Happy Last Day of School For Me!

Week after week, I have watched so many of the awesome blogs I follow celebrate their last day of school. It's finally my turn!  We used to end our school year like this:
Monday: Full Day
Tuesday: Full Day
Wednesday: 10:45 Dismissal
Thursday: 10:45 Dismissal
Friday: 1 Hour Turn-Around Day
However, Hurricane Sandy caused us to miss so much school this year, that we had to have full days ALL.WEEK.LONG.  Okay, so I'm exaggerating a little bit. We are getting out one hour early on Thursday and Friday. Whoopty Doo. Do you know how hard it is to pack up an entire classroom when you have all of your little loves with you ALL.DAY.LONG??  I was so uptight about getting it all done that I actually wound up doing a better job than usual. That left me some time to work on some ideas for next year!

I bought 4 of these Steralite 3 drawer units to hold my student supplies.

On the right, my old way of storing paper goods for classroom celebrations.
On the left, my new and improved Party Supplies crate!

I organized all of my anchor charts and weekly poems. No more digging through my locker!

My brand new Teacher Toolkit! I even made one for Mr. First Love for Father's Day.
 I think I will probably put a little more love into new labels this summer.

I got rid of a LOT of "stuff".

I finally finished my Classroom Library re-organization. I LOVE my new bins and label holders. Don't mind all the bins on the ledge...they are proof of all my packing up!

I turned this old Highlights Magazine sticker tower into a storage container for my calendar cards. LOVE!

I am busy re-decorating my rusty old file cabinet. .. using colored duck tape! I will post a new pic when it is done.

I'm also going to throw in a quick Five For Friday with Doodlebugs Teaching!

#1 - My oldest little love graduated pre-k! She will be coming to kindergarten WITH ME in September. oh.my.goodness. I cannot even possibly believe this is happening already! She also had her dance recital last weekend. She looked B.E.A.U.T.I.F.U.L. and danced so well. I am so proud of her!

#2 - The end of dance class and the end of school means only one thing for me...end of the year GIFTS!  Here is what we gave her teachers...

#3 - Check out this super sweet end of the year gift that I got my class today. Isn't it amazing?!?!?! I am just SO afraid that I am going to break it - I'm such a klutz!

#4 - My oldest will be 5 on the the 4th of July!  Doesn't she have the coolest birthday?  That's why we call her our little firecracker...LOL! She is having her first "friends" party at Build-a-Bear Workshop. I can't wait! She helped me make these adorable invites.

#5 - I am excited to begin my summer reading with this:

Happy summer everyone!!!

Throwback Thursday....with a Cara Carroll Shout Out

Hi everyone! I'm sorry I have been MIA - this last month of school has been beyond crazy, busy, and stressful! So of course I am thrilled to start this post by announcing...
TOMORROW IS MY LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!  I can't believe I made it!  This was a challenging year with the implementation of the Common Core and the new curriculum for both ELA and Math that went along with it, as well the start of APPR. I am super excited for summer to officially begin for me! I have already been working on some great new things for my classroom decor for next year, but I'll save that for a future post.

I saw Cara's new linky party posted on Facebook and knew that I just had to be a part of it. I am very new to blogging, but since Cara was my inspiration to enter the blogland, I decided to use my first post on my new blog design for my Throwback Thursday. There is a special Cara shout out!

Originally posted on March 28, 2013.
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

Thanks for checking out my throwback post!  I promise I will have something new for you soon! Happy summer!

Bye Bye Birdie

It's that time again...

Five For Friday

This week was Daddy & Me Night at Little Love #1's preschool. I was in charge of coordinating all of the food. I decided to supply the chicken nuggets and cupcakes. Her school logo has a rainbow on it, so we made rainbow cupcakes. They were a huge hit! And all the daddies were so super cute with their little loves.

We said goodbye to our feathered friends today. Don't mind all the poop in the bottom picture. That's just what baby chicks do. Kind of like baby babies.  They were quite feisty when we had them out of their brooder box on Thursday so I knew it was time to head off to the farm. It's pretty very neat - a family friend of ours has a farm. She is actually the labor and delivery nurse who delivered both of my Little Loves. She takes our baby chicks every year and raises them on her farm.

Have I told you how much I love our new headphones? We have a community organization that raises money for the sole purpose of awarding grants to teachers in our district. Last year I applied for a grant for wireless headphones and new tape cassette/CD players for all of the first grade classes. I love how my little loves can sit anywhere in the room to listen to their books. And clean up is so much easier! Of course, now I wish I had asked for iPods instead...Oh well. Maybe next year!

Our district buys into a science program from our regional BOCES. Each grade level gets a living thing to investigate during their last unit of the year. First grade gets hermit crabs. I usually love these little guys. But not this year. That's because they are far from little! This year we got the biggest hermit crabs I have EVER seen. They can barely fit inside their shells. The kids all think they look like tarantulas. I just think they smell bad.

Can I get a WOOP WOOP!  I gave our last Fundations assessment of the year today! Don't get me wrong, I like Fundations and it has certainly taught my little loves a lot about letters and sounds. But it can get rather um, boring. I've been thinking of some ideas for next year to help make it more interesting and take less time each day. I'd love to hear from some of you that use Fundations. How do you keep it interesting?

