I'm here!

Wow, I have neglected my little ole' blog this month!  I usually try to do Five for Friday each week, but I have either been too exhausted or we have been busy on Friday night and so I have just let my blog slip.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving and I want to let you know that I'm so thankful for you, my readers!  I started my TPT journey a little over 13 months ago and decided in January to start blogging.  I am thankful for you following what we are doing in our classroom!

I wanted to drop in tonight to share with you some holiday goodies that you may want to scoop up during the Super Cyber Savings Event next week on TeachersPayTeachers.  My entire store will be 20% and with the TPT code: TPTCYBER you can get a total of 28% off!!

First up - December Math Centers!

This set of math centers has a variety of activities to bring a little Christmas cheer to your math centers.  True/False equations, 100's board hidden pictures, skip counting, money, and lots more!

Next - do you Elf on the Shelf in your classroom??  We do!!

I have done Elf on the Shelf every year and this year, I made a morning work and daily elf journal for my kids to do each morning.  The top part of each day's page includes a place at the top to record where you found the elf in the morning and what he/she did the night before.  At the bottom students complete either a math or reading activity this a Christmas theme.  There are lots of other pages to include in this booklet such as writing prompts, wish lists, and more!  I'm so excited to use this with my kids!  All of my booklets are copied and in our elf box ready for Monday morning delivery!

Polar Express Day!

For the past three years, 2nd Grade at my school has done a unit on Polar Express.  We concluded with Polar Express Day.  Last year, I created a whole unit full of language arts and math activities that we did the week of Polar Express Day.  It makes for a great way to end the quarter and celebrate the holidays!

But this year, 2nd grade is doing something a little different...

Since some other grade levels do Polar Express Day, we decided to do something new and different for our grade level - Grinch Day!  I am so excited about Grinch Day and am trying to make it a memorable experience for my kids - ornaments, crafts, activities, and so much more.  Our Grinch Day is December 18th, but we will be doing Grinch stuff all week!

Head over to my TPT store and load up on some holiday goodies!

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and will enjoy the Christmas season - don't forget the real reason for the season though!

Holidays Around the Blog Linky

I don't know about you, but I my favorite time of year is from November 1 - December 31...I LOVE the holidays, especially the whole month of December!  So I was really excited when I saw that I could join the Holidays Around the Blog Linky hosted by Mrs. Labrasciano!  One reason I love December is that I get to do Elf on the Shelf with my kiddos!  When Elf on the Shelf first came out several years ago when I was in college, I bought one at my local Hallmark shop because I loved the concept and said "maybe I can use it in my classroom one day..."  And I definitely do!  I usually make out a plan of activities for him to do each night after spending a lot of time scooping out ideas on Pinterest!

A couple years ago, I found a journal on TPT for my students to journal what our elf, Curtis, did every day during December and loved that idea, but also want my kids to do some morning work like they do already.  So, I created a morning work and journal booklet that will allow my kids to journal about our elf each day and do a reading or math Christmas-themed activity at the bottom. BUT, this pack includes a lot more than just morning work and journal pages!  Check out some sample pages below.

Here is what is included:

Morning Work & Journal Book with numbered days (up to 18 days)

Morning Work & Journal Book without numbered days (up to 18 days)

Elf Adventures Log

Other Activities:

Letter to Santa

Naughty or Nice? Opinion writing

Nightly Elf Adventures imaginative/narrative writing

Christmas Word Search

My Wish List

Classroom Scout Elf Behavior Notes

Naughty Behavior Warnings

Teacher Naughty Behavior Log

Notes to the Elf

I printed my copy a couple weeks ago and got so excited to use this yesterday as I was going through planning on how to copy it for my kids.  I plan on having Curtis bring these with him from the North Pole when he arrives on our first day back after Thanksgiving break...along with his new reindeer friend - Chet!  They keep adding something new every year - but with the Elf Pets, the kids can actually touch, hug and cuddle them to help their heart pendant fill with magic so that they can fly Santa's sleigh on Christmas Eve.  Got mine at JcPenney about a week ago and was able to use a coupon so I got it for pretty cheap!

I know it's early but Merry Christmas friends!  I hope you enjoy this season with your family and classroom kiddos as much as I do!

Saturday Night Freebie!

I haven't had a freebie in a while!  And I missed Five for Friday because I was rather feverish and sick last night...like in the bed before 9.  Feeling much better today and did some Christmas decor shopping with mom.  Came home tonight and made this little label to go on our new Box Tops and Campbell's Labels box.

