Monday highlights

Today was actually a pretty good Monday....nothing major to write home about....my mom went back to Colorado, so boooooo on that! But other than that, it was a pretty good day.

Just a few pictures today to show you some highlights of my day.

We got our school pictures.....here's mine. Not my favorite one, but not my worst. My mom says I actually look like a teacher in this one though, whatever THAT means. ha!!

I am LOVING my little bulletin board!  (and by little, I DO mean little...)

It's donning Hadar's Pumpkin Glyphs and the Fall tree, which I LOOOOVE that our art teacher did in art with my kiddos!  Our pumpkin seed plants are also hanging out there...waiting to sprout!

Today was the start of a new number for our Numbers Every Day folders.  Check out that clue that I gave them to figure out the number for the week!! I had some rockstars in my class who got it! woo!

One of my kids made me laugh so hard today...I have 2 listening centers - one is on a CD player and the other one (this week) is on the tape player....I stood behind this little girl for about a minute and watched her, just staring at it. Then she finally looks up at me and goes "Umm....Mrs. Ross.....how do you work this thing?!?!" in the most sweetest, innocent sound you could ever hear...it just cracked me up!  Ancient technology at its finest, right!?

And one last picture....Mondays we start in on our vocabulary words for the week (we also have others, but these are the ones we focus on using in our speaking and writing)....the kids LOVE doing our vocabulary journals! Check them out in {THIS} post.

Well, I'm off to fall asleep watching the Kelly and Michael show....anyone else watch that?! I love it! The only daytime show that I have to record! I just love Michael's personality and I'm somewhat in awe of Kelly...lol...I want to be like her when I grow up!

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Last week in review - with a freebie!

I'm a little behind in showing you what we've been up to...here are some highlights from LAST week. (woops!)

Our story in the reading series was part of Henry and Mudge. I know, I know, I don't usually use the reading series, but since I love Henry and Mudge, I wanted to do this one....

We worked on Author's Word Choice in our Reader's notebook by using adjectives to describe Mudge (he's SO cute, isn't he???) You can download him HERE.

Then they wrote a sentence using a few of the words from our web.

They're "test" that week was to show me how well they could sequence, and I wanted them to PROVE to me where they found the "answer."  Do any of you remember the 10 Important Sentences from the Scott Foresman series (that was like 3 series ago for us)??? Well, I didn't really like how they had the sentences already in order, so I always mixed them up and then had the kids put them in order. So that's what I did with this....my teaching partner found a cute idea online somewhere (I couldn't find the site again, so if it's yours let me know!) so I made one for our book. They had to put the sentences in order, and once they finally did that, then I let them do the cute part of the activity. Trust me, it was a good way to see who could do this and who needed more practice. 

But didn't they turn out soooo cute??

Click HERE for the sequencing activity freebie.

It was our first week in our spelling, so we dove into our phonics notebooks too. 

We wrote our spelling words in the notebook, and then throughout the week, we added more words that fit the rules.

We also wrote our sight words in the dictionary part.

Checkout my phonics notebook at 

 my TpT store

my TN store
Shop on the Blog

We've also been digging into our poetry journal.

Last week, we did a poem from one of my favorite phonics poetry books...

I retype the poems so that they can't see all the words with the phonics skill (they're bolded in the book), and they glue it into their poetry journal. We practice it all week; whole group, shoulder partners, around the world, individual, whatever, just to keep getting better at it. We highlight the words that follow the phonics rule for the week, and we also circled the words that rhyme - so we can find rhythm and repetition 

*common core! Then I have them illustrate what they visualize while they read the poem (which is another reason I retype it because it also has a picture...lol).

We've also been working a lot in math, and in my math tubs for each group is a few deck of cards, and boy have we been using them! One way is for place value!

Check out my Deck of Cards pack on THIS post - it shows how I keep it all organized!

Today was my baby girl's birthday - she turned 4 years old today!! She came to have lunch with me at work today - happy birthday pumpkin!!

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What we've been up to and a Video Tutorial: Re-sizing Clip Art

you know - it ALWAYS happens!

There are times when I don't really have anything to post and I RACK my brain trying to think of something to share with you...lol

and then other times??? I have SOOOO many ideas and thought to share, that I can't ever seem to get caught up....

But first, I wanted to say THANK YOU for all the love on my Monday Menu post yesterday :)

I'll be sure to show you another recipe next Monday.

Back to school.

So here's our writing we did on our first week back...

They had to write about their favorite memory, something they learned, and what they HOPE to learn in 2013, with a starter and closing sentence, of course. Then, we used the (only PART of) patterns I found from The Glyph Girls freebie - check it out HERE

In math, last week, we moved into learning about hundreds place

They are so good now that I give them a mystery number like this:

6+800+40

and they can tell me, without even thinking about it, that it is 846!

I'm super proud!!!

so, we've changed out the sheets in our Number of the Day folder that we do....

Check out my pack 

And we've been reviewing rounding - one of their centers has been my Rounding with Jack and Jill

Check out my pack 

Moving on to Reading centers....

This week is a review week, so for their word wall center, I wanted for them to do something different...

but first, I want to show you how well I'm keeping up with my word wall!!

