New Year's Blogging Bash Giveaway

New Year's Blogging Bash Giveaway!

Welcome to the New Year's Blogging Bash Giveaway!  The contest runs until midnight on Saturday, December 31st!  The rules are simple and easy:

• One entry for following all of our blogs.  Your comment would look like this: "I follow all 13 blogs."
• One entry for following all of our TpT stores.  Your comment would look like this: "I follow all 13 TpT stores."  

One follower will win all 13 PRIZES.  The winner will be chosen at random and announced on Monday, January 1,  2012!!!!

Here are the 13 fabulous prizes that you could win!  

(For more information on a particular prize, click on its thumbnail picture.)

From  Erica Bohrer of Erica Bohrer's First Grade:

Click {here} to follow my blog.

Click {here} to follow my TpT store.

From Melissa Freshwater of Mrs. Freshwater's Class:

Click {here} to follow Melissa's blog.
Click {here} to follow Melissa's TpT store.

From the Lesson Plan SOS Teachers:

Click {here} to follow Lesson Plan SOS's blog.

Click {here} to follow their TpT store.

From Donna Glynn of Welcome to Kinderglynn: 

Click {here} to follow Donna's blog.

Click {here} to follow Donna's TpT store.

From Rachelle Smith of What the Teacher Wants:

Click {here} to follow Rachelle's blog.

Click {here} to follow Rachelle's TpT store.

From Jodi Southard of Fun in First:

Click {here} to follow Jodi's blog.

Click {here} to follow Jodi's TpT store.

From Lindsey of The Teacher Wife:

Click {here} to follow Lindsey's blog.

Click {here} to follow Lindsey's TpT store.

From Deanna Jump of Mrs. Jump's Class: 

Click {here} to follow Deanna's blog.

Click {here} to follow Deanna's TpT store. 

From Anna Brantley of Crazy for First: 

Click {here} to follow Anna's blog.
Click {here} to follow Anna's TpT store.

From Alessia Albanese of Mrs. Albanese's Kindergarten:

Click {here} to follow Alessia's blog.
Click {here} to follow Alessia's TpT store.

From Michelle Oakes of Fabulous in First:

Click {here} to follow Michelle's blog.
Click {here} to follow Michelle's TpT store.

From Amanda Nickerson of One Extra Degree:

Click {here} to follow Amanda's blog.
Click {here} to follow Amanda's TpT store.

From Cheryl Saoud of Primary Graffiti:

Click {here} to follow Cheryl's blog.
Click {here} to follow Cheryl's TpT store.

*Best of luck to you.  Remember, you get one entry for following all 13 blogs and one entry for following all 13 Teachers Pay Teachers stores.  Please, comment below to enter.  I also suggest leaving in your comment, an email address where we can contact you.

January Fluency Passages

My January Fluency Packet is finally done!! 

Here are the samples for the month.

Penguins



Click on the picture to download the sample.



Arctic Animals

Good Character

Inventors

The entire packet includes 20 fluency passages written by me.  There are a variety of fiction, nonfiction, poems, and songs throughout the entire month.  Along with each passage, there are Power Words (vocabulary), comprehension questions, phonics work, and a home connection component.  I have also included an additional language arts page to go along with each passage.

You can purchase the entire packet by clicking below.

I also sell each week seperately if there is a particular week that you're interested in.

Linky Parties

You know how those last few weeks before Christmas Break, you start thinking of all the things you are going to get done in your time off, and then the time comes, and somehow you don't get ANY of it done.  Well, that's what has happened to me at least.  I completely put off my January Fluency Passages to work on during break, but now there's less than a week left, and they are still not done!!!  Sorry :(  I will be working on them this week and hope to have them posted towards the end of the week.  I have to say though that this last week has been wonderful!!  Christmas is so magical through the eyes of a 4 year old and an almost 2 year old.  I wish every morning could be Christmas morning!

Since I starting Blog Stalking again this morning, I found two fun Linky Parties that I wanted to participate in.  The first one is over at Fern Smith's Blog.

Fern is asking everyone to share their top three blog posts from 2011.  This is always so interesting to go through stats to see which posts are the most popular.  For a long time, my Dr. Seuss activities were the most popular, by far.  However, three new posts have officially taken the top spots.

1. "What's Your Favorite Back to School Activity?" with 21,459 views.  This was a Linky Party as well, so I'm sure that is why there are so many views.

 2.  "Helping Parents Help Their Children" with 16,330 views.

2.  "Teaching Reading with Small Groups" with 14,734 views.

Another interesting Linky Party going on is over at A Teeny Tiny Teacher and Miss Kindergarten.

This one has 11 different categories for you to discuss.

11. Favorite movie you watched:

This one is hard for me because I'm not really a movie watcher.  I pretty much watch Disney movies with my daughters.  Other than that though, I did go and watch Breaking Dawn with my friends from my school. 

 

We all went to the 10:00 pm movie on the last day of school before Thanksgiving Break.  We all put our kids to bed and left them with the hubbies, while we went to the late movie.  We all needed caffeine to stay away so late, but it was a fun time :) 

10. Favorite TV series:

I have always been a huge Grey's Anatomy fan.