I don't remember who it was, but I saw someone post a picture of repurposing a Cascade dish detergent container to use for a center, or something of the sort earlier in the week on Instagram.  I immediately thought that would be so cute to use for Box Tops!  Luckily, mom had one in the pantry that was close to empty that I could use.  It is a larger sized container since we bought it at BJ's, but that just means my kids need to bring in more Box Tops, right???

I printed this page/label at 70% in the printer settings and it came out just perfect. You may to decrease or increase the print size depending on your container.  I also printed one for each side since I had yucky stuff from trying to take the labels off.

Click the picture to download!

Clipart is Melonheadz, Fonts are from Hello Literacy

Have a great rest of the weekend!

Liebster Award Nomination

2 blog posts in about an hour -what in the world?  But, I was nominated by Katie at Living The First Grade Dream for the Liebster award - an award for new bloggers who have less than 200 followers, but have great content and potential.

As part of being nominated, I have to answer the 11 questions below and then nominate 11 bloggers with less than 200 followers.  Good thing 11 is my favorite number!

1.  Why and how long ago did you start blogging? 

I started my blog back in January of this year (2014).  I actually had to do some blogging in college for a couple of my education classes, so I wasn't brand new to blogging, but now I was blogging for real people and not just for a grade from my professors!  I started creating products for my TPT store last year about this time and that (selfishly) was my real reason for blogging.  I wanted to get more traffic to my store.  But now that I've been blogging for about 8 months, I am enjoying the other teacher bloggers I have virtually met and can't wait to go to Vegas next summer for the TPT conference and meet some of them!

2.  What one word sums up the heart of your blog and why?

Sharing - ever since I began teaching, I would have other teachers come just walk around my room, staring at everything and then I would end up sharing ideas or even resources that I had found or created with them.  So, I'm branching out beyond sharing with my co-workers and now I'm sharing with you all too!

3.  Is there something you learned late in your blog journey you wished you knew before? I'm rather tech-savvy, but I wish I knew how to do more of the design aspects of creating and designing my blog.  I'm all about cute and organized and want it all to be perfect.  I'm satisfied with what I have done to this point, but would love to have a blog designer create me a design full of buttons for links and everything!
4.  What is your favorite past time other than blogging?    

I have lots of little things I like to do here and there, but at the moment, I'd have to say support NC State athletics - football, basketball are my biggest, but when we get a chance to go to another game, we go and pull for our Wolfpack, even when we lose.

5.  How many hours per week do you dedicate to your blog?
Not enough!  I usually end up blogging once a week and that is Five for Friday.  I really need to blog more about things that I'm doing in my classroom -GoNoodle, Class Dojo, academics, etc!

6.  What category of blog posts do you enjoy the most? 
I love the holidays and doing fun stuff!  So I usually end up looking for those seasonal and holiday ideas!

7.  Where does your blog inspiration come from?
My classroom and my students - otherwise I wouldn't have anything to blog about!

8.  Which post that you've written are you most proud of?
I would probably have to say THIS post about how I flipped my math classroom last year.  Being able to utilize classroom practice to actually practice what I was teaching my students was a big deal to me!

9.  Is there any post you've been planning to do but have been postponing it for awhile now?

 Probably how I use Class Dojo in my classroom.  I just haven't seemed to find the time to sit down and actually remember to do it!

10.  What is your favorite aspect of blogging?
Connecting with other teachers and teacher bloggers to make connections beyond my small town.

11.  Which recipe, project, or idea on my blog would you be most likely to try yourself? 

I'm going to have to try Nonfiction Text Feature Sort with my reading groups!  We were talking about text features during reading groups the other day and they about killed me not knowing what the caption was.  I know they know it, but they just have to keep practicing it.

Now...onto the nominations!  I don't have 11, which I hope is okay.  I saw from other bloggers, that they only had to nominate 5 - 11, and all of the bloggers I follow have a lot more than 200, or have already been nominated/accepted.

1. Missy from Dirt Road Teacher

2. Lisa from Pawsitively Learning

3. Marissa from The Inspired Owl

4.  Leah from Grasty's 2nd Grade Goodies

 5.  Stacy Ess of Second Grade Sweetie Pies  

To those who have been nominated, here are the "official" rules for accepting:
1. In your post, link back to the blogger who nominated you as a thank you and "shout out." (Follow their blog if you haven't already!)  
2. Answer the 11 questions given to you (the ones I answered above).
3. Nominate 11 blogs of your choice that each have less than 200 followers. Provide them with 11 questions to answer or have them answer the questions above.
4. Let your nominees know that they've been nominated and provide them with a link to your post so that they can accept.
5. Send your nominator a link to your post so that s/he can learn more about you as well! (You can just put your post link in the comments below!)

100 Followers on Bloglovin' Sale!!

I just got the best email...

