Five for Friday...last week of school!

It's the last week of school. The kiddos have been gone since Tuesday and we have been spending two days in riveting PD...

1. One of my fabulous little girls walked in with this on Tuesday. I loved the idea of it and had to share! They painted the base of the tray with chalkboard paint. I am not going to be wiping it off anytime soon, but what a great idea! 

2. I have to admit that I was behind on getting something donated to the Teacher's Notebook effort for the Moore, OK relief. Since I forgot to donate something in a timely manner, I decided to buy it the bundle to help towards the effort to raise money. I got an e-mail last night that they have raised $32,000 but they need help getting the word out. Post it on facebook, tweet it, e-mail teachers at your school...etc. and let them know about this wonderful bundle that goes towards a worthy cause. I just can't imagine what that community is going through. Teachers are wonderful people for coming together and helping. 

3. The school held a talent show and this is one of my students jamming out. This wasn't from the school talent show, but from one that he did when he was 4. I knew he could play the drums, but I had no idea he was this good! This kid will be famous...

4. My class came together and "filled" Ms. Dana's (my fabulous TA) bucket! I had made end of the year buckets for all of my students and wanted to make one for Ms. Dana. A parent made her this adorable bucket and we filled it with all of her favorite things (Whole Foods gift cards, Kind bars, dark chocolate, Paper Source  She was such a wonderful addition to my classroom this year and the kids loved her so I wanted to do something nice. It turned out better than I could have imagined! 

5. I blogged about this the last day of school, but my parents got me a sign to match my blog. It's huge. I can't wait to get it hung up in my classroom. I was beyond thrilled when I opened it.A local artist painted it for me and I am in love with it! 

I hope you all have a fabulous weekend...I'm checking off something from my bucket list and my team and their families are headed to the vineyard tomorrow! 

xo

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Summer Bucket Linky

Today was the first official day for the kids to have a summer break. We are in school at meetings until Friday with meetings...but I am going to pretend that I have started too for sake of the linky! 

1. Enjoy every second of the trip to London and Dublin. I have gone to Europe once and by the end of it I was crying because I was so tired. I have never cried from exhaustion after the age of 5, but the jet lag I felt and walking around for 10 days got the best of me. I am a complete wimp when it comes to being tired, apparently. My hubby will not be carrying around weepy wife so I am going to be stashing some 5 hours in preparation. I am already giving myself a pep talk! 

2. On a car ride not too long ago, my the hubs and I made a 30 before 30 bucket list. One of mine was to go see Beyonce. She is coming to Nashville in July but I have been told not to buy a ticket since she might be preggers...ugh. I will be as close to the stage as possible. Beyonce glitter will be a-flyin'

Should I just buy the ticket!? Has anyone else seen her? 

Jon caught me crying once during a Good Morning America performance....that is embarrassing to admit :)

3. I have a couple of ideas for products that I want to work on this summer. I am really wanting to do something for our science...ever since I have been a teacher I have felt like our science curriculum has been lacking. I am going to work on something for this school year. I need to start writing things down in my notebook for ideas...

4. Find some time to get to the beach with some teacher friends! This is something that I love to do and we always have the best time together. Hopefully, we will be able to get a group of us together. I have a pretty fabulous team <3

If we don't make it to the beach, then we will definitely making it to the vineyards again :0)

5. Organize the black hole my classroom.

Prayers, last day, and linky

I just learned today about the horrible events that happened yesterday. I am beyond heartbroken for those families that were that were involved in the horrific devastation of yesterdays tornado. The thought of being at school while that was happening is unimaginable. There are a lot of ways we can reach out to this community. One way is donating to The Red Cross or the Salvation Army. I am sure there are other ways to reach out but these were two ways I heard on the radio this morning on the way to school. 

So today was the inevitable last day of school. Let me just say that I was absolutely blown away by gift that my parents got for me. I uploaded it on instagram....but just in case you missed it :)

This sign is huge. They had a local artist make it for me. I could not love it more. I knew that my room mom knew about my blog but I didn't know they actually read it or new that it was such an important part of my daily life. I have no words to explain how I felt when I opened this. 

