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 :)

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!

Hello everyone! Sorry it has been so long since I have posted. I swear I have tons of ideas that need to get posted. I promise to get through some of them this week! Things have been crazy as last week was parent teacher, trying to decorate for my favourite time of year, and getting ready to move. For now, I am here to talk about the big TPT Cyber Smile Sale! This is the first time I have ever participated in one of the sales from TPT and I am so excited.

First off, a bunch of sellers have decided to share their old school photos from when they were in school. I think it is absolutely brilliant and am so excited to share mine with you. This is my photo from when I was in grade two! Gotta love the braided/crimped look!

For two days only, TPT is having a Cyber Smile Sale! You can get anywhere to 28% off some great products for your classroom! If you are new to TPT, here is how it works:

1) Find a product that works for you!
2) Put it in your cart!
3) Get ready to check out and put in your redemption code of "SMILE."
4) When you have paid and received your product, don't forget to go back and rate it so that you can earn FREE credits towards future TPT purchases!

Everything in my store is on sale so take a peek and see if there is anything you like!

Here are links to my most popular items:

Number Bingo 1-10

Number Bingo 1-20

Also, if you have any ideas for future products you would like to see, comment below and let me know what you think! I would love to hear from you!

Thanks and happy shopping :)