Friday, June 28, 2013

FREE 2013-2013 Editable Behavior calendar

I'm doing well so far!  Second time blogging this week!  :)  It is sad how truly proud of myself that I am!  :)

I have had many emails from some seriously eager teachers asking for the updated calendar.  I think that I need just a speck of their motivation right now!  :)

Click on the calendar icon to go directly to the download page.  :)


I worked on it for about 5 hours today.  I always forget how long something so simple takes to make.  Even though it is personalized to my school- the dates are correct and you can delete my school stuff and type in yours.  At the bottom it is the code for my behavior chart.  Don't forget to change that to meet your needs too!

So please go- download it- and edit it for your needs!  Why should we all waste 5 hours???  :)

Have a VERY happy Friday!  :)

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Wednesday, June 26, 2013

A snap shot of my life lately. :) Grab your coffee!

I turned 29 in September and for some reason was completely down.  This is the last year of my 20's and I never thought it would bother me but it sure did! 
 
However... my 29th year has been the best year of my life!  :) 

I left my old district behind (I still miss it so much) and started at a new district.  It has felt like a completely different career even though I didn't change grade levels.  I feel like all of my stress and anxiety has vanished.  I was blessed with awesome volunteers that did everything for me including copying, making little books, organize, grade and pretty much made my life so easy!  I was also blessed with a school district that values their staff and their time.  They gave us days off to work on items instead of forcing us to come in hours early and stay hours late.  It was not my other districts fault- they had NO money and we had to work around the clock to keep up.  I never have met a more hardworking staff because they had to be-  but it certainly is nice to see how the other half lives!  :) I'll tell you- I don't plan on going back!

I felt like since I didn't work all waking hours anymore that I actually had time for once in my adult life to RELAX!  I spent time with my hubby and friends.  Even DURING THE WEEK!  Unbelievable!  :)  I even read for pleasure and it wasn't even summer!  Usually books during the year are definitely education related (which I still find pleasurable because I'm a dork) but I read all kinds of things that I shouldn't even mention on here and loved it!  :)

My school went into the first week of June.  The second week I did some long overdue SPRING cleaning and packing.  The third week I went to Punta Cana.  It was an awesome way to kick off break!  Now that I am back I have started the TO DO list that I am famous for.  I never hear the end of the ridicule that I get because of all of my lists that I make from my husband and friends.  I tend to get a lot of notebooks for gifts.  The funny part is that they do it to tease me- but I absolutely love it and use every single page of them.  :p

Well-here is my summer to do list:
1.Surface clean the house
2.Detail clean the house
3.  I have until October to FINALLY get rid of all of my unused teacher stuff.  (look below for a tiny glimpse into this horridness)
4.  Sell teacher books on ebay
5.  Steam clean- EVERYTHING!  (I have 3 large dogs and they are so gross but adorable.)
6.  Help hubby with his multiple business'.  (He is such a busy boy)
7.  Deliver food at least once a week to hubby's customers.
8.  Set up one of the guest bedrooms for a relative that is moving in.  (Yay!  If you ever meet me in person you will learn that I LOVE people and I honestly cannot wait!)
9.  Find a new house with our impossibly long NEED and WISH lists for a house.
10.  Sell our house.
11.  Work on some math units.
12.  Organize all math items into notebooks.  (I have already started this and will post pictures in a week or so.)
13.  Organize a weekly teacher day where I work on teacher things and invite friends to join.  It definitely is more motivating on beautiful days when there are others working on stuff as well.  :)

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A major occupational hazard is being a hoarder.  I should lead the troops in being president of teacher hoarders.  It is REALLY embarrassing how much stuff I have accumulated in my 7 years of teaching.  I have spent thousands and thousands of dollars buying the teacher store published worksheet or lesson books, organizers etc.  I also have spent tons of money at retiring teacher yard sales.  I bought everything under the sun because, "I MIGHT use this someday."  lol. I'm sure some of you are nodding in agreement right now.  You too may be a hoarder or love someone that may be a hoarder.  Now brace yourself for a tiny glimpse of this unorganized mess:
YIKES!  That is definitely the worst but I have 3 closets and 1 1/2 rooms full of teacher stuff.  I even had a yard sale last year and got rid of a lot and also filled up 3 new teacher cars full of picture books, organizers etc.  Some things I just couldn't part with like some of my favorite resources that are ingrained in my head and I don't need them anymore but I still have hung on to them.  I finally decided to post these resources in bundles on EBAY.  I thought about selling them on TPT but I wasn't sure how many people actually bought hard goods on there.  I am guilty of never looking on TPT for hard goods.  I always go to Amazon.  :)