On the back they all signed their names and wrote this: 

It was such a special gift and I am hanging it above my door right by my desk so it will be the first thing people see when they walk in to my classroom. 

And if that wasn't enough, I had a mom (that's a photographer) make me my own book. It is so beautiful and it is something that I am going to treasure forever and ever. The pictures are absolutely stunning. I was doing good with holding it all together until I got this. Then the Mom who made it for me started to tear up and I was a puddle from then on. I was beyond blessed by a wonderful group of parents and students. 

Link up today :) 

You can find me on Instagram with the username elizhall

Let's Get Acquainted on my last Sunday before Monday!

It's my last Sunday before Monday! I was super sad last week and today I am feeling pretty excited that I only have one more Monday to wake up. Even though we have to go to school until Friday this week...the kids have their last day on Tuesday. 

I love a good linky party and Latoya from Flying into First Grade puts on a fabulous on each week! 

But before I get started, I have to share what just happened as my husband was cooking dinner (yeah he cooks) tonight.

As he is cutting up sweet potatoes (and I quote), "I can't believe I didn't pin this recipe." 

Sorry ladies, he's taken. 

I about fell out of my chair laughing when he said that. I do have to admit, my hubby is a wonderful chef and he makes a wonderful wife husband. What a gem. Back to the linky party...

Topic: Meet 2 of my Bloggy Friends

I've met some pretty wonderful people through blogging, but I would have to say that Amanda and Khrys have been my cheerleaders and go to gals since I started blogging. They are both wonderful teachers and fab friends. 

I have also met a lot of new friends that I am so thankful for and would be so bored with my little blog without them. If I tried breaking the rules right now I would probably just copy and paste my entire Blog List of teachers that I follow. I am so grateful to all the peeps out there that I have formed relationships with and gotten ideas from. Thank you for being such a wonderful community of teacher bloggers :0)

Hope everyone had a wonderful and relaxing weekend! 

xo

Five for Friday...keep calm

It's Friday and it's Field Day (which got cancelled for the 2nd time due to rain)...

And it's almost time for summer break (Tuesday). 

So guess what that means?

c-r-a-z-y kids.

I mean cray cray.I love these babies but they are all acting like they are confused as to what they are supposed to do in school. 

Run out of the classroom to go say hi to my bestie in the other class? 

Yep.

Rolling on the carpet?

Sounds fun. 

Crawling under the tables and on the furniture?

Sign me up! 

I am doing my Friday happy dance.
It's time for my weekly ritual of linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching and Five for Friday. 

1. The kiddos celebrated teacher appreciation week this week. They brought in all of these sweet gifts and flowers and made cards. They also brought in things for Ms. Dana, so it was extra fun to share in being appreciated with my 

2. Remember last week how I told you about the fake Derby we go to? Here's a picture of us at  fake Derby Steeplechase last Saturday. Everyone that didn't have a hat on (including my hubby) got scorched. I'm a repeat offender because I wore this hat last year, and now that I'm looking at my dress it looks like the chevron background of my TpT poetry unit front cover.

I should have worn a necklace promoting my poetry unit around my neck and then it would have really been a walking product promotion, haha. 

Don't judge. 

3. Our sweet 3rd grade book buddies created their own Pete the Cat books for their Kindergarten Book Buddy. It was so sweet and the kids loved them. Today, I wore my Pete the Cat kicks. 

4. Just bought tickets today to see JT in November! Let me tell you...I was a die hard N'Sync fan so this is my inner teenybopper dream come true. Watch out, I might start drawing hearts in my notebook and writing Elizabeth Timberlake on all of my papers <3

I love it when he sings to me...

5. There's only two days left of school! 

I have so much to finish but this is my mantra this weekend...

Have a great weekend! 

xo

Get the Tissue Ready...then grab a freebie!

I am a hot mess.

Seriously, a blubbering fool.

