Going stir crazy.....so how about a freebie?

Most of you guys know that Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida is waiting on Hurricane Isaac to hit us tomorrow.  I live in the panhandle and we're just starting to see the wind and rain coming from Isaac.  They closed our schools for Monday - Wednesday but plan on reopening on Thursday.  We've boarded up the windows and now we just wait and see what happens.

In the meantime, we're all starting to get a little antsy!  The kids have already said they're bored at least 25 times today.  My husband has finally finished watching the last of Heroes.  I've scoured the internet looking for great teaching materials and have 3 blisters on my fingers from all the cutting I've been doing!  Hopefully, we can survive sitting here for one more day!

I did go ahead and make something that has been on my to-do list for awhile.  I've been wanting some visual material cards to display on my board, so my students would have a reminder of the supplies they will need.  I made these cute cards with a chevron pattern, and they're FREE in my TPT store.  Click on the pictures to get your FREE cards!

I've also decided to start the year by focusing on color words.  I found some great units on TPT for learning color words.  My thinking is that if my students can learn color words it will not only help their reading but also help improve their ability to read directions and work independently.  I'm also thinking this will be a good unit to start the year while I finish all of my assessments and establish baselines.  

I bought this super cute unit from Doodle Bugs Teaching.

Doodle Bugs (I love her stuff) also just posted this super cute freebie on her blog!  Perfect timing!

And I bought this Color Day Fun unit from Made for 1st Grade which has great lesson ideas with accompanying books.

And to give my kiddos a visual reference for colors words, I made these super cute Color Word Posters that you can check out in my TPT store.  Click on the picture to get yours.

I hope the hurricane isn't too bad and everyone in its path stays safe!

Come Check out My School!

I am so excited about this school year and teaching at my school.  Yesterday, I gave you guys a tour of my classroom {check it out here} and shared some freebies.  

Today, I want to show you the other classrooms in our school.  Our teachers are FABULOUS!!!  Thanks to Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers there are some super cute classrooms.  I work with some creative people, and I know that there will be some great teaching going on this year.

So let's give you a tour!

This is a 1st grade classroom with an adorable camping theme.  One of my 1st grader sons will be going into her class.  I'm so excited for him!

A 3d bulletin board......amazing!!!

I bet you want to know what is inside those camping sticks.  My son, Brody, sure did want to know!

My other 2 1st graders (remember I have triplets) get to be in this fabulous jungle themed room!  I cannot wait to see the stuff they are going to be doing this year.  Their teacher does Daily 5 and Whole Brain Teaching.....I'm in love!  

Let's hope that putting these two together in the same class doesn't turn out to be a bad idea!  I think they're going to just love everything they're learning about though!

This "bee"utiful 3rd grade classroom is right down the hallway from me.   She has made the rest of us on the hallway look bad!

Jungle theme was popular this year in our school.  This is one of my dear friend's 2nd grade classroom.

And here's a 3rd grade classroom's jungle theme.  She even has a sugar glider in her class!

My sweet friend has taken a portable and made it look so cozy for her 3rd grade students.  I just want to curl up in here and read all day!

Across the hallway is this 4th grade movie themed classroom that makes me hungry for popcorn all day long!  Apparently my focus was a little off in these pics!  I've been going to 5am bootcamp and we really worked our arms that morning.  The camera was feeling awfully heavy at this point!

And finally here are some other bulletin boards that I loved as I walked around school.

By all means is this not all the cuteness going around in my school, but this is a good sample.  Tomorrow is our first day of school.  I can't think of a better place to be teaching!

Back to School Pictures with some Freebies!

Last Monday was our first day back to work.  Summer is officially over.  :(  We spent the week in training and having the opportunities to get our rooms ready to meet the kiddos & their parents on Friday morning.  I feel like I worked really, really hard this week.  I decided to change some of my decor at the last minute (I don't recommend do that!) and worked like a maniac to get it all done!

So here are some pictures of my updated classroom and I've thrown in some freebies for you guys a long the way.

Here's my outside Pinterest inspired bulletin board.  We have this vertical boards, and they're kinda weird. I like to do something that I can leave up all year long and then put student work on those skinny boards to the right and left.  You can see my cool rocket ship from last year's board {here}. 

For meet the teacher day, I had my table set up like this.  

Since I teach special education in a resource room setting, my students go to their general education teacher's classroom on Meet the Teacher day.  

I want to see my kids too but know that they probably need a reminder to come my way.  I put these cards on their desk in the general education classroom.  I revamped them since last year, so they're cuter than before.  I've done this the last two years, and I get a lot more students coming to my classroom.  You can download them for free by clicking the picture.  There are two versions.  One for students that you already know from the previous year and one for new students that you haven't met yet.

Graphics by Scrappin' Doodles and fonts by Kevin and Amanda and Hello Literacy.

These Lucky Charm bags came from Pinterest and are so cute!  You can get the topper for free {here}. Do you follow me on Pinterest?  If not, you should!  Click {here}.

