Change is a good thing...right?

Well it's been awhile since I've posted, but a lot has happened since my last post. Remember that over the summer I was preparing for my combined Grade One/Two classroom. Well, the week before school started my principal called me to offer me a position teaching kindergarten. That meant switching classrooms if I accepted. I said I would call him back the following day, but ended up calling him back a half an hour later to say yes I would accept the kindergarten position. So remember that beautiful classroom I had all ready and set to go...dismantle it, and start over from scratch at the complete opposite end of the school (which I swear is like a kilometer away) Thankfully, I have great friends and family that helped me make the switch.

We have just finished our second week of school and I would have to say that I am extremely happy with my decision to switch. I love teaching kindergarten and my students are great. I also get to work with a full time Designated Early Childhood Educator in my classroom. My DECE seems wonderful and our personalities/styles are a great match. So we have 22 students (an even mix of JK and SK) that we will teach together. There are also two other kindergarten classrooms, so we have a great team to work and collaborate with. I think its going to be a great year! A lot of stress the week before school started but it was worth it. Hopefully now that things are settled I will be posting more regularly. I will be creating a post about an awesome kindergarten blogger opportunity that hopefully I will post tomorrow morning.

First Day Jitters Link up

Well I survived our family camping trip. The weather was certainly not great. It rained the first night but the tent had no leaks. Then a big storm rolled in on Saturday afternoon and broke all the poles in the back room of our tent. Everything got pretty wet inside. Yuck, wet sleeping bags = miserable Mommy. We managed to fix up the tent the best we could with rope, duct tape and a tarp. Luckily it stopped storming after dinner. Cameron absolutely adored our camping weekend. He had a great time with the other kids in our camping party. A great trip despite the yucky weather.

A special thanks to Laura over at "Kinder Kraziness" for featuring me on her "Someone New" Sunday post and a friendly welcome to any new followers who found me through her link. Here's a link to her post that featured my little Canadian blog.

 Once school starts back I hope to be sharing lots of classroom ideas that work well for my combined Grade One/Two class.

Though my constant blog stalking I have heard many people mention this lovely book First Day Jitters. I am on the hunt for my own copy. Hopefully I can pick one up on our trip to the city this week. Anyways, Jessica at "A Turn to Learn" featured this great jitters inspired linky. I just adore her blog. Her tutorials are so simple and easy to follow. I have learned so many awesome things! So to show my bloggy appreciation for all the great things she shares on her blog I am linking up to the party.

What are you feeling 'jittery' about?  I hope that you can join in on the fun too!

Thanks for reading and following,

TPT SALE

Happy Friday! It looks like its going to be a rainy weekend:( We have reservations to go camping and Cameron was so excited. Now the forecast is calling for rain all week. Not just rain though but thundershowers. Double yuck.We have a tent. I'm not a big camping person but I was excited for camping with my little boy. Camping in a tent in during a thunder storm just doesn't seem safe to me. We will cross our fingers that the forecast is wrong or will change. Send some good weather vibes our way!

It looks like I will have some shopping to complete before our hopeful camping expedition. TPT is having a Back to School Sale! Awesome!

My wish list is getting quite large, so I think that I will definitely grab some those fantastic deals! Some sellers are offering additional sales at their stores too, so you could save up to 28%!

While checking google reader this morning I came across an awesome blog hop where some sellers are featuring one of their Back to School products. I think I've added ten more products to my TPT shopping cart already! I love to gather a little bit more information about products before I purchase them. So if you feel the same way go check out the blog hop.



Also don't forget to enter the Cameo giveaway.

I can't believe how amazing everyone's creations are turning out! Every trip I take to Michael's usually involves me eying up the Cricut machines. I could never justify the price once considering the cost of buying additional cartridges. But the Cameo seems like a dream. My understanding is that you don't have to buy any cartridges! The cameo works with your existing clip art and fonts. Sounds fantastic to me! It's definitely been added to my future wish list. Maybe Santa can deliver one to me for Christmas, although I'm not sure I can wait that long!

I hope that everyone has a great weekend. Hopefully the storms stay away, I'm OK with rain but please no thunder and lightning. Thanks for reading and following,



Monday Made it

I'm linking up again with 4th Grade Frolics for Made it Monday.

