Versatiles and Versatile Bloggers!

I figured those two things go together, right?

First, over the summer I won a set of ten mini VersaTiles cases from ETA/Cuisenaire because I liked their facebook page. If you don't like them on facebook, you should go do it now! They have lots of giveaways and offer many free resources.

They asked the winners of the giveaway to post pictures of their students using the VersaTiles once school started. I just remembered the other day to take pictures, and I posted one today so I thought I'd share it with you too!

Luckily, one of the free VersaTiles pages on their website was for doubles, and that's what we worked on with second grade on Thursday. I think I'll have to make my own pages with their templates with all of my free time.........

Anyway, my second order of business here is the Versatile Blogger Award!!

I received this award from three lovely ladies!

Leslie from Jack of All Trades

Jennifer from Rowdy in First Grade

and........ Nicole from The Kinder Kid!

You should for sure check out their blogs! They're all from different grade levels but they all have awesome ideas and are all-around the bomb dot com. :)

Since I won the Versatile Blogger Award, I need to share 7 things about myself and spread the love to 15 people! Here are my 7 things........

1. In a week, I will start my second class of six to earn my ESL Endorsement! This class will be my methods and materials class, and I am SO EXCITED!!! Methods classes were always my absolute favorite in college. I'm really happy I decided to work towards my ESL endorsement because I am incredibly passionate about working with English Language Learners and ensuring that they get equal treatment in school and elsewhere. Equality and acceptance is super important to me.
2. At my school, teachers can eat hot lunch for free and we can have free milks too! Since my class gets a morning milk break, I typically drink two chocolate milk cartons a day!! If I'm having a rough day, that chocolate milk is always there for me. So delicious! When I am old, I will probably have the strongest bones ever.
3. I am not well-traveled. I have been to Florida for family vacations when I was little, and I've been to the San Diego area for family weddings in recent years, but there are many places that I want to go! Specifically, I want to go to San Francisco and Washington D.C. Also I am obsessed with southern California so I would like to go there again!!
4. Dead animals really creep me out. I know they can't come back to life and get me...... but I am still scared of that happening. If I am walking my dog and we see a dead squirrel, I run away.
5. I love my Snuggie! I joke a lot that I am going to bring my Snuggie to school with me when the weather gets colder, because the word on the street is that my room is the coldest in the building. I am probably the coldest person in the building on any given day, so this is not a good combination.
6. I have two cousins who I love like sisters! They are my BCFs (Best Cousin Friends). One of them is going to the University of Illinois right now to be a teacher! When she has a classroom and starts a blog, she will be popular fast because she is very creative and artistic!!
7. I love using exclamation points!! In college, I got points taken off on several projects because I overused exclamation points. I can't help it, I'm just excited a lot!

That was a really lame list but oh wells! I was going to to type out my list of Versatile Bloggers, but instead, I'd like to direct you to my sidebar where it says Bloggers Who Inspire Me!! These peeps are all amazing and share great ideas that help me be less boring in the classroom. Some of my new favorites are:

Mrs. Williamson has THE CUTEST IDEAS!! She makes me want to teach Kindergarten.

Mrs. King also has cute ideas, especially her new adaptation of The Techy Teacher's cloud viewer! And first grade is a challenge for me right now, so she is a good help!!

Hope is also amazing, and she teaches second grade, so that's the other half of my kids!!

Ms. Alley teaches in CPS - my dream! I love to see what she can do with the limits on her as a CPS teacher.

And it wouldn't be an award post without mentioning Meredith at Keen on Kindergarten!!!! I want to fly her to Illinois so that she can guide me in Math Work Stations. I think maybe I should stop saying that and just try them.....................

That's all!! Happy Sunday!!

Can You Say Peace?

I mentioned on Wednesday that we had celebrated International Peace Day by reading Can You Say Peace?

Yesterday, after five long days of practicing the play at least three times a day (if not more), we finally went to the other classrooms in the building to perform! I was so proud of my students. No one blanked and forgot all of their lines, generally they were not talking to each other while others were saying their parts, and they were very eager to help when people forgot a word here or there.

I printed out a flag of each student's country so that they could color it. Then we glued the flags to the jumbo popsicle sticks to make flags that they could hold! The countries and languages represented were: India, America, Japan, Australia (although I do not know what language this was!), Mexico, Iran, Russia, China, France, Ghana, and Bolivia. The kids LOVED coloring their flags and seeing in "real life" (on the internet) what the flags looked like. They thought it was amazing.

