TWO AWESOME WEBSITES

                                                           
     
Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.
Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests. It also keeps the source of where you located the idea. To get started you have to be invited. Just leave your e-mail in the comment section below.



 tools for decoding                          birthday treats                            scratch off rewards

                                                
 Teacher tipster has something for all teachers, new and old. This guy is hilarious and opens all his videos with some kind of joke. He has videos for everything from going in the hallway to what to do for the summer. He even has a cd out with all his original songs.

I'm Back

Hey blogging family,

It's been a century since I have written something on here, or at least it feels like it. The school year is less than 1 month away. During the summer, the month of July, I have been reading my life away.
The first book was The Book Whisperer.

                                      

It has inspired me to become a lifelong reader myself. Yes, I said it. I never really read for enjoyment. I only read because I was made to and I got by with it too. But thanks to Donalyn she has inspired to find material that enjoy reading about. So needless to say Barnes & Noble is my new favorite store. I have spent countless hours on the website and have taken many trips to the actual store. I have purchased 4 new books.

I read the cafe in 1 day and starting the The Daily 5 tomorrow. I'm so excited about implementing this program into my daily schedule this year. If anyone has read these two books in uses them in a K-2 setting, please share your strategies.

Henry and Mudge

Estimation...Cookie Station Another fun EATING activity.

Estimation is one of the hardest skills that I have to teach. My students firmly believe estimation means to count. That is not it at all. I want them to use the information they know to predict a great answer. NOT just GUESS!

We do this cookie activity to introduce estimation. Each student gets a cookie. I began by rambling off that there are 1 billion chocolate chips in 1 cookie, 300, 295. Of course the students are like no way. They have a pretty great understanding of spatial sense. I then introduce the term estimation and we discuss. The way we use prior knowledge with this activity is by counting the chocolate chips on top of the cookie, therefore we know that it has to be more then that number. I have the student write their number on one side of the paper towel with crayons. Another lesson inside of that is because they feel as when their answer is wrong they can erase it and change it AFTER we count.

They then began to break the cookie up sorting the cookie from the chocolate chips. They group them to make the chocolate chips easier to count. Some students get really picky and refuse to have any sight of a piece of the cookie in their chocolate chip pile.

They will then count the chocolate chips again and write the correct answer on the opposite side of the paper towel. They get to see how close they were or how far away. Believe it or not a few students hit it right on the nose. So awesome! Of course they get to eat the crumbs that are left. They truly get a better understanding of estimation. Who wouldn't with food involved?



Twinkie Place Value

Who doesn't like to eat in class. We are on our discovering numbers unit. The students answered word problems showing tens and ones on the Twinkies. All you need to do the activity is pretzel sticks (place value), gummies with large wholes (tens and ones), and a cake (holder). We only do tens and ones. SO we have 2 pretzel sticks with two different color gummies.

They got to use the MIMIO to read the problem and help them solve the problem. The picture looks exactly like their actually Twinkies and sticks.

They did a great job working together to illustrate the problem. They each had a job. One person had to get the tens, the other the ones, and the other had to form the number. Everyone was on task! OF course being able to eat it afterwards if they did their best had nothing to do with it....LOL!

Celebrating Dr. Suess's Birthday

Who knows what was so special about today?
 Yay it was Dr. Suess birthday. My class celebrated by completing many activities using Dr. Suess books.
Our first activity was of course to make a Cat in the Hat, hat. We put rhyming words on the white strips and used butcher paper for the headband.

We also read the books The Cat in the Hat and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. Who would have ever thought Dr. Suess books would take twenty minutes to read. LOL! They were GREAT though. Not once did I have to redirect my kids attention. We compared and contrasted these two books and made a foldable. The students got to drag the story elements to the correct part of the venn diagram using our MIMIO. I"ll add those pictures later. Sorry : (

We then read the book I Can Lick 30 Tigers. We have been talking about how we can group items to make them easier to count. The students picked an object and grouped them by 2's, 5's, or 10's. They then wrote about it.

After lunch we reflected about the character The Cat in the Hat by formulating adjective and adjective phrases describing him. The student got to write different adjectives on the MIMIO to help them finish their circle map. I got this idea from a website on the Dr. Suess Linking Party. Sorry I don't have the exact address but definitely think it was creative. My kids enjoyed making these.

We didn't get to finish all the activities, but the kids enjoyed every bit of the day. We will continue to do a few more actvities the rest of the week and I will add them too.

Happy Birthday Dr. Suess!!!



Adobe

Ok, as you know I am a new blogger! I see that most of you fellow bloggers post things using adobe... That is so hot because I don't know how. We have a snow day tomorrow so I figured I could practice uploading using adobe...again the problem is I don't Know how to create or upload in adobe. HELP! Someone tell me where to go to get it and what to do...thanks in advance.

Meet the Teacher

I am so excited to be a new blogger. I have been obsessed with blogs for the past few weeks and truly enjoyed all blogs I have visited. Just about everyone had joined the linking party, and I couldn't think of a better first post. So now it's time to "Meet the Teacher!"

Linking Party First Grade Parade

I am in my twenties and have 2 wonderful puppies.

 I am from Washington, DC but have lived in Ruston for almost 10 years now.

I know...how did you get all the way down there. I attended and graduated from Grambling State University. That is just 5 minutes up the road from Ruston. 

Q: What would you be doing if you weren’t a teacher? 

A: There is nothing I would rather do. Boy, I love my career. Oh, if God blessed me with the skill to be a professional basketball player I would do that part time. LOL!

Q: What are your hobbies?  

A: Shopping, texting on the phone,and hanging out with friends are my daily activitites. I have found a few new ones like making bows for hair and blogging.

Q: When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?  

A: I have always wanted to be a teacher. Thanks to my 4th grade teacher Mrs. Hawkins, my inspiration.

Q: What are your guilty pleasures?

A: French Fries and chocolate are two things I can never turn down.

Q: What is your biggest fear?!

A: My biggest fear is to get into a car crash, even though it has happened multiple times. Bugs!!!! definitely BUGS....save me!

Q: When you’re on vacation, where do you like to go?

A: OMG...Did someone say vacation. June can't come fast enough. I absolutely love, love, love Hawaii!! ( any island) I dreamed to visit Dubai...I check there weather everyday!

Q: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?  

A: You can't please everyone. At some point you have to put yourself FIRST!

Q: What do you value most in others? 

A:  Friendship and honesty...isn't it the golden rule?

Q: If you could choose one of your personality traits to pass down to your kids, what would it be?    

A: Definitely, the ability to give. I strongly believe in treating others the way you would like to be treated.

Q: If you could have lunch with anyone in the world….living or dead…who would it be? 

A: My great great great relative. I've always wanted to know my true family history.

Now tell us one random thing about yourself:

One random thing about me is that I sang with Yolanda Adams at the Kennedy Center when I was in the 8th grade. I really thought I could sing all my life, until my brother finally told me I sounded horrible. Boy, did that break my heart. But, I am glad he did because I would be the crazy trying out for American Idol going off because they said I couldn't sing. I really do sound horrible, except in church, my sense of tune, God, is with me then.