Need a 2nd Pair of Eyes For This...

Happy New Year!

I had a super fun, but late night last night and spent today listening to the Lions get robbed lose against Green Bay while my husband watched it on TV and I worked on school stuff on the computer.

My 2nd graders will be beginning a unit on polygons when we return from break (on the 9th!!!!) and I have been working for the past five hours on polygon math workstation activities for them. I think I have some good stuff and I think it will all logistically work, but what I need is a 2nd (or 3rd even!) pair of eyes to look the packet over.

If you would do that, I would be so happy! Just leave me a comment with your e-mail and I'll send it out. The only thing is that I'm super impatient, so I'd love it if you could look it over and send me some feedback within the next day.

I'll be putting it on my Teacher's Notebook store with my other math workstations after I hear some feedback and make any necessary changes.

HOWEVER... I am putting one of the activities for free right here... but if you download it, please let me know if you think it will work. It makes sense in my head, but I'm not 100% sure that it will actually work like I think it will! Just click the pic below.
So, if you'd review the whole packet, let me know and if you download the game here, I'd love for you to tell me what you think and if you think it will work!

Phew! Off to retire to the couch for the rest of the night!

Thank You, Cassandra!!!!

About a month ago, I started compiling people's Christmas party ideas into a booklet to share and Cassandra suggested doing a hot chocolate bar.

I just want to send out a HUGE thank you to you, Cassandra, for the brilliant idea!

I planned to do one the last day we had school in December and had such a huge response from parents that I was able to share my hot chocolate bar with the entire first grade and we've decided to make it our new 1st grade tradition!

We set up a table with a hot water caraffe, the hot chocolate, and all the fixins' in the hallway between our three rooms. Each of us showed a different movie and the kiddos got to choose the one they wanted to view. While they were watching their movies, we called a few kids out at a time and they got to make their hot chocolate creations!

They LOVED it and every student who walked past in the hallway was green with envy (sorry guys!) for the fun thing we were doing!

So, thank you thank you thank you for sharing your idea!

Here are some pics of our delicious afternoon!
Ok- that's officially IT for 2011! Best wishes for a fun, safe night for everyone and an amazingly creative, educational new year!

Ring in the New Year and a New Sale at My Little Shop!

This is probably the last post for me of 2011...

Tomorrow we're having our annual New Year's Eve adult gathering, so I'll be making food and cleaning the house for the better part of the day!

So... things I'm thankful for in 2011:
*wonderful friends and family
*awesome trip to NYC this summer with my husband
*all the new bloggy friends I've met since starting this blog in June
*health, a job I love, and... of course... choreographed dancing and singing in all of the musicals I've seen this past year... I love them so!

Accomplishments:
*60 lbs. lost thanks to hard work and Weight Watchers! My new skinny jeans are feeling a bit snug after the holidays so it might be like 55 lbs. at this time, so 2012 will bring renewed dedication to health and weight loss for me
*I'm still honored to have been asked to present at the webinar for Marygrove College... so that goes on my list of accomplishments!

And, finally, goals for 2012:
*continue on the weight loss journey
*READ MORE!
*work to become more effective as a math teacher
*keep my house de-cluttered!

And there you have it! I hope you have all had a wonderful 2011 and I wish you a blessed 2012!

On a side note, my Teacher's Notebook store had the first 20 items on sale for 20% off until tomorrow... well, I've since added quite a bit more (with some good freebies!), so I'm putting EVERYTHING at 20% off until the 1st!

Click the pic below from the new "MEGA PACK" of classroom awards if you want to check the store out:

Have a safe and happy night tomorrow!!!!

School leak=Mess!

Fortunately, the leak wasn't in my room... but due to a leak before break, we are having some work done (which I didn't know about) and I went in to work today to find everything from under my sink piled on the floor... my top cabinets open with my stuff all shuffled around... and I'm working hard on "circles of control"... I'm sure you find this quite obvious hard to believe, but I have a hard time letting go of control. So, to find my things a mess was very disturbing to me... but it is out of my control... so I had to suck it up and get over it.

