100 FOLLOWER GIVEAWAY!

We are almost there!
100 FOLLOWERS!
Can you believe it?  Our first post was back in June. We were excited then, and excited now!  Maria and I have really enjoyed meeting so many people this year.  And look forward to all the people that we will continue to meet.  As a thank you to all of our curious followers out there, we are doing a 100 follower GIVEAWAY!
The winner receives a handmade wreath.

a Rafflecopter giveaway
Thanks again to all of our followers!

Em and Maria 

Five for Friday

Oh, Five for Friday (even though it's Saturday)...I love you!  Thanks Doodle Bugs Teaching.

Just returned from JoAnn Fabrics.  I bought tulle and elastic for our "Thing 1 and Thing 2" tutus.  Our first grade team will be all decked out for our upcoming Dr. Seuss week.  Can't wait to share the pictures next Friday!

I remembered this week that my little girl received "This is Not My Hat" by Jon Klassen for Christmas.  Maria and I have been looking ahead at the rest of our writing pieces for the year and I thought this good be a good book to support personal narratives.  Has anyone used this book?

I think one of the best parts of my week was when my two little ones helped me bake some muffins.  My oldest (4 yrs) is on a gluten free diet.  We made her some "special" muffins that use almond flour.  I have so much fun cooking with them.  Here are the muffins that we made and the link to the blog where the recipe and photo originated.

Source: Kicking Carbs to the Curb

We teamed up with 16 other teachers around the country (and Canada) to do an exchange of winter project ideas. It was arranged, organized, and mailed out by First Grade Carousel.  Thanks so much!  It was fun. I finally posted all of these great projects.  Take a look...

This week I worked on a blue wreath with some little felt flowers.  It is for our (almost) 100 follower GIVEAWAY!  We will be posting our giveaway within the next few days.  It is our way of saying "thanks!" to all of our curious followers.

Happy Weekend to all!
Em

Our Day with a President's Day Freebie!!!!!

This week we made it rain hearts as part of our RAKing.  So... we started our RAK after we finished this book.  We decided that we would surprise my Curious Friend Em, our Secretary (who by the way has done a tremendous job filling in for our normal secretary who's been away. :(  we miss her, but our fill-in has been doing awe.some!), our Health Aide, and Janitor.

 

 

Then we worked on our hearts:

After that, I put them together.

 

 

I hung them on the doors to their workplaces.  Sneakily of course.  :) 

I was around.the.corner when our health aide came in and I know why this is so addicting.  Her reaction was priceless. My only regret is that I can only tell my firsties how people react.  I wish they could see it for themselves.  :)  Any ideas for that??????

 

Not only did we have a day off today, it was a big day for my middle lady.  S.H.O.T. day.  :(  She has been nervous about this day for weeks.  Today was the same.  She started talking about it as soon as she woke up today.  She was more quiet than normal.  Poor Girl.

 

Well... I did what any mom would do, I bribed her.  Take shots in stride...ish and we'll go to

 Build-a-Bear.  So...... she did get them in stride, with me laying on top of her holding arms and legs with a scream that could have cleared the waiting room, but if someone was coming at me with 4 needles just to go to Kindergarten, I might do the same.  That's in stride, right???

Here's how the day ended up.

            Our Bear choices           Making wishes on our hearts



Filling our bears.                    Giving them "baths".

 

I leave you with a FREEBIE!  Tomorrow we will be reading a Scholastic (and other various pieces of literature) about George and Abe.  We have worked on that opinion/argumentative pieces, but I feel my firsties have struggled with it.  I'm going to use this planning sheet to hopefully help.  :)

 

Thanks to Graphics By the Pond for the border and Hello Fonts by Jen Jones at Hello Literacy.  I also used The Dotted Apple from An Apple a Day in First Grade.

Click the picture to grab your copy!

 

 

Have a Curious FOUR day week!!

A Special Day with a Freebie!

Today my baby girl turned 7!  I can't believe it!  I was home for a 1/2 day with a sick baby who keeps getting random fevers.  :(

So... here she was on her last day being 6.

 

And today on her first day as a 7 year old!

 

She didn't want a cake, so we ran thru McDonald's after the bus stop and grabbed caramel sundaes!  :)

She needed a big breath for that one candle.  :)

Happy birthday, sweet baby girl!!!!

 

And a birthday freebie for you!  We are writing Mo Willems inspired stories and here is our planning sheet for you! :)  I hope you can use it!  Let me know what you think!

  

 

Click the picture to get your freebie!

A Little Firstie RAKing!

My GREAT friend Erin over at Mrs. Beer's Language Arts Class and I have teamed up at our school to do 26 Random Acts of Kindness in 28 days.  This is tricky for my firsties because I've tried to choose things that are easily done here with the hopes they will try a few at home or outside of my classroom.  It's funny the difference in my classes.  My higher class has really gotten into this project and ask me to do certain RAKings.  They are really driving this project.  My other two classes.... well..... I'm still trying to get them on board.  They like doing it, but they are not as excited as my other firsties. 

So this week we........ RAKed teachers, lunch ladies, soldiers, parents, read to a child, and complimented someone new.  :)  Here's a few pics from our RAKing.

RAKing Teachers

This one was my favorite.  "Thank you for the challenging test.  You are awesome."  The challenging test is what gets me! Made.me.laugh. 1+2=3  So challenging! :)

We "sneaked" outside. to put the cards on teacher windshields.

My Curious Teammate and her hubby RAKed me by updating our free blog background to what you see now.  DO.YOU.LOVE.IT??????  I do!

