100 Days Smarter ~ Celebrating like ROYALTY!!!!

We are 100 days smarter!!!

My 2 favorite days are probably the 100th day and Read Across America Day... { Dr. you know who }  Well today we celebrated and I used the unit I created last year because it was such a hit last year!  We celebrate like royalty!!!

How cute is she?!?!  She came dressed for the occasion for sure!!!

And here is one of our knights ( in shining armour ) :o)

We had such a blast!!  If you love this idea you can grab it at my store  { here }

BTW if you bought this I did update it yesterday to add the diamond bracelets to it so be sure to re download on your my purchases page.

Happy 100th day my friends...I would love to hear how you celebrated yours...



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Penguins and a Manic Monday { freebie }

Penguins are everywhere in my classroom right now!!!!  I created a new penguin unit and updated my polar regions unit so we are busy having loads of fun!!!

We are soo busy learning, reading, sharing.  I love when the kids on their own time ( Daily 5 reading ) or DEAR choose a non fiction book about what we are studying and tell me new facts they learned.  That will warm any teachers heart!!!

Here are some pictures from last week.  The cute penguin was from the super talented Sarah over at First Grader at Last!  I think I found it on Pinterest and just added the fun crest on his head.

  

How cute is this handprint penguin?!?

I also have a penguin informational writing freebie that would be great to use when you study penguins...

Although for my Manic Monday Freebie I thought it would be fun to share one I just made in honor of the Shh!!!  Dare I say - Super Bowl!!!  It has 9 pages of a variety of skills that is themed around football!!!  I can't believe it took me this long to make a football themed pack as I'm married to a football coach and PE teacher...LOL

Enjoy!!!



Link on up with Charity and share your latest freebie...





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What have you done for me lately??? { kid edition }

I thought that would get your attention...what I'm actually going to blog about is what have you done for your kids lately?!?  I'm telling all you young moms out there ~ You will literally BLINK and they will go from this:

to this:

It's absolutely INSANE and I can't even begin to tell you just how FAST it goes!  My mom was as you all have heard me say:  The most amazing woman ever!  She made me feel like a million bucks!  She would stay up late to sew me a new dress or shirt to wear on picture day.  When I woke up it would be hanging on my dresser and it was usually the first thing I saw.  After a winter formal I came home and was not happy because 5 girls had the same dress as me from Windsor I think...there's an old school name for you guys...so she wouldn't have that...FROM that moment on she designed and made all my formals from then on out and no one ever had my same dress.  It was awesome!!!  She would do things like this for me:

Of course this is Mandy ~ but my mom did stuff like this for me as a kid. 

Unfortunately I don't have the awesome sewing skills my mom had ...but this iron on shirt LOL made him feel like a million bucks on the day of student council elections and he WON for president.

It's easy to get bogged down with STUFF ...it's really NOT important...I promise!!!  It will still be there TOMORROW staring you in the face.  But these little guys won't be unfortunately.

I just want to encourage you to not only spend time with them but really build memories with them that will last a lifetime.  My mom's legacy will live for generations to come because she instilled this in me and I in my kids. 

If you don't do it already pick a night to be game night or no technology night.  Just when I think my teenage daughter doesn't feel like hanging out ~  I suggest playing a board game and she's all over it.

Our time with our kids is so limited...don't miss out!  I LOVED being home most of the time when they were little.  It was the best thing ever...I loved job sharing.  I know that time will never come back and I have no regrets!

Tonight I made this for my daughter who's going on her 8th grade trip soon...{ a fun little countdown chalkboard }

She's so excited and this is just a little thing but she will always remember it.  Don't second guess the little things ~ they stay with them.  Yes we are getting old and may or may not want to go to a one direction concert but buy the tickets and surprise your kids! 

{ I admit that I like their songs...there I said it out loud }lol  Well I hope this is a good reminder that sometimes we need to STEP AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER -- I don't do it enough either!! 

If you are lucky enough to be a mom or looking forward to starting a family think about all these things.  It's such a passion of mine and truly a gift from above and I know they are just on loan from our Lord.



