Favorite things - Summertime!

I'm starting my July with some linkies... check out my July Currently here.

I'm linking up with Teaching Trio for Favorite Thinks Linky!

Since it's the first day of July, I HAD to choose my favorite summertime things!
I LOVE LOVE Summer! It's kind of hilarious how much I like summer because my husband hates the hot weather! He works on a golf course and so when it's super hot out, he has to work even harder... so my less than busy months are his busy months!

1 - LOVE LOVE LOVE the beach & live about a mile away from it, which means I can hit the beach up for an hour or two or camp out the whole day there.

2 - We share a driveway with our neighbors and they work at the same golf course as my hubby (the golf course is basically our backyard!) so we spend a LOT of time together whether it be brews at the fire pit or horseshoes at the pits we built last year or running our dogs around on the golf course or all beaching together. It is the perfect summer set-up!

3 - Running - it's my stress-relief during the school year, but in the summer there is SO much more time for running!

Go link up here!

It's July - Currently!

My summer resolution is to post on here at least twice a week and so I'm staring with a couple linkies! Check out My Favorite Things Linky here.

I'm linking up with Farley over at Oh' Boy 4th Grade! for Currently July!

LISTENING - I'm a littttttle [read a lot] obsessed with Grey's right now! It's a realllllly bad thing that I chose it as my next Netflix show - there are SO many seasons!

LOVING - The hubs and I finally have a membership to BJ's Wholesale club and our obsession with Pineapple juice has skyrocketed since we can get a 24 pack of small cans for cheap!

THINKING - I just converted my Classroom Jobs TPT product into Chalkboard themed! I made a lot of little things for my classroom last year that were Chalkboard themed and have decided to do a lot more this year! Check out my Chalkboard Themed Jobs by clicking below!

WANTING - So this morning there was a crazy amount of rain and thunder and lightning and now the weather is a sticky kind of cool (I realize that makes no sense but the weather rarely makes sense in New England) so it's no beach today... Tomorrow is looking like a good beach day though!

NEEDING - I really didn't do a great job posting on my blog probably since January. I had a student teacher and with finishing grad school there was a lot on my plate and sadly posting on my blog fell to the wayside. This summer though I'm going to try to do a better job - hopefully 2x a week!

ALL-STAR - I have the best grade level partners like ever! I have always gotten along great with guys and my grade level team is made up of myself and 2 fabulous guys. They are so easy to work with and we always have fun together - all while managing to get A LOT of work done. Even though I'm the youngest I'm kind of the mama bear of the group. I am always making sure they remember deadlines, are ready for upcoming units, have copies of everything and overall make sure that our grade level team is completely on point. After 2 great years I'm starting to think we all couldn't survive without each other and it will be a sad, sad day if one of us ever leaves!

Now go link up to July Currently too!

19 Days and Counting!

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday and can't wait until I'm linking up with Summer preparations for next year!

 So there are 19 days left of school, and we're hanging in there... thank goodness it's not too hot in New England right now because we'd be barely hanging on if it was hot!!!

 Last Friday my grade level partners' butterflies were ready to release and none of our chrysalises had opened yet... I was so nervous we wouldn't have any butterflies in our room, but thankfully we came into school Monday and ALL our butterflies were ready! Butterfly release day is always an exciting day, and we got to have 2 this year!

This year instead of the 2D/3D shape snack sort we normally do, we built shapes with marshmallows and toothpicks. The kiddos had a ton of fun and had to think about the number of sides and vertices/edges, vertices and faces while building. Grab the recording sheets here.

One of my girls came in with this and it made my heart smile! There are NEVER 'name things' with my name spelled correctly who would think there'd be a bottle of coke with it spelled correctly!!! Proof that it is the little things in life :)

Loving our end of the year door! I have families sign up at the beginning of the year to decorate the door each month. Families that work schedules that don't allow them to volunteer love to help out by coming after school and decorating the door! I also love to see how proud the kiddos are when they helped their parents.

Until next week... (or hopefully sooner!)...

Five for Friday (on a Friday!)

Hey all, I'm actually linking up on a Friday for a change! Late on Friday, but still Friday!
Also doing a little blast from the past in this post because it's been a while!

A few weeks ago we were delving into our money unit! We love the game Rich Robots! I found it here a while back. It's a great introduction to coins.

More Money, Money, Money! We love Blair Turner's Interactive Notebook! This great activity had flaps that made this sheet into a fun flap book. Check it out here.

