Sorry for my Blog Manners but I'm Joining Some Linky Parties

I already posted. Sorry. I am posting again. Please forgive my bad manners. I am joining a linky party.

My contribution is Buzzing Blooms a long i game for more expereinced readers. They need to read the words and decide if they say the long i sound like the spelling suggests.  Good for advanced first graders, and all second and third graders.

download Buzzing Blooms here


I am also finally getting around to joining the K-2 world linky party hosted by Jeannie at Kindergarten Lifestyle. Better late than never.

Have You Checked Out Mathwire?

Now I might be late to this party, but you are all invited. I found mathwire through some pinterest boards and I've been there for about an hour. It has a collection of games and activities organized by standards and grade levels, and seasonal ideas as well. Several of the ideas cover multiple standards, so you can get extras bang for your ...I was going to say buck but it's free.
Some of my favorites to get you interested

• m & m probability game works on addition

I Have cards for 2 x 4 labels in place value, money, and operations

templates for repeated practice, laminate or place in communicator sleeves


I am on break. Even better, my big Easter fair was this morning and it is over. My church is small and for us to open up to the community and have 25-30 children participating in an an event requires planning and support. We made Easter bunnies using styrofoam balls, pipe cleaners, pompoms, and wiggle eyes, birds nests using brown paper bags, craft glue, sticks, and Spanish moss, decorated eggs using crayons on warm eggs (back to that in a minute) and sticky flowers with tissue paper squares
(pictures soon).  We hid over 1,016 eggs and had to give the kids second baskets since several of them had over 80 eggs! Hotdogs and sloppy joes inside, then sack races, parachute games, and hula hoop games outside.
Back to the eggs. Crayon wax melts GREAT on hot eggs from water that had been near boiling. Boiled eggs in a crockpot on high was not hot enough to melt the wax. Teacher minds unite-- how can I keep the eggs really hot without keeping them on the stove in boiling water?  This might also be good for big river rocks to get decorated for paperweights. The wax would wash off in a garden environment, but there have to be other uses for crayons at this winding down time of the year.


I am looking forward to calmly planning/ grading /cleaning/ blogging/ pinboard surfing /laundry:(/relaxing? over the next week.

TBA is almost one year old so they are having a giveaway. Go over and enter.
http://www.teachingblogaddict.com/2012/03/celebrating-tbas-1st-birthday-with.html#more

The Talk

We had the Talk today. 3:00 everyone was called to the media center.
Next year we are down a second grade ( my grade) and up one first and one third.
So anyone that wants to retire or transfer had better speak up now.
One of my teammates kinda volunteered to move up or down. She hasn't been holding on to things this year and getting them organized.
We spoke up for my amazing student teacher from last year. And a current long-term sub.
The principal will let us know who she is moving after spring break.
I don't want to switch again yet.
Is your staff pretty settled, or do you get moved to promote your growth?  After many years in third grade, I didn't want to teach the same stories one more year. I was ready for a switch. I wasn't done fifth grade when I was moved. I do not want to switch unitl I've had at least one year of reteaching a math or reading program. Is that lazy?
Hopefully I do not have to post about this after spring break.

One kid had his meds refilled. Today was WAY better than yesterday. Everyone went home on green and I didn't have a headache. Happy teacher.

Hunger Games

Just got back from the movies. My daughter and her fifth grade friend were slightly disappointed because they wanted more details from the book in the movie. My husband was trying to explain that they couldn't tell every detail but they need to get the key points across. My second grade son laughed at the kissing and covered his eyes and held my hand for the dog scene.  He hopes to be able to read book 1 and 2 before the second movie comes out. And it is also set up for elements of the third book to be turned into a movie. I wonder how much they will make this weekend.

Spring is in the Air

We're going on our field trip tomorrow, which means lots of parent visitors in the building. I convinced my teammates to take down Seuss day projects for two reasons.
1. We're a bit past his birthday.
2. I wanted to hog the wall!
Our current unit in Treasures is Growing and Changing., and I wanted to do something spring-y.  We've been noticing so much academic growth lately that I wanted the kids to get a chance to show off how they have changed. I can't type too much longer because I am so excited.

I dragged my two children to the grocery story at 6:50 am (we're an early school) to buy the cupcake liners for the middle of the daffodils.The petals each tell a growth or change, and the flowers are taped on the wall to show the child's actual height.
I'm getting ready to put the organizer and printables together. Look for this as a freebie in the stores later tonight!

Spring Freebie! Tell Everybody!

28 is good.
It's a nice number.
I trust you are all wonderful people.

