It's 'ight

 We are working on the "ight" family this week and I need a cutesie pie way for my kids to remember this strategy so we have the Mighty Fighting Light Man! Get your for FREE at my teachers pay teachers store.

Money Center

Thank you to Mary at Pitner's Potpourri http://pitnerm.blogspot.com/2012/01/wallet-war-freebie.html Because of her I was able to adapt her FREE wallet war idea for my first graders. Kids play the game like traditional war except for they count the value of the coins on their card. The player having the highest value of coins keeps both cards!


I hope that you enjoy this freebie. Visit my teachers pay teacher story to download for free!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Signup?ref=MrsNewp

Whattttt! Tomorrow my little darlings get the day off and I get to prepare for report cards. Actually I am feeling so lucky to have this day!

Over the next couple of weeks I plan to work on a big unit! More to come about our tadpoles and frogs unit! I am verrrry excited for this by the way! Stay tuned...


In other news I made one of the most amazing discoveries while pinteresting today. As my hubs would say it was SO PINteresting. http://classroom.booksource.com/ This site - no joke is one of the most valuable things I have ever found. After creating a free account, download the app. to your smart phone (also free). Using the app. you can scan the barcodes of any books in your classroom library and it puts them into a database. Your kids can then checkout books by entering the title or ISBN number on the computer in the classroom. It keeps track of books they read, take home, and how often they are checking out books. Another fab side to this is it tracks the level of books they are reading. This is especially useful with firsties who have a difficult time choosing those just right books. A problem I am sure we all have.

Reading Strategy Posters

The original beanie baby reading strategy posters were wonderful but were much too big for me to post them all together without taking up extra space. Plus, my kids must have cutesie pie pictures to help them really remember the strategy. I hope you enjoy this little freebie! Click the link just below the picture to grab yours for free.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Small-beanie-baby-inspired-strategy-posters

Goooodness Gracious

It has been FOREVER since I have blogged. There are too many amazing blogs out there filling my mind with FABulous ideas that I can't seem to find time to maintain my own blog. 


Anywho magoo I have to share my purchase with all who are willing to listen. My incredible hubs bought me a Canon T3i SLR camera for Valentine's Day and I could not be more happy with the results! Conner on the other hand is sick and tired of all the pics I am snappin'. 

Classroom Library

I feel like this is really my first BIG post. It has been a few days since I have been blogging (on my own site anyway) so here it is.....

I have been trying to rejuvenate my classroom library and make it just perfect for my little firsties! Of course I do the 5 finger rule and just right books lessons at the beginning of the year but as we all know the majority of the time kids just aren't that great at choosing books that are right for them. 

In my classroom I have a section of my library that is organized by genre/theme and another smaller section that is organized by level. When choosing books I tell kids that they may have 3 books from the general classroom library but that they must also choose 3 books from the basket that I assign them to. This way they always have books that are at their level while still in control of making their own reading choices!

This week I worked on creating new basket labels and new sticky labels for my books! I hope that you find them useful. I am going to post the PDF and the word document. This way if you need to revise them in anyway to make them usable for your classroom you can! Happy blogging!

https://docs.google.com/?tab=mo&authuser=0&pli=1#folders/0B_24NnvDRkqcYjI2MGIzZTYtMzNjMS00ZjFjLThlYjQtNjA3ZDI3NGZhMWZj

Ahhh weekends

I feel like I only look forward to the weekend so that I can get some work done in my classroom! :) Is that sad?? I just love being all alone in the school for those few hours early Saturday morning. Being able to complete more in those few short hours that I have all week long feels nothing short of wonderful. 


Today I finished up my bulletin board. (Well I still need to add the little froggies to each clothes pen with their names). I also hung up my classroom sign that I made. I need to get their silly face class picture in it but it is oh so cute. It feels great to do some fun stuff-- really making the classroom my own!

Let me know what you think!