December 14, 2012

12 in 12 Linky

I know it's not 12/12/12 anymore, but I still wanted to do this linky party... SO I'm linking up with the ladies at "Miss Kindergarten" and "A Teeny Tiny Teacher' for the 12 in 12 linky party. Here are 12 of my favorite things!


(12) Favorite movie you watched
The HUNGER GAMES had to be my FAVORITE movie of the year and right after that would have to be Breaking Dawn Part 2


(11) Favorite TV series

I am STILL in love with Grey's Anatomy! After all these seasons I would have thought I would fall off the band wagon and get bored... but no! I still cry almost every episode!!!

(10) Favorite restaurant

My favorite restaraunt is probably the mexican restaraunt near my house, Jalapenos.  We usually go every Friday night!!! Oh and of course I still LOVE Chick-fil-a!!!


(9) Favorite new thing you tried

This is a tough one... I guess I could say my favorite thing I've tried is making my own Christmas wreath. I found the idea on pinterest and then this is how it turned out:

(8) Favorite gift you got

My favorite gift this year was definitely our hard wood floors! My husband surprised me for our anniversary and had hard wood floors put in our house while we were vacationing at the beach... when we got home I was SO shocked!!!!


(7) Favorite thing you pinned

I absolutely loved this idea of using glitter to make a Reindeer for Christmas decorations...
so I took the idea and decided to do a footprint Rudolph with my 18 month old's foot. He LOVED crafting with his mama :)

Here is a picture of what we did:

I got this one for the fall. I have gotten tons of compliments on it.


(6) Favorite blog post
I absolutely LOVE reading Amy Lemons' blog over at "Step Into Second Grade". This particular post was had some ideas for regrouping that I used in my classroom and the kids absolutely LOVED! Thank you Amy for always having such wonderful posts!

You can read the post here:

(5) Best accomplishment
Hmm... one big accomplishment is that my little blog has reached 100 followers :) I know that's not a WHOLE lot, but I would just love for my blog to keep growing. I really want to be able to help other teachers just as some of the bloggers I follow have helped me in my classroom!

(4) Favorite picture

These pictures were taken a few weeks ago for our family Christmas card and I absolutely LOVE them!


(3) Favorite memory

My favorite memory is probably my son's first birthday party. We did a "Where the Wild Things Are" birthday theme and had SO.MUCH.FUN. planning his special day. We enjoyed the day with tons of friends and family who just love my little man! You can read all about his party here, on my personal blog.


(2) Goal for 2013
 To serve more. I absolutely LOVE getting to serve others, but I don't have the time to do it as much as I would like. I want to clear some things out of my schedule in order to make some time to serve more in the community and at church.

(1) One little word
Blessed
God has truly blessed me and my family, and I could not be any more proud to say that I am a follower of Christ. I am so in love with our God and am truely grateful for all the He has give me.

Hope you enjoyed reading my 12 in 12 :)

Amy

December 13, 2012

LMN Tree: Wrap Up the Year Sale Linky!

LMN Tree: Wrap Up the Year Sale Linky!



Everything is 20 percent off today through the 15th! Go stock up :)

Amy

December 11, 2012

SCOOTPAD

Have you all heard of SCOOTPAD?

It is AMAZING!!!! I was just introduced to this WONDERFUL website and my students absolutely LOVE it!

If you haven't heard of it, I'll tell you a little about it.

First of all it's a website where students can practice every single standard in math and reading on the computer. They can practice at school and at home. And the BEST part is that the website is ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!! There is even an app for it if you have an ipad.

I got my students excited about it by telling them it was kinda like "FACEBOOK" for kids.  The kids were giving me all kinds of "oohs" and "ahhs" when I told them that.

How to start:
Go to scootpad.com and create a free account. Then you can add a class and add students. You can even make up your own usernames for your students (which I just used their AR usernames so they would have one less login to have to remember). Next, your students can just log in and start working through the units and earning coins for rewards that YOU make for them.

After your kids have logged on and done some of the units, you will be able to view reports. My students are competing against each other to have the most points at the end of the week. They can play at school and at home. I absolutely LOVE this because they are working to earn coins, but learning at the same time.

