Sunday Celebrating!

This week I am celebrating spending some time with my favorite set of cuties!!! They are visiting from Utah and we plan on spending a fun day at the pool--pictures to come later! Will you link up with me and share your celebrations?! I can't wait to read them!

Five for Friday- July 24, 2015

I am so glad to have some time this Friday to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday! It's been a very busy, very exciting week and I can't wait to share with you!

The past two weeks I have been visiting with my aunt, uncle, and cousin who live in Bozeman, Montana. I flew out to Bozeman with my grandma and we had a great time! There were so many incredible things to see and the weather was AH-MA-ZING! If you want to see a ton of pictures from my visit to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Park, check out my Sunday Celebrating post! :) Here are a few highlights from my trip!

I hit a small, but still really exciting, personal TPT milestone this week when I reached 100 followers! To celebrate my entire store has been on sale for 20% off- good news for you is that it is still on sale through the end of the day! Head over to my page to check out some great deals! 

I have been reading The Book Whisperer this summer (and loving it!!) and was encouraged to make some reading surveys for my kiddos. I am SO EXCITED to use these at the beginning of the year and even more excited that I could really gear them towards beginning readers! As a part of celebrating my 100 followers, this pack is a forever freebie in my store- check it out! 

My grandparents both love sewing and quilting and all kinds of artsy things. While I was in Montana, my grandma and I visited many many quilt stores and started collecting some fabrics for baby boys nursery! We had decided to go for a nautical/whale theme and spent a lot of time on the hunt for some cute whale fabrics for a quilt that my pop-pop is going to make for us! We finally found this adorable whale print and I am so excited to mix it with some teal and navy fabrics and dream up an ocean world for baby boy! 

My friend Lindsey over at Miss Johnston's Journey is celebrating her 2nd bloggiversary! She has put so much time into putting together an awesome giveaway for everyone and has over 50 prizes that will be given away next week! My first grade sound unit is included in one of her prize packs, so be sure to head over to her blog and enter for some great things!! Happy Bloggiversary, Lindsey! 

Happy Friday everyone! If you have really exciting to celebrate this week, come back and link up with my on Sunday for my Sunday Celebrating linky party! I love reading and joining in on your joy! :) 

Back to School Reading Surveys

This summer I have been reading through The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. If you haven't read it, I definitely recommend it! There are a lot of really great topics that Ms. Miller shines a light on in regard to reading.
One thing that really stuck with me in my reading was Ms. Miller's encouragement to use reading surveys at the beginning of the year to find out the interests and reading habits of each of your students.
I wanted to create a simple, yet effective reading survey to use with my little ones at the beginning of the year. I'm excited about learning their interests and pairing them with books that they will enjoy. I think it is incredibly important for students to find books that are interesting to them so that they will want to pick them up and read!
I can't wait to use these reading surveys in the first week or two of school so that I can really get to know my students as readers!
If you would like your own copy of reading interest surveys for beginning readers, check them out here! As a part of celebrating hitting my 100 followers milestone on TPT, I'm making this survey pack a forever FREEBIE!! :)

Enjoy!

Back to School Reading Surveys for beginning readers

The BIG 1-0-0!!!

Hey everyone! I am SO EXCITED!! I have made it to my first self-declared milestone on TPT and now have 100 lovely followers! 

To celebrate, I have an exciting new freebie coming your way that I think will be a great resource as we all think about the first weeks of school (which have snuck up on me way too fast!) 

To celebrate my 100 followers, my entire TPT Store is going to be on sale for 20% off tomorrow through Friday! Be sure to stop by and check out some awesome deals! 

Make sure to be checking on Facebook, Instagram, and back here on my blog around Wednesday this week to check out a great new freebie.

Thanks for celebrating this milestone with me! 

Sunday Celebrating

Good morning from Grand Tetons National Park! I can't wait to share about my trip to Yellowstone later on this evening, but I wanted you to have plenty of time to link up with me and share your joys from the week! I am looking forward to reading all of your posts and joining you in celebration! Feel free to grab either of the images from this post and then come back here to add your link!

I just got home from Yellowstone/Grand Tetons National Park and man, oh man!!!! I am absolutely celebrating the beauty of the parks this week for my Sunday Celebrating! Pictures can't capture the incredible beauty that I saw the last couple of days, but I sure did try to snap quite a few!

I visited the park with my sweet Aunt and cousin (who I am staying with in Bozeman right now) and on Saturday we explored Yellowstone for a bit. It was nice and chilly (WONDERFULLY CHILLY) and so so so gorgeous! 

After spending most of the day in Yellowstone, we headed over to Grand Tetons National Park and took some sweet shots of the mountains and scoped out a sunrise spot before the storm clouds scared us back to our lodge for the night.