So...because I now have 100 followers on Bloglovin'...I'm throwing a sale in my TPT store!  My entire store is 20% off through Tuesday!  Go get some stuff for the upcoming holidays on sale!

Five for Friday - we made it through the first week back!

Well - we made it through the first week back to school after track-out!  Granted the kids were only here 4 days...but we made it!  I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday!

Well, before track-out we did our writing craftivity for Halloween and I never snapped a picture, so here is the final product!  I love it!  I contemplated making them all color their witches the same way, but I like their creativity with their colors!

This week in writing we are writing opinion pieces about trick-or-treating at night.  The city doesn't want children trick-or-treating at night, so we came up with 3 problems that the city might have and then they had to choose to either support the city, or try to convince the city to let kids trick-or-treat at night, so they were coming up with solutions for the problem.  Opinion writing is one of my least favorite types of writing because everyones can be so different.  I'm trying so hard to set a model for my kids to follow, and they want to just be lazy and not follow it!  AAAHHHH!  Trying to work on this and really support my kids as writers.

I am so excited that I got a grant for the math program, Reflex Math!  We started on Wednesday and my kids are OBSESSED!!  We are going to master our math facts!  We are going to start our math facts tests in a couple weeks, so I'm hoping with a couple weeks of Reflex under their belts, they will get started off on a good note on our math fact tests.

I got my Standard Professional II license this week!  After 3 years of teaching in NC, you have to get a new license that is good for 5 years!  My school did all of the paperwork for me and it finally came this week.  My principal brought it to me during reading groups this week because he knew I had been waiting for it to come.

I always do Elf on the Shelf between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Well somehow I'm on the Elf on the Shelf teacher email list and back in September I got an email that they were sending out 10,000 scout elves to classrooms, so I entered.  Well, low and behold, I got an email last week that I would be receiving a scout elf.  She came on Thursday in a big box from the North Pole along with the birthday set.  I had to hide it from my kids so they wouldn't get suspicious.  I might save her until later because I love my first elf, Curtis, but we might have to see how we can use the birthday set.

Happy Friday Y'all!

Five for Friday!

I can't believe my track-out is almost over!!  I don't really want to go back to school on Monday, but so thankful it's a workday, even if it is filled with mClass math training all day :(  Kiddos return on Tuesday.  But I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday...track-out style!  Next week I'll try to have some really good classroom stuff!

This past Monday I laced up my tennis shoes and met my cooperating teacher from student teaching (3.5 years ago!) for a walk.  I was so lucky to be with her my Junior and Senior year thanks to the Teaching Fellows Program at Meredith, so we had a great relationship...we just haven't stayed in touch too much since I graduated!  But when she texted me in August and said she had retired, I knew we had to get together over track-out!  The weather was absolutely perfect and we did a lot of catching up!  We walked around the lake 3 times and I think that is between 5 and 6 miles.  We walked for an hour and 45 minutes...it sure didn't seem like we had walked that far or for that long!  I so enjoyed catching up with her now that she is retired!

Then I came home Monday afternoon and got crafty finishing up a pumpkin door hanger for our side door.  I had found a website that made these cute seasonal door hangers but couldn't imagine spending $50-$80 on a door hanger that might stay up for a month!  So we made one as a family - mom drew the shape, dad cut it on the saw, and I painted it and added the bow.  I love it and can't wait to make a Christmas one!

This has been 2 weeks full of productivity for me!

Lots of new TPT things for the coming season and holidays as well as novel studies for The Doll People and The Meanest Doll in the World by Ann M. Martin.  Plus!  I updated my first TPT product...The Polar Express unit.  Gave it a nice little facelift :)

Click the picture to go to my TPT store!

Polar Express with a facelift!

A NEW Christmas unit!  We are doing Grinch Day this year!  Can't wait :)

Last night we went to the Zac Brown Band for my dad's birthday..which was in July!  We got him the tickets in July for his birthday and he just had to wait to use them!

Despite being right beside the smoking section and feeling our lungs turning black the whole night - we had a great time!

I haven't spent my whole track-out working on school related stuff...I also started some of my Christmas shopping!  I started last week when I went shopping on Thursday and then had to make an exchange yesterday and got some more stuff too!  Did a little online shopping as well for my mom.  Feeling accomplished!

Today, I had to face reality that I'm going back to school next week and should be responsible about being ready for my students.  From our all-day planning day a few weeks back, we have all of 2nd quarter planned, I just had to type up my lesson plans.  So this morning, I got the first three weeks planned, typed, and put in my Erin Condren Lesson Planner -gosh I love that thing!

Happy Friday Y'all!