I took a deep breath and, believe it or not, I am now over it. I was looking forward to going in today and then just working on little things at home until going back on the 9th, but now I'll be heading in next week just to make sure my things are put away correctly!

Today I finished a huge undertaking that I've been working on for quite some time. Last year when I started teaching 1st grade, I wasn't really sure what to do with those "automaticity" charts that are pictured every Monday in my Treasure's teacher edition. This summer, I decided I would "quiz" my students on those words each week. Well, I found something similar to what I was looking for online and bought it, but it just wasn't "hitting the spot" like I wanted it to.

A few weeks ago, I made this for the current story we were working on:


and it worked perfectly! So I went ahead and started making them for the rest of the year and today I finished all the previous ones too!

I put it up for sale at my new Teacher's Notebook store, but will send a free copy to the first three people who leave a comment requesting one... be sure to leave your e-mail address! Keep in mind it is for the first grade Treasure's series! :)

If you want to check it out at my store, click the picture below:
All right... blog at ya later! :)

It's Official...!!!

I have taken the leap and have opened a shop on Teacher's Notebook! I am really excited about being able to share items with you on my blog, The Teaching Oasis, and Teacher's Notebook... right now I don't have a lot up, but there are a few freebies!

If you have a chance to check it out, let me know!

For a "grand opening", I currently only have 20 items listed, so I am offering 20% off the first 20 items in my shop until 12/31 while I work to bring new goodies in the coming year!!!!!!

I'm headed in to school tomorrow to do some much needed housekeeping and lesson planning for 2012! I'll be adding new items to my shop tomorrow night and next week!

PS- I hit 1200 followers today! Yippie!

Top Three of 2011

Mrs. Smith is having a fun linky party that required me to do a little stat-digging tonight to find my top three posts of all time. My blog was born over the summer and it blows my mind that my top three posts have so many views for being so young!

So, here they are:


The first one's popularity (Christmas Party Handbook) I attribute to Pinterest. My good friend Bethany over at My Special Education has told me at our last two Thursday get-togethers that she keeps getting so excited by the e-mail notifications that someone has re-pinned one of her pins... but when she goes to see what it is, it's the party handbook that I put together with everyone's party contributions in it! Seriously? 17,000 views?! That's crazy! I hope ya'll found some fun ideas to spice up your holiday parties!

I have gotten on my soap box many times about the Daily Five on my blog, so I'm not surprised about that one being second.

And, the third of the top three about Christmas Around the World picture books... I'm gonna go out on a limb and credit Pinterest with that one too!

So, what a fun linky party and a great way to see what's hot and what's not on my blog! :)

Look for something new this week... I spent the holiday sick on the couch with the stomach flu, started taking Christmas down today (I'm a Grinch, I know) and am hoping to have my house cleaned and back in order tomorrow. BUT... then I'll be working on school stuff, blog stuff, and an announcement related to teacher resources!

Until then... link up with Mrs. Smith! I'd love to see your Top 3 too!

A Quick Pic and Something Else...

Here's a picture of the "gingerbread ornaments" my kiddos made yesterday (if you saw my blog post about the smells in my room). We baked them yesterday and today we used acrylic paint to paint them. I am SO excited about how pretty they turned out!

And, I was featured in my local newspaper today... in full-color on the front page! I got interviewed last week due in large part to the webinar I did for Marygrove and a proud dad who called the paper to tell them I was doing it! (Gotta love dads!)

I am still so humbled to think that people actually care what I have to think and say about things! You can check out the article here. (And thanks, Patty, for the nice comment on my blog post from yesterday! I'm glad you saw the article!)

Christmas party tomorrow, PJ day & hot chocolate bar on Thursday... then done until 2012!

Blog at ya later! :)

The Smells from Room 10

Did that get your attention? Generally, my room just smells like a room full of 6, 7, and 8-year olds... which *fortunately* doesn't really smell like much. But, we've been having some tell-tale-holiday-smells for the past few days:

Last week we made our parent Christmas gifts- the reindeer ornaments and tissue-paper-covered-jar-luminaries which I have neglected to take a picture of.