So- some stuff I am going to try to sell at a yard sale this Friday and what I don't sell- I'm going to give away to some awesome friends that just got their first teaching job.

Others I have taken the bundled pictures and have started outing the items in UPS boxes or envelopes so that they will be ready to ship out whenever they sell.  I am that person that buys Christmas cards each year- write personalized messages to each person and then NEVER mails them out.  lol.  I have a mental block against mailing things or something.  So I had to make this as easy as possible.  :)

Each package has a post it note with the name of the bundle inside of it.  I have 40 of these little bundles.  I really do have A LOT. 
 
 
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My husband, I, and our 3 dogs are definitely out growing our 4 bedroom house.  Between my hoarding (which hopefully will be no more by October) and my husbands ever expanding business'- we need more land and a pole barn and can't fit in our awesome neighborhood anymore.  We bought our house a week before we got married 5 years ago.  We bought it foreclosed so we got a terrific deal on it.  My husband and our family has pretty much remodeled everything but the kitchen in it.  Our house is exactly how we like it.  However getting 2 GIANT shipments a week to our driveway with tool boxes and tools is getting to be too much.  We always have boxes all over our porch, driveway and in our dining room.  My neighbors are awesome and never complain.  :)

This is the vehicle that sits outside of our house everyday and luckily it is not a delivery day so my car has room in the driveway.  :)

We desperately need to move to the country.  This way there will be no more deliveries in my parking spot and my hubby can get rid of the 2 storage places that he currently rents.  Also my neighbors will finally have a nice truckless view again! 

So I have a lot of things to accomplish this summer but I also want to stop neglecting this blog!  I love sharing what I find because there are terrific resources and ideas out there and they NEED to be shared!  However if I start neglecting it again- you will know why!  Feel free to comment and get my booty in gear if I go too long without posting!  :)

Enjoy the remainder of your week and thanks for reading!  :)





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Wednesday, April 24, 2013

FREE Good Luck Testing Posters

The OAA's are coming!

This is the time of year when you start to notice the stress/ anxiety of the teachers and students!

My first grade students have third grade reading buddies that we meet with once a week.  We are going to make these for them:



My students will choose one of these and then write a letter to their buddy on the back. 

Get your FREE copy here.  :)


Have a terrific Thursday!  Sorry for the short post!  :)

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Wednesday, April 10, 2013

WINNERS!

Sorry I have been desperately trying to finish grade cards and ordering!!!

The Grand Prize winner is Rachel!!!!!

YAY!  I will contact you soon with your TPT gift certificate and find out which 3 items that you would like!  :)

The 2nd plave winners are:

These lovely ladies may choose any three items from my TPT that they want!  In Yvonne's case- she can choose any 6 that she wants!  ;)

I will hopefully update this again later and make it more pretty- but I wanted to post the winners before I run out the door to work!  :)

Congrats!  Also THANK YOU to all of you that participated!!!!  I am a VERY lucky lady to have such nice and sweet followers that will read my ramblings from time to time.  :)
 
Have a wonderful Wednesday!

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Monday, April 1, 2013

More of my favorite things and giveaway reminder

Here is the reminder... for real $50 to TPT.  :)  Click the icon below to enter if you haven't!

 
 

My students LOVE science and this is a real inquiry based unit that I made this year.  If you ever buy my TPT products you will notice how I try to included ABSOLUTELY everything that you need.  This has a book written by yours truely, scientific logging notebooks, scientific process posters, and experiement lesson plans.  Many fun science items that I find are not inquiry based but this one is. 
 