Not sure who we will be RAKing this week, but I just wish the sickness monster would RAK someone else because I feel like we've gotten hit by a ton of bricks this year!  It's like... every.other.day. someone is sick in my house.  My youngest woke up with a fever AGAIN today.  (this happened the week before last, too)  Poor baby. She was not herself today.  So my hubby is taking the morning and I have to take the afternoon. 

Here's to a GREAT week!  :)  Who will you RAK this week?????

Love for a Lovely Birthday

Today was my birthday.  It started off with a screaming toddler but quickly took a turn for the better.

First, there was the wonderful new plant from my Title I partner.

Then, my amazing curious team spoiled me with all of this wonderful chocolate and gifts! (They know me SO well).

And then I got a text..."Go check your car."  My husband dropped off some great Servatii treats for me to share!

Thank you so much for all the love today!

 I have posted about these sight word cards before from child1st.  But the more I use them, the more I like them.  I love that they have a picture on one side and the stand-alone word on the opposite side.  The motion and sentence are super helpful.  I feel like each learning style is hit with one card.  Do I sound like a salesman?  Yep...sorry.

Tomorrow is conferences!  Here's hoping for a productive Wednesday!

Em

Reading Recovery Conference Anyone?

So today my curious friend Em and I ventured up to Columbus for the annual

Reading Recovery Conference. 

 

 

This was my first year attending and I'm SO happy I went for many reasons. 

 

5.  There was a GREAT keynote speaker today. Peter Johnston talked about RTI. He was very easy to listen to and was very humorous.  :)

 

4.  Em and I attended one AMAZING session on research writing.  UH-mazing I tell you!  I'm so going to implement this into my upcoming writing/learning about US symbols and research reports.

 

3. Then, we left our second session(just not really what we thought it was going to be) to attend another FANTASTIC session on Using Science Inquiry and Writing TOGETHER!  The ladies welcomed us with open arms and were so wonderful! Not to mention they entertained the bagillion few questions we had about implementation.

 

 

2.  We've been looking for a more concrete writing program.  This year has been interesting for me as just the writing teacher.  I've been able to connect to a lot of literature and mentor texts, but I feel like I've been searching for more direction, or maybe a program that gives me more direction instead of coming up with EVERYTHING including the kitchen sink on my own.  At the Expo we ran into stumbled upon

 Developmental Studies Center. This non-profit has a program called Being a Writer! Needless to say I was jumping up and down with joy having a very adult conversation with the consultant.  Em and I are SUPER excited to get more info from these guys because we were VERY in love with what we saw.  We were also able to see the connections in our Inquiry session because those gals already use this program and SANG. it's. praises.! Very comforting.  These super sweet ladies are also from O-H-I-O!

 

1.  Now... I know you're wondering why I'm counting down. 

 Let me tell ya.  I had just said to my friend Em.... "I wonder if Abby (from The Inspired Apple) is here because she's a Title 1 teacher now."  Guess what friends.... she.was.there!

We walked into our first session about Research Writing and Abby was in it!  I'm sure she thinks I'm a babbling LUN-A-TIC because I went up to her like I had known her forever.  Me: Hi Abby! I follow your blog, LOVE it, You're amazing! Not even sure what I said after that.  I felt like I met a movie star because ladies.... she's famous in our bloggy world! 

She is one of the nicest, sweetest, most genuine ladies you'll EVER meet!  We chatted for a long time about school mostly. (I hope she wasn't late to her next session) and yes... I did ask to get a pic with her. Wouldn't you?

 

So thanks Abby for chatting with Em and I and yes... I am serious when I say if you want to borrow a little lady for a few hours... I have three who would LOVE to play with Beckham!

 

 

Did anyone else out there go to the conference??????

Five for Friday (just a little late)

Oh! It's that time! Five for Friday has become one of my favorite posts!  I love looking back (reflecting, analyzing, scrutinizing, critiquing) my week.

I am super excited about my #1 event this week...so I am going to list my five backwards this week!

Number Five

January brings discussion and teaching of what fluency means and sounds like.  I started the "6 minute solution" with my two reading groups.  I do not do it the way it is laid out in the book because of my time constraints and such.  My goal in doing it each day is to build their confidence in reading a passage and to model what fluency sounds like.  We read the passage for one minute together and mark where we stop.  Then they read it for one minute independently.  Here is where we marked our readings this week.  They were so excited that we improved each day!

Number Four

I don't think anyone wants me to write about all the temper-tantrums, screaming, and fighting that came from my little two year old this week.  Or the irrational fights about someone flushing the toilet or touching someone's coat.  So I will just say that this week by perfect little angels made me a grand feast for us to enjoy over and over again.

Number Three

I have seen several pins this week about placing Skittles on punctuation marks as a way to motivate some students to pay closer attention   Our little Green Chimps really need some motivation. 
So a big THANK YOU goes out to the teacher that left some "mini" MMs in Maria's room.  I used them yesterday to try this motivation tool.  But a little twist came to me...the MMs were green and red...so I placed the green MM on their capital letter for starting the sentence and the red MM on their end mark.  Wouldn't you know...each student remembered to use capital letters and punctuation!

Number Two

Our Mo Willems author study was in full-swing this week and the firsties enjoyed LOVED it! Here are a few pics from our Pigeon fun! (Oh...one firstie was inspired by my toilet paper roll pigeons and made one herself!  That made my week.)

Number One

Our amazing teammate Karen has a birthday today!! We wanted to show her how much we love being a team!  So we made some shirts to show off our Curious Firstie pride!

  Happy Birthday Karen!  We love you!

Maria and I head off to the Reading Recovery conference tomorrow.  We hope this will inspire us to write some great posts!

Happy Weekend!
Em