So, for two days, my room smelled like aerosol sealant... And the hallway. And probably everyone else's rooms at my end of the building.

But... today... another smell came wafting out of my room. Something much more pleasant... gingerbread!

We read gingerbread books, compared and contrasted them, wrote about gingerbread characters, and made gingerbread play dough!

During the making of the play dough, I realized we should use the cookie cutters to each make and bake an ornament... so then that happened and the smells of warm cinnamon, ginger, and cloves wafted through the room... drawing many a curious nose into my classroom! :)

Tomorrow we're going to use acrylic paints to paint our ornaments which I will then seal with the aerosol... thus reverting back to the original smell of crafts and memories!

Check out the pictures from our work today!

Each group worked together to mix their dough... here's the recipe:
2 c. flour
1 c. salt
2 T. vegetable oil
1 c. water
3 t. each ground cloves, ginger, and cinnamon

Mix, mix, mix and then separate for each kid. After we played and cut out shapes, we bagged it to take home!

I brought in all of my Christmas cookie cutters and we made lots of shapes!

Then each kid chose one of their shapes and we baked them in my neighbor-teacher's little oven at 250 degrees for about 30 minutes. Don't forget to poke a hole in the top of each with a straw before baking!

Then we read Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett and went to the computer lab where we made these on ABCYa.com!

Tomorrow's agenda is more gingerbread stuff including making and eating cookies, lots of writing, painting our ornaments from today, spraying them with smelly stuff when the kids leave, and then I'll be prepping for our Christmas party on Wednesday!

Have a great week!

Yes... I'm here... Marygrove, Lions, and Christmas!

This blog has been a ghost town lately!

I have been super swamped, but just wanted to pop on to say that Marygrove College has...

INTERRUPTION!

The Lions just got a touchdown to be a point ahead of Oakland!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok. I'm re-focused.

Marygrove has posted two blog posts that I guest blogged for them answering some of the questions I received after last weekend's webinar about having students set and chart their own oral reading fluency growth goals.

I hope you'll go check them out and add any other questions you might have in the comments!

You can HERE to head over.

On a side note, if you're looking for something fun and educational to get your students through the next week of school, check out my freebies for Christmas Around the World over at my website by clicking the text or right HERE!

Gotta go watch the last few seconds of the game... Go LIONS!

What We Did Today... And a Plea for Ideas to Keep My Students SANE!

...it was such a Tuesday today!

We did our best, but the threat of losing our snow, getting tons of rain, still having another week and a half before break, and Christmas around the corner make Room 10 a craaaaazy place to be right now!

However, we did do part 1 of our parent gifts today... a totally Pinterest inspired project:


This was super easy! Each kid used acrylic paint to do several thumb prints on their ornament. Before they arrived today, I used a white paint pen to write their name and "2011" on the bottom of each. I also attached the ribbon. Then, this afternoon, they drew the antlers, eyes, and smiles on with a black Sharpie and we used red glitter acrylic paint for the noses. They used Q-tips to put those on. Then I sprayed them with Mod Podge sealer when they were dry! They turned out super cute!

PS- that is a laundry drying rack that I bought at Wal-Mart for about $7.00. Each kid has a clothespin with their "number" on it and we hang out art to dry from the rack! Today we hung our ornaments after we painted them... worked PERFECTLY!

AND... I found this website a few weeks ago on someone's blog... so I signed up and we did the dinosaur adventure today. It was a welcome way to get our energy out, learn a little about dinosaurs, and get some exercise too. I even did it with my kiddos... and admit it was a little bit of a workout! You should check it out. It's free and fun!

How are you all keeping your students sane...? Or are they all crazy right now? When are you done for the year? We go until the 22nd, which seems terrible BUT I'm really looking forward to not starting back until mid-January! Having so much time after Christmas and New Years to relax and enjoy will be wonderful!'

Thanks, Finally in First, for hosting a linky party about student Christmas gifts!