All I do is pin, pin, pin no matter what...

I dare you to get that song out of your head now!

I went shopping with my mom today and bought something new for my house. You'll have to stay tuned to see it because I won't get it until next week when she can bring it out to my house. It's currently riding around in the back of her Explorer. But, we're going to do some stuff at my house next week so hopefully I'll have some updates to blog about. But, to hold myself over, I've been pinning lots and lots of stuff :) Here are the rooms I'm loving this week...

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I think this kitchen is so sweet! The open shelves are great... but, even better when you add all the colorful and vintage dishes. And, that sink is to die for!

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I really like this wall color! And, the plates aren't too shabby either. I also think it's a pretty cool idea to put old suitcases into an open dresser.

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I'm not sure what it is about this room that I like. I think it's all the great pillows. And, I know I love that sign above the bed. The room just looks cozy to me.

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This is maybe the most calming room I've ever seen. Those billowy curtains are so dreamy! And, I absolutely adore the pillows on the bed.

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I've mentioned before my love of white with colorful accents. And this is a perfect example! Those pillows are gorgeous.

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This room is really not my style at all. It's a little formal and hotel-ish for my taste.  But, I really like the color scheme. Plus, the rug is great! And, again, I love the pillows. Pillows can single handedly make a room, I do believe.

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This room is fresh, fun and so cozy! Isn't it perfect for curling up on the couch and watching a movie? The lamps are amazing. And, fuschia is really not used enough in decorating.

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Love this headboard and the use of navy and yellow together. If I had a beach house, I would absolutely be re-creating this room!

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I do NOT like wallpaper. But, I think if you took the wallpaper out of this room, it would be fabulous. I really like white and yellow. Have I mentioned that?

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I can't stop thinking about these slipcovered bar stools. And all that shabby chic wood!

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This is eclectic decorating at its best! That color scheme is just so yummy. And, I'm all about some symmetry in a bedroom.

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Another peaceful, dreamy bedroom. With more amazing pillows....

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The warm and bold colors in this entryway are just beautiful. The gray walls, red doors and patterned drapes are what stood out to me.

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I love every single detail in this room.

Every. Single. One.

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These might be some of the cutest built-in bookcase decorations I've ever seen. I just love the mix of old and new!

Okay, I think that's enough.

Thanks for reading!

The Power of Retelling

Buckle up, people.This one is going to be all over the place!

1. Did you notice my new blog design? I have serious blog ADD. (And, regular ADD. But that's irrelevant.) I just get tired of the way my blog looks and never really truly loved my last design. So, when I saw this design at Shabby Creations, I was sold! It was dang cheap, too. Since my blog is not only about school (because, I do NOT want to keep up with multiple blogs), I wanted it to be not too "schoolish." Mission accomplished.

2. Today was Book Character day at our school. I don't think I've ever seen so much cuteness in one place! I'd say my favorite was a little boy in another first grade class who dressed up like Lebron James. Because, you know, we all love that book. Ha!

3. Last week, we learned all about inventors and scientists. This is a unit in our Treasures series. We used Cara Carroll's activites the last two years and I LOVE them! You can find all her awesome ideas here. We made the light bulb anchor charts, we filled out the inventor booklets and we even made our own inventions. Here are a few of their cute little creations:

4. Here are some updated pictures of our teeth writing that I wrote about yesterday. You can find that post here. We used a flow map to write paragraphs about losing a tooth.

5. We spent a lot of time this week focusing on retelling. In years past, I'll admit this was a difficult skill for me because I could never figure out a way to get my kids to tell enough. And, forget about them putting it all in order. Enter this book:



It is amazing!

It's such a great resource for teaching comprehension. One of the main things we use out of this book is the GO chart. This chart is used before reading a story. Here's a sample of what a GO chart looks like:

We do these all the time with our basal stories. We discuss the vocabulary and then the kids predict words that will be in the story. Then, they make predictions about the story. After we read, we use the third column to do some kind of comprehension: usually whatever skill we are working on that week.

