Orange Ya Glad It's Summer?!?!

First things first...I realize it's been forever plus a few days since I've last entered into the land of blogging. Hundreds of reasons (too tired, lack of motivation, major writer's block), but the biggest of all...I have a little guy baking inside of me. Nothing that I could have ever read would have prepared me for the brutal existence of the first trimester. Morning sickness is a cruel joke...it doesn't come and go with the rising of the sun or the ending of the morning talk shows. It stayed around all.day.long and it by far one upped the worst hangover that I've ever had. Think back to college days when you were young, dumb && ate the fruit from the PJ like it was a fruit bowl from Publix. What??? That didn't happen to you? Me either...((hanging my head in shame)). Awful, pure awful. I'm certain that I'll never drink ginger ale or eat saltines willingly ever again. I'm also certain that I'll never again feed into the Old Wives Tales floating around out there && that my "mommy intuition" is seriously busted because I was 100% sure that I had a little girl on the way...wrong...couldn't have been more wrong. He's a boy and made it very obvious throughout our entire gender reveal ultrasound.

With summer finally arriving and the sickness of the first trimester being an almost distant memory, I have my fingers crossed that I'll have a little more time on my hands to share what's been going on in this brain (and classroom) of mine. Looking through my post history I've been M.I.A. for everything since Valentine's day. Eventually I'll get caught up...I did take pictures and I did manage to struggle through the bouts of nausea to make a portion of my OCD plans happen. For today I'm focusing on the end of the year fun that every teacher is counting down to (or relishing in it's arrival). I had my last work day of the year yesterday && I made it through. The reality hit that my kids  left the nest as I sat in a quiet classroom void of my noisy, pencil destroying, we put glue on every surface 7 year old crew. While I'm stoked out of my mind to have summer at my doorstep, it's such a bittersweet time of the year. As close as my bus came to breaking down permanently in crazy town I adore each and every one of the 17 little billy goats that I shared 18o days (give or take) with. My talkers, my drama queens/kings, my wiggle worms, my sneaky sneakies...they're all moving on to a new teacher and it has me feeling some kind of way. I know that it's part of the "circle of a teacher's life," and after 7 years I so should be used to this, but it's always the same. They leave pumped up on the dreams of summer, I'm beyond excited too, and then when I'm laying in bed the night after the storm (or sitting in my eerily silent classroom) it hits me...my babies that I know everything about, the voices that I have memorized, the I know who's doing what without even looking up from the paper on my desk have left me. I'm on vacation from the days of yelling from the classroom bathroom that I need 2 seconds, yes I can hear you the walls aren't sound proof, and have I mentioned that I have a peep hole and can see everything that you're doing?!?! (I don't really have a peep hole for anybody out there that might be thinking ermergerd this chick needs to be reported). I'm on vacation from having to sharpen gnawed up pencils that had brand new erasers yesterday and are now eraser-less. I'm on vacation from watching kids attempt to glue their hands together with glue sticks during spelling...wait you don't need a glue stick during spelling??? As cheesy as this sounds...every year a piece of my heart leaves when my crew packs up all of their things and walks out of my door for the last time. Teachers must certainly be born with extra large hearts right?!?! As if that weren't enough to get the tears flowing, perhaps watching some amazing friends pack up their classrooms to move on to new chapters in their lives will open the flood gates. I'm in denial about this last part...if I don't speak it, it won't really happen and we'll still be the well oiled, fun loving, woohooing COMPLETE grade level that we are. #MustStopNow #TearsAreNotGoodCoffeeAdditions

Sooo let's talk end of the year greatness. There's always so much that I want to pack into the last few days and I never get to everything on my list. Surely I can't be the only one with this problem? Prego or not, there just isn't enough time in the day (or energy in the body) to make all of our end of the year dreams come true...right?!?!

