Better late than never... December in Pictures!

Well, HELLO there!!  It has been way too long since my last post and my sincere apologies for that! Many FUN and EXCITING things have happened and I must admit that I have been a little preoccupied....  On December 21st, I became engaged!!!!  Kevin and I are over the moon and excited for this next chapter in our lives!  For those who may be reading and not know our story... the short version is that we met at a mutual friend's wedding and danced the night away! We even have a few pictures from that first night and they are included in the collage below!  :)

I thought that this blog post would be more of an "at a glance" type post, sharing the highlights of my classroom from December.

This bulletin board was inspired by the Stocking Stuffers community building activity over at TGIF! - Thank God It's First!  One of my team members, Shelley, shared this resource with me and it was an absolute gem! My firsties really loved this activity and the idea of getting special "holiday mail" from their classmates. As a teacher, it was awesome to witness the time and effort each student was putting forth to write a special and cheerful note to each one of their classmates.

Are your students as obsessed with Legos as mine are?!  As we approached the holiday break, I realized that my students needed a little more motivation to stay on task and engage in expected classroom behaviors... who's didn't?!?  Ha!  With that, I decided that getting our own class set of Legos and borrowing more from a teacher friend in the building would be just the right incentive for my firsties and help me keep my sanity until the holiday break arrived!  :)

(P.S.... it worked!!)

This picture was taken the night before our "special delivery" arrived!  This was my first year having a classroom elf and so I borrowed many of the ideas outlined on Kreative in Kinder's: The Elf is BACK! post.  Her post was great was a "first timer" and I was all over the idea to put the elf in the freezer the night before and when I got to school the morning of his debut!  My firsties absolutely LOVED feeling the cold package before we opened our special delivery!!

After taking a vote shortly after our class elf's arrival, he became known as Chippey (just like the elf from the DVD) and he certainly did not waste any time engaging in mischief around our classroom.  The picture above is just one of the many #Elfcapades of Chippey!  I will never forget my firsties' faces each morning as they arrived to see what new mischief Chippey had been up to during the night.

Here are a few more of his #Elfcapades!

Annnd, the grand finale.... Chippey TP'd our classroom on the last day before break!

One of the last days before break was Polar Express PJ Day!  I snapped this photo before the kiddos arrived and gave it the caption: "Starbucks & wearing your PJs to school...winning!"  :)

Thanks for stopping by!  It's oh-so-good to be back!! 

New TpT product .... Visualizing Illustration Sheets

The finishing touches on my latest Teachers Pay Teachers product were made while still in my PJ's and enjoying my coffee this morning!  

( That's allowed.  I'm on Thanksgiving break, remember?! Ha! )  

The product - Visualizing Illustration Sheets - can now be found in my TpT store.

This product was created to supplement our Visualizing Unit in reading this year.  My students have really enjoyed sketching out mental images in their mind as I read to them or as they read independently and then using these illustration pages to help their mental images come to life on paper.  These pages have also served as good conversation starters when reading a story whole group and sharing the variety of mental images created by each of the students, noting the similarities and the differences between them.

As we have moved through our reading curriculum, my students have really bought into the strategy of "making connections" to the stories and texts being introduced and read.  They are SO eager to share their text-to-self and text-to-text connections and thinking with me and their friends.  When first introducing visualizing as a reading strategy, I piggy-backed off of the making connections strategy already in place...modeling and sharing with my firsties that sketching and painting mental pictures in my mind also helps me to "connect" with the story and become a more engaged and growing reader.  With the help of the visualizing illustration pages and relating this strategy back to our "being a scientist skills" - using our 5 senses - my firsties are becoming more involved in the stories we read together and those they read independently.  They have also enjoyed using the illustration pages as a way to showcase their creative mental images and share them with their classmates.  I just love it!

Be sure to stop by my TpT store to check out the Visualizing Illustration Sheets!  I certainly hope they will serve as a great supplemental resource for you and your students!  

Thanks for stopping by!  Enjoy your day!  

Milestone Monday!

Hi friends and followers!  Happy Monday!  Today is just a little extra special... not only because I am enjoying the day off for Thanksgiving break, BUT also due in large part to the fact that I have achieved a milestone with my Ms. Gartman goes to First Grade Facebook page!!  

Drum roll, please ..... that's right, folks - I have reached 100 likes!! Whoop, whoop! 

