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 :)

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!

Five for Friday

http://doodlebugsteaching.blogspot.ca/

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!

Five for Friday

Hey folks! Well it is Friday the 13th and we all made it through. I figure there is no better way to start this blog than linking up with the blog Doodle Bugs Teaching and her five for Friday party!! Five for Friday is a linky party where teachers post about five random things from their week. And ladies and gentlemen, mine are certainly random this week! Let's get started!

My amazing week began by having my blog totally redesigned by A Little Peace of Africa. I signed up in the middle of October and was counting down the days until the big reveal. I am so impressed and keep coming back to check to see what it looks like. I love the colours and the themes. I cannot say 'Thank You' enough... but maybe one more time! Thank you!!!

This past weekend I went to see an amazing little apartment in my hometown. I am excited to announce that I am signing the lease (hope this doesn't jinx it) and will be moving in in December. It has been awhile since I have lived out on my own but am so excited to take the plunge again. Just think of all the decorating possibilities! I have a feeling that there will be lonely days ahead but I cannot wait to come home from work to a place that is my own. The apartment is the perfect next step and where I am in my life. I am excited to see where it takes me!!

I was really slack on taking photos this week. There were tons of exciting things happening at school from the Remembrance Day ceremony, to Bus Evacuation Drill, to Lock Down Drills and Mad Science presentations. Needless to say, it was a great week to be on top of my game and completing my report cards at least 4 days before they were due. I can honestly say that I know all about procrastination. It is the name of my game most years when it comes to these. This year I am job sharing with a lovely teacher and she is far from a procrastinator. With her help, we completed them early and I was able to celebrate that accomplishment! Thank you!

What photos I did take this week were today during my math stations. I have made it my goal this year to make these a reality, regularly. So far this year I have made it through three or four rounds. Along with math stations, I have been working on my guided math practices. They are coming along and I am excited to say they are something I look forward to everyday. Right now we are working on number sense goals such as estimation and counting to 100. My grade ones worked so hard today to complete these! We did skip counting puzzles, missing numbers and matching number cards. Needless to say, their independence during these stations has certainly made me a proud teacher this week.

Lastly, my favourite part of my week was Coco Chanel. My mom and dad's dog has got to be the cutest little puppy. Actually, this week I taught Yoga to my little group of kiddos and one of the little boys reminded me that his dog was not a puppy, but a small dog. So correction: Coco has got to be the cutest dog. My parents were away for a part of the week so I was taking care of her. Coming home everyday to her excited prance always brought a smile to my face, even when the day was hard. Last night, she even chased the geese off of our yard. She definitely makes a good guard dog :)

Thanks everyone for reading! I will update with a post about our art lesson on Monday! We ran out of time today with everything that was happening so students are excited to get started next week on their creativity!

See you soon! :)