Can you help some more wonderful people find me? I am offering a spring freebie for suffixes, a memory match game for words with the suffixes -ing, -less, -ful and -est. It's cute, quick and easy to laminate and cut up, and it might help one or two of your babies say, "Oh! That's what those suffixes mean!"  Tell me they don't. After you've taught it for WEEKS.  Maybe this will help.
I'd appreciate comments here and any wonderful people you know are also welcome to download or join us wonderful people.  I have turned off word verification if that is extra motivation for comments. And this download might save you some of your personal time so you can go out and enjoy the beautiful spring weather.

Click here for Duck, Duck, Caboose Memory Game Freebie

Good News, Sad News, Sad News, Good News

I haven't done a very good job of posting- or commenting on your blogs either- lately.  L:ast week was busy, but at least we had an amazing sub (my old student teacher) for Thursday and Friday. We have her in again for this week. We are giving her the page from the planbook, and she is going to teach. We don't have to write up sub plans!!!
Not too long ago, I posted about a teammate whose mother had cancer in three systems. Last week was her second week in the hospital, ans she passed away Friday morning.  My teammate doesn't like hugs. It's been almost exactly a year since her grandmother passed away.We are lucky to have wonderful supportive people in our lives but we miss them so much when they go on. I'm gonna hug her anyway.
The teaching assistant in my classroom that assists with my behaviorally challenged friends lost a pregnancy at the end of last week as well. There are two other staff members who are also pregnant and the three of them had been comparing symptoms. She will also have a hard week.

The weather has been beautiful. I think we are beyond any hope of snow. The crocuses have bloomed, the daffodils have bloomed, and yesterday I even saw irises blooming. In Maryland? In March?  We are still two weeks away from our spring break.  This week we are headed to the Natural History Museum to check out the rocks and dinosaurs. We went last year, and some of the exhibits downstairs had me totatlly lost. Hopefully I do better this year.  I think we might be a little early for the cherry blossoms, but we can hope. Have a great Monday!  I will try to get around this week.

Is it Friday Yet?

We've split classes all three days so far this week.  After we each took a day to write the sub plans for the classroom without a sub. Every night they tell us there will be a sub, and every morning there isn't. Did I mention we are then spending our planning period splitting papers and checking with the other classes to see how far they made it in case the class gets to really have class tomorrow?
The first day while I was moving furniture,  I told my kids we're having friends over. The second day they asked if we were having friends over as I rearranged the furniture. This morning one not-so-happy guy actually growled when our "friends" joined us .
It's also over 70 degrees, and that's before the extra body heat.
Tomorrow is my day to provide sub plans again, so I figured they needed something different to have extra practice graphing so...Spring Count, Tally, and Graph. Currently only at TpT.
There better be a sub.

I'm feeling vicious.

Ugly Vegetable Time

My sequencing activity for The Ugly Vegetables is up in both stores. I do not speak or read any dialects of Chinese or other Asian languages, so I worked hard to find real photographs of the vegetables in the book. I hope they are close to what the author intended.  I found some seed companies, but I'm pretty sure they would take longer than our radishes and lettuce. The kids were so excited to see the radishes sprout this week. I gave them raw turnip earlier in the year with some ranch dressing to dip it in. They loved it. I hope the lettuce is quick and the radishes are slow so we can have them both at the same time. Time to go to bed since we have to SPRING forward tomorrow.  So this weekend really is shorter than last weekend!

This will be quick

Life is happening this week. My daughter's research project for media, applications for art camp, rehearsals at the high school for the strings concert tomorrow night, trying to locate my W-2s somewhere in a stack of work that needs to be graded (I brought home a copier paper box tonight (I'm gonna find it!!)), the mass issues, and I want to finish my Ugly Vegetable activities tonight so I can laminate and cut out over the weekend.
Did I mention that my daughter forgot to pack a shirt for after dance class which ended 15 minutes before strings rehearsal so we had to go buy the first shirt in her size at Target? I didn't even look at the design before buying it.
My husband tried to fry the chicken. 3 out of 10 tenders are still brown, so 7 out of 10 moved past brown to a new color.
Time to get back to work.

Whoa!

Where did you all come from? I look down and now there are 20 followers. I am trying to comment back, but I am quite frustrated about the blog button bit. I even tried switching from mediafire to google docs, so now I am pretty sure it is a size issue.

Today in math, the coins were gone and the triple beam balance was proudly displayed. The helper of the day had a target of 100 grams. He picked an organizer station that was well over 600 grams. The class helped him revise his thinking, and then they thought maybe a reading text would be about 100 grams. ONE child said,"How about trying 100 paper clips?" "Why 100 paper clips?" I asked him (knowing full well). He replied, "If one paper clip is about a gram, then 100 paper clips should be 100 grams." The class still thinks we should try the reading text tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow two kids will tell me that we should try 100 paper clips.