I didn't have much time to craft this week because we were celebrated my son's sixth birthday yesterday with my side of the family. (His actual birthday falls on Wednesday) I did make a cake, does that count? I'm kind of embarrassed to even post a picture. Normally, I would buy a cake but Cameron recently fell in love with a cake that my sister in law made using Dream Whip for icing. He raved about that simple cake for weeks, so I had to bake one for his birthday. I figured I would pick up some green coloured icing to write Happy Birthday and was swayed into purchasing this lovely product.

I thought that I could write on the cake and then switch tips and make some decorative 'thingys'. As you can tell by my cake decorating vocabulary, this is not my hidden talent. Anyways, the star tip made some lovely star 'bursty' like lumps. However, that can of icing was not user friendly when it came to writing. Certain times tons would come out. Then nothing came out for the next letter. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong. But hey it tasted good, so I guess that's all that matters in the end.

The masterpiece - notice skinny P versus fat P in the word HAPPY

I did make one thing for school this week. I printed out and put together my teaching planner binder. I used the free printable from The Resource(ful) Room.

Amy has lots of amazing things on her site. Be sure to go and check out her website. I ended up organizing my things into two separate binders. One binder contains my lesson plans, calendar, standards, student info/IEPS, meetings. The other binder will contain my reading information - groupings, conferences, tracking/assessment information, etc. I think that they will really help me stay organized next year.

I can't wait to see what everyone else was creating. Thanks for reading and following,

August Currently

I am linking up for the first time to the 'Currently' linky party over at Oh' Boy 4th Grade. I've been wanting to link up since I first started blogging last month, so here it goes.

I am currently loving the Olympics, and to my surprise my five year old son is loving watching them too. I kind of expected him to put up a fuss to watch his Disney Channel shows but he hasn't at all!

Today I finished Cameron's yearly shutterfly photo book. I make one every year just before his birthday. This year's book includes photos from when Cameron was five years old. If you haven't created a photo book you need to right now! I am horrible at printing off photographs, but each year I create and order a photo book for Cameron. They are my most treasured possessions. You can check mine out at the link below.

Shutterfly photo books offer a wide range of artful designs and embellishments to choose from.

Click here to view this photo book larger

The next three items all involve B2S of course. Squeezing every last bit of fun out of summer, getting some pampering for myself, and dreading the organizational task of sorting books.

My B2S must have items are pretty self explanatory. #1 - Love my laminator, couldn't live without it. #2 Love my sharpie markers, need to get the 80's set before its gone. #3 Need my checklists to survive. Love technology and now I use my iphone for this task all the time! Thanks for reading and following,

The challenges of a combined class

Happy Friday bloggers and blog stalkers! In Ontario, we teach until almost the end of June, but we don't go back to school until after Labour Day in September. This means that I have exactly one month of summer vacation remaining. Wow, that first month of July just flew by! We had a quick visit to school earlier this week and I took a couple pictures of my classroom but I only had my cellphone. Please excuse the quality of the pictures.

My word wall will go here

Checking to see that my Cafe Strategies fit so I can add a space for the post it goals

My teachers desk along with a small work table.

 

As many of you are aware, I am scheduled to teach a combined Grade One / Two class in September at my new school. Among my efforts to work smarter and not harder I was searching for a document that would easily let me compare the expectations in each subject area across the two grades. Well I searched and searched and came up empty. There doesn't appear to be any document available that shows this information in an easy to read format.

I decided that I should attempt to put something together myself. I figure it will allow me to easily compare the expectations and plan accordingly to accommodate both sets of expectations within my lessons. I don't have the time or the energy to present two totally separate lessons so this comparison document will allow me to easily visualise the differences between the two grades. I'm hoping that I can deliver my whole group lessons to cover common expectations, and use my small group and guided instruction to cover the unique expectations. Hope that all makes sense.

So far, I have completed the language and math comparisons for the Ontario Curriculum in Grades One and Two. I have uploaded the documents to Google Docs, hoping that some of my fellow Ontario colleagues can also benefit from the information. Here are the links.

