It's a SALE!

I've just uploaded 6 new products to my TpT Store!  I will be posting about them later this week but in the meantime, I'm throwing an End of the Quarter Sale!  Stop by my store to get your shop on!  You'll get 20% off of all the digital products in my store this Saturday and Sunday ONLY!  Enjoy!

Click here to visit my store!

DOUGHNUTS

Cue the rainbows, unicorns, and angels singing!

We've been working on getting these doughnuts for 4 weeks and yesterday was the day!  Every time the whole class earned a compliment from an adult for good behavior at any point during the day we crossed a letter off of DOUGHNUTS.  My students have gotten compliments for great behavior before school as they were reading in the hallway, for walking in straight lines, following directions during lunch, and being good listeners during resource classes!

Yesterday was one of the best compliments so far, not only because it was the last they needed to make me pick up my keys to hit the double D during lunch but because it was a totally genuine compliment!

Let me set the mood:
We were sitting in the classroom getting ready to do some word building.  Everyone was in their seat cutting out their letters quietly as we were jamming out HM main story songs "A girl found a mouse inside of her house, she wanted that mouse out of her house and she said EEK!"

Anyone else feel my pain?

Just a little?

Nope?

Ok, back to the story....so we were working away and the door happened to be open.  We all heard a teacher in the hall say "Look at Ms. Ehlinger's class when we walk by, they're always doing their work and following directions."  I looked up just in time to see big smiles as the realization that we'd just overheard a really sweet compliment and it was the last one we needed!

So we had doughnuts with sprinkles before we went home and decided our next compliment goal will be RING POP PARTY!

Where The Wild Things Are

Last week we retold Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak to focus on retelling and sequencing.  After reading the story one time students illustrated their favorite part and then we put them in the proper sequence.  Students noticed that some of the important events were missing so we left spaces on the paper to fill them in later.

The following day we filled in the missing illustrations and completed a shared writing to retell the story.  Once we completed our shared writing we read our retelling to check for missing information and hung it in the hallway.

Finally, students cut out strips sequenced and glued them down.  When they finished sequencing they illustrated their favorite part and we hung them all in the hallway for everyone to see!

We ended our Where The Wild Things Are week watching a reading on YouTube:

Fishing Pole Galore

48

That's my magic number today, 48 fishing poles.  Painted, decorated, assembled, photographed, diptic'd, instagramed, and posted on Etsy.  It's been a busy week!

I'm running the iOS6 update on my phone and cuddling up with a 2 inch stack of baseline tests and weekly assessments to grade.  Grading tests is both enlightening and depressing.

To ease my enlightened depression I'm going to share pictures of my newest batch of fishing poles!  I really love how they turned out!  Please feel free to share them, pin them, post pictures on all the stop signs in your neighborhood and/or at your local Target.  Help a sista out!

Click here to see the green magnetic fishing poles!

Click here to see the orange magnetic fishing poles!

Click here to see the yellow magnetic fishing poles!

Supplementary Worksheets

Teachers are always looking for ways to supplement their curriculum.  Ways to engage their students and provide additional practice with the skills and strategies that they are working on.

I'm not a big fan of worksheets but last year I started making a worksheet each week for my students to do either during skills block, morning work, or as homework.  They practice basic skills like handwriting, rhyming, or ABC order as well as the comprehension skill or strategy that we are working on that week.  Our district provides us with Houghton Mifflin teaching materials so my worksheets are themed around their main stories each week.  I wanted to share a couple of the worksheets I created for theme 1 with you for free!  They are available in my TpT store.

Theme 1, Week 1-Mac the Cat

Theme 1, Week 3-Pigs in a Rig

I will be packaging and posting worksheets for themes 2-10 over the next few weeks.  If you happen to use HM, teach first grade, like jelly beans, and want some awesome supplemental worksheets please check them out in my TpT store!

I just finished editing and posting Theme 2 Supplemental Worksheets!  They are available in my TpT store for $1.50!  Here's a little peek....

Just a little something for the Mom's and Dad's...

I just stumbled across this video and really felt the need to share it with all you Parent's out there, especially the Mom's and Pop's in my class :)

Enjoy!

Birthday Bucket

I'm the worst about birthdays.  I know my students have birthdays and I know they're excited about them because on the first day of school they inform me that their birthday is February 22nd.  Then, everyday...every....single...day, they remind me that their birthday is February 22nd.

I love that their Mama's birthed them on that special day and I only get annoyed about their daily reminders once a day, when they remind me.

In the past I've just never seemed to get around to making it a special thing in the classroom because there are just so many other things.

SO. MANY. OTHER. THINGS.

This year I decided to make their birthdays a little more special.  I posted their name and birthdate on yellow and orange circles around my calendar (no picture, sorry, I'm lame).

We also have a Birthday Bucket!  They get so excited about this!  When they come in and the bucket isn't on top of the T.V. I hear them say, "Gasp, she took the birthday bucket down!  It's someone's birthday!"

Inside are a whole bunch of treats to choose from so it's like going to the treasure chest just because you were born.  Which reinforces the fact that I am the greatest teacher in these United States.  It's so easy to make kids happy :)

This is what it usually looks like sitting on top of the T.V.

So on their birthday they get to wear the birthday glasses, pick a treat out of the bucket, and make a foldable birthday book (I got the birthday flippy book from Bunting, Books, and Bainbridge).

B.A. celebrating his birthday this past Friday.

I introduced the Birthday Bucket during the first Friday back and we celebrated the summer birthdays since they always miss out on the class celebrations!  It's been a lot of fun and really easy to incorporate so this Birthday Bucket might be a keeper!