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100th day ideas

UPDATE!!

I will email tomorrow - sick tonight. :o(

If you are a first grade teacher the 100th day is well.... { kinda } a BIG deal!  For years we dressed like we were 100.  Now there is a very cute app that ages you to 100.  Several teachers have used this for the 100th day.  It's called aging booth.

  

I think I've mentioned before that I get bored very EASILY and I like to switch things up.  So one year I celebrated the 101st day of school.  It was when I taught 2nd grade and it was so much fun!  The local paper even came out and did a story on it.

This is how the kids were greeted with this door and me like this:

We had such a blast!  We did rotations: 

1 String 101 cheerios onto a 'dog collar' with a dog registration     ( they had to name themselves )

2  Estimation station:  guess how many dog bones were in the container...  ( Scooby graham crackers shaped like bones )

3  Color 101 black dots onto a plain white shirt with a sharpie.     { Note went home asking parents to bring in a shirt that could get  { 'ruined'  }

4  Take 101 steps and see where you end up at school

5  Take a photo in front of our 'dog house'.

* We made dog ears and painted their faces like mine above - again with parent permission.

 

aren't we 'cute' puppies?!?

 

Grab it here if you think you want to try it out...

Last year I was racking my brain trying to think of something new to try.  When I moved back down to first they were STILL doing the 100 year old thing.  10+ years of that was just too much and like I said before I get BORED!  So this came to me and I made a unit and ran with it.  The kids and parents loved it as well. 

The girls wore sashes and the boys had shields.  The girls made 100 tally marks on their sashes and the boys on their shields.  They both wore 100 days smarter crowns and took pictures with this frame I made for their memory books.  It was such a FUN day!!!!

If you love this idea you can get it { here }

However you choose to celebrate ~ make it fun and memorable for your sweet students...Happy 100th day my friends!

LEAVE a comment on which one you would want and I will pick one winner for each item Friday night.



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5 for Friday { fun 1st week back }

I had the best FIRST week back my friends!!!!  I love my firsties this year so much!!!!  I missed them and it was great to be back together.  We had a busy week though that's for sure.    Be sure to hook up with Doodle Bugs to join in on the fun!!

So we were working on doubles this week and I finished this unit JUST IN TIME to use.  The kids love how interactive and hands on it was...

The kids loved spinning and seeing what fact they landed on...then they had to decide if it was a doubles fact or not...they circled yes or no after solving it.

This can easily be used as a worksheet but I used it in our math journals instead.

Next we worked on 'Academic Conversations'...our principal trained us on this our first day back { staff dev }.  I had fun making an anchor chart and getting them started on what it looks like.

I had the principal's son { very bright boy } model with me what this looked like.  It was fun but we still needs lots more modeling and practice.

Also I used my first poem from my new poetry for the year pack...the kids enjoyed doing this and adding it to their anthology.

We did a craftivity - first we brainstormed ideas of how we would spend a day with a snowman friend...

FIRST - have the kids paint bubble wrap white

Then have them gently place it on top of the background paper

LIFT and see the magical 'snow' appear.

It was so FUN to see how creative they were in their writing...for once a semi unstructured writing activity.  They thought up the most clever ideas for how they would spend a day with their 'snowman friend'.

Our phonics skill for the week is MAGIC e...so I whipped out my old faithful magic e unit and my long vowel bundle and my kids had a blast!

My long vowel bundle comes in handy...I wrote a poem for each long vowel and have printables for each long vowel.

This is totally NOT teacher related but I finally washed that gray right outta my hair...now my kids can't tell me they see gray hair when they get all in my grill.... LOL

Hope your first week back was as good as mine...I know some of you didn't really have a first week back because of snow days.  Since I had such a GREAT first week back I would like to give away either my doubles unit or my huge long vowel bundle...leave a comment below { with email } and I will pick one before next week.  xoxox



Oh and for those of you that missed it...I posted this FREEBIE last weekend...check it out!







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