Happy Valentine's Day!

Part of the fun of being a teacher is that you get to relive fun traditions that were part of your childhood.  Making these Valentine's cards made me think about all the little Valentine's cards I made/bought over the years and the class parties we had.

It was all about googly eyes this year!  

The little heart ornaments were from Joann's and I'm attaching 

a pencil to each one.

For my two awesome 1st grade colleagues!

For my kiddos!

The 100th Day of School

Finally...it arrived!

Every K, 1 and 2 teacher knows about the time honored tradition of celebrating the 100th day of school.  I've been teaching for 14 years now but I had no clue about it until year 6, when I started teaching second grade in English.  My first five years were spent teaching all in French at a French Immersion school in Edina, Minnesota.  We never kept track of the days of school and certainly didn't celebrate the 100th day.  But now I know and now it really is a fun tradition.

Map of My Heart

Valentine's Day is this week and I've seen this idea floating around and put my own spin on it.  Kids visually represent (through coloring and a "key") what they love and how much they love it (how much space it takes up in the heart).

I think this is such a fun, non-mushy way to celebrate Valentine's Day.

Download the activity here:

Freebie Friday

I'm linking up again with Charity over at


to bring you a free Readers' Theater script called Moose's Loose Tooth. February is Dental Health Month and animals have teeth too :) This cute play is based on the book by Jacqueline A. Clark and is about a moose whose loose tooth just won't come out but he wants a visit from the Tooth Fairy.
You can download the script here:

SmartBoard Freebie

It's Monday morning so I'm linking up with Charity again over at:

I love my SmartBoard!  No, I LOVE my SmartBoard!

I do soooooo much of my teaching with that wonderful piece of technologic magic!  I have created oodles of lessons with it and need to start putting more of them online to share with others.  Here is one about antonyms, which came up in our reading curriculum recently.

You can get it by clicking below.

Themed Writing Journals

I'm linking up with Tara again to share what I've been working on this weekend:

About 2 weeks ago, I met with some 1st grade colleagues that get together once a month to share ideas.  Our focus was writing and one of the teachers pulled out these notebooks she'd made for kids to write in.  Each notebook had a different "theme".  She printed a cute cover and glued it to the outside of the notebook and VOILA my brain started racing!  This is the thing I've been searching for to answer the age old question: What do kids do who have finished their writing but I'm still helping other kids and there is still time left?

I'm going to have them go write in one of these journals!

I'm going to introduce them this week and already this past weekend, I've done two things (like climb a "snow mountain" with my daughter & make potato soup) that I want to write about in one of these journals.  So I think I'll write about those two things and share it in the Author's Chair as an introduction to the whole thing!

Go take a peek at the whole pack by clicking here.

Parent-Teacher Conferences

Our second set of conferences falls in mid-February.  Like fall conferences, I send home an invite and then wait to collect them all back to see if 

the time I chose for them works for them.

But I stumbled upon a great website that allows you to set up an online sign-up that not only saves trees but also saves you time.

www.ptcfast.com

I've already had some parents sign up and they say it's easy, fast and a great idea!  Gotta love technology :)