 

One of my new favorite shows is Person of Interest.  It is awesome and my husband loves it too.

9. Favorite restaurant:

Tokyo Japanese Grill, Olive Garden, or Applebees

 

8. Favorite new thing you tried:

Selling on Teachers Pay Teachers and Teachers Notebook was something new from this year.  One of the best decisions I ever made.

 

7. Favorite gift you got:

A Citizens watch from my husband.

 

I love it!!!  He said he has had his eye on this watch for about 3 years and he finally got it for me this year.

6. Favorite thing you pinned:

I don't think I could ever decide.  I love Pinterest.  You can follow me here.

 

5. Favorite blog post:

This one is a hard one.  We will go with my post from August titled 1st and 2nd Day of School.  In this post, I shared my lesson plans and activities that I would be doing during the 1st and 2nd day of school this year.  I know I love to get a glimpse into other teacher's classrooms during those first few days and I was trying to do this for others.

 

4. Best accomplishment:

I actually just had one of my ideas published in The Mailbox for the February/March 2012 1st grade edition.  I thought that was pretty cool.

3. Favorite picture:

My friend from school, our PE teacher actually, is an amazing photographer.  She took some pictures of my girls this fall and this is one of my favorites.  I love the sisterly love here.  I know it won't last forever, but I will always have this as a reminder once they hit their teenage years.

 

2. Favorite memory:

I don't think I can narrow it down to one this year.  I was lucky enough to have a new niece and a new nephew born this year, we went on a great family vacation to Washington DC and to the mountains in Virginia, Christmas this year was AWESOME, and many more.

 

1. Goal for 2012:

 I want to take advantage of every second with my family.  My girls are growing up so fast and I know in the blink of an eye, they will be grown up.

Currently December

I'm linking up with Oh Boy Fourth Grade for her Currently December Linky Party.

I'm sure someone has mentioned A Teeny Tiny Teacher already, so technically I am breaking the rules of included someone that has not been used already.  Sorry :(  But, she just cracks me up!

Check her out, if you haven't already.

Christmas Wrap Up

Talk about blogging withdraw.  I have been without a computer at home for about a week, which may or may not have involved a 1 year old and a glass of water.  All is fine now, so this post may be a little random because I have been making lists of things to include :)
First, I wanted to share a New Year's activity.  First, we read the book, Squirrel's New Years Resolution.

After discussing New Year's resolutions, we created a list of some of our own.  Each student wrote their own resolution.

Click here to download the writing page.



Then I passed out the numbers 2012, students glued them onto their papers and decorated them with crayons, glitter, and sequins.

This week, we also made our parent gifts.  For the past couple of years, I had been making handprint calendars.  Every year, I told myself, "I am not doing these next year" because they are so time consuming and then when students move away or move in, it was a nightmare trying to catch everyone up.  This year, I finally chose a different project. 

I'm sure you have seen these ornaments before.

They turned out SO cute and they were SO easy compared to the calendars.  Here are some recommendations for making these.  Use acrylic paint.  I was the idiot that used tempera paint.  After painting 21 little hands, I let the ornaments dry only to come back and see all of the paint had flaked off.

Tip number 2, if you can find blue plastic ornaments, do this with these instead of glass.  The glass ones are shiny and pretty, but so fragile.  One of the students broke hers before she made it out of the building. 

I had the students decorate paper bags to place these in.

Sorry.  The picture is sideways.

I really wanted to make these cute gift bags that I found on Pinterest, but we just ran out of time.

I also found this idea from Mrs. Lee's Kindergarten.

I decided to have my students measure their own strips since we just began working with rulers and inches.  I gave each student five 12 inch strips.  They had to measure a 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, and 2 inch strip for their tree.

Then they decorated the trees.

The last thing I wanted to share is another Pinterest idea.

This idea was originally created as a gift to give a neighbor, but I loved this idea to give my grade level companions.  I just attached a gift tag that said, "Ho! Ho! Ho! From the Ding Dong next door!  Merry Christmas!"

So, now it's officially Christmas Break and I have 2 weeks off.  I am very excited to spend tons of time with my family and relax.

Sparkly E

I found the idea for a "magic e" last year on Mrs. Wheeler's blog. When I saw this wand, I knew I had to make one.  When I searched through my cabinet for a cut out letter, I found a sparkly one and taped it to a ruler.  I decided to call my E, "sparkly E" and I love it!

I tell the students that when Sparkly E shows up, the vowel in the word is SO excited because the E is just so beautiful and shiny that the vowel just has to introduce itself.  "Hi, it's so nice to meet you.  My name is A."  I make a huge deal about this and really elaborate the story.  The kids really get into it.

 

We practice using the Sparkly E as a whole group.

Next, we made our own Sparkly E's so we could practice changing CVC words to CVCe words on our dry erase boards.

This is just a 3x5 index card cut in half and glued on a popsicle stick.

We also had fun learning this song that I made up about Sparkly E.

Click on the picture to download



If this is something you think you'd use in your classroom, leave me some love with a comment :)