I also felt bad when they read the outcomes and saw drawing conclusions. There was actual cheering. I explained that drawing conclusions would be fun, but we were not going to be drawing like in art class. They decided drawing conclusions was not as much fun as it sounded. Poor babies.

Has this been one of the worst flu seasons you can remember? Kids are sick, teachers are sick, and they are trying to bleach surfaces and have us wash and sanitize. One class today had 5 kids go home. Sick. Like sick-sick.  I don't remember ever having a winter like this. And it doesn't seem to pass quickly from child to child, but it lingers. It's not moving around a table group, it jumps all over the classroom. And it comes back around too. Hopefully your classrooms are healthy.

I am going to comment back (thank you for taking the time to comment!), work on the blog button issue, work on the grams and kilograms, and then record grades for the six assignments I graded after my committee meeting today.

The day is getting even better!

I have a featured product in this week's TN newsletter. Is that randomly selected or did someone have to nominate my product?
I also read from Alisha (The Bubbly Blonde) that we might be able to claim clipart as a tax expense. That is useful knowledge. We haven't met with our accountant yet, but I will definitely mention it to him.

Go Australia! Oh no, Measurement!

Leap Day was a great day, but things have been slow since. I woke up this morning and found my first sale in Australia! It also woke up my freebies downloaded, so I know that things aren't just sitting still over there.
Ladies and gentlemen, measuring went even worse than I thought. I was out on Thursday, and when I came back on Friday...OMG. They worked with grams and kilograms on Thursday. They know that grams are little and kilograms are big. 200 g and 999 grams meant the same to them, and 1 kilogram and 1000 kilograms meant the same. I am taking down money from our morning math meeting. I spent most of last night working on measurement. There's not a lot available out there. I know that this is slipping away to third grade on the common core, but my county isn't implementing math common core for third grade until the year after next, so this year's babies won't get it again until...6th?...7th?
I want something that I can use for morning math meeting, I want something as a center, I want 2-3 games, and I've worked on some real world homework assignments for the grocery store and possibly the sporting good store. This is a serious problem. Look for new activities soon. How do you teach measurement to your kids?

Feel the Love

Danielle from Twirlybird Teaching.made my day! She gave me my very first blog award! I feel like giving all of my kids stickers tomorrow on everything, even if they didn't really earn them.

What it's all about...

The Liebster Award is awarded to blogs with less than 200 followers. The award is passed along from blogger to blogger and highlights up and coming blogs. Liebe is the word for love in Germany, which is where the award originated.

Guidelines to accepting the award:

Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog. Link back to the blogger who presented the award to you. Copy and paste the blog award on your blog. Present the Liebster Blog Award to blogs of 200 followers or less who you feel deserve to be noticed. Let them know they have been chosen by leaving a comment on their blog.

I am pretty new to this, and Danielle didn't even have a button to grab from me. Maybe that problem is solved?? When I look at the established blogs, I get the impression that bloggers are growing up in classes, and I am part of a new class of bloggers. When I figure something out, I am so proud of myself. Every improvement I make increases the chance that what I've experienced in the classroom might be seen by someone who can use my knowledge to improve the lives of their students.
I am part of a growing community that isn't just content teaching our own classroom of learners. Thanks for letting me share with you and offering your knowledge.
I'm off to look for new bloggers to love!

And I'm finally back!

Trisha is a first grade teacher here in Maryland!



http://firstgradefrosting.blogspot.com/


Brittany K.

http://secondgradesweets.blogspot.com/

Grabbable Button

Can you see my button? Can you grab it? Right now all I see is the red x. I'm sad. Please make my day and let me know it is working.
We had to take my son back up for an MRI at Hopkins. The pediatric department work their butts off. They make cool, not lame, jokes, talk about the child's interests, have the reovery team look up the condition so they are knoweledgable, and offer a gazillion flavors of LipSmackers for the breathing masks. My son wasn't having any of it. He walked back on his own, but woudn't let us touch him. He was going to get the mask instead of an IV but decided that his Lip Smacker smelled disgusting. In the end my husband and I helped hold him down. The anesthesia doctor tracked us down at lunch and gave us his personal e-mail so that if we have more procedures they can give him pre-meds. No more kicking and screaming sounds WONDERFUL. Before we left he had a popsicle and a brand new full sized Monopoly game.
I should go to school and set up my room for tomorrow. I should go to school and set up for next week, since that is what I do on Thursdays. My back is so tight, and everything is fine and I knew it would be fine. Good thing I have planning period first on Fridays.