Last year the first grade ladies decided to celebrate the end of the year using a Pinterest idea that one of us found. I don't know the original source to give credit where credit is due, but whoever thought of it first--- you're brilliant! The original pin had a 20 day balloon pop count down. Each day you pop a balloon and a piece of paper with a "special treat" falls out. The 20th day count down snuck up on me last year && it snuck up on me again this year, so I opted to do a 10 day count down. Much easier on my sanity and my bank account. The best thing about it, you can fill the balloon with any treat you want...it doesn't have to cost you a single penny and the kids are just as stoked about it. For my 10 day count down I filled my balloons with these treats (they aren't in order because I can't for the life of me remember which treat came on which day of the count down):
-Lunch in the Classroom
-Shoes Off to Learn (with the expectation that if there was a fire drill they better grab their shoes and run barefoot down the hallway if need be)
-Write with Markers
-Sit Wherever You Want
-Bring a Stuffed Friend to School
-Popsicles
-Make Ice Cream in a Bag (amazing idea...didn't happen because of time and they never knew I swapped it for Fudgesicles)
-Extra Recess
-Special Treat (Cupcakes)
-Pizza Party

There are thousands of ideas floating around out there in Pinterest land to make this work for you. It's been an amazing way to encourage positive behavior (no behaving=no surprise) and oohhhh the excitement that fills the room right before the popping of the balloon. The favorite of the line up was Stuffed Animal Day...I've never had a quieter and more focused Read to Self block...for serious how cute are they?!?
 


Another must do on my end of the year list is tie dye. We have a love/hate relationship, but the end product is way too cute to pass up on. I've done tie dyed t-shirts with my kids for 6 out of the 7 years that I've been teaching and I curse the process every year when I'm hunched over my tub cutting the rubber bands, rinsing the extra dye out && then scrubbing my once white/now multi colored tub with a magic eraser, but every May I find myself buying a kit and going through the steps. Word to the wise: double up on gloves...somehow the die ate/leaked through my first pair and my fingers looked like I had been digging in some seriously nasty places....and I forget this every year...which adds to the cursing of the process. BUT it's so worth it! See what I mean?? The cuteness far surpasses the tedious, pain in the butt process!

Also mixed in with the end of the year nutiness: awards, memory books and gifts. We have a huge award ceremony to recognize the academic achievements of our kids, but with only 5 awards to pass out, it leaves a lot of friends high and dry...well not so high or dry because there are usually a lot of tears and hurt feelings...even after a talk about being happy for our friends and to remember that everyone got an award at some point throughout the year. In my world, academic achievements are only part of the kids that I teach. They each have unique personalities and qualities that should also be celebrated. Honestly my warm & fuzzy awards are my favorites to give. I blogged about them last year {{here}}. If you like what you read, you can grab your own copy at my TPT store {{here}}. As always, if something's not in there that you need, let me know and I'll customize the file for you because after hours of googling I still can't crack the treasure chest of creating editable PDF files...and I'm tired.

Moving right along ...taking a walk down memory lane. Ahhh the end of the year memories...all placed into one neat little memory book. My kids are typically the can't wait to be finished so I can just sit there and stare at my neighbor type of kids, but they really, really took their time filling in their sweet little memory books. I can't for the life of me find the picture on my laptop (and again I'm tired of searching) so if you're in need of something to get your little ones reflecting on their year head over to my TPT store and check it out {{here}}. If you like what you see snag yourself a copy.

Last, but certainly not least, end of the year gifts. I went with my kid tested && kid approved gift from last year because lets be honest...Baby stuff is crazy expensive yo, and baby brain doesn't allow for too much extra creative juices to flow when you've had a few 12 hour work days thrown into the mix. I'm in the process of putting together a mega pack of gift tags for gift giving throughout the year to add to my TPT line up. Be on the look out for that new product within the next week or so! I'm beyond excited to get started creating all kinds of tags and treat combos!

&&& just like that I've officially spent waaaaaaay too much time attempting to catch up. In the words of Arnold...I'll be back! Buuuut until then, live, love &&& enjoy the start of your summer break because YOU'VE EARNED IT!

