Five for Friday

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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!!!

Five for Friday x 2

Hi Everyone!! Last Friday night I didn't have a chance to post so I am taking items from the past two weeks to make up my five for Friday... I figure it is the best way to capture all the great things from last week as well! So here we go...

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Okay! I will admit, although I love science and doing it with the kids, I totally lack imagination when it comes to planning a unit. We were scheduled to start Materials and their Properties after Christmas and I just couldn't choose what to do since it is my first time teaching this grade. So, eventually I found the most amazing unit on TpT from Secondgradealicious. I have been following it pretty closely as it meets our outcomes perfectly and best of all, my students couldn't wait to get started. Here we have some pictures of the stations that they had to run through. I just love it when a lesson goes just as planned!

A teacher at my school showed me these super cool magnetic ten frames that she found online from Really Good Stuff. Well, with the Canadian dollar as bad as it is, and the shipping as expensive as it was, I searched high and dry for it online. Luckily, Scholar's Choice had it right here in Halifax. I cannot tell you how much this has changed my life! The kids actually understand adding and subtracting when I use these! It blows my mind but they love it so much and get so excited when I pull the ten frames out! Happy little learners!!

On Saturday we had a crazy snow storm! It started in the morning and went strong and steady until about ten o'clock at night! I couldn't get over how beautiful it was. Oh and yes, it may have been on a weekend, so no snow day for us, BUT who doesn't love a good day when you are forced to stay home and you can do whatever you want! It was a gem and I was able to finish all my housework and then have lots of time to relax to boot! Couldn't ask for a better start to my weekend!

A good friend of ours was able to get us tickets to go see the Canada vs. USA team for the World Sledge Hockey Tournament that my hometown is hosting. Although neither Tony or I are huge into sports, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We went with a group of our close friends and have to say it was such an entertaining sport. I knew nothing about it and loved to watch the guys skate around. Oh... and CANADA WON in a shoot out!! :) This weekend are the finals so fingers crossed that luck keeps going their way!

Over the past two weeks my students worked so hard to create beautiful 3-D snowmen. I found this idea on Pinterest last year and did it with the primaries that I was teaching. It took several days because of all the steps but my grade ones totally stepped up and did a fantastic job! Wahoo for wonderful art lessons!

Since I chose items over the past two weeks, I have to say it was hard to narrow it down to 5 items. I love this challenge every week because it reminds me to be mindful and to be thankful of all the little, great things that go on throughout our lives. 

Five for Friday

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Last year a lot of really great things happened to me and I have a lot to be thankful for. I can only imagine what 2016 is going to bring and I am ready to take it on with open arms. Here are a list of 5 great things that happened this week.

This was my first full week on my own in my new apartment. Although there were some very emotional days (transitions are hard to adults too), it is so gratifying to come home and have a place to call your own. I built my first fire on my own and was able to keep it going in the "comfortable" zone. I know this may sound pathetic to some but I totally rocked my first week... until my toilet flooded last night and I had to get my friendly neighbourhood handyman to come fix it. Needless to say, my week ended with an adventure.

I started a few different goals for 2016. My first goal was to take time for myself this year and one way I plan on doing that is to read at least a book a month. I have a stack of books that need to be read but unfortunately they are in a box in a pile of boxes that I just haven't unpacked yet. So, I started Me Before You by Jojo Moyes on my iPad this week... and finished it this week. It was such a good book but I have to say that I cried a lot more in that book than I think I have ever cried in a book. Do you ever get the feeling after you finish a good book that something is missing from your life? Well I am totally going through withdrawals of the characters in this one. If you haven't read it yet, go do it. I doubt you will regret it.

I promised myself that I would do some serious food prep in my new place so that things went smoother during the week and that I would have more time for fun things. I should note that I love cooking though so that is totally a fun thing. Anyway, I made some delicious treats including a quinoa salad, spinach salad, and lasagna cupcakes. I nabbed this recipe from my wonderful boyfriend's blog. He really knows his way around the kitchen. These lasagna cupcakes were easy, amazingly delicious and quick to make. I froze a ton of them and now just grab them for in my lunches every now and then. You can check out the recipe here if you wanted to give it a go! He is going to update it this weekend with a new post so stay tuned!!

This was a busy week at school with lots of absences. Maybe that is why I am feeling under the weather? Anyway, needless to say, I thought about taking lots of pictures this week of some of the things we were doing but never got around to a single one. I spent some time teaching them how to play a great new game I found from Primarily Speaking when she posted on Primary Powers. We played "Walk the Plank" to practice our addition strategies and my grade ones loved it! They loved it so much that they were requesting to play when I suggested it later on in the week. I will be adding it to our math stations when we get to them later this month for sure (and I promise to have some pictures as well ;))

I am excited that I got to spend some time making a new bingo game this week. I feel like this one has taken me forever and that if I maybe post promising that it will be posted on my TpT store this week, then it will kick my bum into gear to get it done. Look forward to a post about this, this week! In the meantime, check out the rest of my products at my store!

Another one of my goals this week was to make great use of my blog. So check back soon for an update from my class to yours :) Thanks for reading!