Pick Me Up

As I sit in my classroom on a Sunday afternoon finishing up report cards (and getting distracted every 2 seconds) I'm thinking of 1,000 things I'd rather be doing. Currently, I'm reading journals to determine writing levels. As I was about to give up, I stumbled upon a little gem from one of my lowest writers...

"I love school cus I love awr teachr He is the bestist teachr"

Is it just me, or do these little moments NEVER get old?? Definitely put a smile on my face!

On a side note, I'm crossing my fingers for a delay tomorrow, as I have yet to plan for the week! Eek!

Now, pardon me as I put my phone down and force myself to keep grading.

Spread The Love!

First off, I feel the need to spread a little love... My AWESOME wife made me buttons to link to my facebook page, pinterest, AND TpT.  She's the best.

And since she took all the time to make the buttons, you might as well go LIKE my facebook page... Haha :-)

AND, without further ado... My Valentine centers are up for grabs on TpT!  Spread The Love contains 8 Valentine's themed centers activities (4 math and 4 literacy).

This unit includes the following activities:
Literacy...
-Cupid's Crazy Sentences - students arrange cards to form sentences
-Valentine Word Building - students build as many words as they can using the letters in VALENTINES DAY
-Sweet, Sweet Sound Sort - students sort cards by long and short vowel sounds
-February Word Sort - students will sort words into nouns and verbs

Math...
-Counting Valentines - addition facts to 15
-100's Chart Puzzles students will use cards to complete 6 100's chart puzzles
-Valentine Fact Families - students will use the 3 numbers on the cards to create fact families
-I <3 Place Value - students will recognize tens rods and ones cubes to determine each number

First one to comment with their email address gets a free copy!

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Nonsense Freebie!

My little firsts are taking their Winter DIBELS tests tomorrow morning and we've been hammering those short vowel sounds so they *should* blow those nonsense words out of the water.  But just in case, I made a quick little FREEBIE to help them practice!!

Click to download for FREE in my TpT store!

This game is very similar to my short vowel freebies on TpT.  Students pull cards that all contain CVC and short vowel nonsense words.  If they read it, they keep it!  If they pull a KA-POW card, they have to put all their cards back.  My kiddos LOVE playing these games!!  Enjoy!!

Techy Teacher Tuesday

Greetings, all!  I was browsing one of my favorite teacher blogs, Queen of the First Grade Jungle, and she's hosting a Techy Tuesday link-up.  I immediately thought of something that my students are OBSESSED with right now.  Our school has a subscription to Reading A-Z, which I love, because it has an endless amount of leveled texts.  Our reading specialist (who's a long-term sub and is leaving next week and I'm super bummed because our kids LOVE her and she's doing amazing things for them) introduced us to Raz-Kids...

Oh my gosh.  It's amazing.

Raz-Kids allows you to input your entire class, along with their individual reading levels.  When your students log on to the site, they are given a wide variety of texts to choose from, ALL ON THEIR LEVEL.

Each book gives them the option to read the book, listen to the book & take a quiz.  When they finish each of these things, they earn "stars" that can be used to "purchase" pointless super awesome prizes!  It lets them buy aliens and planets and lots of other stupid fun things!

Making this product even COOLER, you can download a FREE iPad app if you have an account set up.  With the marking period rolling to an end, I've been listening to sight words and DIBELS and other fun things.  I checked out enough iPads at school for a whole reading group, and it kept those little cherubs as happy as clams while I pulled them to read for me.

Hope you're able to use this in your classroom!

Too Funny Not To Share...

I've got a real post in the works, but this first grade comment was too good to pass up... First off, we had a half-day of school today for in-service... yay/boo!  My kids were slightly off their game, but nothing too ridiculous.  We also filled our warm fuzzy jar, so i made them choose we voted on lunch and a movie in the classroom.  I'm all about those rewards that require no extra effort on my part.  Anywho, I digress.

As we were cleaning up from lunch and packing up to go home at the same time, one of my dear little female firsts came up to me and asked me the following question, in this sweet and shy little voice...

Student: "So, Mr. V, do you think, maybe, that you might sometime wanna, like, come hang out at my house?"

Me: "Aww, that's ok, no thank you."

...I'm fairly sure I was asked out by a first grader.

Hope I didn't break her little heart!

Enjoy your weekend!

Barf City

Oh my garsh. Flu season is in full swing at my school. I had 7 kids out yesterday AND my aide was out too. Needless to say, the day was a little nuts! We just read Ruby in Her Own Time, and I was planning on having my little firsts make time-lines. Well, it's a little hard to start a project when you're missing 1/3 of your class! I felt like we were SO unproductive. Today I only had 3 out, so we were able to start the project this afternoon. 

HOWEVER.

Some of my kids who WERE there should NOT have been there. This afternoon, I swear half my class was complaining that they were about to throw up. I've gotten pretty good at determining whether or not a child is about to vomit in my face, and these kiddos weren't faking it. Praise baby Jesus, none of them got sick in my room. Been there, done that, not fun.

While working on time-lines, I was checking what they had written (their homework a few days ago was to list one thing they'd done each year of their life). One of my kiddos had written that he had his tonsils out, so I was just making small talk with him while checking his spelling. 

Me: "Oh, you had your tonsils out?"

Student: "Yeah, cuz I puked on the couch."

Seriously?

I'll snap some pictures of our time-lines when they're finished. In the meantime, here's a fun little craftivity we did the other day to spruce up our L.A. focus board. Ruby the duck learns to do things in her own time, so we made some ducks to hang out on the bulletin board. I found the pattern online for free here... Check them out!

Here's to hoping your students are healthier than mine this week!

Happy New Year!

Oh goodness! I have been neglecting my little blog! I decided to make Christmas break a true break and therefore did not do ANYTHING school related! I was a little frazzled to return yesterday, but it was REAAAAAALLY nice to leave everything at school.

Yesterday, I had my little firsts write about their favorite Christmas presents for 2 reasons...
1: to work in a little descriptive writing.
2: it really cut down on the "GUESS WHAT I GOT" comments.

Let me defend myself. I DO care what they got for Christmas. Really, I do. I'm really not bitter that they got iPads and I did not. Mostly, I don't like the look on the faces of kids who didn't get "fancy" things for Christmas. My school services students from a WIDE range of financial backgrounds. Having them write about their presents instead of sharing gave them all the opportunity to be super excited about what they got.

*Side note* My kids got Furbies. Furbies are back?! They scare me.

Today we wrote about our New Year's Resolutions... I've got a fun little craftivity for them tomorrow to spruce up their writing. If it turns out super awesome, I'll share it! If it stinks, I'll share it!

FUN GRAMMAR STORY OF THE DAY:
I'm constantly helping my firsts to be as polite as can be, and to speak like proper little citizens. Most of the time, I LOVE their little quirks, but there's one that has alllllllllways bugged me. Aposta. You know you've heard it. "What are we aposta do now?" or "Where are we aposta put our folders?" My response is usually "A posta hangs on the wall. Try again." This always gets a laugh and I love it. Today one of my kiddos asked his neighbor what they were aposta do on their morning work. His neighbor, one of my lower readers, which made it even more priceless, replied with "it's SUPPOSED to... a posta hangs on the wall."

Made my day. Happy 2013!