Just Teach It (Whole Group Style)

Have I mentioned how much I adore summer? J I’m kidding! I know I’ve mentioned it only a gazillion times already, but holy guacamole I love, love, love all of the fun it brings. The only thing better than hanging out by the pool with fabulous friends is going to a summer wedding with your fabulous friends (after hanging out at the pool). Throw in a little road trip and you have how I spent yesterday in a neat little party sized nut shell. Yesterday was a day of celebration for the first grade team- - one of our own became a Mrs.! A sea of alligators, spiders and cockroaches couldn’t stop me from taking part in the festivities (and I’m deathly afraid of all 3).

A little bit of sun and a whole lot of fun is good for the soul…bad for your energy & motivation the next day, but hey! You only live once! Now that I’m in my comfy clothes, the hubby is watching golf, and my super sweet fur babies are curled up at my feet reality is hitting that I have a pretty daunting to do list approaching for the week (first and foremost: major grocery shopping…barf)! Before I start orchestrating that fabulous outing I figured I would link up with Leigh at the Applicious Teacher for the third week of the Apple a Day blogging linky. This week’s focus: Whole Group Instruction.

 

Whole Group Instruction can be pretty darn challenging- -trying to keep the attention of 18 little ones takes a lot of magic and sparkles that’s for sure- -and sometimes a bribe here and there. Magic && sparkles meaning teacher tricks to keep everyone focused, on task, and actively engaged- -I’m certainly no Harry Potter. . .sorry to disappoint. Of course without a magic wand of my own there will undoubtedly be a kid or two that is taking a short vacation into LaLa Land or one that is chewing on their shoe lace (apparently they taste delicious…double barf), but for the  most part whole group instruction is a piece of cake! I say that because to me it’s kind of like baking a cake…you have to have the right ingredients, there are steps to follow, and you have to spend the right amount of time. If you bake the cake for too long you’ll burn it to a crisp and if you don’t bake it long enough you’ll have a cake with a soupy center. So without further rambling, here is my recipe for Whole Group Instruction!

 

Step 1: Location is Everything

You wouldn’t bake a cake in the microwave (even though Pinterest has those cakes in a mug thingies…I remain a skeptic) and you definitely wouldn’t bake one in the bathroom. Location is everything with W.G.I. It needs to take place in an organized space where you can maximize your “baking” time. I’ve found that with first graders it’s too much for them to be spread out around the room at their various tables while I’m trying to teach the entire group. For that reason I’m a huge fan of carpet time. They’re all right in front of me and I can reach out and tap them if they need extra reminders to stay with me. My polka dotted rug is our gathering place and it’s at the front and center of my classroom (right by my Smartboard). I’ve gone through plenty of rugs in the 7 years that I’ve been in the classroom (our custodians run over the edges of them thus making them into a curled up magic carpet ride that the safety inspectors don’t think too highly of). I’ve finally found one that they haven’t been able to destroy- -it’s not as fluffy as it was 3 years ago, but for the most part it’s winning the battle between the vacuum cleaner. If someone just absolutely can’t sit still or manage to focus (we all know this happens) I’ll ask them to sit at their seats, but for the most part they’re on the carpet…right in front of me…in the middle of the action && I like it like that.

 

Step 2: Preheat

You pre-heat an oven for one purpose- -to get it to the right temperature to bake your cake. “Pre-Heating” your students is when you’re prepping them to be ready to learn. This involves the laying of ground rules (and the constant reminders of said rules). I don’t have assigned seats on the rug in first grade. I did in Pre-K because well you can imagine the melt downs that happened when Julian sat on Parker’s red dot and it was his red dot- -no other red dot would do. By the time our babies make it to the first grade classroom they’re a little more mature- -some days more than others, but overall it’s not as crucial to sit on the same red dot every.single.time. Just because I haven’t assigned seats in the past doesn’t mean that I won’t have to in the future. Every class is different and you have to do what works best with that class. I DO expectations about where you can sit and who you can sit by. It’s a simple rule: don’t sit next to someone that you can’t learn next to. If you want to sit next to your BFFL cool beans, but if you’re playing and not listening I get to make the decision of where you sit. My boys were awful about it this year. They weren’t allowed to sit next to each other under any circumstances because it always ended badly- -think rock, paper, scissors in the middle of a read aloud. All it took was one look and they would scatter faster than cockroaches when a light is turned on. They just couldn’t handle themselves- -they knew it, I knew it, we all knew it. My other expectations are equally simple: sit criss cross applesauce with your hands in your lap, eyes watching, ears listening, brain thinking, and voice turned off.   