Here's what my room looks like from the back corner.  It's a little blurry.  I don't know what happened. :/

This is what you see when you walk in my door.

The Alphabet Cards can be downloaded from my TPT store by clicking {here}

This is where I will hang my official schedule once I get it completed.  You can download the schedule cards for free from The First Grade Parade {here}.  I will also be hanging the daily objectives here but of course I haven't finished making them yet.  I need to get that done ASAP!

These are my Class Rules Posters.  You can download them for FREE in my TPT store by clicking {here}.

Underneath them is my Behavior Clip Chart.  And I think it turned out ADORABLE!!!  You can purchase them at my TPT store by clicking {here}.

These are my desk name tags.  They're also FREE in my TPT store.  Click {here}.  There are 6 different colored tags in the pack.

I like showcasing some of my favorite books on my shelves.

Here are my Touch Point Math posters that I love!  You can purchase them in my TPT store by clicking {here}.

I finally put labels on my clock that I got from here for free!  This has been on my to do list for a YEAR!

This is my too small classroom library.  I have a ton of other books, but they're reading level is too high for the kids I have this year.  I'm doing K-2 and most of my students are struggling students below grade level.  I have such a hard time finding books that are good for Kindergarten and 1st grade students since my school does AR.  Does anyone else have this problem?  Any ideas of where I can find books that are 0.5 - 1.5?  I've even noticed that my books that are 0,8ish seem to have really hard words.  I don't get it.

So that's it!  I'm pretty happy with the way my room turned out.  I have a few odds and ends that I want to finish but haven't gotten to yet.  Soon I'll posting pics of other classrooms in my school that look AMAZING!  I can't wait to show you all how cute our school looks!

Back to School Sale

Today begins Teachers Pay Teachers Back-to-School sale!

My entire store is 20% off, which means you get a total of 28% off when using the code BTS12.

I just uploaded 2 new products last night that I was hard at work on yesterday.

Since I decided at the last minute to change my room's colors, I made a behavior clip chart in the same bright colors as my Alphabet Cards and Touch Point Number Posters.  Click on the picture to check it out!

Next up, I need to make word wall letters.  I better get busy since teachers go back to school tomorrow and I still need to get it all laminated!

I was also thinking ahead and made this really super cute Trick-or-Treat Sight Word Game for Halloween.  Click on the picture to check it out.

Happy Shopping everyone!!!

The Best of Back to School Products Premiere

I'm teaming up with Christina from Bunting, Books, and Bainbridge to show you guys some of my favorite games that I've made.

You may have heard but there's going to be a HUGE back to school sale on Teachers Pay Teachers on Sunday, August 12th and Monday, August 13th.  Everything on TPT will be 10% off using the code BTS12 and a ton of sellers will be offering even more discounts for up to a total 28% off your purchase.  My store will

 be 20% off.

So now onto my favorite games that some of you might want to use in your classroom.  Click on any of the pictures to get more details.

I just made this new Wizard of Oz Sight Word Game and LOVE it!!!  It's my new favorite!  It uses all 41 1st grade Dolch Sight Words and 31 of the Primer Dolch Sight Words.

My best seller is this adorable Er, Ir, and Ur Birds - An R-Controlled Vowel Game.

If your students need practice reading words that have the Silent E, you may want to try my Magic E game.  This game contains word pairs that have CVC and CVCe.  Such as cap ~ cape, bit ~ bite, and scrap ~ scrape.

Since fall is almost on us, I made this Happy Fall! CVC game last night.  Here in FL we don't really have a true fall but I know I'm going with the theme anyway!

Happy shopping and filling up those wish lists!

Classroom Theme (freebie) and Back to School Sale!

Back in July, I posted pictures of my class for last year and said I was going to decorate in a Blue/Green theme.  You can check those pics out here and see one the Blue and Green Alphabet Cards I made by clicking here.

Well the more I've thought about it, the more I've decided I wanted to do a different color scheme.  I don't really want to be stuck with just blue and green, so I've made some new stuff in a new Bright Colors theme.

First, I've redone the Alphabet Cards in Bright Colors.  Click on the picture to check them out.

Then I decided that my Touch Point Number Posters were boring!  So I redid them and you can click on the pic to check them out.

And after I got done with that, I decided I needed new name tags for desks.  The last 2 years, I've name tags that had a lot of "stuff" on them.  I've felt like my students just didn't utilize them the way that I hoped.  They really only utilized them to help remember which way to write the letters 'b' and 'd'.  So for this year, I'm just going to have their names and the alphabet line.  Maybe next year, I'll do something else.  I'm giving these away as a FREEBIE to you guys!  Click on the picture to get your freebie name tags!

Finally, Teachers Pay Teachers is having a HUGE Back-to-School sale on August 12th & 13th!!!  Everything on TPT will be 10% off if you use the Promo Code BTS12, and I'm offering an additional 20% off for a total savings of 28% off!  So use this weekend to fill up your wish lists with all the great things you need to start your year off right!  Click on the picture to check out my store.  A lot of other TPT sellers are giving 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% off as well so shop around!