Five For Friday

Happy Friday Blog Lovers!
I am THRILLED to be linking up with the fabulous Kacey once again for her weekly Five For Friday Linky Party.

I am especially thrilled because tonight is a BIG HUGE ENORMOUS EXTRA SPECIAL night for me! Read on to find out more!

1. Are you as totally in LOVE with my new blog design as I am?!?!?!  This is my dream come true and it is all thanks to the amazing Christi from Design By Christi, a.k.a. Ms. Fultz, from Ms. Fultz's Corner! Seriously, she is terrific. I am embarking on a new and exciting adventure in the blogging world and without her help, it would be pretty DULL. I am forever grateful!

2. Today is my last weekday of Spring Break. Do you hear that? It is the sound of me boo-hooing all the way back to school. I have loved every minute of being home with my favorite big, little, and furry loves (and yes, I am talking about DIFFERENT loves - no one I love is big AND little AND furry, but I guess that could happen...). I am looking forward to Easter Sunday. My littlest love is going on her first egg hunt with her big sister and her 8 big cousins. I can hardly wait!

3. It's no secret that girls love buying shoes. But my latest shoe purchase?  So NOT my favorite pair of shoes. Check out these puppies:

Betcha' didn't think I literally meant puppies!  My poor furry love scraped off a big chunk of one of his pads. We had to buy these special dog boots so that we can take him for nice long walks in the neighborhood. He loves his walks and has been so sad since he's been stuck in the house and yard:( I have to tell you, it was H.I.L.A.R.I.O.U.S. when I first put his boots on. First. he looked like Bambi learning to walk for the first time. Then, he looked like he was trying to Irish Step Dance!  It will take some getting used to, but he'll get the hang of it...LOL!

4. I want to give an extra special shout out to the one and only Cara Carroll! 

Click HERE to visit her blog!

She is the one who inspired me to embark on my blogging adventure. I first fell in LOVE with her TpT products and began using them faithfully in my own classroom. That, of course, inspired me to begin creating my own. Then I caught on to her her blog, The First Grade Parade. It was through her blog that my eyes were opened to this amazing support network of teacher bloggers. You ALL are AMAZINGLY FANTASTIC. Thank you for letting me into your world!

5. And last but not least, I want to celebrate my official entrance into the blogging world with a giveaway! I know it's a little late, but you can still use it next week in your classroom. This is what my Little Loves will be doing when they are Working With Words. I've been so busy getting ready for my big unveiling, I haven't been creating. But, boy, do I have a bunch of things in the works! So, here you go - ENJOY!

Click HERE to go to my TpT store and grab this FREEBIE!

Have a very Happy Easter everyone!  Thanks for stopping by!  I would love to hear what you all think of my new blog design, so please leave me some love if you can! 

Oh yeah, one more thing. My First Love has a Facebook page, too. Make sure you check it out!

Click HERE to go to my Facebook page

Spring Breakin' It!

Hello Lovely Teacher Friends!
I am FINALLY on Spring Break. Whew. That was a long stretch!  We have always been lucky enough to have a week off in February after President's Day. This year it was taken away:(  (insert sad violin playing here). I actually feel really bad for my neighboring districts because not only did they have a year without February Break, many of them lost days off os their Spring Break because of Hurricane Sandy and lots of late season snow. My district does a great job of managing snow days and such, so we were able to keep our WHOLE Spring Break. YIPPEE!

Last week I joined a super fun Let's Get Acquainted linky party by Latoya over at Flying Into First. Here were my two truths and a lie from last week:

1. TRUTH When I first started teaching, my principal made me lie about my age. He said that parents would go crazy if they found out he had hired a 21 year old...LOL!

This really did happen!  My first month teaching I was helping at a school event where the community helped to build our brand new playground. It was awesome!  I was screwing in bolts with my principal and a new teammate and my age came up. I thought he was going to faint. He did ask me to never tell my age...he was only a little kidding!

2. TRUTH I was a serious fighter when I was a teenager. I even won a bronze medal at the National Collegiate Tae Kwon Do Championships. 

This is true, too!  My dad, my brother, and I are all black belts in Tae Kwon Do. My freshman year in college I represented my alma mater as the only team member and fought to win a bronze medal. I also won a silver medal at the Junior Olympics .

3. LIE I am seriously obsessed with crocheting. I have an entire closet in my house filled with only my crocheting "stuff".

I don't know anything about crocheting, but I would love to! It looks like it would be a major stress reliever. ahhh...just thinking about it calms me down.

So far on my Spring Break, I have been taking it pretty easy. On Saturday, the family and I hung around the house and even settled down for a WHOLE FAMILY NAP. Even the dog joined in. It was bliss. We went out to dinner at Applebee's and used some of the gift cards our students gave us for Christmas. YUM!

Yesterday, we took an outing to Stew Leonards. Have any of you ever been to one?  It is the world's most fun grocery store. My little loves had so much fun checking out all of the talking animals while I was checking out their YUMMO prepared soups, dips, and everything else you could want. I made Beef Stew in my slow crocker today with my goodies. DELISH! Can you tell I love food?

Today was a day for some schoolwork. groan. I know...I always tell myself I am not going to do work on my vacation, but who can stick to that?  Not this teacher. I am trying to reorganize all of my binders and files. It is a B.I.G. job. 

