Would You Rather....?

We are currently reading Wizard of Oz as a read aloud. What an eye-opener it has been! I thought I knew the story but I guess not. Did you know how the tinman became the way he is? Well, let me tell you. He was once a woodsman who first accidentally cut off his leg. So he went to a tinsmith and got a tin leg replacement. Then he proceeded to chop off his other leg. And on and on until he chopped everything (arms, legs, head, body) and got his entire self replaced with tin. OH MAN. Who knew? I stopped reading out loud after I read about the first leg being chopped off. Basically just said..."and you get the gist of it". But man, did the kids beg for me to read it! Of course I told them that it was not classroom appropriate and that they can read it at home if they want.

Anyways, I went off on a little tangent there. Now that we have been introduced to the Scarecrow (who wants a brain) and Tinsman (who wants a heart), I had the kids do a little journal writing. Would you rather have a brain or a heart? They came up with some interesting responses...

Haha, love it! This has led me to the creation of "Would You Rather..." journal prompts. Okay, I need to rephrase that. A work in progress to the creation of these journal prompts. It has been started! Hopefully it will be completed by next week. We shall see! :)

What's Ahead in 2013? (Another Linky Party)

Joining linky parties is fun! Here is another one by Making It As a Middle School Teacher!

Here are my 13 things that I will be looking forward to or taking part in during 2013.

Join in on the fun and link up! I'd love to see what you have set for yourself in this brand new year! :)

New Product - Winter Making Words Activity

You know how there are people who will try to stay up as late as possible when they finally can? Yep, I am one of those people. And even though it is freezing right now I absolutely feel like I HAVE to stay up on Friday nights just because I can. And boy was I productive! Got my lessons planned for the next two weeks and FINALLY finished my newest product (which I started during winter break), a winter-themed making words activity! Hope it's not too late for you to use it!

Click on the image above to go to the product page.

And for being a devoted reader, here is a freebie from the product, the letter cards for the word gingerbread! Click on the image below to download the freebie.

Please leave a comment if you download the freebie! Knowing people download my creations are really want motivate me to keep creating so please comment away! :)

Okay, it is now 1:17am. I think it is finally time to sleep! Good nights!

Five for Friday

First week back from break is finally over! What an exhausting week! Wanted to make a blog post about something we did in class but I forgot to take pictures of the writing so next week it is! For now...another linky party! :)

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching!

5 Random Things About This Week

Happy New Year!

1. In class, we wrote our New Years resolutions and took pictures with a hat and party blower. Happy New Year!

Meet Claude, the albino alligator!

2. We went on a field trip on Wednesday to the Academy of Science in San Francisco. A parent from a different first grade class works at the Academy of Science and generously donated this field trip to all the first grade classes. Such a generous donation! The kids had a lot of fun.

Not a picture of mine!

3. I made some pecan tarts for a crust party I went to over the weekend. Still had tons of filling left so I finished baking the rest of the pecan tarts last night and then brought them to school. I brought a big ziplock bag of them to school. They were all gone when school was over!

4. I watched Les Miserables this week. WONDERFUL movie. If you are into musicals I definitely recommend it! I hope it wins a lot of Oscars. It definitely deserves it!

5. My mom got me the Wii Just Dance 4 bundle in an attempt to get me to exercise more at home, haha. And it arrived today! Kind of excited to try dancing it out! I was always interested in getting a Wii. Finally got it!

Happy weekend!

New Years Resolution

Can't start the new year with your students without having them write new year resolutions!! :)

Last year, we simply wrote our resolutions and then wrote 2012 in big block numbers above it. I definitely wanted to spruce it up for this year and thanks to pinterest, I think we definitely succeeded! Thank you Kindergarten Korner for the writing paper!

I originally planned to use this craft and writing for the kids' memory book (my gift to them at the end of the year). Then I realized that the party blowers would make it quite difficult so I ended up just taking a picture of each one which I will then print out and include on the January page. But!! Before realizing all this, I also thought to include a cute picture of the kids with the piece. I went to the party store and bought a New Years hat along with the party blowers. Before the kids taped their party blowers on, they got to take a picture with it and the hat. 

I was originally worried that the hat would be too big for the kids' heads since it is adult size. But I tried it on two of the students and they fit fine. I'm sure you can imagine my reaction when this happened...

So cute! :)

I'm so glad we are halfway through the week. This week has been so EXHAUSTING!

Back to Work!

Winter break is officially over. Getting out of bed was a little difficult today. :(

HOWEVER, it was a good day back to work. It was great seeing all my students' smiley faces as they walked into the classroom. They all seemed excited and ready to be back! Interestingly enough, they were! I didn't really feel the need to review classroom rules and procedures, they pretty much seemed to have everything down still. We shall see as the week goes by, maybe they are still in their winter break comas or something...

I also got some late holiday gifts from students who left for vacation before winter break. This one was a great one!

Another tote bag! Woohoo! Teachers can never have too many tote bags. :)

Also got a nice new year gift from work.

Upgraded work computer! Woohoo!

Started working on a winter-theme making words activity during the break. It's basically done but I need to add the credits and copyrights and all that good stuff on there (that's always the part that takes up the most time!). I would work on it now but I'm so pooped from work that I can only hope it gets done sometime this week. I really don't know how all you teachers with families are able to find the energy and time to teach, take care of your family, and create products. You are all AMAZING!!!

Well, we're off to a good start! We have a field trip on Wednesday and still waiting on three permission slips. I know, field trip on the first week back from winter break, crazy huh? My circuit had originally cancelled the field trip but then one of the parents of my first grade colleague's class really wanted us to go (he works at the place) and generously donated the trip so now we have to! Ha, it's really not as bad as it sounds. None of us first grade teachers have gone to the place (Academy of Science in San Francisco) for a field trip before so it will be a new discovery for us too. But I'm sure it'll be tons of fun!!! :)

Hope to share some things from the classroom later this week!

January Currently!

I'm linking up with Farley and Oh' Boy Fourth Grade and doing my first currently ever! :)

Resolutions? Well, if you read my previous post, I listed my resolutions for this year. I haven't set resolutions for myself for a very long time because I never really thought people took resolutions seriously since you rarely hear people talking about completing resolutions probably a month in to the new year. But I decided to go for it this year since it was more a time for reflection and motivation for growth so I really hope I can help myself stick to making sure I complete these resolutions I set for myself. 

Halfway through the week, school starts again on Monday. I need to get my teaching butt back in gear! Ah!