Ontario Combined Grade One/Two Language Expectations

Ontario Combined Grade One/Two Math Expectations

I am hoping to complete the other subject areas over the next few weeks and I will continue to post the links. I am hoping there are some Ontario teachers who can benefit from their use. Thanks for reading and following,

New {School} Year Resolutions

I was catching up with some blogs tonight when I stumbled across an awesome linky by Amanda over at Teaching Maddeness.

  It makes perfect sense to make our resolutions now rather than in January, so here we go.

#1 - Stay organized - I'm lucky to be switching schools because I will start the year off in a completely clean and organized classroom. I intend to keep it this way, including my dreaded teacher's desk. I really need to make one of those teacher toolboxes.

#2 - Embrace change and try new things - New school, new administration, new students equals lots of change. I'm also embarking on a new journey with two whole new teaching 'strategies/systems'. I'm so excited to employ whole brain teaching strategies with my students and also to change up my literacy block with the Daily Five.

#3 Connect and Communicate with Parents - When I first began teaching I felt quite uncomfortable with this aspect of teaching. As time has passed I have begun to feel more at ease with this challenge. I'm also super excited to employ technology to my advantage and use it to help keep parents informed.

#4 - Use my time wisely - I really want to have a balance between home life and work life. I also need to squeeze in some time for my new found blogging life as well. I usually arrive early to school, so I want to make the most of the time before my students arrive each morning. Less gossiping around the Keurig in the staffroom and more planning and preparing.

Do you have any resolutions to share? Be sure to link up and share. Thanks for reading and following,

Classroom Update & What I'm Pinning Wednesday

Cameron and I have spent the last few mornings working away in my classroom. I have all of the bulletin boards covered and bordered. I had heard that someone used plastic tablecloths to cover bulletin boards so I thought that I would give it a try. We ran into a slight problem, the plastic tablecloths were too thin so we had to double them. Not a big deal, just slightly more time consuming. I put up my number line, and alphabet line. We arranged my letter headings for my word wall, and arranged my Cafe strategy board. We also arranged the desks and organized some stuff in the drawers of my teacher desk.

Still lots of jobs left to do, but it doesn't feel like such a huge task when we go for a few hours each week. The following still needs to be done before school starts - organise my classroom library, set up Daily 5 center areas, and beg/borrow/steal more manipulatives for my classroom, set up plan book and plan for first week. Still lots of time - School doesn't start here until September 4th.

Anyways, it's time for one of my favourite linky parties over at Kinder Kraziness.

Ahh how I adore pinterest! I swear I am absolutely obsessed with it. There are just so many awesome ideas out there. Here are some of my favourite pins for the week.

I've been keeping my eyes peeled for a sale on "teacher toolboxes" so once I score my deal I can print these awesome labels off and save myself some time and frustration hopefully. You can grab these wonderful labels here. (Teachers pay teachers is currently down for maintenance so I can't verify that this link is correct right now, please comment if it doesn't work)

I've also been planning on organizing my students by number this year. So these are some great free printable number circles. I hope to use one set for my book boxes and another for documenting who's out of the classroom (bathroom, office, etc..) I like these numbers because I can print them on coloured paper and save ink. You can grab these awesome numbers from Runde's Room.

These are some awesome printable math games from Mrs.Clapp over at Serenade to Second Grade. They only require simple manipulatives like dice and cards. Be sure to visit her next post to grab the labels for the game if you want them too.

My last pin is this awesome treat to celebrate the start of the Olympic games! I love watching the Olympics and this treat will be a great way to celebrate tomorrow night. Bake some yummy cupcakes in ice cream cones and then decorate with some flaming icing. Looks easy enough, right? I hope I will find the time to make these before the ceremony starts, wish me luck.

Thanks for reading and following,

Fabulous Find Friday

I'm linking up again with Elizabeth at Fun In Room 4B for a linky party called

I scored a few really good deals for school this week, along with something a little bit different. I will share my school items first. First off I got some plastic drawer units for my classroom at 50% off. I've been keeping my eye open for a sale on these, and I finally found it.

I think I will leave off the casters and place this along my back counter to hold math games/centres/manipulatives or something along those lines. I bought two, so I basically got one for free. They were $9.99 each at Canadian Tire.

Michael's had a buy two get one free sale, so I picked up a few items and applied my teacher's discount as well. I had a gift card from awhile back so my deals felt even better. No debit to my account or charge to my credit card.