The other great thing we use from this book is the retelling chart. This is the one I made last year and still use:

It's basically a triangle, square and a circle. The triangle is the beginning and the three points are characters, setting and problem. The square is the middle and provides the events of the story. Each corner is first, next, then and last. The circle is the end and is where you share the solution to the problem.

We read Henny Penny this week and together we put post-its on the charts to retell the story. And, I used the gradual release model to practice. I retold the story by myself, we retold it together, they retold it in groups with character cards they created themselves, they retold it to a partner and then I had them write it. We did all this over the course of two days. It took a while.

We made a little graphic organizer to go with the chart.

This is the front. It's just a little flip book.

Here's the inside. If you get past the spelling and lack of punctuation, you can see that the kiddos actually did a pretty good job of retelling the story of Henny Penny! And, I know when I assess them orally next week, they will do even better. They still don't have as much stamina in their writing as they do talking :)

Here are a few more:

Then, we read the story Little Rabbit out of our basal. It's very similar to Henny Penny... it just has different characters. We did all of the retelling we did with Henny Penny (minus the character retelling cards... we ran out of time!) But, instead of using the graphic organizer, I decided to give them the flow maps we used in the tooth writing. I wanted to make the connection that we had been retelling stories AND we had been retelling when we wrote about how our teeth came out.

Here is their retelling of Little Rabbit:

If you want some great retelling and comprehension ideas, I TOTALLY recommend The Power of Retelling.

Okay, I think that's all.

See, I told you I had ADD.

Enjoy the weekend!

We're Losing our Teeth!

I kind of realized this week that in my haste to teach my kids how to be good writers... I've missed something. We write a TON! Like, really, a ton. But, since we don't have a science or social studies time built into our day, we have to teach those things through our reading and writing. And, since we have to get 15 grades for science and 15 grades for social studies, I teach almost all of that through writing. Which, is fairly obvious if you've read my blog before. Which is all well and good... except, we hardly ever write personal narratives!

So, this week, I was BOUND and DETERMINED to get my kiddos to write a personal narrative. And, since we have spent the whole week working on retelling using beginning, middle and end (more on that later!), I decided to have them write a narrative with beginning, middle and end about loosing a tooth!

I already had in mind the perfect way to get some good BME paragraphs out of my kids.  I actually got the idea from a fabulous fourth grade teacher at my school! She and I presented a professional development session at our school together about writing... and, I'm fairly certain I learned more in the process than I taught! She uses a flow map to get her fourth graders to write paragraphs. And, you know what? It's genious.

We went through each step together. First we talked about how the first sentence is the beginning and includes the who, what, when/where. I modeled for them the first sentence... but, I basically just said "My tooth was loose."

And, because of this chart right here, my kids nailed me! They were all just DYING to tell me it was a weak sentence, ha! So, together, we made it a strong sentence and it turned into "My little tooth was very loose when I was six years old."

Then, the kids scurried off to their desks and wrote their own beginning sentences.

Then, I brought them BACK to the carpet and we talked about how the middle of the story is where we give the details. We  talked about all the different things you do when your tooth is loose. They helped me write three sentences and we made them strong together. Then, they got to write their own.

Last, we discussed how the end is where we wrap it all up. They all knew it was the part where they could FINALLY  write about those little baby teeth coming out!

I have to say... this was a GREAT way to help my kids write a personal narrative. The flow map just makes so much sense to them! Plus, it's so generic that you could use it for just about anything.

We took our flow maps and turned their writing into a paragraph format. I pre cut-out some lips and let them cut white computer paper to make teeth as a little "decoration" for their writing.

Here's the finished product:

(I took a few more pictures... but, they all turned out blurry for some reason. Sorry bout that...)

Anyways, I'm going to try and blog again tomorrow. But, we'll see if it happens. Stay tuned...

In Case You Need a Laugh

  So, this week has been rough. And, actually, it's only Tuesday! I'm so tired and I've been meaning to blog a few little things going on and I'm just too dang lazy to even take pictures! I hope your week has been better. Really, I do.  But, if not, maybe these little funnies from Pinterest will make you laugh as much as they made me laugh.

I mean, seriously! I do.