This is a screen shot of our class "wall" where students can write comments. (Aren't these comments funny?)

Here is a screen shot of our rewards in our classroom. My students are working hard for these!

And here is a screen shot showing all of the different topics that are covered in math (they have this for reading too). You can also choose to add topics from different grade levels for remediation or enrichment as well.
You should definitely check this website out!!!! My kids get on Scootpad for one of our math groups and one of our reading groups. I just had to share because it's probably my new favorite website to use in the classroom.

Hope you're all having a wonderful week!

Amy



December 10, 2012

Antonyms and SCOOT FREEBIE


Last week my students were learning about Antonyms.

We decided that after talking about antonyms for a few days, to do something with a little winter theme, so we made "Antonym Mittens", because you have a LEFT and a RIGHT.






The kids had so much fun decorating their mittens after writing their antonyms. They were even asking if there was a way for me to let them wear them!!! haha!

I also wanted to share my SCOOT FREEBIE that you can find at my Tpt store.
I use SCOOT in my classroom VERY often.

This freebie happens to have a person, place, or things game, but you can use the SCOOT card for any subject in the classroom.

I give each student a SCOOT recording sheet, then they also have a card on their desk. The card will have a number on the back so that the students know which square to start with.  When I tell them to "GO", they flip over the card, write down the answer on their recording sheet, and then when the timer goes off I yell "SCOOT", and the kids move to the next seat. When I yell "GO", they start on the next question. This is a great way to get your kids thinking fast and a great quick check as well. The kids LOVE this game because they get to move a bunch, and I LOVE this game because they have to do it without talking :)

I hope you enjoy this FREEBIE!

Other fun units for you to check out this Winter:





Have a wonderful week!

Amy

December 7, 2012

Winner and Moon Craters FREEBIE

First of all, THANK YOU TO ALL THAT ENTERED THE GIVEAWAY!

The winner of EVERY SINGLE ITEM in my Tpt store is...

Comment number 5, Laura {who has a SUPER CUTE blog by the way}!!!


Laura, I will contact you :) It really means a lot to me that you all entered this giveaway! I am so excited that I have reached 100 followers!
Now I want to share a little Moon crater experiement that we did a few weeks ago.

We've been talking about the moon and Space for a few weeks now, so we decided to wrap up our unit by doing a rotation between four of the teachers on our grade level. We each did a different activity on the moon or stars in the different classrooms.

In my classroom we did an experiment on moon craters. {I'll share about the other classrooms in a few days}

We started out by watching a short video about moon craters, where I would stop every now and then and discuss the key details.

Then we decided to make some moon craters of our own by dropping different objects into our moon buckets that we made. We then recorded what we saw and compared our objects to comets, asteroids, and meteoroids.






The kids had a LOT of fun making craters!!!

If you go to my Tpt store you can download the experiment and recording sheet FREE!!!!



I hope this FREEBIE can come in handy for you :)

Have a WONDERFUL weekend!!!! Only a week and a half left for me 'til Christmas break!!! YAY!!

Amy

December 4, 2012

Wild Thing Classroom Set and a GIVEAWAY!

I have gotten several requests for a "Where the Wild Things Are" Classroom Themed Set.

WELL FOLKS... I FINALLY finished it!!!! You can find it in my Tpt Store here!




So if you're looking for a CUTE theme that your "Wild Things" will LOVE, this is it!!!! If you have any suggestions or want any personalized things added, please just email me at amydarley@gmail.com and I would LOVE to help you out!!!


Ok... now to the GIVEAWAY!!!

Well, this little blog is almost to 100 followers, so I would like to do a Giveaway!
I am going to giveaway EVERY SINGLE ITEM in my Tpt store to the LUCKY winner!!!

How to enter:

1. Just become a follower of my blog and leave me a comment telling me that you're following.
2. For ONE extra entry share this post on your blog, facebook, twitter, or pinterest, and leave a seperate comment telling me you shared the post and you will have two entries.

The Giveaway will end on Thursday at Midnight, so make sure to leave your comments by then.

I will use RANDOM.ORG to pick a winner on Friday morning so stay tuned!!!!


Thank you in advance for entering my GIVEAWAY and sharing this with your friends!!!! I look forward to all of your sweet comments.