Just by coincidence, I read aloud a book to my students this week that talked about peace, too! When I'm at the library getting books for my content areas, I like to grab random books to read aloud. This time, I grabbed The Alphabet Tree by Leo Lionni, just because I like him as an author.

The book is about letters who live on leaves, and one day they get blown off the leaves by a wind and they're scared. A Word Bug comes along and tells them that they'll be strong if they come together to make words, and later a caterpillar says they should make sentences! An "important" sentence that they make is something like: Peace on earth, and goodwill towards all men. It tied in nicely to our week, and by accident!!

This post is linked to the Week in Review linky party hosted by Clutter-free Classroom!

What I'm Loving Wednesday

Wednesday is already here!! I love that my weeks feel so quick. :)

I'm loving my class! They are working hard and (hopefully) learning a lot. Every morning, they have part of a handwriting packet to do, and almost all of the students go on past where they are supposed to stop every day because they say they love handwriting so much. I can't really complain about them wanting to practice handwriting..... haha.

I'm loving our class's new book boxes!

 Inspired (once again) by the amazing Lindsey at The Teacher Wife, I ran out to IKEA last week to buy these book boxes. They were 5 for $1.99!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How can you even beat that? My kids are obsessed with them and they have been super excited about decorating them. I'm hoping this excitement transfers to the books housed inside. They were sad when I said they could only put 5 books in their boxes!

On a related note, I'm loving IKEA. I never wanted to leave!!! Too bad it is about an hour away. Worth the drive, for sure. :)

I'm loving our space unit! Today we made little models of how the sun lights part of the earth while the other part has night. They were pretty simplistic but the kids were just amazed. They were also amazed at the quality of the picture that I'm posting of the finished product. They think I am a great photographer, haha!

 I'm loving International Peace Day. I read two books in honor of this awesome day: Can You Say Peace? by Karen Katz and The Peace Book by Todd Parr (whom I love).

And of course, we did corresponding activities for each book! For Can You Say Peace?, I found a little reader's theater that goes along with the book in a Library Sparks magazine. It is really cute and perfect for first and second graders! Each kid represents one country, so they say, for example: "My name is Carlos. I live in Mexico. I say paz." There are 11 different countries featured in the book, and they aren't all European countries!!! Hooray!! We have been practicing like crazy and we're going to perform for each class on Friday! For The Peace Book, after reading it, we created our own version. The students had to write, "Peace is ____________" and fill it in with their idea of peace. They did a good job!

 I'm loving taking walks with my mom and pupster at our local conservation area!

I'm loving our new bathroom passes that I got from First Grade O.W.L.S.! The little plastic frames to hold them were only 95 cents at Walmart and they adapted to this change in routine really fast. Yeah! And they are super cute. :)

I'm loving that Jennifer from Rowdy in First Grade awarded me with the Versatile Blogger Award!!!! I am still so surprised!! I will make that post tomorrow maybe. But it really made my day and week!! :) :)

And finally, I'm loving my boyfriend because is the bomb dot com! We went out for Chinese last night and it was deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelicious and made for a great lunch today!

Not only am I linking up with What I'm Loving Wednesday, but I'm also linking up with Ms. Kerri and Her Krazy Kindergarten for her positive things linky party!!

The Sun, Collaboration, and Free Educational Clip Art

We had a fun and successful week in first and second grades! I'm doing better with being consistent about behavior expectations, and the kids are really catching on to routines without me constantly reminding them. I am a happy camper. :)

I mentioned on Wednesday that we had started our space unit. On Thursday, we studied the sun. Our Science book included a little song about the sun to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. We didn't sing it... we just said it like a poem because, although I know the kids are only 6 and 7 and I shouldn't be self-conscious about singing in front of them.... I still am. Haha! Anyway, the song was legit and included a TON of facts about the sun. Then we made a little graphic organizer about the sun, but I forgot to take a picture of it!

Afterwards, I borrowed an idea from Mrs. M at The Techy Teacher and we watercolored pictures of the sun! Watercolors were not on my students' supply lists, but our awesome art teacher told me about the huge basket of watercolors in the art room! The kids were SO EXCITED about painting and they did so well! I started to explain watercolor expectations to them, but they informed me that they knew how to watercolor...... and they were right! No issues. :)

I left Mrs. M's examples on the TV screen so they could see that I didn't want them just to paint a yellow sun and call it a day. They did really well and I hung them up after school!