It's not even a pretty cry. It's the kind of cry where mascara is running down your face and your face turns all red  and the hiccups take over for words. 

I can't even tell my husband something sweet that happened at school for fear that I might burst in to tears. It happens every year, but this year it's just a tad worse. I have always had wonderful kids and a wonderful group of parents but this little class and Ms. Dana (my aide but really teacher #2 and I refer to her as "My Dana") have become my family. If I even think about them walking down the hall next year to first grade I tear up. I am going to have a headache until next Tuesday to hold back the tears. My principal was in tears during their "moving on up" presentations...so it's not just me! 

I know a lot of people read Oh the Places You'll Go at the end of the year. It is always one that I enjoy reading too. I found this book, The North Star,  my first year teaching and I read it every year. I cried reading it this year. It's worse because Ms. Dana is a blubbering mess too so it's just a snowball effect! 

Back to the book...here is a picture of one of the pages.

I love Peter Reynolds and I have read a couple of his books this year, but this one is by far the best. It's all about a little boy that finds his own journey and learns that other people have a different journey. It is the sweetest and I would recommend it to any teacher at any grade level! You can get it by clicking my affiliate link!

When we were done reading the book, we talked about what it meant to have your own journey and we talked about their journey as first graders. They did a list of the things they are looking forward to in first grade. I also made a second page for you first grade teachers! I know that there are some first grade friends that stop by from time to time so I hope that you can use it!

Just click on either picture to get it for free :)

I am sure my kids think I have lost it and they are terrified that I am going to burst in to a ridiculous snotty cry at any thing they do or say...I need to pull it together.

I hope that you all are having a great end of the year with your kiddos. Don't let the stress of the end of the year ruin the last couple of days you have with your kids! 

Love to you all! 

xo

My First Guest Blogger!

I am so excited to be hosting my first guest blogger, Sarah, from Teaching is Colorful. She has wonderful ideas and is fab :) Make sure you check out her blog! 

_________________________________________________________

Hi Everyone! I am very excited to be guest blogging for Elizabeth today! First, let me introduce myself! :) My name is Sarah and I am a first grade teacher in North Carolina. You can find me over at Teaching is Colorful.

 I have been teaching for just 2 years now, but couldn't picture myself doing anything else! I am always trying to come up with new and creative ideas to add to our sometimes mundane curriculum. haha! I absolutely love first grade and it is my favorite grade. I like to call it the "growth" grade because you really see the kiddos soar through the year and become little second graders  (and sometimes third graders!) by the time they are done.

Today, I'd like to talk about what to do if you have early finishers. We all have those kiddos that just seem to fly through every assignment we give them. It's so hard to come up with more and more activities for them. There are lots of wonderful packets out there for early finishers, but if you don't have the time (or printing and lamination) then I have another option for you! :) 
I have my kids in groups of 5-6. Each table has a book basket filled with about 20 different books that get rotated around the room throughout the month. When students finish an assignment early, they can grab a book from the basket to read until everyone else is finished. To make reading more worthwhile, I have also created worksheets to go with the books. These are generic that can be used with any book, but provide a little more practice and allows the children to pay more attention to the story or print. My freebie for you includes 4 sheets to use with your kids. (just click on the pic)

I hope you find them useful and for more ideas, check out my blog! I want to thank Elizabeth for hosting me today! She is an awesome teacher and I love her ideas :) Have a great day everyone!

Announcing the Winner and Linky

I can't even believe I have the hand strength to type right now. Hashtag report card problems! They are the worst. I am just doing a little at a time so I am not in an arm sling by next week. 

Geez. 

That's my drama for the night :-P Who do I think I'm talking to!? The same people with the same problems! Summer is coming! 

Yay for Erika because she won the poetry unit. I can't wait to start using it next year with my Kinders. I make all of my products to fit the needs of my students and my teaching style. My hope is that it can help someone else as well! 

Now on to my fellow TN teacher linky party! You don't have to be a teacher from TN to join in the fun. Lucky you! 

