Happy Holidays!

I love the holidays! It means time spent with my family, time to relax, and time to catch up! My hubby and I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas celebrating with his family and mine. Our puppy Rosie is still exhausted from all the fun!

This was the picture on our Christmas card. Rosie was kind enough to stand-still for a few minutes for me to quickly snap this picture.

My husband gave be a Silhouette for our one year anniversary (get it… paper!). I have really enjoyed crafting on the weekend with it. It is super simple to use! I have made several banners… my specialty. I am thinking Etsy may be a venture I should look into.

Winter break means I have the time to do what I love.

I decided to update some of my older products… some really needed a face lift! If you already own my Types of Nouns pack or my Spring into Learning pack make sure you download the updates. I plan on redoing a few other items, so look out for updates.

 

 

Click the pictures to see the products in my store.

Can you tell I am loving the polka dots and chevron banners?

What else have I been up to?

I collaborated with a friend and coworker to create two amazing products. Jessica Zaninni is a mother, teacher, and  very creative TPT seller. She has more experience in the upper grades than I do, so I asked for her help with two 3rd and 4th grade products. Check them out in my TPT store. I think we make a pretty fantastic team.

This product has been requested by many of my TPT followers. Jessica did a fantastic job, every ELA, Reading, Writing, Speaking/Listening vocabulary word you can think of is included in this set. I hope you all enjoy our labor of love.

 

 This is another product that I had several requests for. I  am so grateful for Jessica's help and expertise with these 4th grade ELA EQs and I Cans.

 

Now, what should we do for New Years Eve? I guess I need to make some plans.

The First 30 Days

It has been a very busy first month of school for my students and myself! There has been so many times that I have thought about typing a blog post, but became distracted with other ‘must-dos’. L It’s Sunday, and usually I go to a body sculpt class at the Y, but I am going to skip that today to relax, watch some football, and share some of our exciting projects.

This year I am blessed with the opportunity to teach the advanced math class. For my county this mean that the first unit I teach is a ‘recap’ of the first semester math standards, then I start teaching unit 4 (addition & subtraction with regrouping). Basically, by January I will be teaching 3rd grade math to my class. I was super pumped when I found out this was the plan… I LOVE curriculum and am excited to teach third grade standards to my second graders.

In the recap unit I had to cover place value, of course. This is one of my favorite units, and I was kind of sad we had to ‘fast forward’ through it. We still had fun though!

During math centers the kids practiced writing numbers in standard, expanded, and word form on the Activboard.

  

Math is an easy subject to incorporate food into…. and FOOD = FUN! I gave each kid a three-digit number. They had to write it in standard, expanded, and word form. Then, they got to build it using BIG Cheese-It’s (hundreds), pretzel sticks (tens), and chocolate chips (ones).

In Social Studies we learn all about our state: Georgia! The first unit is all about how Georgia is unique. They learn about the five regions, landforms, and rivers. Our culminating project is a salt-dough map of the state.

 

The dough is made out of flour,  salt, warm water, and a bit of oil. I made two batches the night before to save instructional time. 
The first day they cut out their maps of Georgia and glue it to cardboard. I gave them each a handful of dough to spread across their map. They had to pinch the dough to form mountains in the regions where they are located.

Day two involved painting the maps. First, they painted to entire map green. Next, they used red to outline the regions and blue to draw the rivers. Last, they painted the mountains brown. I am very thankful that I had a parent volunteer to help out, in addition to my team-teacher and a parapro.

Although, my class this year is very chatty, they LOVE to learn! I love their eagerness, it gets me excited every morning when my alarm goes off!

TPT Sale!

It’s that time again! The Teachers Pay Teachers

Back-to-School is coming!

 

 

This adorable graphic is from Zip-A-Dee-Doh-Dah Design. You can get it HERE for free.

Starting tomorrow is you enter the code BTS13 at checkout you can get 10% off. I am also having a HUGE sale at my TPT shop… everything is 20% off. Enter the code and you can get up to 28% off!

 

Click HERE to check out my shop & sale!

Don’t forget to leave feedback on your purchases. You earn TPT credits that way, which means you can get more goodies!

Classroom Digs... My classroom tour! - Teacher Week!

Hello! Thanks for stopping by.

I am linking about again for Teacher Week with Blog Hoppin'.

I am very excited to share my home away from home with your today. I must warn you though of two things….

1. I took these photos with my phone, so they may be a bit blurry.

2. I totally forgot to take a picture of my students desks. Whoops!

This is the view when you walk in my door. It is my mini-teacher station. My laptop and document camera must go there in order to connect to the Activboard. I love my document camera!

Here is the rest of my board. The purple pocket chart is for reading centers, and the T-Chart is for I Cans and Essential Questions. See my mobile word wall below? I love it and the kids do too.

 

This is my real teacher station... although I am never really at my desk. Behind my desk are my personal children's books on one shelf, and my TEs and binders on another. I wish I would have taken a close up of my teacher utility box (the purple box to the right of the window).