Have a great weekend and don't forget to spread a little LOVE around! (especially in the comments below!) I would also LOVE to have you as a new follower, so join in the love!

What a week!

This week was unbelievably jam packed and I am so excited to share it with all of you! I'm linking up with Doodlebugs for Five For Friday! I was so totally ready to write this post on Thursday night so I could link up nice and early on Friday but.... my fairly new MacBook Pro decided to play dead at precisely 7pm! Thankfully, all is well in Mac Land now so here we go!

Five For Friday

1. This was chick hatching week! I was feeling pretty sad on Tuesday when all I heard all day was the cheers and excited screams from the other 3 first grade classrooms as their chicks started hatching. I just kept looking at my 2 little eggs that had teeny tiny cracks in them.

By the time I left on Tuesday, there were 4 eggs with teeny tiny cracks, but nothing else. I was actually scared to walk into my classroom Wednesday morning. I couldn't look in the incubator. I made one of the kindergarten teachers look for me. Then she started counting: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6!  We had 6 chicks out of our 9 fertile eggs! Look at these cute little guys!

There were still two eggs with little cracks, so I left them in the incubator overnight and on Thursday morning, we met our last two chicks!  We have 8 adorable fluffy friends. One of the K teachers takes them all home for the weekend every year, but I took home my two newest little guys. They are a little weak and their legs are a little funny looking, so I didn't want their big brothers and sisters picking on them. Look at my Little Loves loving on our babies:

2. Next week we are giving our post assessments. This is our first year with APPR and we are giving our local assessments for both ELA and Math. I broke out my Primary SMART Response System to do some quick math assessments with them to help them feel confident about their "big kid tests". My little loves had such a blast using their clickers to answer the questions. They didn't even realize when we were doing. They have all learned SO MUCH this year and I am so proud. I know they will do great!

3. Check out these A.D.O.R.A.B.L.E. Mother's Day cards we made. I am in LOVE with them! And the writing inside!  Oh my word. These little loves of mine are simply amazing and they sure do love their mamas!

4. Speaking of Mother's Day, I went to my own Little Love's preschool on Thursday for their annual Mother's Day Tea. It was one of those days where my heart just melted. Take a look at the adorable flowerpots by big girl and her bestie made for the teachers to show their appreciation! Wouldn't you love to get one of these from your students?

Afterwards, we went to the most incredible nursery to buy some plants for Nana and Gram for Mother's Day. Take a look at this place:

After MUCH debate, we finally decided on these two lovely hanging baskets to give our special ladies!

5. We have been up to our eyeballs in non-fiction!  We spent a couple of weeks pouring over loads of non-fiction texts exploring the text features. We also read lots of books about chicks, of course!  Now my little loves are writing their own non-fiction books about the animal of their choice. We will be presenting these books to our families at our Author Celebration in a couple of weeks. The kiddos have been working super hard on their research and I can't wait to see the final results!

Hope you all had a great week as well!  Happy Mother's Day everyone! Spread that LOVE around (especially below by leaving a comment...LOL!)

8 More Fridays To Go {but who's counting?}

As I have trained my kids to say during our morning calendar routine, "It's Friday - My favorite day of the week!" If I say that 8 more times, it will be summer vacation!  Can I get a WOOP WOOP!

Friday also means, FIVE FOR FRIDAY!  So here it goes...

Five For Friday

1. Tomorrow is this big guy's birthday:

I can't believe our first "baby" is going to be 7 years old tomorrow. We just love him to pieces. He still acts like a giant goofball most of the time, but he can also be a giant mush. Doggy Birthday Parties in our house always mean the same thing - Carvel Ice Cream Cake. YUM.

2. We had a half day of school on Monday for Parent-Teacher conferences. I scheduled my conferences last week for before school, lunchtime, and after school so I had my Monday afternoon free to work in my classroom. I REALLY wish I would've taken a "before" picture of my supply locker. I emptied the whole things out onto my tables and cleaned it up all nicey nicey. It's the little things that make me super happy. {happy sigh}

3. We are all about our EGGS right now. It is Day 10 of our egg incubation period and we have been busy learning about what is happening inside of those eggs of ours. One of center activities this week involved choosing an oviparous animal and writing a riddle about it. We are going to share them on Monday and the little loves will get to practice their inferencing skills. They came out super cute and I cannot wait to watch them present their riddles to the class. You can pick up a copy for yourself by clicking the link below.

What's Hatching!

4. I am so unbelievably proud of myself for getting my act together last week and linking up with Jodi's Fly on My Wall Linky Party. It was so much fun to share so much of my day. You can see my blog post {here}.

Fun in First

5. Our school uses the Fundations program for phonics instruction. It can a little, ummmm, boring. I am trying to spice it up a bit. Check out this fun Suffix Sort I created for practicing adding -s and -es to basewords. It's on sale for only 50 cents for the rest of the weekend!

Click HERE for Suffix Sort

Have a great weekend filled with lots of LOVE!