On Friday, the third and fourth graders came into our room to read us the fairy tales that they wrote.

I was really happy with how my students behaved! When the third and fourth graders came in, I was like, "WOW, there are a lot of people in here!" Then I realized that between the 2 classes, we only have 30 students................... which is the number that most other teachers have every day. I'd like to pat you all on the back!

Last week, I discovered a free educational clipart website run by Florida's Educational Technology Clearinghouse.



They have over 65,000 pieces of free clipart there! It's not cute, but it is useful! For my math curriculum, we only have the student workbooks and teacher manuals, no homework pages or tests, so I make everything myself. This was really useful to me this week when I made the second grade math test and needed clipart of base 10 blocks or bundles of 10s. It's not just math too... there are many different categories which I have not yet explored. But definitely check this out and bookmark it. :)
This post is part of The Clutter-Free Classroom's Week in Review linky party! I'm excited to share what I'm doing every week and also I'm excited to get new ideas! :)

What I'm Loving Wednesday

Happy Wednesday, friends! I have not participated in WILW since August 3rd!! Holy mama. I need to get back on it.

I'm loving that I'm lucky enough to have a class of 12 as a first-year teacher. They definitely feel like 30 sometimes though!

I'm loving the space unit we started yesterday! I really haven't done any full-on units yet - just tiny mini-units on September 11th or Labor Day or Grandparents' Day. But after seeing a few other teachers' space unit ideas, I thought that would be a good first unit! I never really liked science as a kid, and I don't want my class to feel that way. I'm trying to make this unit as hands-on as I can! Today we did a lab which helped us understand what causes day and night. We made models of the earth with foam balls and unsharpened pencils and then shined a light on the ball, which represented the sun! The kids really liked this a lot and it was a pretty inexpensive activity.

Tomorrow we study the Sun!

I'm loving that my first Scholastic book order came today!!!

Even only having 12 kids, our class bought $150 worth of books! Although I have to confess that my mom ordered some books for my cousin's birthday... haha! But because of our amazing total, I got a ton of free books!!!

I had $10 to spend in both SeeSaw and Lucky catalogs, and then I got free book packs from both also!! This made me sooooooo happy, because I love books! And the kids were excited about my free books too since they know that they'll be able to read them as soon as I categorize them! Too many exclamation points!!

I'm loving my bff Nicole who also helped out my class by buying the Hunger Games trilogy! They were a great price and they came with a Mockingjay pin! Now we have to get together so I can give her the books. :) Also I am loving this picture of us from New Year's 2009!!

I'm loving this idea that I adapted from a someone's classroom pictures blog post! I don't remember who it was, but if it was you, please tell me. :) My students ask me ALL DAY LONG when it is time for snack or lunch or going home - at which point I tell them how sad I am that they are so excited to leave me, haha. So I bought the dollar clocks from Target, stood on a stool, and tried not to break my limbs as I threw these up on the wall. God bless my hot glue gun!!! The first graders told me that it still doesn't help them since they can't read a regular clock....................... oh wells. Hopefully they'll catch on.......

I'm loving the education honor society I'm a member of - Kappa Delta Pi. As we speak, I am participating in a webinar about getting kids excited about reading and writing! However, I plugged in my headphones and nothing is happening, so I'm not loving that so much. I also got my New Teacher Advocate magazine in the mail from them today!

I'm loving that my kids get excited about morning meeting. I truly have no idea how to really do a morning meeting, but we do our best and they really look forward to it after morning work and routines are taken care of. They especially love when I play Start This Day With a Song from Jack Hartmann's Hip Hop Alphabop 2 cd.

Okay, I need to figure out why my headphones don't work!! What are you loving today?

Done with Week 4!

Friday of this short week meant that I've made it through four weeks of teaching!! It's very exciting and exhausting, all at the same time. :)

Last week we talked about Labor Day so that they knew why we weren't in school on Monday. We made mobiles depicting different jobs and hung them in the room. I don't have pictures but they were nothing too too exciting - they just drew pictures and backed them on construction paper. Then I tied the pictures to hangers. I really should have taken a picture of how one student spelled Army....... he wrote "aknu." And this is a child coming out of the reading program where "100% of Kindergarteners can read by Christmas!!!!!" Anyway, that is a thought I should keep in my brain. :)

Moving on to better things, this week we discussed 9/11 and Grandparents' Day. I'm glad they coincided because it was going to be a tough week without Grandparents' Day. When I brought up 9/11, none of my students had ANY idea what I was talking about at all. So I showed them the 9/11 BrainPop video to give them an idea. Then we colored a sheet I got from First Grade is Fantabulous. The second day, I read 14 Cows for America.

