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!! 

My Masterpiece: Product Reveal and GIVEAWAY!

I am so happy to FINALLY have finished up a huge sight word packet that I am super excited about-so excited that I spent the day yesterday printing and laminating and testing it all out so I could make sure you would love it as much as I do!
I have been working on this pack for close to 3 weeks now and this week's TpT Seller Challenge was just the extra push I needed to get it all the way finished and I can't wait to tell you all about it!

This project was inspired by a Dolch Sight Word program that I used while I was student teaching. I loved the idea of having sight word folders for each student to encourage and support their learning of new words. One of my summer creating goals was to give this idea a major facelift!
I know how effective this program can be and I am even more excited to use it with my firsties this year and have new themed supporting activities.

I was so excited about creating this product that as soon as I (finally) got it finished, I kept my printer and laminator running hot yesterday making my own set of everything included in this pack. I want to show you each piece of this pack and explain how I intend to use it in my class! Be sure to stick around until the end of the post for a chance to win your own free copy!

The biggest part of this sight word program are the student books. I LOVE these little safari books!! I promise that a teacher guide and parent guide are both included in the product as well, but here is a short summary of these books. 

Student books include ten sight word lists (The 220 words that are on Dolch Pre-Primer-Third Grade lists). Each list includes a practice page with sight words on it and a safari sentence page that includes words from that list to be read in context. I have students take these folders home each night to practice words with their families. The beauty of this sight word program is that each student moves at their own pace. I have students read their words to me each Friday, but they move through the lists according to their own learning needs. You may have some students who breeze through their whole folders in the first few weeks of school and you may have some who are still only halfway through by the time summer rolls around. The beauty of this program is that there are so many supporting activities included so that your more advanced students will have plenty to do even after they have finished reading through their folders! 

 I love making a big deal about students completing a list and always give them a prize when they finish a list...I even included a cool prize for you in this pack :) 

I'm borderline obsessed/excited about these sight word coloring pages!! My hubby even helped me color some last night so that I would have a pretty picture for you. I am planning on using these coloring pages as prizes for my students! As a student finishes a list in their folder, I'm going to give them the coordinating color page AND let them drop whatever it is they might be doing to color it! Since I always have students read sight words to me on Fridays, I usually have something quiet going on that would be fine for them to abandon in order to celebrate finishing a list. These coloring pages will also act as my way to share with parents that their child finished a list! (Plus each coloring page includes a sentence with words from that list just for a little extra practice!) 

Supporting Activities 

Sight word flash cards are so much more fun when they have cute safari animals on them!! Each list is supported with both black and white and colored versions of flash cards. I love having these available to students as they practice their words.

 

I LOVE these sight word sentence strips!! I plan on making a few different rings that students will have access to in order to practice applying their new sight words in different sentences. Every sentence included uses only sight words and animal pictures and I may be partial, but y'all-they're CUTE!

Safari Sentence Scramble! Oh man. This might be my new favorite word work center. I love it so much that I'll probably print and laminate another copy just to have two bins going. This activity is one that I think will really benefit the quicker learners who know all of their words pretty quickly. The goal is simply this-using all of the word tiles and animal pictures, build sentences! I included a recording sheet as well so students could practice writing the sentences that they create.

Do you love it yet??!! I am so excited about this product that I want to share it with one of you for free! This giveaway ends on Wednesday, July 8th at the end of this week's TpT Seller Challenge. I hope that you will enter!
If you just can't wait to have this product right now, fear not! This product is on sale until Wednesday as well!
What are you waiting for?! :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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!! 

Dreaming Big!

I am excited to link up for week two of the TpT Seller Challenge! Being so new to Teachers Pay Teachers, I have so many big goals and dreams that seem crazy to hope for right now, but I'm excited to share them anyway!

Reach 1,000 Followers on TpT: This dream seems so big to me right now while I'm still working on reaching 100 followers but I'm shooting for the stars on this one and hoping to get to 1,000! I know that this is going to take a lot of patience but my hope is that it will come alongside my continuance to grow my store and learning how to promote my products!

