Summer Break is HERE!!

YAH!!! Yesterday was my last day of school for the 2015-16 school year and I am proud to say that I am officially on Summer Break! As a tribute to my summer vacation, I am sharing my summer bucket list with you.

My Summer 2016 Bucket List

1) go camping at Lake Moultrie
2) take Miss M to Tweetsie RailRoad to Day Out with Thomas
3) clean out my closet
4) meet Dorothea Benton Frank (again!)
5) organize my pantry
6) go to the beach with Miss M
7) organize the files on my school computer

My Summer Reading List

1) See Me by Nicholas Sparks

2) The Walk Series by Richard Paul Evans

3) All Summer Long by Dorothea Benton Frank

I will let you know how I do on accomplishing these things as I get a chance to do updates this summer. I know I won't be checking in often because I will be spending time with Miss M! I hope you have a wonderful summer as well!

Only 2 More Days of School Year 2015-16!

As I sit here reflecting on this school year, it has not come without its share of challenges. This was my first year teaching 2nd grade in my teaching career. Changing grade levels this year also meant changing who I was working with and losing my wonderful TA who was like a mom to me at school. My class has been rather challenging as well. I have had a very active group with some challenging behavior issues. I loved them all very much, but I am very ready for a break this summer.


In my reflection to this school year, I have composed my #teacherstats and posted this to my Instagram account as well. 

I have taught for 10 1/2 years. I graduated early from college in Dec. 2005 and managed to snag a teaching job at a district about an hour from home for the rest of the school year teaching a first grade class. Then I went back to the school/district where I student taught to teach kindergarten for 2 years. Finally, I came to my current school/district where I have been for 8 years. While I have been here, I have taught 1st grade for 3 years, kindergarten for 4 years, and am now in 2nd grade. It has been a whirlwind and definitely CRAZY at times, but I love teaching my little people!


I am heading off to see our high school graduation this afternoon. The valedictorian tonight was one of my kiddos that I babysat when I was in school and is super precious to me. I am so proud of her accomplishments and can't wait to see her receive her diploma. I would love to hear all about your #teacherstats as well!

Lots of Learning about Lifecyles

I love teaching about life cycles every year! This year since I am in 2nd grade, we have lots of science standards that focus on lifecycles. We are currently in the process of growing our caterpillars. My students are excitedly watching them grow daily from the itty, bitty caterpillars that came into our classroom a week ago. They are writing about the lifecycles in their science journals and are so excited to see them create their chrysalises.


I always enjoyed doing these life cycles in kindergarten as well. I was looking over some of the emergent readers I made when I was in kindergarten and decided to give them a face-lift. I think they look much better with the new clipart from Creative Clips. I have posted them in my TpT store for $1.25 each, but ALL of my emergent readers will be on sale this weekend (Friday, Saturday, & Sunday) for 10% off! Click on the links below to purchase:

The Life Cycle of a Butterfly emergent reader

The Life Cycle of a Chicken emergent reader

These books have also been added to my Kindergarten Emergent Readers bundle and the price has increased to reflect these additions. If you purchase this bundle now, you will receive all future updates for FREE even as the price of the bundle continues to increase!

Read Across America Week 2016

This past week was one of my favorite weeks of the school year. I simply LOVE teaching about Dr. Seuss and all of his wonderful books. He makes me want to read more to my students and this week we have had so many read-alouds.


My class did our first directed drawing of The Cat in the Hat from First Grade Blue Skies and they were so excited. I think they were precious!

Our school also participated in Read Across America Week 2016 by having 3 school spirit days starting on Dr. Seuss's birthday on Wednesday. I got some birthday hats from Dollar Tree for my students to wear and another wonderful teacher friend of mine made these adorable shirts for us to wear. She made our panda mascot wearing a Seuss hat and she put a different Seuss quote on the back of each person's shirt. I LOVE mine and I can wear it every year!

Thursday we celebrated Fox in Socks by wearing silly, crazy socks! I wore these silly apple socks! I rolled up my pant legs so you could see them better. I posted this picture on Thursday on Instagram which I am LOVING using since I can post it quickly!

Friday we celebrated our favorite Seuss characters. I dressed as The Cat in the Hat and my kiddos LOVED it! I had a couple of Things show up for school along with another Cat in the Hat. I also had a Sneetch and a couple of Foxes in Socks. They were precious!

