Back to School Freebies!

It's back to school time!!! Teachers in our county start back on Monday. Of course I'm going through the normal roller coaster of emotions that all of us go through at this time each year...excited, sad, excited, nervous, excited, overwhelmed...

 

 

I've been working on a few things that I want to share with you.

 

The first is a back to school gift that I  am using with my kids this year. I bought a big pack of suckers for cheap and made these SWEET labels.

 

Click on the pic to get these labels for free.

 

The next is a sign that I made for my classroom bathroom. I think I said this a thousand times last year so maybe a poster in the bathroom will help them remember. Here's hoping...

 

Click on the pic to get it free.

 

And last I made a power point presentation to run while students are in my room for meet the teacher. Sweet Aimee from Primarily Speaking created this little adorable power point template for free. Go to her blog to get yours too. Here is what I did with mine.

 

Don't you love the letter to the students? I got the idea from this pin.

The font I used is KG Lego House.

I also wrote a post last year about more meet the teacher and back to school ideas. Click here to read about it.

 

Good luck!

 

 



Back to school bulletin board ideas

One of my favorite summer activities is thinking of my back to school bulletin board! I'm not one of those teachers that makes it easy on herself and uses the same one every year. I wish that I could do that and be satisfied, but I love creating them too much! I've been thinking about it for a while now and I finally have my idea. After my new blog design I'm a little inspired with ice cream so my bulletin board is going to be:

"Here's the Scoop on Mrs. Farmer's Sweet First Graders!"

After a little searching online I found this amazing one and will use it for inspiration when creating mine.



I love the awning and how she did the words "scoop" and "sweet"! She also has a great template for the ice cream cones...all for free! Just click on the picture to go to her website.

I plan on doing something a little more with the ice cream cones. My title will be "Here's the Scoop..." so each day the kids will add a new scoop to their ice cream cone with information about themselves. Some ideas I'm kicking around are...family members, hobbies, pets, favorite subject, something they did on summer break, and color in their favorite ice cream flavor. Since the first day of school is on a Monday, I will probably have one for each day of the week. And I'm pretty sure that the last one will be their favorite flavor, topped to look something like this:


The chocolate syrup is actually brown tempera paint in a condiment squeeze bottle. Love the cotton balls and sprinkles...oh wait, and the cherry on top!!!

As their gift for meet the teacher, I found a few things that I just love:
      
S'mores treats and ice cream bubbles...maybe with a tag that says, This year will be so sweet! I'll share when I make them. Of course this will go along with magic confetti!

If you are interested in an ice cream back to school bulletin, I thought of some other good titles:
"Here's the scoop...1st grade is a real treat"
"Ms. _____'s first graders are sweet!"
"1st grade is scoops of fun"
"Scooping up a great year"
"Here's the scoop...we're a great class"

And here are the bulletin boards that I have done over the past few years...this of course was before I was a blogger so unfortunately I was not good about taking pictures back then.

2010: "Here We Grow Again" I put pictures of the kids faces inside of flowers!
2011: "Let's Set Sail for 1st Grade"...Mrs. Jump inspired pirate ship...it was so cute! I had little pirate bears on a huge pirate ship.
2012: "Let's Kick Off to a Great Year"...football inspired {since this was last year, I did have a picture}. Read more about this one here.

I would love to hear what you are thinking about for your back to school bulletin board. Leave me a comment here or on my facebook page! 

The First Week

I love Labor Day weekend. It's apple season in NC and the Apple Festival where I live is in full swing. Little man and I picked apples today at a beautiful orchard and plan on enjoying all the festivies of the festival tomorrow.

 

I just wanted to write a little post on some of my favorite activities from our first week of school.

 

 

 

Check out this adorable name flower one of my students made after we read Chrysanthemum. We counted the letters and vowels in our name to know how many petals and leaves to put on our flower. Cute right? I got the idea from Mrs. H over at Once Upon a First Grade Adventure. She has a Kevin Henkes back to school pack in her tpt store and it is amazing!

 

Here is another activity I did from her pack.

 

 

Its Wemberly Worried. The students wrote what Wemberly worried about and then things that they worry about. So stinkin cute!

 

In math we explored with manipulatives: pattern blocks, dominoes, connecting cubes, geoblocks and the computer while in small groups we practiced writing our numbers the correct way and we learned how to count objects accurately {by touching each object and moving it with our finger}. I just love this poem about how to write numbers!

 

 

 

In writing we wrote all of our letters, capital and lowercase, matched letters to letter sounds, and discussed the differences between sentences and nonsentences. This activity turned out awesome and the students LOVED it.