This is the root of all meetings. I swear it's true.



This is soooo true! And, funny.

Words to live by.

How nice of him.

Maybe my favorite pin from my favorite movie of all time.

Oh, and here's another one from my OTHER favorite movie of all time.

This is totally me when cooking, ha!

Thank you, internet, for all the laughs.

Math Center Central

So... math centers.

We have a love-hate relationship.

 I LOVE that they provide my kiddos with tons of hands-on practice.

I HATE that I have to come up with new centers and then make them.

And, I'll just go ahead and confess right now that I am NOT a fan of all these centers that you buy online and then have to sit and cut and laminate. I think it's a lot of work for something they only use a little while. And, my kids get bored with them.

I came up with a math center plan this year. It's not perfect... but, I can say that I've sent my kids to a differeniated math center most days this year for at least 25 minutes. So, it's certainly a step-up from years past! Ha.

Here are some of the activities that we've used this year in math centers. I've taken these pics over the course of the last few months. (And, FYI, I DID NOT come up with all if this stuff on my own. Some of it I did, but some of it came from blogs and pinterest.)

One component of our math centers is math journals. I didn't want to have 12 different centers I had to keep up with. So, I have 5 centers and then the rest of the kids go to computer or math journals. (This has changed a little the last few weeks.) The math journals are differentiated by ability and there is a place for them to draw a pic, write a number sentence and explain how they solved the problem.

This is how they store their problems in their journal. This friend is clearly not done, ha! They have a sheet of directions and they also have a "cheat sheet" with addition words and subtraction words behind it.

This is what the lower students' journals look like. Much simpler.

One center we did was use buttons and ten frames to make number sentences. One partner would put some buttons on the ten frame... and the other partner had to write the number sentence on a marker board.

This idea came from The First Grade Parade. She did this for Halloween. I just made it a little more generic so we could use it longer. And, we've used it a loonnggg time! I've moved this little center around to where pretty much every group has gotten to use it. And, they all love it! They basically just take addition problems on popsicle sticks and put them into a cup with the correct sum. They use our little homemade bead counters to help them out. (Well, they did at the beginning of the year.)

I have three extremely low little friends who have needed a lot of practice with just counting. So, I took 12 plates and wrote the numbers from 1-12 on them. Then, I gave them a bag of buttons and let them practice putting the amount in the plate.

I try to utilize some of the store-bought puzzles and things I've bought over the years. This one in particular is a favorite because it has subtraction on one side and subtraction on the other. I think it was like $6 at TJ Maxx - can't beat that!

Okay, the kids LOVED this one! I made some little cards about three years ago with some circles and blank addition sentences on them. So, I got some blue and orange pom-poms. The kids put some orange and some blue in the circles. Then, they have to write the number sentence.

Okay, this came from Lory Evans' page. The kids roll a dice and then subtract it from 10. I've printed off several of her activities and they are FABULOUS! Oh, and I also tried using self-laminating sheets for these centers. And, I will NEVER AGAIN laminate a center with just regular laminating. These are much sturdier and they clean a lot better!

I've been letting my lower kids use stickers to help solve their math journal problems. Just a fun way to get them into math. And, a great way to use up some of my two million stickers, ha.

I printed off some "Make Your Own" word problems from Lory's page, too. The kids love them because they are full of popular characters from a lot of the books we've read. And, some we haven't. Let's just say I've been reading a lot of word problems about Voldemort and Harry Potter :)

This idea came from here via pinterest. I think it's great practice for place value!

I look back on the centers (math and literacy) I've done in past years that I had to change every. single. week. I stayed at school every single Friday night and switched out all my centers. And, honestly? Those centers weren't any better than my centers now. They were actually worse because they weren't differentiated a bit!

I think that if you are differentiating your centers and if you are making them fun for your kids to do, you DO NOT have to change them that often! I change my math centers about once a month. My kids have never once told me they didn't want to do one or acted bored at their centers. Since they are on their level, they are being challenged and feel successful every day.

Well, I'm off to watch some Real Housewives of Atlanta. When did Kim become the most normal person on that show?

Thanks for stopping by!