 

Step 3: Time It Right

Timing is everything when you’re baking a cake && it’s equally important in the teaching world. There’s so much to cram into any given day so time really is a virtue. It can definitely slip away from you easier than a popsicle melts in the hot July sun. It’s good to hold yourself accountable for staying within a given time frame, but it’s also fabulous to make your students aware of your time frames too because lord knows they can take all day doing the smallest of the tasks (because cutting paper into millions of tiny pieces is far more important than anything else in the world…well except for eating pizza).

My W.G.I. almost always requires the kids to either write an answer on a dry erase board, find a page in their reading book, cut something out to use for the lesson, turn and talk to their neighbor, etc, etc, etc. Sometimes I use my simple little teacher timer (I really need this super cute flamingo timer), but other times I like to spice it up a bit with visual timers. Online-Stopwatch is a website that has some really cool visual timers. True they’re not the fanciest of all graphics, but my kids loved them to the moon and back (especially the firework one). I use them a lot during small group instruction when they’re rotating through centers independently, but they’re good to keep track of W.G.I. tasks too.

 

Step 4: Ingredients

Nothing can ruin making a cake faster than not having an ingredient. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to get an ingredient, it’s not there, and I have to make a mad rush trip to the grocery store. Frustrating doesn’t even begin to describe it. Making sure you have everything ready to go for your lesson is a must do. Keeping it all organized- -well that can get a little cray cray. Before I leave school for the day I get all of my read alouds and materials that I’ll need for the next day placed into the basket by my Adirondack chair. My kids know not to go into it (doesn’t mean that they don’t look in it), but they don’t touch anything in it. It’s nothing fancy just a cute woven basket with handles that sits next to my chair on the floor for easy grab and go of the things I need for the lesson. The rest of the week’s stuff is stored on a shelf by my desk.

This area is getting a serious upgrade this summer- -either my dad or my husband WILL be making me something like this. That’s pure cuteness with a colorful cork board hanging above it. I’m in love already!

 

Step 5: Share the Sweetness

Hopefully you share your cakes after you bake them- -I love sweets more than anything, but even I always share. The same goes for your classroom- -give everyone a chance to enjoy the sweet lesson that you’ve cooked up for them. In my room it always seems to be the same friends who want to share with me. They’re my eager beavers and I love them, but I also want my quiet loves to participate too. It’s easy to call on the one kid who’s waving their hand wildly in the air like they just don’t care, but it’s really important to me to have everyone participating. To help me keep track of who I’ve already called on I use the popsicle stick method. Every friend has a popsicle stick with their name written on it. All of the sticks go into a cup and I pull a stick each time I need help answering a question or figuring something out. After their stick has been pulled, it goes to the side until everyone has had a chance. It really works out great with games on the Smartboard when everyone is dying to get a chance to play because after all, all is fair when popsicle sticks are used…and life doesn’t always have to be unfair. Of course my plain little cup that I’ve been using for forever is due for a face lift too && you would be nuttier than a jar of crunchy peanut butter to think that I didn’t have something in mind already. My love of chevron is only rivaled by my love for mason jars. There’s just something about those things that have attached themselves to my heart. Here’s my “PIN-spiration”- -I’m thinking a chevron bow is definitely making its way on to my new and improved stick jar! I’ll post pictures later this week when I get it fancied up!  

 

Until next time friends!

