Black Friday

Well Everyone,
Black Friday is upon us.  I rejoice for several reasons:
1. I haven't been out of this county since last Black Friday.
2. I get to spend 3 days with my BFF and her mom in a hotel!
3. I buy ALL, yes ALL of my Christmas gifts in one weekend and spend the rest of December relaxing and enjoying the holiday specials, concerts, etc.

Here is a photo of last year's trip. This is my friend's mom in the back seat of my SUV! I learned the hard way NOT to post pictures of gift buying on Facebook.  My friend's13 year old daughter is my friend on Facebook and she saw her gift in the photo.

click here to get this great planning sheet

Nouns, Verbs, Sentences and Wordpress!

Hi everyone! I wanted to share an activity that we did recently. We have been learning about complete sentences. This activity is about Nouns, Verbs and Adverbs. We worked on it as a class by reading words from each category and then deciding where it would make sense. The kids liked it a lot and have been enjoying referring to the poster.

 

Click here to download.

 I also wanted to mention that we have been doing some rearranging in blog world. My husband and I have decided to turn our Blogger Robin's Nest blog into a family blog so that we can keep extended family updated on kids, grand kids, travel and wedding plans. I have been working on a WORDPRESS.ORG blog for our crafts and projects blog. It has been interesting to work with a different platform, but I am liking it.

 If you were a follower at therobinsnest.com you will want to hop on over to therobinsnestdesigns.com and start following there! Even if you weren't a follower before, come on over!

                                 We have a lot of projects in the work that I will be blogging about over there!

Current thoughts on Planbook.com

Hi friends! Another week has come and gone. Is it me or is the month flying by? I mentioned recently that I have been trying out digital planning with Planbook.com. So far I am liking it. Here is just one reason: This year due to a lot of scheduling changes we have had to make both school wide and as a grade level, I have had to redo my plan book 3, yes 3 times. I make mine in Publisher, print it and bind it. Well, this week brought yet another scheduling change we had to make in first grade. I simply logged into my online plan book and with 2 clicks changed the times around. Took about a minute. Yay! After what I have already been through with my plans this year that was nothing short of miraculous. :) I also like that I can type the instructions for a substitute once and it can carry over. I can also print the week out as a PDF for either myself or for a substitute. I also like that I can insert Standards if I desire to.

I can also make changes on my IPad which is super convenient when I don't feel like getting out of bed and getting my computer. LOL!

Here is a link to my plans for this week so far

Making Ten

My class was having trouble with sums of ten so I made this dice game to practice them.  It was fun and they had a great time.

Get it here!

Engagement News, Singular and Plural and An Ornament Tree

Hello everyone! It is 6 am on a Saturday and I am up working instead,  of in bed! It is one of those nights where the sleep wasn't great and finally just got up! Bleh!

Oh well . . .

Before I get to my post I wanted to tell you that we had very exciting news this week! Our son and his  girlfriend got engaged! They are a delightful couple and we are thrilled for them!

After that, the rest of the week was pretty much a blur!

We did continue to have school however, I know, shocking in light of this monumental event . . .

One of the things we have been learning about lately is Singular and Plural. We worked on it over the course of a couple of days with the first day being an introduction to the concept by teaching the vocabulary followed by demonstration of singular and plural using examples in the classroom.

The second day we practiced identifying words and pictures as Singular or Plural and gluing them on the appropriate charts. Here is a picture of the charts. They did quite well at deciding which chart was the right one.

I am sharing my pictures and word lists. The box formatting isn't perfect on the word lists because I was making them for myself and knew I would be cutting them out.

Click here to download posters.

Click here to download cards

I also wanted to mention that  I am currently in love with PicMonkey! 

I took pictures of my class for Halloween and did some super cute special effects with PicMonkey and then put them on my classroom blog for parents.

Have a great Saturday! We are working on putting up Christmas decorations at our house . . .

This is a special kind of tree called an Ornament Tree which is meant to really put the focus on the ornaments. This will be our upstairs tree this year. We are going to put our regular Christmas tree downstairs.

Yummy Broccoli Cheese Soup and digital planning! Yikes!

Hello friends. Did you survive Halloween? It is kind of exhausting to me . . .and then we have the problem of the leftover candy which is a problem for my Weight Watchers Points!!! Speaking of points, we recently found a great recipe that is really low in points (only 2 per cup) but really tasty!! It is Broccoli Cheese Soup.

I made it for a school luncheon recently and lots of people want the recipe.

I started something new and daring this week. (daring for me anyway!) I started trying out digital lesson plans on the Planbook.com site. I have always been very traditional about a paper and pencil plan book, so we will see how this goes. I like the idea of being able to attach documents and links. Here is a screenshot of what I have done for next week so far,

I also love that there is a notes section for each subject/time so that I can type out details for a substitute one time and never have to again. I will give you a report next week and let you know how it is working out!

Can you believe Thanksgiving is right around the corner?

Click here to download.

Have a great night!