I'm SOOO proud of myself!!

Over the summer, one of my goals was to work on my word wall...that was ALWAYS my weakest link. I sent out an S.O.S and so many blogging friends came to my rescue!!

Lori sent me a picture of her word wall, and I LOVED it, so I decided to go forth with it, and I love it!

My only problem is that since i don't have any wall space, I had to use the space under my wall, and I'm VERY QUICKLY running out of space... in fact, I HAVE run out of space for some of the letters...

So I think I'm going ot have to take some down, but I really don't want to because we refer to it ALL the time when we write....

Any suggestions?!??! I really am stumped...

Anyway, for one of their reading centers, I gave them graph paper, and they had to write the words, correctly with tails and hats (what do you call them??) taking up TWO boxes and the "shorts" taking up only one box. Then, outlining them like the words on are on the word wall. Apparently, this is a harder skill than I thought it was going to be, because I've had to have most of the ones who have done it already, redo it...lol

I'll do this again when we get to perimeter, so they can find the perimeter of the words. But we're not there yet.

And one of the other centers I wanted to share with you was a great find! It's from Michelle, over at Teach123 - it's her Arctic version of Read, Trace, Draw (check it out in my visual plans post)

I think I'm addicted to these now - haha! I might need them for all the "seasons."

and ONE last thing!

I had such great "reviews" from my last video - on how to insert your name on a picture for your blog, that I am doing another one for something I get asked a lot. 

HOW do you resize your clip art on your products so it doesn't look like this....

or this....

poor kitty - sorry Ashley!

(but thank you for making such a CUTE kitty!)

So here it is, a quick video tutorial on how to resize clip art - there are few different tricks I show you, so check it out, and let me know what you think!

Re-sizing the clip art to keep it from "squishing."

Want to see more techy posts?? go check out my girl Katie's Linky party!

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Place Value, Drugs, and Pho-tog!

Hey y'all!  Quick post tonight...

Just wanted to share a few things with you...

First - 

I'm STILL having some difficulties with some of my kids knowing which is the tens and which is the ones place...ugh!!

SO...I "whipped" up this little doo-dad...it mixes up the tens and ones so they really have to think about it...

Then, they color in the Mystery picture on the chart using the color key at the bottom...

and it SHOULD look like this...

when I had my kids do it, I had made a few mistakes...hehe...so the there were yellow eyes on the outside and the mouth was wackadoo...lol.

Oh well..it SHOULD be fixed now/

click the pix to get your copy...

AND...

here's our Red Ribbon Week "door" contest...

I say "door" because I have an outside door...so I'm not decorating that - yeah right..ha!

So, I just did the wall space in the hallway.

Aren't they SUPER cute?!?! I LOVE them!!

Where did I get them??

Why from Hadar, of course!!

(I'm sure you know her as Miss Kindergarten)

Click the pic to go check her monster craft out!

And I leave you with some pho-tog moments...

Farley (Oh Boy 4th Grade) showed a picture of her hat day on her FB page, so I thought I would show you mine (this was from yesterday)....

that's B trying to steal my hat...

of course I let her...

and I got THIS awesome pic!!

Just MELT. My. HEART...

And today, we attempted to go to the "pumpkin patch" (Florida style)

Love my girls!

Ok - laters!

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Ladybugs and Raining Numbers!

Sorry I've been MIA all weekend - Hubs worked ALLLLL weekend long, so the girls and I HAD to get out of the house - so we went BACK to the zoo to see the Dinos!!

and then had an impromptu beach trip

and went to one of my bestie's baby shower

and then A decided she was so tired from all the fun...hehe

hehe - I have LOTS of cute pictures...but I won't bore you with them...

Instead, I'll bore you with some school pics! ha!

Friday, we released our ladybugs that had finally "hatched" (can I tell you the REAL reason we released them was because I saw baby cucarachas in the "house!" ahhhh!!!)

Don't mind my "still chewing on them" nails...bleh!

Kelley asked me before, and I thought it'd be a good question to answer "out loud" - Where do you get your ladybugs??

insectlore.com

 I also get my caterpillars, ants, shrimp, praying mantis, etc there! Yes - I really have gotten all that before - ha! I really do love having my kiddos have that first-hand experience - oooh!! The chicks are hatching this week too!!!

And real quick, I want to show what I did in small groups last week - we've been working on 4-digit numbers. So we're analyzing them, doing all sorts of fun stuff with them - lol. 

sorry - computer won't upload it the correct way :-/

This is one of activities I use a deck of cards as my "random number generator." The kids are so funny - they actually call my deck of cards that - ha!!

These are in my new pack I just uploaded...

This packet has the option for the students to analyze 2, 3, and/or 4 digit numbers!

Great for differentiating instruction - or for the whole class to use to practice the place value on which you are working.

Included are posters and number cards (should you not have a deck of cards). There are 3 different analyzing sheets for the students to write on, and 2 different crafts to either copy off onto construction paper or you can make tracers out of them.

Click to get it on TpT or TN

 Ok, I must go prepare for my week - and did I mention I'm SOOOO behind on blog stalking - AGAIN! grrrrrr...

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