(Insert happy dance here)

Thanks so much to my friends, colleagues, and fellow bloggers for your support and virtual love!  Y'all are awesome!  Although this blog is more of a hobby and live journal than anything else, those 100 likes sure help to motivate and encourage me to just keep calm and blog on!

// Photo retrieved from Reviews from a Bookworm //

Here's to 100 likes and counting.... !!

New TpT product ... Hungry Alligator!

Hello all!  I hope your week is off to an awesome start!  I am enjoying my last day of a mini-vacation (spent several days in the Blue Ridge mountains with my parents... #happyheart) and have certainly made the most of it.  Between unpacking, doing household chores and preparing for the week ahead - I managed to find time to finish up my latest TpT product... Hungry Alligator! 

Earlier in the school year, my students were introduced to Hungry Alligator and have enjoyed incorporating his "Chomp, chomp!" into any comparing numbers situation.  The amount of fun my firsties had was definitely the motivation behind the creation of this product in hopes that other kiddos would have as much F-U-N as we did learning about and practicing comparing numbers.

Swing by my TpT store to check out Hungry Alligator as well as my other products!  Thanks for stopping by and cheers (or, "chomp, chomp!") to a fabulous rest of the week!  

This is Halloween, this is Halloween!

Hi friends and followers!  And, hello November!  But, before we get carried away with pilgrims, turkeys, cornucopias, pumpkin pie, Charlie Brown and all things Thanksgiving - I want to share some of the highlights from my classroom during the week of Halloween.  In two words, our week was "terrifying-ly terrific!"  

To kick off our week, I made googly eye reading sticks for my firsties to use during their read-to-self and buddy reading time!  If I had known that a popsicle stick, googly eye, and a little bit of hot glue would excite my students as much as it did last week, sheeesh, I would have done it weeks ago!  Ha!  I may just have to come up with another themed reading stick for Thanksgiving!  Any ideas?! 

Not only was it the week of Halloween, but our school was also celebrating Red Ribbon Week!  Talk about b-u-s-y and FUN!  Red Ribbon Week was punctuated by "Be Super, Be Healthy - Super Hero Day."  How perfect for Halloween... especially for a team of first grade teachers who do not need much of a reason to dress up for a theme!  Check out my SUPER team of awesome teachers!

Above:  Pretty Super Heroes

{From left to right: Minnette, Ashley, Ann Elizabeth, Me, Haley, and Shelley}

// Photo credit: Haley //

Above:   Strong Super Heroes

{From left to right: Minnette, Ashley, Ann Elizabeth, Me, Haley, and Shelley}

// Photo credit: Haley //

Didn't they all do an awesome job with their costumes?  It's hard to tell the details of my shirt and skirt in these pictures, so I posted separate product pictures and links below.  I actually wore this outfit to my Nerdy 30 birthday party in February...LOVE it!

Marvel Super Heroes Vintage T-shirt: I Heart Men in Uniform 

Marvel Avengers Comic Book fabric skirt (made to order from Etsy by NerdAlertCreations)

Black Star Panythose from Party City

Once the students arrived, it was time to hit the ground running with all of our Spooky Fun Friday activities!  As I was in the planning stages of Halloween week, I came across this AWESOME Pumpkin Mini-unit freebie by Nicole Ricca posted on TpT.  This freebie includes so many fun activities related to pumpkins accompanied by book suggestions, lesson plans, and printables!  What a gem this was to find!  Thank you so much Mrs. Ricca for sharing such a thorough, fun, and FREE resource in your store!  I am now one of your newest followers!!  :-) 

 

Before we started our Pumpkin Investigation from Mrs. Ricca's mini-unit (pgs. 8 - 11), I read "How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?" to my firsties.  A few weeks ago I introduced a Counting Collections mini-math unit to my students following a district-wide math training and this book was actually mentioned by one of the training facilitators.  Since we had already spent several days sharing our mathematical thinking and strategies used for counting collections of objects, my students really enjoyed seeing many of their ideas expressed and illustrated in this book.   

Following the reading of the book, we engaged in a book discussion and students were able to share their thinking about the book and how the characters went about making predictions about the number seeds as well as the strategies they used for counting the seeds (i.e., counting by singles, 2s, 5s, and 10s).  Again, I felt like this discussion had a little more depth due to our previous lessons on Counting Collections.  Yay, they had been listening!  As we concluded our book discussion, my firsties were excited to investigate their pumpkins and put their own counting strategies to use.

