Wednesday 8 February 2017

Who doesn't love a good TpT sale?

TpT sales are my absolute favourite because of all the amazing products there are to buy! Last week I made a significant grade change and so I am in need of some sprucing up of my resources. Needless to say, I was at a loss of what to buy. I made the change from grade 2 math to grade 5 ELA, health, and art. Not to mention, the brand new school that came with this change. Anyway, if you have any suggestions of must have products, I would love to hear about them, even after the sale is done and over with. I haven't taught ELA in over two years and the last time I did, it was grade primary so I will be getting used to the change over the next few months.

Needless to say, I did find some goodies though to buy today!

I started off buying some of Krista Wallden's beautiful clip art. This product won't really be helpful in grade 5 but I know I still have a lot of followers in the lower grades so I am excited to add some of these to my store this weekend. I already added one to my Valentine's Day No Prep Literacy and Math Pack! I will likely add the rest this weekend so check them out.



I am excited that she is including so many holidays in this pack. I am just obsessed with her clip art.

Next up, I purchased some simple borders to use on some upcoming products. I love Sonya DeHart's borders because they are clean and sharp looking!


I also bought some grade products for my grade five class that I hope will be helpful for planning. 

The other 50% of my job is Reading Recovery so I have to say I think I am pretty good at guided reading. However, I have never done guided reading in grade 5 so I have to say this is where I need the most help. Any advice is welcome at this point and time. Fact is, my class rocks at reading! They are all where they are supposed to be and that is terrific. In order to help them even further, I picked up this package to help them with their reading tasks. 


It seemed like a good place to start because Jen Bengel has laid out the the planning, objectives and organizers for these specific levels. I thought I would start here and see where it takes me over the next few months!

Lastly, I am trying to set the tone of classroom community in my grade five room. Fact is, I am only with them for half of the day and I am a complete stranger to them. It is going to take time to build that community so I thought that this product from Miss 5th would be perfect!



So there you have it... my four big purchases for my snowy day at home! What did you buy? What did you wishlist? What advice do you have for a new grade 5 teacher! Comment below and let me know!

Love,

Friday 2 September 2016

Back at it again... 5 for Friday


It has been way too long so I am so happy to be joining up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to participate in her 5 for Friday!! I love these so without further ado...


1. A colleague of mine told me all about bullet journalling last June. I instantly fell in love with this type of journalling and totally loved all of the examples on Pinterest and Instagram. If you haven't checked it out before, you totally should head over to it! So anyway, I finally got around to put mine together! I am so excited and proud of it! Here are some pictures of my creations so far:



2. This is my first year as a permanent teacher at my school and I knew I needed to give my room a little uplift. I went out and purchased some new book bins and redid all of our Reading Recovery books! The change is amazing! I cannot believe it took me so long to do it. Some of those boxes were from the early 90's... I swear! 



3. I finally took the jump to get Tailwind to help me manage my Pinterest and hopefully take the next leap for my Teachers Pay Teachers account! Andrea, over at Maternelle avec Mme Andrea, was amazing and gave me so many little tips to figure it out. I had been so scared to use it and had no idea how to even get started. I am really hoping it will get more people to my store and maybe even to my blog! Here is to a new school year and hopefully a very successful one!


4. Meanwhile in my personal life, I finally started going for my daily walks again and I started trying to run. For May and June I was getting up every morning and walking before work! It was amazing and I was really starting to feel so good... then summer came and it all went out the window. This week I had PD most of the week so I decided to try and get back into the swing of things. Monday, I planned on just walking but then I started going and I decided that I was going to try to run for a bit! I was so proud that I did it on Tuesday and Wednesday again! I am hoping to keep going with it and just taking it at my own pace! Here is hoping I can keep up with it! You will keep me accountable, right? ;)


5. To go along with my walking, I also started doing food prep! I am so excited that I was able to stay on track and eat well almost the FULL week! I am glad I am started this week because I should be good to go next week when school starts! Hoping to stay on top of this!



Thanks so much for taking the time to read my 5 for Friday! The long weekend is all that stands between us and the beginning of the school year... and I am totally ready for it! Bring on this school year! What are you excited about this week? Comment below and let me know :)

Thursday 1 September 2016

Back to school goodies...