Hope you have a "WILDLY" awesome day!!!!

Amy

November 19, 2012

Almost Break Time!

It's ALMOST Thanksgiving break for us! One more day after today and we will have 5 days of MUCH NEEDED rest!

I am going to be posting about a WONDERFUL CYBER MONDAY SALE that will be coming up and a HUGE giveaway from my Tpt store! Stay tuned!!!!!

I am SO excited!!! I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving and safe travels!

~Amy

Here I am this morning, in my comfy clothes {which I wear to work often}!

November 16, 2012

Let's Go RACKing!

So, I saw this last year around Christmas time and SOOO wanted to do it, but {hang head in shame} I was honestly too lazy.  I made the excuse that I didn't have enough time... BUT I DO!

RACK stands for RANDOM ACT OF CHRISTMAS KINDESS and our famiy has decided this is going to be a little Christmas tradition we are starting this year.

We made a whole list of things that we are going to do to show Random Acts of Kindess this season.

We did 25 Acts for the 25 Days of Christmas. We plan to leave a little Christmas note with each of our acts of kindness. I'm not recreating the wheel, so I'm using Cara Carrol's card that you can find on her blog here. Cara also has a list of what she did last year when she went RACKing :)

Here is our list for 2012:

1. Tape candy canes to ATM machines.

2. Tape coins to vending machines.

3. Take cookies to the librarians at our local library.

4. Take brownies to the local fireman.

5. Take doughnuts to the local police officers.

6.  We are doing two Christmas shoe boxes to ship overseas to one boy and one girl in need.

7.  Visit the nursing home and hand out Christmas cards.

8. Donate items to the animal shelter and visit the animals.

9. Take hot chocolate to Salvation Army people outside of Walmart.

10. Leave a gift in the mailbox for the mailman/mailwoman

11. Collect canned goods for those in need.

12. Put candy canes on cars

13. Leave a stack of children's books at the play area in the mall.

14. Anonymously pay for another family's dinner.

15. Donate clothes to FABRIK {they are teaming up with United Way to help teens in need}

16. Donate toys to those in need.

17. Take gifts to our neighbors.

18.  Donate coloring books and crayons to doctor's offices.

19. Adopt a class and bring them goody bags.

20. Donate coloring books and crayons to the church.

21. Push those random grocery carts back where they belong.

22. Bring breakfast for Caycen's babysitter.

23. Bring in breakfast for coworkers.

24. Visit the people working at CVS on Christmas Eve and gift them a gift since they can't be with their families.

25. Drop off Baker's Pride doughnuts at the local hospital and put them in the waiting room for the families and staff working on Christmas Day.



I am super excited about going RACKing and teaching my little man the importance of serving others and showing the love of CHRIST.

If you want to join us please let us know! And we would love LOTS of comments letting us know if you will be RACKing this year and also some encouragement as we get all of our stuff together to start RACKing!

I hope everyone has a BLESSED weekend!!!

Love,
The Darleys

November 6, 2012

50th Day of School

Yesterday was our 50th day of school!!!

Thanks to Cara Carroll's AWESOME 50th Day Unit, we had a BLAST!

We came dressed in our 50s attire and we made paper poodle skirts for the girls that didn't have one. (I cut the poodles out on my cricut).  They were so stinkin' cute!






We watched a short video clip from United Streaming on the 50s and read the story "Long Ago and Today" to compare and contrast the 50s and today. 

We then used the cute craft to write one of the differences that we found interesting.

After lunch we had a sock hop. We did the limbo, freeze dancing (where everyone must keep dancing until the music goes off and they have to freeze, then if you move you're out- this was introduced to me by one of the kids haha), and then we had a dance off.  It was HOPPIN'!



We then completed a 50th day math book.

At the end of the day we talked about how a root beer float is made, then we made some for ourselves.



What a fun way to celebrate 50 days of being in school!!!

me and my co-teacher


me and Becki (another teacher on my grade level) YES... I had to make my poodle skirt and I cut a little too much off the back so I had to wear real pants underneath... whoops!!!

Have a great rest of the week!!! We have conference day today so I will be meeting with parents all day long :)

Amy


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