Five for Friday: The Longest Week

Is it just me or do we all agree that there is no tired like the end of the first week of school tired?! Seriously! My eyes are for real struggling to stay open so I'm going to make this Five for Friday short and sweet :)

This week was our first week back with kiddos! We had pre-planning Monday and Tuesday and started on Wednesday! I loved getting my classroom all ready to go-dinos and chevron make my heart happy! 

I loved sporting my AWESOME blog shirt from A Plus Images during pre-planning!! I had so many people tell me how cute it was (even though most of them didn't even know it was my blog button!) If you haven't checked out A Plus Images, run over there immediately! They have so many incredible shirts for teachers! 

I LOVE my new focus wall!! I can't wait to have a place for my kiddos to reference our standards and essential questions, as well as a pretty display for when administrators walk through and like to see what we are working on! If you would like these posters, you can download them here (for free!)! I'd love to see pictures of how you display them in your classroom! :) 

I loved spending time with my grandma last weekend making some ADORABLE little reading buddy monsters!! Check out my post about them over here to learn how to make some for your own library! (Like the sign? It's free if you check out my post!)

I LOVED using my reading profiles with my kiddos this week and I was pleasantly surprised by how much they loved them too! One of my munchkins even said "Mrs. Browning, I think this is a FABULOUS idea!" 

Be sure to check out this awesome FREEBIE so that you can learn about your little readers, too!

 

Be sure to check out this blog post to learn more about the reading surveys!

Happy Friday everyone! :)

Sweet Summertime: A Five for Friday post

Is it really Friday again ALREADY?! I don't know about you, but I feel like summer is breezing by just a little too fast!  I'm ready to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching again for another Five for Friday post!

I started off the week celebrating one year of being married to the love my life! We had a nice dinner out in Chattanooga to celebrate. I can't believe a year has already gone by! (And at the same time can't believe it has only been a year!) Can't wait to live decades of more years (God willing) with this man by my side. 

I am loving dreaming about being a mommy! In two weeks we will get to find out if we are welcoming a sweet baby boy or girl into our family and I had a blast designing some invites for our family. Even though we are just doing a small cookout, I love designing so much that I had to come up with something anyway! Thank goodness I have a bank of so much cute clip art! 

I loved getting to share all of my dreams this week through both my TpT Seller Challenge post AND my Tell All Tuesday post! I spent hours reading through everyone else's dreams too and it was so encouraging to see so many teachers with such a passion for growing, both through professional development for teaching and finding ways to grow TpT stores and success! Be sure to check those posts out if you missed them! 

My husband has to work this weekend so he had both yesterday and today off and it was nice to relax together for a few days! We are hooked on Graceland and spent a lot of the day yesterday alternating between Netflix and working on a fun new puzzle. It was a pretty lazy day, but we did accomplish putting 550 pieces of fish together! 

I have spent a lot of hours the past 2 weeks working on a HUGE sight word pack that I am really excited about! I keep thinking It'll be done and ready to post soon and then I think of just *ONE MORE THING* I need to add. My goal for the weekend is to finally finish it up- be sure to stop by next week to check it out- I plan on posting all about it and even giving away a pack or two!! 

Five for Friday! (And all my answers about Tell All Tuesday!)

Hey everyone! This has been a busy week of link-ups for me and I'm excited to finish it off with my Five for Friday post!

First things first, I know you are all DYING to know which one of my facts was a lie in my Tell All Tuesday post! 

**DRUMROLL PLEASE**

If you guessed that fact #2 was my lie, you were right! While I do love my fur babies, my little sister is the one who always thought about being a veterinarian, not me! If you missed out on reading my post, check it out here!

The most exciting part of my week by far was finally sharing some really really exciting news with the world!! My husband and I are expecting our first little one this December and we finally shared our news through some incredible pictures that my sweet sister took for us!

I enjoyed reading and blogging about the first chapter of The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. It is an excellent book so far and I can't wait to dig into it even deeper! If you have the book and are joining along on the link up, be sure to check out my thoughts of chapter 1 here. 

I will wholeheartedly admit that I am a full on Netflix addict. I am loving having so much uninterrupted day time to binge on all of the series that have been patiently waiting for me on my list. Right now my current obsession is SCANDAL. And when I say obsession, what I mean is 2 full seasons watched since Tuesday and I'm digging into the 3rd. LOVEEEEE IT! 

I had a blast going to a painting party with my mom, grandma, and sister! The OCD part of me would have liked to have probably 7 hours to perfect every inch of my painting, but sadly I had to do what I could with the 2 hour class restraint. I still think my little painting turned out pretty nice though! (Plus is was fun!) 

Thanks for stopping by to read about my week! 

Blow painting and STEM and Mother's Day-Oh My!

WOW! What a crazy busy week it has been in First Grade! I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for five for Friday because there are so many amazing things that I want to share with you about our week!!

Last week we started working on writing our very last narrative writing of the year! I knew I wanted to do something really engaging so that my kiddos would write really good stories! When I saw this idea I just HAD to try it! I quickly through together some stories I had about times that different characters were scared and after reading we brainstormed things that scare us! I am really proud of my kids for writing some really awesome stories to go with their really awesome pictures! I plan on writing a long, detailed post about this project as soon as possible, so stay tuned! 

 

This week has been packed full of so many STEM activities for me! I am a part of the STEM committee at my school and we have been working hard to come up with some cool project ideas for next year. I started an aquaponics project with my kiddos earlier in the week and then got to visit another school to learn about an exciting hydroponics project! I am pumped up about STEM right now and have so many fun project ideas! I can't wait to create some fun projects to share with all of you :)

We have been getting ready for Mother's Day with lots and lots of crafts! We loved doing other Mother's Day direct drawing by First Grade Blue Skies earlier in the week and then we added to our Mother's Day Books with a few other ideas too! I was so happy to find this writing pack to go with our pictures! 

We had a preview day this week where each grade got to move up to their new grade for an hour and see what it is like! I had a blast doing some Mo Willems activities with the group of future firsties that I had visit my room! We read pigeon stories and then got to draw the pigeon! I wanted them to get a taste of directed drawings since we do so many in my class! 

      

Today we went on the most exciting field trip of all time!!! Today was our county-wide STEM day and when I was trying to come up with a good idea for our kids, my brilliant husband reminded me that one of the high schools in our county is a STEM highlight school and they have a lot of cool things going on. After thanking him for his smart brain I quickly got on the phone with my principal and asked if please pretty please could first grade go visit the high school for a STEM field trip?! Needless to say, she loved the idea and after a few short e-mails we had the day planned! In my head I was thinking we would go, tour the school, see their program and greenhouses and they kids would see a bigger scale of what we do at our school. I was absolutely BLOWN AWAY by how much more this field trip would mean to me and my kids. The high school STEM staff and students planned an entire day packed full of fun science activities for our kids. They paired up one-on-one with our students and helped them plant flowers in recycled water bottles, make paper rockets to shoot with straws, and make tornadoes in bottles. My kids left the field trip with three priceless souvenirs and a newfound passion and excitement about science and IT.WAS.AWESOME!!! I could honestly write pages and pages about how great our day was, but for your sake I will just let the pictures show you! 

      

             

I hope that your week has been a great one! Thanks for stopping by! :)