How is it September 1st already? I just cannot believe how quickly the summer went this year. It was so busy that I think I remembered to enjoy it! We had my sister, brother in law and my beautiful niece Charlie visit from Scotland for most of the month in July. It was filled with all kinds of fun times like camping, food, family photos, food, get togethers... did I mention food? Then I went to Vancouver for almost a week to attend the International Reading Recovery Conference with some amazing colleagues! I am in love with that city... it was still beautiful Canada with the same heat as Nova Scotia... but without the humidity, which was a dream. Next I started focusing on school here and there but still managed to get together with friends, have some relaxing times before heading back into the swing of things this week. Four days of conferences about Assistive Technology and Trauma based learning along with one full day spent setting up my Reading Recovery Office (stay tuned for a preview on that one next week).

I have been into school probably a dozen times since the beginning of August and I have to say this is the most exciting year for setting up yet! I have been teaching for 6 years and finally got permanent this year (Wahoo)! I was pretty excited to hang my new name plate from Tallahassee Sunday on my door the other day. She does such a gorgeous job and it is so colourful! I love that I get to look at it for the rest of my career (along with the other grade one teachers at my school as I gave them all one for a gift last year).


So here we are talking about back to school and I wanted to share some of my great products to keep those little minds busy for just a little while anyway :)

First, it seems important to talk about my best seller. Over the years I have created quite the little collection of Bingo's in my store. I have numbers, ten frames, holidays. No matter what you are looking for, I probably have it and if I don't, send me a request and I will see what I can do for you! I loooooooove getting requests! I will be coming out with some new ones this year too that I am pretty excited about. My Number Bingo from 1-20 is my most popular set but below you will see an assortment of all my back to school related Bingo's.


Next up on the docket, is my practice activities. I have taught primary and grade one and I always found these were super helpful for students who needed a little bit more practice. Giving students tactile activities like the Number Playdoh Mats and Letter Playdoh Mats below are so much fun and educational. My students loved it when they were playing with the Playdoh, so much so, that they didn't mind doing a little bit of learning at the same time. We used Playdoh a lot in our Math and Literacy centres. I also have some Number Practice sheets that I often will send home with students to help them become more acquainted with numbers to 20. Those teen numbers are tricky and a lot needed the extra help last year.



I also love the Modifiable Blank Calendars because they are so versatile. Last year we used them to track our weather for the month and would have some great conversations about our first rainy day/snowy day/sunny day. The students were even able to count up the days and we did a lot of graphing activities with these. It was so useful for such a simple task. At the end of the year, they had a duotang filled with the year at a glance. This year, I think we will also track how many days we are in school on these little calendars.


The products that I am most excited about have got to be my new classroom line! I have been meaning to organize my books for the longest time! This summer I decided to stop wasting time and created some Library Labels (White Background) and Library Labels (Chalkboard Edition). Then I decided to go a little further and create some Word Wall Letters and words that matched these two sets (White Background and Chalkboard Edition). Needless to say, I could not wait to put some of them to use in my classroom. As most of you know, I don't have my own classroom exactly so I had to modify them to best suit what I did have. I hope that you get to use them in your classroom though because I bet they will be gorgeous! I cannot wait to see your pictures! Classroom pictures have got to be my favourite!




That is just to name a few of the finds over at Teaching with MaGee. Head over to see if there is anything else you may want to take a peak at! :)

So, now tell me, what have you been doing this summer? Share with me your great memories as we get ready to fly back into the classroom this coming week! Chat soon :)

Monday 8 August 2016

Teacher Planner Organization

Anyone else obsessed with the new teacher planners that come out every year? I drool every time I look at them! A few months ago I learned about the different types of planners that were available to teachers when planning out their weeks. Up until this point I was focused on creating my own every year and modifying it to suit my needs. I always enjoyed doing this but it was a lot of work and I never thought to look elsewhere. Then, it was as if the light was shining down and a friend introduced me to the variety of teacher planners out there!

Ta Da!

Soon after I luckily won a C. Jayne Teach Teacher Anchor from a Facebook share and was happily surprised by how fantastic this planner is! Inside this one little planner is everything I need for the year. It is all in one place! There is a place for my lesson plans, transportation lists, contact information, allergy information, birthday lists, monthly calendars, student grades and the best part, there are even black line masters to a variety of student data forms.