I had to paraphrase many of the pages because the words were really over their heads. But I think they got the main idea. Then I made a little PowerPoint about the Maasai tribe and we watched a Youtube video of them singing and dancing. The kids really liked it a lot! A lot of them said it was their favorite part of the day. I also had a student tell the class that she is part Maasai and that she had been to the place where they keep the sacred cows. Needless to say.... she is 100% Caucasian American. Has anyone else encountered a student who makes up blatant stories? She does this a lot and never about actual important things - only things like this, or that she speaks a different language. Weird.

Anyway, for Grandparents' Day, I sent home a family tree and the families filled them out. Then, my favorite next-door neighbor teacher helped me make a big tree to display them on in the hallway!!

I also had the students bring in pictures of their grandparents to share. About half of the students brought in pictures. But it was awesome for the kids to hear each others' stories and practice asking questions.

Before we shared pictures, I read Who's Who in My Family?

This was a really cute age-appropriate book about family trees and families in general. It talked about the nuclear family as well as grandparents, great-grandparents, great-aunts and uncles, and blended families. It also discussed adoption, which only one of my students had ever heard of.

And last, but absolutely not least, my library finally ordered Pete the Cat for me!!!!!!

I am soooOOOooo excited to read this on Monday! I'm planning on using lots of ideas I've seen in blogs to accompany it. Yay!!!

Even and Odd Street AND Top 10!

I have learned in the past 3 weeks of my life that first and second graders are wooooooooorlds apart when it comes to their levels of independence as well as their depth of understanding. It is not easy to teach first and second grade in one big group! At my school, we only split up Math and Reading. Right now, I'm teaching the first grade writing curriculum to the whole group because I know my second graders didn't write last year.

Does anyone else use Write Source? I like it so far! It is pretty straightforward and I think the kids are getting it.

Anyway, the point of that whole story was that there are a LOT of things that the second graders know like the back of their hands, and the first graders have nooooo clue what I am talking about. One example of this is even and odd numbers. The second graders have them memorized while the first graders are lost. So, when I saw The Teacher Wife's post about Even and Odd Street, I fell in love!! [Also, I think I've said the phrase "Even and Odd Street" to my boyfriend about 2839749875 times in the past two days... he's probably relieved that I did this so quickly, haha!]

We did this today, and my kids fell in love too.

I didn't put them up on the street until after school, so I'm pretty sure they are going to freak out when they come in tomorrow morning. I used the printables that Lindsey shared and just copied them onto construction paper for the Even Houses. Then for the Odd Houses, I just copied the template on regular paper. We talked about what "odd" means, and then I told them to make the weirdest house they ever saw! Mainly they just scribbled but they were super proud of their work. During afternoon wrap-up, they all said that was their favorite part of the day - making the houses. I hope they use Even and Odd Street as a resource throughout the year!!

Okay, onto the second part of my post... top 10! Mechele from Barrow's Hodgepodge listed me in her top 10 list!! That was a shock to me because I am so new! :)

I'm pretty sure that everyone I will mention has already received the Top 10 award.... but oh wells. :) I will just name a couple!!

I just started following Lindsey like two days ago and I already love her! She offers lots of free things and has awesome ideas!! And I love her blog design too.

Meredith is awesome. I feel like she is down to earth and nice in real life! Also she has been so very supportive of me, especially lately in my math work stations dilemma. And I got the tissue paper flowers idea from her, which really brightens up my room!
Everybody loves Hadar!! She is super nice and leaves me comments sometimes. I love her DIY ideas and I love her signs (which I think I've said a million times). She is also very funny! I keep thinking I should make my introduction video so I can join her linky party....... maybe I will tonight!
And lastly, I just recently discovered Kristin and she is sooooooooo funny! I love when I see that she has updated. I don't even care if she has printables ... that is how funny she is. Haha!!
So those are some of my faves - only 4! Thank you again to Mechele - you made my day. :)