We turned in early for the night with a wonderful sounding storm as our lullaby and then woke up this morning insanely early to go grab some sunrise shots! Unfortunately, the clouds wanted to hog the spotlight, but we were still able to get a few pretty shots!

 My favorite part of the day was definitely on our morning ride through the park when we saw a bear on the side of the road! Shortly after we stopped to snap her picture, two little cubs ran up next to her. Snapping pictures out of the car window made it tricky to get us a good shot, but I loved seeing their bear faces through this fence!

After a long time of bear watching, we drove back through the park and made our way to the Lower Falls in Yellowstone where we hiked until our legs fell off, but got to see a pretty rainbow reflected off the waterfall mist!

I can't wait to come back some day with my hubby and our little man and spend some more time celebrating how beautiful it is!

Thanks for celebrating with me-I hope the pictures bring you some joy as you start your week off! Don't forget to link up if you share your celebrations :)

Sunday Celebrating!

Hey everyone! This week has been such a fun and exciting one for me and I wanted to share with you! I hoped I would get around to writing on Friday to link up for a Five for Friday post, but I ran out of time and thought, hey-I bet I am not the only one who has something to celebrate, why not make it a new linky?!

SOOOO- If you have a celebration to share, whether it be big or small, will you link up with me?! I would love to read along and celebrate with you too!! You can grab either of the Sunday Celebrating image by right clicking and saving to your computer. 

This week my husband and I finally found out that we are having a baby BOY! We celebrated with a gender reveal cookout and had a blast! We had our gender ultrasound at 9AM and my mom came with us so that she could find out and it would be a surprise for us at the party. I'm pretty sure it was the longest 10 hours of my life waiting to know, but it was worth it for how much fun it was to get to celebrate with our families all together! We are so excited for our little boy and can't wait to get everything ready for him! My OCD brain is so ready to plan, plan, plan! 

My other exciting new from the week is that I finally started up a facebook page for Stomping Through First! I can't wait to use facebook to keep up with the TPT/Blogging/Contest world even more! If you have been on facebook for a while and have some tips, I'd love to hear them :) 

I would LOVE if you would visit my page and give it some love!!!I am loving taking the time this summer to really try and make connections and grow! 

I'm on such a high from a great week and would love to celebrate with you!! I would love to give away ANY PRODUCT from my store to the winner of this contest, so be sure to check it out!!! Thanks for celebrating with me :) 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

An InLinkz Link-up

Five For Friday: JULY?!

 Is it really already July?! I can't believe it! It has been an exciting week and I can't wait to share it with you for Five for Friday! 

This week's TpT Seller Challenge came at the perfect time for me. I've been working on a sight word program for the last few weeks and I am so excited to finally have it finished and be able to show it off!! If you missed my post earlier this week, I promise you will want to check it out here- it includes a giveaway for a free copy of my new pack! 

 

I owe a huge thank you to Diana from My Day in K and Erin from Kindergarten Dragons  for nominating me for the One Lovely Blog award! 

I have loved jumping into the blogging world the past few months and can't wait to continue to grow and make even more blogging friends than I already have! I wanted to share a few things that I love about blogging and then I have a few friends to nominate as well! 

1. I LOVE linky parties!!! Linking up is such a fun way to both share and learn and I love having link-ups as my motivation to write!

2. Encouragement- it is such a joy to meet people through blogging that share the same passions and dreams as I do for teaching/blogging/creating! 

3. Sharing- I love sharing my ideas and blogging is such a perfect outlet for that. Thanks so much for reading along- I love reading your comments on my posts! 

I would like to pass along the love and nominate the following people for The One Lovely Blog Award: 

Jackie at Pocket of Preschool 

Sarah at Shine on in First Grade

Carol at Mrs. B's Classroom Adventures

MY husband helped me relocate my desk to our living room this week. Since my office is going to turn into our nursery, I decided to take the first step in getting some of the furniture moved! Maybe I'll actually use my desk now that it is in the same room that I do all my Netflix watching!! ;) 

I had a fun lunch date with my sweet friend and college roomie, Katie! It has been way too long since we got together and it was great to catch up. She teaches second grade and is planning on joining the blogging/TPT world soon so get ready- I promise I'll introduce you to her and I'm sure you'll love her as much as I do! 

I am so excited about Ron Clark's new book! I have read all of his other ones and admire him so much! I can't wait to dig in and learn even more from him! Is anyone reading?! I was thinking about hosting a book chat linky party to discuss- if you would be interested in joining, will you comment and let me know?! I have first time linky party fear of no one coming to my party and wanted to gauge interest before I start my party planning! :) 

Hope you have had an amazing week-Happy 4th of July!!