TGIF!

TGIF!  Despite it being a "short" week, it felt pretty LONG to me!  It was due to the fact that we had a rainy day on Wednesday and when it rains, it pours.  Literally and figuratively.  Our district went from 20-1 in K-3 last year to 32-1.  Luckily, I only have 27 students but 16 of them are boys!  I don't know what happened!!  They are little darlings though and have come a long way since the beginning of the year.  Remember my post the other day about my finds at Lakeshore?  Well, here's a before picture of my calendar area and an after.

Before

After!

I am loving the fact that I can now have a word wall in my room too!

I was able to get some old keyboards from school and made these awesome keyboards so that my kids can work with words and practice typing their high frequency words.  I got this fantastic idea from First Grade Fresh's blog.  I am so thankful for awesome bloggers who have inspired me with new ideas for my classroom.

Here are one of my little munchkins hard at work.  I love that they can work independently and are so engaged in learning!

Here's another one of my little darlings working independently writing/stamping words using the Word Work Activities from Babbling Abby from The Inspired Apple.  I bought every single one of her word work activities and my kids LOVE them!

At the beginning of the year when I first discovered TpT, I bought the Calendar Companion from The First Grade Parade.  I would write it on the board and it would be sometimes difficult for my students to follow along.  Our district does not have funding for Elmos or Smart Boards so I actually set up my iPad as a document camera.  More on that in another post.  Anyway, I love the Number of the Day activity from the packet so I created the Number of the Day for my whiteboard.  I laminated those pieces and cut the middle of them out so that I can write directly on the whiteboard.  It is so much easier than trying to draw all that every day.  My students can now do this all by themselves and it's a wonderful way to reinforce many skills in math/number sense.

I am loving my new calendar, whiteboard, and word wall area.  The things on the side are like a "pride wall" area.  I have a picture of the kids' faces printed in color, their name, and hang up a monthly writing activity.  The kids love looking at a picture of themselves.  

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.  Look for a giveaway to be posted sometime this weekend.  In the meantime, enjoy this sub report form. 

Download the document here.