Be able to attend the TpT conference (and maybe some day present?!): I so badly wanted to go to the conference this year, but with a baby on the way and bills to pay, it just wasn't an option this year. My hope is that as my store continues to grow, I'll make enough to put aside a conference fund and be able to attend and then hopefully someday present! I absolutely love speaking and sharing and would love to be on the presenting side of things (obviously a while down the road!)

Make enough additional income to pay my way through grad school without any loans: I shared in my Tell All Tuesday post about how one of my professional goals is to be able to go back to school and get my master's degree in reading specialty. I would be over the moon excited if my success on TpT provided me with enough additional income to be able to pay my way through grad school without having to take out any loans.

Work full time on TpT for a few years so I can be a stay-at-home mom while my baby is little: With a little one on the way this is a goal that has quickly become super real to me! I love creating on TpT and would love to make it a full time job for a few years so I could stay at home until my kids are school age. I love teaching and I know that I wouldn't want to be out of the classroom for long, but the comfort of having enough additional income to stay home for a few years would be incredible!

Thanks for reading about my dreams! Be sure to check out all of the other posts and link up to share yours!
Thanks to these wonderful ladies for coordinating such an awesome challenge:

 

 

Tell All Tuesday- My Teacher Bucket List

It feels like this last week has FLOWN by-I can't believe it is already Tuesday again and time to link back up for another week of Tell All Tuesday! I am so excited for this week's topic- i love getting to share my goals with you and I can't wait to read through everyone else's bucket lists as well!

~Go back to school and get my Master's Degree: I would LOVE to go back to school and get a higher degree! I've look at reading specialty programs and I think that would definitely be the most engaging program for me. With a little one on the way I know it will probably be a while before I get to pursue this goal, but hopefully in a few years I will be in a place where I will have both the time and money to make it happen! 

~Continue to work on growing my school's STEM program: My school is just getting the ball rolling with STEM and I am really pumped about it. I have been to a couple of conferences this summer already to learn more about growing and implementing STEM in the classroom (both of which I've been meaning to blog about and haven't gotten around to-oops!). I am on my school's STEM committee and I am looking forward to helping other teachers in my school learn more about the benefits of integrating STEM activities into our curriculum. For those of you who don't know a whole lot about STEM, be on the lookout for a big post I'm working on about a new STEM pack that might help you get started as well! I'm planning on including some great project ideas and a freebie as well! 

~Grow my TpT Store: I am still new to both the blogging world and TpT world and I can't wait to watch my store grow (hopefully!). I would love to get to a place where my store will help me provide my students with more resources and activities (by giving me more income to put into my classroom), as well as providing me with additional income for me to pay my way through grad school without loans! I know that it is a big big dream for me just starting out, and even to me it seems like a lot to hope for, but it's on my bucket list nonetheless!

~Have a community of blogging buddies to collaborate with: One of the biggest reasons why I wanted to start this blog was from seeing all of the connections and relationships that blogging can bring. I work in an old school in a tiny town and it has been really hard for me to find anyone to really share my passion for teaching and creating and blogging with. I wanted to write so that I could have an outlet and feel connected to other teachers who have the same passions. This past year I have seen so many teachers just counting down the days until they can "get out" and heard so much negativity about this profession that I truly love and I NEEDED a place to come to where I could be excited about teaching and surround myself with others who still find joy in it as well. All that to say this-wanna be friends?! :) 

Thanks for hopping over- be sure to link up and share your bucket list too! 

The Book Whisperer: Chapter 2

I am excited to be linking up again this week to talk about Chapter Two of The Book Whisperer. If you have not checked out this book by Donalyn Miller, you need to! Read on to find out why! :) 

When I jumped into reading chapter two, I told myself that I was going to make sure that everything that I found meaningful in this chapter I would write down and then figure out how to apply each idea to a first grade classroom. There is so much relevance in Donalyn Miller's words and I didn't want to lose any of that in making the translation from her sixth grade classroom to my first grade one.