This next item is my newest purchase and I LOVE it from the very talented Michelle Oakes!  It is full of fun map and pirate activities.  A perfect supplement are the adorably cute "ar" activities from The Teacher Wife.  I love trying to cover things by a theme because my kiddos get super excited and remember more!
 

This is a recyling unit the I made.  It is simple but my kids love it.  My favotie part is listening to them as they work in groups and try to discover as many ways as they can to reuse certain items.  Boy do they get creative!  :)
 
 
Hopefully the past few days have given you some ideas of what free items to pick from me if you win my giveaway and what to spend your $50 TPT bucks on!  :)
 
 

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More favorite things and giveaway reminder!

I thought that I'd post more of my favorite things since I received a few emails asking me more about them.  :) 

But first a reminder...
CLICK ABOVE TO ENTER!!!!  :)
 
 
 
First is a super talented teacher Jodi Southard.  She has made the best addition practice packet.  She has made up her own rhymes (not just retyping rhymes that have been around for a long time) for the math facts.  She has has fun practice sheets to go with each type of math fact.  I have been using her fun rhymes and some of her practice sheets all year to supplement my addition stuff.  I wish I was as talented as her!  My brain does not wrap around rhymes but wraps around tables/ charts and data!  :)  This is a MUST buy!
 
This is my cut dry version of math fact practice.  I have flashcards, motivational tracking charts and assessments.  I use this weekly.  My students earn flashcards and keep them in a baggie that I have stapled into their math folder.  After they finish their independent jobs for the day- they always end with practicing their flashcards which are right in their folder. 
 
This next one is by far the best fraction item that I have ever found.  This is by Busy Me Plus Three.  I am a huge fan of fun cut and paste instructional books.  This item has just that.  There is a sheet that the students have that they cut from and the other pages of the book are stapled together.  It makes for an interactive lesson.   You read the page and then tell them to find the items and cut and paste them out inot the booklet.   There are also a lot of fun games but the booklet is by far my favorite! 
 
 
That is it for today!  Don't forget to go enter my giveaway!  :)
 
As I have been going to TPT to find screen shots for this post- I put 3 new items in my cart.  I am totally obsessed!  :)
 

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Some of my favorite things and giveaway reminder!

 
Reminder that you could win a $50 TPT gift certificate and 3 free items from me!  Click the icon below to enter!  :)



It is sad sad each year while preparing my taxes I start to print out all of my TPT receipts.  I always am shocked at the amount of money that I spend! :)  I am almost always very happy with my purchases and they save me so much time but seeing that final number is always a little shock to my system!

Since nothing beats word of mouth and I'm one of those Amazon shoppers that spends an hour reading reviews before I buy something- I thought that I'd give you some of my reviews of items.  These are some of my favorite things that I have either made or purchased recently:

That lovely Lory Evans has made fantastic daily math review sheets for the entire year.  These appear to be just for first grade skills.  I purchased another version that had some 1-2 skills mixed- which was awesome but I was aiming for just first grade skills.  I started by using term 3 this year.  I peaked at the term 1 skills and might hold off on using it from the beginning of the year because I totally don't cover that much material that fast.  I think that I will use the term 1 for my "advanced" kiddos.  I totally recommend purchasing these! 

Another is one of my kiddos favorites is the Super  e set by The Teacher Wife.  It has a cute super e story and a ton of fun worksheets to practice silent e.  I had left it for a substitute to complete with my students but she didn't have time to complete it.  My students saw it on my desk and were begging me the next day to check it out.  Who am I say no to children begging to learn????  :)  We read the story and completed the worksheets.  My kiddos LOVED it!  My kiddos would HIGHLY recommend buying this!

This last item is one of mine.  It took me many months to complete it.  In it you will find almost everything that you need to teach common core first grade writing.  It has teaching posters, writing notebook resources, rubrics, blank writing forms, publishing pages, topic starters etc for each of the 3 writing types.  If you click on the icon- it will take you to TPT where you can preview it.
 
All of my items are on sale until tomorrow!  :)

(COUGH-COUGH  remember that you could win a $50 TPT gift certificate by entering my 100 follower giveaway!)

Have a fantastic day!


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