Tomorrow will be family time for sure. I'll be back soon with a SURPRISE!

~Danielle

Two Truths and a Lie Linky Party!

Hi fellow blog lovers!
As most of you know, I am quite new to the blogging world. I am slowly figuring my way as I go. I have been holding back a bit, because the amazing Christi is busy working on my new blog design as we speak. I am SO EXCITED. Seriously. I can't even take it. Once my new design is up, I will finally branch out into the blogging world full steam ahead.  But I just couldn't resist joining in this great linky party hosted by Latoya from Flying Into First Grade.

Here are my 2 truths and a lie. 

Can you guess which one is the lie?

1. When I first started teaching, my principal made me lie about my age. He said that parents would go crazy if they found out he had hired a 21 year old...LOL!

2. I was a serious fighter when I was a teenager. I even won a bronze medal at the National Collegiate Tae Kwon Do Championships.

3. I am seriously obsessed with crocheting. I have an entire closet in my house filled with only my crocheting "stuff".

Take a guess and leave it in the comments below. I will let you know the answer at the end of the week. Have fun!

~Danielle

Top o' the Morning to Ya!

Oh.My.Word. Today I literally felt like this all day long:

We had a snow day on Friday, which normally is a very good thing. But we had none left, so it means we lose a day of our Spring Break. That is just about the worst news ever, if you ask me. To make matters worse, I have Open House TOMORROW NIGHT. We have so much to do and so little time!  I jammed up the copy machine this morning trying to use construction paper in it. I promise, my colleague told me she does it all the time and it works "just fine". Well, it did not work just fine for me.

Anyway...
my little loves worked SO very hard today. I am so proud of them. We finished two complete Open House projects today and they came out super cute! See for yourself:

Aren't they super cute! Major LOVE to Teacher to the Core and The Teacher Wife for these great TpT products. They made a great addition to our collection of adorable Open House projects.

I am really looking forward to seeing all of my little loves with their fan clubs at tomorrow night's Open House event. It is so sweet to see them showing their families all around our classroom with their little hearts filled with pride. I'm so proud of them!

This is the first year I am going to put out some of my intervention activities for the kids to do with their families. I tried to pick a variety of content areas to display so my little loves could show their loved ones what our class is all about. This one is a class favorite, and it's just in time for St. Patrick's Day:

Click here to check this product out at my TpT store!

It's on sale until St. Patrick's Day! Hope you all have a fantastic week!

Lots of Love,
Danielle

Five For Friday!

I had so much fun with last weeks Five For Friday Linky Party. All week I found myself thinking, "I'll have to remember this for next Friday!" So without further adieu...

Here's my FIVE FOR FRIDAY!

1. Everyone loves a SNOW DAY. Getting that phone call at 5am usually puts a huge smile on my face. But not today:( We used up most of our snow days in October during Hurricane Sandy because of the widespread power outages. Today's snow day means we just lost our first day of Spring Break. This is VERY.BAD.NEWS. It is going to be a long rest of the school year! But I guess it was the right call, judging from what I saw when I went to let my puppy love out this morning...

2. Cara Carroll's post last week got me all jazzed up to introduce math tubs. Well, I got a little too excited and tried to do it all at once. My kids LOVED doing the hands on activities in small groups during math time, but we just don't have enough TIME in our schedule to do our textbook lesson AND math tubs. So I put on my thinking cap... and my little loves now have BUCKET BRAIN BOOSTERS. I am having my little loves visit a math tub first thing in the morning when they arrive. Each day, Monday to Thursday, they visit a different tub. On Friday, they complete any unfinished work from the week. It is going great! Looks like I have a LOT of laminating and cutting in my future!

3. Does anyone else out in Blog Land have Spring Open House at their schools?  Basically, it is a night event where students bring their families to school to "Show Off" all of the hard work they have been doing in school. It is one of my favorite nights of the year, but it is SO.MUCH.WORK. I think my classroom usually looks "Open House ready", but I always seem to think I need to change EVERY.SINGLE.DISPLAY in my classroom. My Little Loves have been super busy preparing for their big night. We are writing paragraphs about important people in our country's history, making place value leprechauns, presenting community workers, remembering the first 100 days of schools, and much more. Check out next week's post for some pictures of our special night!

4. PROUD MAMA ALERT!  My own personal Little Love is in Pre-K this year. This week, the hubby and I went to meet her teacher for our Parent-Teacher conference. We got to sit in her little chairs and see her work hanging up in the classroom. Her teacher gave us a GLOWING report and couldn't say enough about how well she is doing and how much she has blossomed this year. Every single skill and concept on her report card was marked as "mastered independently". She even told us that our baby is READING!  Okay, so I already kind of knew that, but I really didn't think she would be reading in school. We are so proud of her!

5. Now it's time for a bittersweet mama moment. My Littlest Love is 19 months old. We turned her crib into a bed today on our unexpected day off from school. She suddenly became terrified of her crib that Sunday after a full year of being a perfect angel at bedtime. We were hoping that converting it to a toddler bed would help. Fingers crossed that tonight goes smoother than the last 5 did!

Love to you all!
~Danielle