1.  What made you decide to become a teacher?

2. What has been your most rewarding experience as a teacher?

3. If you were not a teacher, what would you be?

To answer the first questions...it was never a decision I made. It was a calling. A teacher I work with always says, "Teaching isn't a job, it's a calling." I have never believed a statement so true. I remember in college when I asked people what their major was and they didn't know. In my head I always though, WHAT?!?! How do you now know? I just always knew that was what I was going to do and there was never another thought about it. 

My most rewarding experience as a teacher has been working with special ed. I did a guest blog post about it last week, but it has been life changing and it will forever mold me as a better teacher. If you are trying to avoid getting special ed in your classroom because you think it will mess up your flow...you will learn more from those kids than I could ever tell you. Try it if you haven't! 

If I wasn't a teacher I'd be a stripper (kidding) photographer. I always wanted to do something crazy like photograph for National Geographic. I still love taking pictures and hope that it will continue to just be a fun hobby for me. 

I am having my first guest blogger tomorrow so be sure to come back and give her some luvin'!

xo

I know I know....but you could win it :)

I shouldn't be a pushy product person blogger (that just rolls off the tongue) but I just finished an entire unit of Poetry for Kindergarten and I am so excited to not have to worry about this next year! Of course, it's the end of the year and we only have one full week left...but now I don't have to think about it for the Fall.  Each week, we were all running in to each other's rooms asking what poem we had for the week. Then if you got one and it wasn't up to snuff in the design category...forget it. We had some seriously rough looking poems going home in the poetry notebooks this year. 

After you start buying TpT products and then creating your own, you just expect more visually appeasing (cutesy...) hand-outs. That is where the Fairy Tale Unit came from! I could not send home some 1985 version of the 3 Little Pigs re-tell. I just couldn't.

I am getting to the point that I am creating things just so it doesn't look like it came from my grandmother's Kindergarten teacher. 

I thought this unit would be easy to just "throw" together since I had some of the poems already. Wrong.

This took me longer than any other product I have ever created but I also feel like it is a staple in my classroom and it needed to be done. I love using poetry for fluency and expression. I feel like it's one of the most important components to my literacy time. 

There are also 5 different activities that I created to go along with each poem. I plan to have a regular poetry station next year where they students have the poem for the week and they work on different skills like rhyming, syllables, visualizing and sight words. 

Now that I've told you how excited I am about it...I would love to give one away! Enter today and I'll pick a winner on Monday :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Five for Friday

It's a rainy Friday here. It would have been the perfect morning to pull the covers up and go back to sleep. 

But I had to get up to teach spin and then come to school to finish up the week :)

Thank goodness it's Friday though and it's time to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday. 

1. We are going to Steeplechase tomorrow. It's basically when people in Tennessee pretend they have a Derby. Everyone carries around a  This was a picture of me and hubby last year (or maybe 2 years ago!?). I am not wearing a fancy hat this year because I have a big head and lots of hair and it always rains. So I will be going sans hat this year. 

I think.

2. We went on a Field Trip this week to a Wetland and it was comical. Two kids fell in head first while fishing for tadpoles. It was also an hour ride there and back. The teachers kids we exhausted. I think it gave them inspiration for their habitat project though! 

3. I was a guest blogger twice this week! It was so fun to see what I wrote on some else's blog. I am so grateful to Khrys and Jeannie for having me blog for them this week. You should go check out their blogs if you haven't already! 

                                             

4. The habitats are being created! The kids are so excited about them. They have been studying about habitats and I just let them create an animal around a habitat that they pick. The books I got from American Reading Company (for free I might add!) have been perfect for this activity. The kids have been able to scan through the informational non-fiction books about habitats to get ideas for what they want to add to their habitat. I have them create them in shoe boxes but you could get creative and have them draw one or write about one. I used this planning page to help them plan their habitat. 

5. Lastly, in honor of appreciating teachers this week...I did a giveaway! It ended today and here at the winners:

I'll e-mail you shortly so you can let me know what you would like! 

Have a wonderful weekend  :)

xo