electronic portfolio. When I first tried this recorder I loved it! It's SO EASY TO USE! *Don't you love it when things are easy to use?!* It takes up next to zero space and voices record very clearly. I used it as an incentive to encourage my struggling readers to keep reading. Parents loved hearing their child! AND OF COURSE my students loved hearing themselves too! Jennifer from First Grade Blue Skies had a great idea and uploaded the MP3's of her kids reading to Smilebox! I passed it around to the rest of my team to try too. We all liked it so much that I decided to write a grant for us to each have one for next year. Today I found out that MY GRANT WAS FULLY FUNDED! Woooohoooo! Now it's time to celebrate!

Now it's time to give one of these great little recorders away to one of you!

Here are the rules:
1) Follow my blog- and leave a comment
2) Follow/Like Learning Resources on FB- and leave a comment letting me know that you "like" them.
3) Follow/Like my blog on Facebook -and leave a comment letting me know that you follow me

The giveaway ends on Thursday evening!

PS: did anyone see that after my post about David LaRochelle's book last night that he actually POSTED on my blog too?! How cool!

1+1=5?

Have your textbooks been picked up already? Are you looking for something fun and challenging to do with your class? I have the perfect book and activity for you! The book is 1+1=5 and Other Unlikely Additions by David LaRochelle.


Each page has a picture and says something like 1+1=7?
I show the page to my students to see if they can figure out what in the picture would add up to be seven. Then we look at the next page for the answer. For example, one triangle + one square = 7 sides! My first graders LOVE this book and it encourages higher level thinking. Once we have finished reading the book students make their own pages and we put them into a class book. I have already created the class book pages for you. Just click the picture to download your copy!




Great News

 A big thank you to all who purchased an item from either my TPT or Teachers Notebook store. I went a little crazy and I seriously spent so much money---but I  loved every minute of it! What's not to love about shopping? BUT if you're in the mood to shop a little more go check out my friend Staci at Let's Teach Something! She is having a giveaway and I've donated a $10 gift card to TPT. There are some other fab prizes as well. Head on over to try and win yours!


YOUR NAME


I have GREAT NEWS to share! I found out today that I will be teaching first grade again next year! Woohoo! AND more great news: I stopped by my storage unit and pulled out all my crafty gadgets including MY LAMINATOR. I feel whole again. To celebrate my good news I made a quickie freebie to use in your math stations. Click on the pic to grab your copy!



Snafu and Shop til you Drop!

If you tried to use the code ROWDY to purchase a Samson's Classroom license and you couldn't get it to work you were not alone. The code is now fixed and officially working!

Now....about that shopping til you drop! It's time for some Teacher Appreciation sales!

 I'll have everything in my entire shop on TPT for sale May 6-8! Maybe you've had your eye on my Dozen Sweet Centers??? (That's my favorite! It's all donut themed....I sure wish donuts burned fat!) I spent some time creating a VERY large wish list- 18 items! Can't wait to shop in my pj's!




I will have everything in my Teachers Notebook shop for sale too! And Teachers Notebook is having a huge sweepstakes from May 5-May 11 and seven lucky duck winners will win $100 worth of items!


Go on now...go make your wish lists! And Thank Goodness Tomorrow is FRIDAY!

Learning Resource Grant!

I just found out the Learning Resources is offering teacher grants! Say what?! To enter they just answer this question: "How would you use portable interactive technology to create collaborative lessons?" Hmmmmm..... My wheels are turning! To learn more click HERE.