Anyway, so here you are, thinking that I am here to promote the Teacher Anchor, because, well, it really kicks some butt!

But, I am really here to ask you some questions. So let me get to it...

I have never had one of these planners before and I was terrified to write in its beautiful pages. I have been sitting staring at it and thinking about what to do first.



Today, after having it for a month, I wrote in it for the first time. I got out my beautiful Papermate flair pens, my washi tape, and my school calendar and got to work... But I only got as far as August until I realized I think I wanted some inspiration.


This is where you come in! I tried looking on Instagram but there wasn't much there about these planners. I tried numerous hashtags and looked at Pinterest... but again, was overwhelmed and didn't see too much.

How do you use your planner? How do you begin to plan for your year? What do you like to do to get you in the mood to plan? Do you dress it up with flair pens and washi tape? Or just leave it clean and simple?


The countdown is on! Only 3 weeks until I go back to school for my first of numerous summer PD sessions and 4 weeks until the kiddos come back! My mind is full and I have no idea where to start!

Friday 12 February 2016

Five for Friday

Well there were a lot of great things that happened again this week. There were so many that I actually had to do an elimination of some things. I love when I can be organized enough to think about this each day and decide which items I want to pick and choose to share with everyone. Check them out below:
http://doodlebugsteaching.blogspot.ca/

We had a wicked snow storm on Monday afternoon into Tuesday. My parents are away in Scotland to visit the newest addition to our family, my niece Charlie, so I am staying at their house to look after their dog throughout the week. Needless to say Tuesday had a lot of shovelling in my day plan. On Wednesday I headed back to my apartment to pick up some things for the rest of the week. The 40 minute drive home from work was definitely not the best because all I was thinking about was the shovelling I would have to do when I got back here. Well... my first Five for Friday has to be my amazing landlords! They shovelled out my apartment and had everything ready for my arrival!! Sweetest gift I could have asked for this week! Thank you!

The two storm days resulted in days away from my wonderful students which allowed me to spend some time prepping for Valentine's Day in our classroom. I created two TpT products (Valentine's Day No Prep Math & Literacy Pack and Valentine's Day Bingo) that have been doing super well all week! It took me awhile to get into this TpT idea but I have to say I am so pleased with how well the products are doing. I still can't believe people want to buy things I create for my students. Just another reason why I love my job and what I do!



Number 2 leads into number 3 for me! Today was our Valentine's Party and although I had no voice and my partner teacher was out, our substitute was so awesome and stepped up! She took over and managed the day so I could sit back and save my voice to spend with my kiddos. We went to the local Astor Theatre (which I had never been to before!) to see Inside Out! Some of the students had never seen it before so it was a treat to take them! Then we came back, passed out our Valentine's and had some treats before it was story time, followed by home time! Lovely day!

My niece Sloane totally gets a whole section to herself here! Right now she is living with us throughout the week while my sister does a work term locally. Everyday I get to come home from school and pick her up from daycare! Watching her run up to me when I arrive takes all my problems from the day and lets them go. No dwelling with this little smile!
I have been fighting a cold all week. You know, the kind that takes your voice away, gives you a runny nose and makes you cough really bad... one of those! Anyway, I am excited that I survived, that I made it to Yoga last night regardless if being exhausted, that it is the weekend, and that Monday is Nova Scotia's new holiday: Family Day! Yay for recovery!

Some things that didn't make it into the post was the possible release of the Harry Potter Script and Jesse being added to the cast of Gilmore Girls! What five things happened to you this week? Share away!! :)

Thursday 11 February 2016

Valentine's Day No Prep Math & Literacy Pack

Can I just take a moment and say how much I love what I do? We all have our days where things do not seem to go right but at the end of the day, I love that I get to work with little lovelies every day! They love learning at this age and I am so eager to teach them everything I can.

This week was definitely chaotic. We were supposed to have day 100 but due to two snow days on Monday and Tuesday, it has been pushed to next week. Stay tuned for some great ideas that I used in another blog post. To top off our two snow days, for some unknown reason, the town my school is located in lost power yesterday and the students had to be dismissed at lunch. Needless to say, a teachers work is never completed. Although I didn't have my students, I spent the day correcting and then creating wonderful Valentine's Day activities for my grade ones and I am hoping they will be delighted to use them!