Each table was assigned a pumpkin and we used the Pumpkin Investigation page from the Pumpkin Mini-unit freebie by Nicole Ricca on TpT.  You have to stop by her store and grab this freebie!

Below you will see the 5 different pumpkins we investigated.  One of my super sweet room Moms donated all 5 pumpkins to our class... how generous what that!  I would definitely recommend using small to medium sized pumpkins - they are much easier to cut open and just the right size for this age group.  This picture collage shows several of the tables working together to deseed the pumpkins and conduct their investigation about pumpkin size, height, characteristics (i.e.,. float vs. sink; lines/ridges), and total seed count.  This was all very time consuming and a little messy, but we had an absolute blast!  Some students even shared that they had never deseeded or carved a pumpkin...and this was their very FIRST time!  What a special memory for them to make!  Loved it!

Here's a snapshot taken from the float vs. sink part of our pumpkin investigation.  For the record, each of the pumpkins floated!
  

The "investigation" of our pumpkins will not stop just because Halloween is over.  On Monday, we placed the pumpkins in our classroom garden bed and will watch the pumpkins decompose and turn into a rich fertilizer for the Swiss chard plants we are growing and harvesting.  To say that the kiddos are really pumped about watching this process would be an understatement!  I am so excited and proud of how much interest they are showing in pretty much EVERYTHING!  #luckyteacher

Thanks again for stopping by!  Have a great week and hello November!

// Photo courtesy of Free Internet Pictures //

#perksofa3dayweekend

So this past weekend was a 3-day one for my school district!  Boy, oh boy!!  I was super excited for an extra day to sleep in, get my house in order, and.... drum roll, open up my own TpT store.  Check out my post - I'm a teacher-preneur - to see my first FREEBIE product!

With all of this "extra" time (what's that?!) on my hands this weekend, I decided to revamp some old files and create some new TpT products.  As geeky as it sounds (For those that don't know me, I had a Nerdy 30 birthday party this year so I'm all about calling myself out on a "nerd alert"!  Ha!), I really enjoyed figuring out how to re-create my old files and make them "TpT worthy" (not a real thing, but kind of a real thing).  I literally spent a couple of hours learning how to use and incorporate clipart, borders, fonts, fair use policies, PowerPoint gadgets, the list goes on.  I had a blast!

I've included the cover pages of my two newest products below.  Click on each picture for a direct link to it in my TpT store.

 
This product contains 2 PDF versions of a mini-quiz on basic hurricane unit content.  One version, contains 10 varying types of questions on the content of this unit.  The second is an accommodated version I created for a former student with an IEP, containing 5 questions and a reduced number of answer choices.  An answer key is also provided for each version of the quiz.

This 10-question quiz covers content related to a unit on the earth, moon, and sun.  Multiple choice and true/false questions are found in this assessment.  An answer key is also provided.

I really like how the cover page of the Earth, Moon, and Sun quiz turned out.  It may even inspire me to create some sort of product bundle in the near future.  Maybe?!

// Credits for clipart, fonts, and borders can be found on each product's TpT store page. //

Thanks again for stopping by!  I even hope it leads you to my "baby TpT store" from time to time.  Suggestions, comments, and questions are always welcome via email: msgartmangoestofirstgrade@gmail.com.

Have a great week!! 

I'm a teacher-preneur!

Hi friends and followers!  I'm super excited to announce that I have officially opened up a Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) store!  Thanks to the encouragement from my colleagues and, not to mention, a much needed 3-day weekend (whoop, whoop!).... I made the decision to open a store and posted my first freebie product today! (Insert happy dance here.)

Just like this blog, my TpT store is still a work in progress but it's a start! If you've read my previous post - Building Community & Character - you may remember this product.  I decided to start small and start with something that I had already created.  As my colleagues would say... "Work smarter, not harder!"  Ha! 

    

Check out this freebie in my *brand-spanking new* TpT store!  I hope you will enjoy this activity and book discussion of "One" by Kathryn Otoshi as much as my students and I did.

As always, thank you for your support and for taking the time to stop by!!  Please be sure to visit often for new products and updates! Have a great rest of the weekend!