Hope you had a great Read Across America week! Have a great rest of your weekend!

I SURVIVED 100 Days of 2nd Grade!

Today was our school's 100th day! So of course I celebrated it as most teachers do with my class. I truly feel like this year I SURVIVED 100 days of 2nd grade. Changing grade levels has truly been a difficult experience for me. I am a creature of habit and I LOVED teaching my Kinders, but all good things must come to an end I guess. In true teacher fashion, I would never let my kiddos know that I miss teaching a lower grade. I do love my class and even though I did not require or even ask my class to create a 100th day shirt, I had a student who did. I thought it was too adorable so I had to share it with you!

It is just TOO CUTE right?!

Teaching 1 & 2 Digit Addition With a Friday Freebie!

For the past month or so, my 2nd grade team has been reviewing 1 digit and teaching 2 digit addition to our students. We began by reviewing what they knew about 1 digit addition (friends of 10, doubles facts, near doubles facts). This lead us right into our instruction on 2 digit addition without regrouping. Once our kiddos had the hang of addition without regrouping, we introduced regrouping which was difficult at first but most of them had it by the time we went home for Christmas break. This week, we reviewed these skills and today we had our cumulative assessment.

1 & 2 Digit Addition Assessment

This assessment is a freebie on Tpt so you can just click on the link above to download if you would like to use it with your kiddos too! Please remember to leave my some feedback if you download! Happy Friday everyone!

Christmas Parent Gifts

I just wanted to pop on and share with you what I made my students' parents this year for Christmas. I wanted to do something different than I have done in the past since I have a student in my class this year (2nd grade) that I taught in kindergarten. Since I didn't have any "great" ideas popping into my head, I went searching on Pinterest (I don't know what I did before we had it!). I found a great idea where a mom had made silhouettes of her children and framed them for gifts. Well I decided to make them of my students and make ornaments out of them!

First I took each students side profile picture. This works well if you take their picture with a window as the background where there is a lot of light and you get a well defined image outline. Then I printed them off on my black and white printer in my classroom. Since I wanted them smaller and more ornament sized, I printed them 3 1/2 x 5" size. BTW: The smaller the size, the more tedious cutting them out is! Then I laid each child's picture on a piece of black construction paper and with my fine point scissors, I cut out their silhouettes. Then I glued them to the cardstock oval I made dated with the year and laminated them. Then I tied a red ribbon through the top for them to hang on the Christmas tree.

Here is what the finished products look like:

I think they are just precious and I am sure the parents will love hanging them on their tree year after year. I know that today is the last day of school for most places before Christmas, but I think they would make great Valentine's or Mother's Day! They would be great to do in a 5x7" frame!

WOW! I have been MIA for TOO Long!

I am so sorry that I have neglected my little blog for so long, but my life has had a lot of changes in the past 6 months. I haven't been as faithful posting since I had our little girl Macy who is now 2 1/2! She keeps me busy, busy, busy when I am at home! She is not the reason I haven't been on my blog as much though...


During the summer, I got the phone call that I dreaded getting. My principal decided that I needed to move to 2nd grade! Needless to say, I PANICKED!!! I have never taught 2nd grade! I loved kindergarten! I had taught kindergarten for 4 years! I loved my TA! I just couldn't do it! But I didn't get a choice...I was moving! So after a few good cries and being very upset, I packed up my whole life in kindergarten, took home loads of things I wouldn't leave behind and stored them in my attic (thank goodness I have a BIG one!), and moved into my itty bitty 2nd grade classroom.


Fast forward to 5 months later, I am teaching a class of 18 active but sweet 2nd graders with a great team of teachers. It is very different from kindergarten and what I was used to but I am adjusting (at least on most days) well. Thank goodness for some great people to work with.


Now that my little update is over, I just want you to know that I still have all my kindergarten materials on my blog and TpT store, but you will begin to see more 2nd grade materials posted too. I also am planning to have an update done to my blog to make it more current with my new position...and a little more generic in case I get moved again! Thank goodness I can't teach any higher than 3rd grade with my ECE degree! :)


Thanks for listening to my little rant! Only 5 more school days!! YAH!!