In my Valentine Math & Literacy No Prep Pack, I have included numerous worksheets for you to use with your students. I hope that they enjoy it as much as mine have! You can do them as full class activities or put them into a station or center that works for you.

These worksheets meet the following concepts:

Math:

-Filling in Missing Numbers on a Hundred's Chart
-Finding Missing Numbers 1-30
-Counting by 5's to 100-Counting by 2's to 24
-Addition to 20-Soting 2-D and 3-D Objects
-What comes Before, Between and After Numbers
-Ten Frames-Patterning
-Colour by Number


Literacy:
-Word Families (4 sheets)
-Roll a Sight Word (4 sheets)
-Count the Syllables
-Word Search
-Word Scramble
-Beginning Sounds
-Ending Sounds
-Write about Valentine's Day (2 sheets)

It is going way better than I thought and will definitely be adding more products like this to my store, including a Saint Patrick's pack, Easter pack and an every day pack! Stay tuned for more updates about these.

I also spent some time over the past week putting together a Valentine's Bingo (which we will be using in our class for the shuffle on Friday - see below). Head over to my store to check it out! I am going to laminate it today after school. Thank goodness for Creative Clips Clipart because she makes everything I make look so much better!

I have to say, I have an addiction to Krista Wallden's Creative Clips Clipart. Every time she posts new products, I am so excited to purchase them and put it to use in anything that I create. If you ask any of the teachers at my school, I am always adding her borders and clipart to everything I use. Not to mention my students love her work as well! To top it off, she created a FREE Valentine's Day colouring book that my students are loving right now. We use it every chance we have a free moment. We all have heard about the adult colouring books craze (and honestly, who doesn't love colouring therapy?) so why not take a few minutes for your students to enjoy the art of colouring as well? I sent the link to the colouring book to all the Primary and Grade One teachers in my school.

Needless to say, tomorrow is going to fly by! We are heading to the local theatre to show the students Inside Out. It connects with our PATHS program and we will be talking about our emotions and how they affect us. Then we will exchange Valentine's, followed by a grade one shuffle in the afternoon. I am so excited to share how tomorrow goes so make sure you pop back by to check it out!

Friday 29 January 2016

Five for Friday

http://doodlebugsteaching.blogspot.ca/

I cannot believe we have another Five for Friday already! These weeks are just flying by!

Here are a few things that I am thankful for this week!




Last year my boyfriend surprised me by buying me a copy of The Magic School Bus: The Complete Series! This was such an amazing purchase! I love how the booklet is broken into topics. On Thursday, our school went skating and the kids were just all over the place. We had been working hard to learn about habitats earlier in the year and I thought this would be a perfect time to show the episode on Habitats. What a dream class! Everyone was engaged and we had the best discussion afterwards! Mrs. Frizzle has it going on!


I started teaching Youth Yoga through Bridgewater Parks and Rec this week. I had such a great night with my group and I cannot wait to teach it again this Monday coming! I also have my last session for the season with my yoga kids through the local YMCA on Saturday. My Yogis are absolutely wonderful this week and I wish I could show a picture of them because they were so cute doing their poses, but alas, with all the internet


My Scholastic book order arrived on Wednesday. I don't know about you folks, but I always love it when that arrives! I have a guilty pleasure for those picture books and the kids always love the new stories that I find! How about you?



For Christmas I bought myself a necklace and earring frame to hang on my wall. I had given it to my parents to give to me but complained that I probably could have just made myself a DIY one. On Christmas morning, I didn't have a frame to open which was a little bit weird. Well... I went over to their house for supper last night and my dad said he had a surprise for me. They had secretly returned the one I had purchased and my parents had made me one together. They painted the screen so it would match my bedroom, picked out handles to match my colour scheme and made it with a swing door so I can access my earrings easily! I just have to say, I have the BEST parents ever! Thank you!!



Lastly, on Wednesday I had my TPTiversary! It was one year ago that day that I posted my very first item on TPT. It has been a big year with a lot of ups and downs. I continue to struggle to make the sales that I want but I know that I am learning along the way and that is all that matters. I am going to continue to make some quality activities for students and hopefully I will continue to grow my little following. In honour of the big day, I made a little number practice for your students. I have done it with a few of my struggling grade ones and their number knowledge is really coming! Fingers crossed it works for you too!!!