My last find is not school related, but I stumbled across these while shopping online for my son's upcoming birthday. My son and husband have been obsessed with playing Minecraft lately, so I ordered this Lego set at Amazon.com.

Not exactly a great deal, but if you compare it to the price these are fetching on eBay, I guess its a pretty good deal. Anyways, while searching for this Lego set I ran across this website to create paper crafts. A.G. Papertoys. Basically you print off templates to fold, cut and paste little paper minecraft characters. Here's a picture off their website.

You should know that this is NOT a child friendly craft, the cutting and folding is extremely intricate. Definitely an adult or older child job. But they are just sooooo cute and Cameron LOVES playing with them. A great afternoon activity. Plus Cameron is happy to 'play' minecraft using his imagination and I'm happy to get him away from the xbox. Hooray! A quick picture of Cameron with some of his new paper minecraft toys.

He played with them all afternoon cooking up various scenarios, he's a very happy boy! Thanks for reading and Happy Friday!

A Blank Slate to Make my Mark

Oh my! I have a lot of work to do in my new classroom. Cam and I stopped in the other morning to take some photos of my empty classroom. Looking at it was very overwhelming to say the least. I thought I could unpack a couple boxes before swimming lessons, but we didn't get much accomplished, just sorted through a few bins of teacher resource books. Here are some photos so you can see the magnitude of work ahead of us.

Hooray! I have a smart board in my new classroom! Along with a document camera, scanner and printer.

You can also view the rats nest of wires that I will need to sort through under the desk. Yikes, it's a mess! A job for another day. My computers have to stay in that location, so I'll place the carpet in front, not ideal but no other place will work. I think I will cover all the bulletin boards in blue, with a uniform border. Maybe something with blue, green and purple. I'm not sure what to do about the 'green' blackboards. I've thought of maybe covering them, but I'm not sure. I will attach my CAFE strategies to one board, and my word wall to another board using magnets. Not sure about the others, I most likely won't write on them so I figure I could post some stuff on them instead.

I'm not thrilled with the location of these shelves but my thoughts are to use them for my leveled books and other books for students to choose for their reading bins.

My teacher's desk will go back here in this corner with my personal frequently used resources on that tall shelf behind my desk.

A shot of the back of the classroom. All of the stuff on top of the big brown cupboard has to go. I just need a ladder to get up there. I will take down the clothesline while I'm up there. Not my style. You can also see all the boxes I need to unpack. The bulletin boards back here will be done in the same style as the front, with a blue background. Maybe my work with words and listen to read centres can be on the long counter.

Anyways, I think my first job will be the bulletin boards. Any thoughts on what I should cover them with? I've heard of people painting them, covering them with wrapping paper, covering them with plastic tablecloths or covering them with bed sheets. Any thoughts on the best plan of attack? Please leave a comment with your best solution.

Thanks for reading,

What I'm pinning Wednesday Link up

Since I've just started blogging, I don't have any followers yet. As I was cruising the blog world I ran across this linky party hosted by Laura over at Kinder Kraziness.

A link up based on Pinterest! That's right up my alley. So here goes my very first link up blog post. Hopefully I can gain some of my very first followers. Here's a few things that I pinned this week.

A very cute back to school treat for my new students at my new school. Simple, easy and cheap. Looks fantastic to me. Unfortunately I cannot locate the original source of this pin, if it belongs to you, let me know.

These cards will be perfect next year. I plan to place magnets on the back and stick them up on my blackboard whenever needed. Plus they match my colour scheme. Thanks to Linda Nelson over at Primary Inspirations.

Aren't these just the cutest cards to pair up random students. Peanut butter and jelly, milk and cookies, and Bert and Ernie. Fabulous and free! Thanks to Making it Teacher for an amazing resource.

Whole brain teaching posters. This is definitely one of the things I want to try and implement in my classroom next year. A Grade Four teacher at my previous school implemented many of these strategies and it was fantastic. I've been researching furiously on the Internet for more information. Thanks to Stephanie over at 3rd Grade Thoughts for sharing how she uses these rules with hand signals.

Well that's all I have to share this week. I can't wait to see what everyone else is pinning.

Thanks,