 

My writing wall!

 

Here is where I do get to sit down every so often. This is my small group area. Ignore the mess on the table, my students' 'backpacks' are drying.

 

Computer station and math tubs! The top row of the math tubs will soon be filled with leveled games to play when they finish their work early during math. The next two rows are filled with manipulatives, and the bottom rows are for clipboards.

 

This is my favorite area of the room. I love my READ board and library.

 

I spent a lot of my post-planning and pre-planning time scanning, sorting, and leveling my library. The fiction books are sorted by guided reading level and the non-fiction are sorted into categories.

 

This is my supplies/mailbox/work area and my word wall. The space to the right of the word wall will be for my math vocabulary words. The trays of paper were from Open House... ignore those.

 

Here is my behavior 'wall'. Clip chart, expectations, rewards & consequences, and goals. I wish this wasn't so blurry.

 

Lastly, this is my jobs chart. I love, love, love how it turned out!

 

Now, just picture student desks in the middle of the room!

Off to relax now. I hope to see you tomorrow for another Teacher Week post.

Let's Talk About Me - Teacher Week 2013

I am exhausted after my first day back to school, but I couldn’t resist a quick post and a linky party. I am excited to participate in Teacher Week with Blog Hoppin’, and hope I get through an entire week of posts.

 

So, today I get to talk about myself! Well, that should be easy.

 

 

1. I was born, raised, and still live in Georgia! I will probably never leave. Well, I did spend 4 short years in Alabama at Auburn, but the rest of my life has been pleasantly spent in the peach state.

 

2. I met the love of my life at Auburn and we got married last October. I love this picture... wish I knew what I was laughing at.

 

3. We adopted our first (fur)baby in April. This is Rosie and she is a Golden Doodle. We love her very much and spoil her with attention. She is not happy that I have returned to work after spending all summer with her.

 

 

 

 4. I teach in the same county that I went to school in.

 

5. I love chips and cheese dip. I would eat it every day if I could... but then I would have to work out every day, and I can only motivate myself to do that a few times a week.

 

6. This is my sixth year teaching! And my first year as our grade level chair. I adore second grade!

 

7. I have a fear of being late. I prefer to be at least five minutes early to wherever I am going and get anxious if I am only going to be on-time.

 

8. I LOVE crafting and creating! I did not go on a vacation this summer, but I was just as happy playing with my Cricut, paint brushes, and computer.

 

9. I am addicted to: coffee, Tazo cucumber white tea, Reese's Pieces, Starbucks, Words with Friends, Pinterest, and iPad.

 

10. I have NEVER snoozed my alarm. Yup, I am a glorified morning person. My alarm goes off and I jump right up! Perfect for a teacher.

 

 

Come back tomorrow and see my entire classroom!

Monday Made It {August 12th}

Today is the first day of school! Woohoo!

I wanted to start the day by linking up for yet another Monday Made It with

4thGrade Frolics.

Made It #1

I printed these and filled them out this weekend. I love my new Parent Communication Log! You can get it for FREE! Just 'Like' Snazzy in Second on Facebook.

 

 

Made It #2

I also created a fancy Just Right Book poster for my room.

Click HERE to get it for FREE!

 

 

I also have to share something that one of my new parents made for me:

 

Becky is amazing! I am blessed to get to teach her son. Did I mention that she also works with me? She made this frame for me to use to take pictures of the kids behind. I am even more excited about starting school now!

 

 

 

 

 

Classroom Sneak Peak

It has been a very BUSY past few weeks! I went in to my classroom a couple of days before pre-planning to start prepping. Once pre-planning officially began my to-do list got longer, and longer, and longer, and it is still growing. Although, I set up my room the same as I did last year, I am loving my revamped bulletin boards and a few other additions. I have a brief sneak peak for you, but you will have to stay tuned because close-ups are coming soon.

This is my new writing board. I decided to do banners instead of letters on all my boards and I am obsessed! I love my writing goals chart I created after seeing it on Mrs. Heeren's Happenings blog. Her goals chart is super cute, but I needed to adapt it a bit for my friends.

 

This is my favorite part of my room! I love the way it turned out. Those are GingerSnaps's genre posters above my library.

 

Another banner... I love the way it turned out. Ignore the stacks of papers on the counter, I took this picture right before Open House. Can you spot my snazzy caddies and my crayon drawers?

 

 

Lastly, here is the little present I had waiting for my students at Open House. Again, this was not my idea... I can thank Pinterest for it. You can download the pencil tags for FREE over at A Cupcake for the Teacher.

 

Ok, I have to get back to work on some new TPT products. But, before I do, I have a question for my fellow TPT sellers... how do you handle product requests?

I have received a few lately, and I want to get them done in a timely fashion. With school starting again I am struggling to find the time to work on them. I would love any advice on requests.