The first thing that Mrs. Miller wrote that really resonated with me was that ALL students are readers-they just have varying levels of readiness and interest. This is something that I see so much with my beginning readers! There are those that start off my year with an eagerness to read any book that they can get their hands on, and those that look like they might cry just from looking at the cover of a book. This last year I had the widest range of readers I have ever seen- some coming into my class as first graders reading on a third or fourth grade level (CRAZY!) and some that didn't even know their first 20 sight words.
Mrs. Miller's words spoke so much truth when she said that "Embracing their inner reader starts with students selecting their own books to read." She then goes on to say "Providing students with the opportunity to choose their own books to read empowers and encourages them." (Page 23)
This idea is SO important! In order to have the passion and drive to students, students need to be interested in what they are reading. This first step that we can make as primary teachers is allowing them the freedom to pick up the books that THEY want to read, not the books that WE want to put in their hands.

Throughout the next part of chapter 2, Mrs. Miller went on to introduce the three different trends that she sees in readers- developing readers, dormant readers, and underground readers.
As I was reading through this section, I couldn't help but think about how much POWER there would be in identifying readers in this way at such an early age-to truly see them for the readers that they are and learning how to encourage every type of reader to grow.

Developing readers- Reading this section truly struck me hard. Mrs. Miller calls attention to the fact that these readers are often the readers who are placed in remedial programs to help improve their reading-yet they are the readers who receive the least amount of time to actually just read! When I thought about those readers in my class last year, I couldn't help but think about how true that was. One thing that I want to make sure I apply from this book is her idea that these students need to have books in their hands MORE, not less than other students. Mrs. Miller says "What they need is support for where they are in their development and the chance to feel success as readers instead of experiencing reading failure. They also need to read and read." (Page 25) Want to make a non-reader a reader? Let them read!

Dormant readers- Growing up my younger sister didn't like to read. She was a strong reader and would read what she HAD to, but while I always loved curling up with a book for pleasure, she never did. One summer my mom asked me to "please help your sister love reading." And so I began my mission to find the books that would make my sister want to read. I vaguely remember a time when I would pick a book and sit and read a few chapters out loud before she would be interested enough to keep reading on her own. Eventually she started to see how much fun it was to get lost in the world of a good book. Once she found the right stories, there was no stopping her.Today my sister is one of the biggest book lovers I know. She works in a bookstore and has a library in her bedroom that might make even Belle jealous (A bookworm's obvious choice as best Disney princess)!
 This to me is what dormant readers are-they are the students that need us to help them learn to love reading. Mrs. Miller said it perfectly when she wrote, "dormant readers might become engaged readers if someone showed them that reading was engaging." (Page 28)

Underground readers- "While teachers scurry to support students who are still developing their reading skills and wonder what they can do to motivate the dormant readers who do not like to read, underground readers are a subset whose needs go unaddressed. These children are the ones who come into our classes as avid readers." (Page 30) I want to make it a goal this year to not let these students get away from me. I want to learn how to both encourage and challenge even the very best readers, to not leave them underground.

After going through the different types of readers, Mrs. Miller shares about what she has learned about conditions for learning. The factors that she notes on are: immersion, demonstrations, expectations, responsibility, employment, approximations, response, and engagement. While Mrs. Miller goes into more detail for each of these factors, I think her final words of this chapter sum it up well.

"We can spend hours determining what students should know and be able to do, crafting instruction to accomplish the desired results, but without considering students' right to an engaging, trustworthy, risk-free place in which to learn, what we teach will always fall short. Students must believe that they can read and that reading is worth learning how to do well. We have to build a community that embraces every student and provides acceptance and encouragement no matter where students are on the reading curve." (Page 37)

If you made it this far, then I'm glad you stuck with me. I get so excited about reading about reading that I could go on and on about it!
I am learning so much from this book and can't wait to keep reading and growing and working on finding ways to apply what I am learning to my kiddos next year.

If you are reading along, I can't wait to see what you have to say about chapter 2! Make sure you link up to share your thoughts!