 

First we sorted premade sentences that I had written on sentence strips. We talked about what sentences need and then we practiced writing a sentence on a sticky note. {Keeping sticky notes in our pencil boxes work great for quick formative assessments like this}. We shared our sentences and then just for fun we practiced writing a nonsentence. They all giggled at the silly nonsentences!

 

Looking forward to another great week and sharing more fun ideas!

 

 

Love to all!

How We Get Home Labels! {Freebie}

Who doesn't get confused and sometimes frusturated with the constant changes of how your student(s) get home each day. For me the most terrifying part of a changing schedule is sending the student home the wrong way. Scary! So I got some inspiration from pintrest {of course} and made these little tags. Click on the picture to download yours for free!

I have mounted them to my wall with ribbon and will have a clip for each student. After I check agendas each day or when my secretary calls me throughout the day with a change, I can go over to this display and move that child's clip in the appropriate place. Then when it is time to line up and go home, I have everyone organized where they need to be. Here is the general idea {without student names yet}.

This idea came from  tattling to the teacher and you can see her blog post and labels here!

Visit Tara at 4th Grade Frolics to see what other ideas teachers have made this week!

 

Don't forget, today is the last day for the teachers pay teachers back to school sale. Be sure to check out my Constitution Day Packet!



Let me know what you think!

Love to all!!



Composition Books

Here is what my first grade team and I are doing with our composition books this year. Times are tough and we realize this for all of the families of our students. We asked for each student to send in two composition books. With the first book we each take it home to our wonderful husbands and/or dads and ask them to cut them in half. Word of advice from my dad, use a small saw blade otherwise it can chew them up. So instead of one big composition book, we now have two small ones that we are using as the students' word work journal and math journal.

 In the past we have used regular sized composition journals but  {big surprise} the students were just wasting the pages. So now we use these mini journals and it works great!


The other composition book we use as their writing journal. It looks like this:

{I have different labels for the boys}

Now here is what is special about these journals. I don't know about you but I always have students who just LOVE to share what they write, but can never find their story. Or they open up to any blank page and begin writing {which is a total pain for me because I don't want to spend forever trying to find what they have written (cause I love to leave them little notes) }. The solution? A permanent bookmark! Here is how you do it:

Open up to the back cover and hot glue a piece of ribbon near the spine.



Now your ribbon can mark the page of any story your little sweeties are working on. No more frusturation for you or for them. Yay!! Pretty sure I will be using a ribbon bookmark for all of my journals this year.

Check out this cute ribbon I found at Michaels today! I know, its perfect!

I'd love to know how you are using composition books in your classroom. Check back soon for first day/week ideas!

I'll end this post with a picture of the tazmanian devil whenever he enters my classroom. Too cute to get upset with!

Love to all!



Meet the Teacher

The countdown begins to the start of school and this year I am going to be ready! Here's what I've been working on for meet the teacher. Usually I make a big packet of stuff to send home when students come in for meet the teacher. Since our school is working so hard on conserving paper, I've changed it up a bit. This is what students will have waiting for them on their desks when they come in:

• "I've been bubbling with excitement to meet you" gift {click here to get it}
• Magic Confetti to use the night before the first day to help get rid of those jitters {click here to get it}. The bags I used are from Michaels in the baking section. I think they are lollipop bags...real cheap! For a more detailed explanation click here.
• Welcome to First Grade cover sheet with important first day tips {see below for a closer look}
• Student Information Sheet for parents to fill out that day. {click here to get it}

The rest of my papers and info sheets including the ABC's of First Grade, What Your Child will be Learning in First Grade, Classroom Management, Homework, Our Schedule, Parent Volunteer Sheet, etc will either go home in their BEE Book {update 8-4-13...link was wrong, check back in a few days and I'll have everything fixed and BEE book for you to print!} or will be posted on my classroom website.

Here is a closer look at my Welcome to First Grade Sheet. Keep in mind it isn't complete because I don't know our specials schedule yet!

Check back in tomorrow to see how creative my first grade team is with compostion books. There may be some free labels too!

I would love to know what cute ideas you have for Meet the Teacher!

Love to all!





Back to School Gift for Students {Freebie}

Check out my back to school gift for the kiddies!

Its no secret that at this time of year I am not only broke but running short on time. I checked pintrest the other day for back to school gifts for kids and found some adorable ideas (including a little pencil made from rolos and a hershey kiss), but none of them were easy, quick and cheap enough for me. So I made one up myself. I bought a pack of 24 bubbles from Target for $4.00...

and created these little labels!

I was going to tie with a cute ribbon but taping it to the front was way faster, easier and in my opinion just as cute!

Click here for your copy of the bubble labels. Let me know what you think!

I'm currently working on more back to school/meet the teacher cuteness and ideas so check back in a few days!! Love to everyone!

Meghan