Ice Cream Inventions

With the end of the school year quickly approaching, I needed a fun topic and I needed it fast. What better topic than ice cream? Everybody loves it and there are endless possibilities for fun classroom activities. When I announced that we would be talking about ice cream and having a sundae party at the end of the week, my lovelies were beyond excited. For the end of the school year to be so close (3 days and counting) my kids worked hard and created some of their best work. To start the unit we watched an "EyeWonder" Video on how ice cream is made. My lovlies were assigned to be reporters. This meant that they were responsible for writing down three interesting facts from the video. . .another sneaky trick that teachers use to get their kids to pay attention without fussing at them. :)

After watching the video, we shared our interesting facts with each other. The kids really enjoyed sharing their facts and hearing what their classmates found interesting. I created a cute form for them to record their interesting ice cream facts.

The next part of the lesson provided practice on comparing and contrasting. My lovelies were given two sticky notes (a pink and a yellow). They then participated in a taste testing of two types of ice cream: Cookies and Cream & Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. As they tasted each flavor, the recorded descriptive words and their thoughts about each flavor on the sticky notes. They each filled out this cute compare and contrast sheet using their notes. It was incredible to see how serious they took the assignment. Food is truly the way to their hearts! :)

For the next portion of the lesson, we read the book Ice Cream Larry by Daniel Pinkwater. The kids loved the story and the illustrations. My lovelies and I began to compare ourselves to the book's main character Larry. Their responses to this activity were equally impressive as their responses from the taste testing activity.

In the book, Larry is a polar bear who eats a lot of ice cream at an ice cream shop. This draws the attention of a businessman (I. Berg) who comes to see Larry. Larry and I. Berg have serveral meetings, but nobody knows what they are about. At the end of the story it is revealed that Larry helped I. Berg create a new line of ice cream called "Larry Bars." This book provided the perfect opening for our writing/art activity. I told my lovelies that they would each be creating their very own new ice cream flavor. They were told to write about the name, the flavors of the ice cream and how they would package it. After the writing process was completed, they made their new flavor ice cream with construction paper, crayons and markers. They had an absolute blast making their ice cream cones! I was blown away by how much thought they put into the creation of their new ice cream flavor. Some of my favorites included: Worm Pie (cake batter and gummy worms), Blueberry Blue (blueberry ice cream with blue berry cobbler bites), Strawberry Chocolate Skittles, and Cinnamon Cookie Dough.

♥ Ms. Lee

Life is Sweet

While cleaning out my file cabinets for next year, I found all of the cute letters and pictures that were in my "sunshine" file from my kids this year. Looking through the file made me realize once again that teaching is truly the best job in the world! It isn't always easy getting up at 5:30 and diffusing the fights of eight year olds all day long, but knowing that I've made a difference in their lives is worth more than any high paying desk job could ever be. Over the years as I've followed my original group of lovelies from Pre-K to second grade, their notes have gotten longer and their pictures have gotten more detailed. I know because I've saved them all. If I could give one piece of advice to new teachers, it would be to start your own sunshine file. Save the notes, letters, and pictures that are given to you and look through them every now and then. It really is a great feeling to be loved by twenty three little ones. . .some love you so much that they give you gigantic, delicious cupcakes!

And sometimes you'll love them so much that you will bake and hand ice twenty three flamingo cookies for part of their end of the year gift. Life is what you make it. . .so why not make it sweet!

♥ Ms. Lee

Volcano Madness

The last week of school is finally here and my kids are climbing the walls. Every teacher knows that there is only one way to combat the end of the year crazies. . .make it simple and fun! Being that one of my lovlies is moving to Hawaii in a few days (I'm jealous) I thought that a mini unit on volcanoes would be a fun way to spend the last few days together as a second grade class. Thanks to United Streaming, we watched a few short videos on volcanoes. We learned about the three different kinds of volcanoes and created flip books to describe each type. (I forgot to take a picture, but I will take one and upload it soon). For the second part of our volcano lesson my lovlies conducted a science experiement. Play dough, vinegar and baking soda were all that the experiment required. . .talk about simple.  

Each group had to work together to create their very own  play dough volcano. When all of the volcanoes were finished, we added baking soda and vinegar and watched each of them erupt. It was absolutely amazing to watch their faces and listen to their comments during our final science experiment of the year. Volcanoes. . .simple and fun!

♥ Ms. Lee