For my grad class, I did a co-teaching action research project on topic & detail with one of my favorite co-workers! Here my kiddos are getting serious about topic & detail!

I have a student teacher right now (part of why I haven't posted much, it's actually a lot of work!) but let me tell you, it is making it SO much easier to do reteach! I grabbed a group of kiddos who struggled with subtraction with regrouping and did a little reteach activity today. I got this game from Amy Lemon's I Can Regroup Addition & Subtraction Centers!

Check out my new favorite app Shadow Puppet! My students wrote How To stories and recorded them using this app! It's basically a really fun presentation app. You can do a lot more with it than my kiddos did on their first try, but seriously so fun & such great final products.

Check out one of my favorites by clicking the image above.

Another Saturday version of 5 for Friday!

Hey all, I'm back with 5 for Friday on a Saturday (again!)

Super excited to share a non-related teaching item! I just became a Jamberry Consultant because I am IN LOVE with the nail wraps & lacquers! It's a great company & I'm getting paid to have pretty nails!

Email me if you'd like a sample! All I need is your # sample selection and address. I also can host a facebook party for you... I do 95% of the work and you get free stuff!

At our school we have a H.E.A.R.T. motto... it stands for Helpful, Effort, Acceptance, Respect, Thoughtful... the kiddos can earn Hearts from teachers when they display Heart qualities. Their hearts go up on the wall and have created these beautiful giant hearts in the hallway! We took Valentine's photos in front of them for our parents and put them into cards! The kiddos thought it was fabulous because they got to stand on a little table we pushed up against the hearts haha!

I just had to share this cute picture... we had to change our "assigned" rug seats this week because we are officially too big to sit around the rug comfortably. It's amazing how much these kiddos have grown. When we were all set up with our new spots they insisted I take a picture of them, so I had to oblige!

We are staring to learn about money in math! I am in love with the math interactive notebook by Blair Turner, I bought and the money activities are probably my favorites so far! We need to buy bigger math notebooks next year because we have had to start making the foldables on paper instead of in our notebooks :(

Last but not least, on this lovely Valentine's Day, I have to share my February classroom door...

If you want to know more about classroom doors, go visit my post about it here.

Happy Valentine's Day!

5 for Friday... Saturday Edition

Hey all, I'm linking up with Doodlebugs Teaching for another Five for Friday, on Saturday!

If you live in CT or MA you know that this week was all sorts of wacky with the "blizzard"... we had an early dismissal, 2 snow days and 2 delays... crazy, crazy! The pup enjoyed the snow!

 About 2 weeks ago my Donor's Choose project was funded to get 2 iPads for my classroom, we were SUPER excited and since they came in and FINALLY have apps on them, we've been using them during Daily 5 for word work! Can't wait to use them for other fun projects in the classroom.

If you're looking for a few fun and FREE apps for word work, I downloaded:
Sand Draw, Art of Glow, Kidsdoodle and Draw Stars

I've had this game (I don't even know the name of it) that someone gave me and it has these awesome buzzers that all make really silly sounds. I've been dying to use them and haven't been able to come up with a great way to use 4 buzzers... Then one of my grade-level partners bought buzzers just like mine (without the game) and I decided I needed to find a way to use them...

We learned how to check our subtraction problems using addition. So I paired my kiddos and put 2 pairs and a buzzer at each table. One partner solved a subtraction problem that I put on the board. When that partner solved the problem, the second partner checked the answer using addition. When they were done and their answers matched, the partnership rang in with the buzzer at their table. I would stop the class and we'd decide if the pair was correct. If the pair was correct, I put a new problem up and the partners switched roles. It was a lot of fun and everyone at least got to finish the subtraction problem each round (I very purposely paired my kiddos in hopes that this would happen). I'm pretty sure using the buzzers is a new favorite activity for my kiddos!

One of the other things we managed to squeeze in during this very bizarre-no full days of school- week was Topic & Detail cups! Unfortunately, I only have a picture of my example, but what the kiddos did was read a nonfiction article with a partner, highlighting important words. Using what they read and highlighted, the kiddos decided what the topic was and at least 3 details. The topic went on the outside of the cup and the details went inside the cup.

I mentioned the last time I liked up here that as a second grade team we are partnering up with one of our reading consultants and one of the special education teachers to do fluency groups. Unfortunately this weather has been a disaster for our fluency schedule, but we have been able to meet a few times over the past couple weeks.

The kiddos seem to be enjoying being with students from the other 2 classes and hopefully I wil be reporting back soon that we are seeing improved fluency!