After the Sugar High Sets In...

I hosted a little Valentine playgroup party at our house on Monday. My oldest is part of the sweetest little playgroup...8 boys...ALL the EXACT.SAME.AGE!!!!! Their mommas are some of my favorite people in the world!!! Love them!! There were about 12 kids under the age of 4 running around my house that night. We consumed way too much sugar, played our little hearts out, and made these PRECIOUS Valentine bags courtesy of The Teacher Wife. If you don't have her Valentine unit, you MUST!!! It's darling...even for the littles!!!

My boys handed out these Valentines {thank God for Pinterest ;)} I ended up giving my kids the little "love bugs", too!!!

Yesterday, I was WAY too tired to think about a dang thing after school. My.word. That party took it right outta me. It was a CRAZY day full of WAY too much candy. When I got home, I had two VERY excited boys and slipped right into my sweats. Elastic is SO forgiving :)

We had the most fun little chocolate fondue bar at our party yesterday. Yes...I had a few servings.

The kids had the absolute BEST time and ohmiword. Things got crazy. My parents coordinated this cute little Minute to Win It game where the kids had to transfer Skittles from one plate to another using a straw. SO fun!!! The winning team got bragging rights and even MORE candy to add to their stash!

I picked up my boys and took them out for a little date right after school. Usually, our little family of 4 goes to Snuffer's every Valentine's Day. We started this tradition while I was pregnant with Landon. Who doesn't love hot dogs, cheese fries, and milkshakes on Valentines?! Well..Mr. Spouse had to work last night and he specifically requested we wait for him to continue our tradition. SO...I've absolutely got my elastic pants on today ready to devour even more fattening food tonight :) Instead of our favorite little restaurant, I took my boys to McDonald's for 2 hours of playtime and ice cream last night. BRING.IT.ON. Not a soul in the entire place!!! Best date ever!

I knew my little itties at school would be suffering from a serious candy hangover today. What better way to treat a hangover than with the exact same thing that made you feel all fuzzy in the first place?!?!? I pulled out the leftover kisses and hugs this morning and we started out our day with a taste test. The kids had to try both candies and decide which they liked best. We graphed the results when we were all finished.

Seriously, as nervous as I was to start the day with more candy, this little activity couldn't have been better!! They were SO excited AND they rocked their little graphing skills. Turns out we love kisses WAY better than hugs :) If you're looking for a way to get rid of all of that extra chocolate, you can grab a copy to download by clicking the pic below.

I wanted to do a little literacy piece that tied in to what we were doing in math, so I had the kids write about which they liked better...{people} hugs or {people} kisses. Then they got to create their own little candy hugs and kisses to match :) They thought this was hysterical! I found this idea on Pinterest, but I don't think I pinned it. If you know where this idea originated, can you let me know?!?!? I'd love to give a shout out and link back!!! For this little craftivity, I just cut out a class set of construction paper kisses and had the kids cover them in foil. They glued on googly eyes and then added some glitter squeeze paint for the smile. Love it!!!

I wanted to put more of my leftover candy to good use, so we did Abby's Sweetheart Snatcher activities today and OHMIWORD...AMAZING!!!! I was going to do this for my formal observation last week, but I ended up doing something not as exciting instead. Honestly, I'm so glad I waited til today because this was the PERFECT after-the-sugar-high-sets-in activity. They LOVED it!!!! SO much fun and SO engaging!! This is another "must have" in your arsenal of Valentine goodies!!!!

I'm STILL without a computer and it's driving me absolutely CRAZY!!! I'm dying to catch up!!! However, I gotta say that it's pretty nice going to bed at a normal hour instead of staying up and playing around on Pinterest :) Now it's off to stuff my face full of cheese fries and fried pickles. Nothing says "love" like a heart attack ;)

Oh, and for those of you who have recently emailed me to ask if I've ever gotten any not-so-nice comments and how I handle them, well, I found the perfect post for you to read!!!

You can read more about it at Home Stories A to Z.

TOO funny!!!

Happy hump day, sweet friends!!! Friday's almost here!!

What Happened to Mrs. Carroll? And a Few Other Things...

I took a personal day on Monday. I hadn't seen my sweet family since mid-December, so I took my boys home for an extra long weekend. Mr. Spouse had to work. Boo. While I was out, I had my kids write about what they thought happened to me. I didn't tell them where I was going or what I was doing, so it was hilarious to read their responses when I got back!!

One of my sweeties said that I was spending the day shopping with my sister, Mrs. Cortez. Mrs. Cortez is a precious 6th grade teacher. We are NOT sisters, but we *might* have told the kids that we are :) We get told we look alike no less than 20 times a week :)

Last week we celebrated the 100th day of school Sadly, I've got NOTHING to share with you. I absolutely got ALL of my ideas from Pinterest and loved every little minute of not having to recreate the wheel. We had our annual balloon launch in between the intermittent spurts of rain. It stopped right before we headed out and started right back up again as we were walking inside! Dear Mother Nature...thanks for that!!!

We also celebrated Groundhog Day sans my camera. However, I did get a few pics the next day of some things that we did to celebrate.

We made a grade level graph {Pinterest inspired} and we did the same little writing we did last year, only this time I had them draw their burrow instead of making one for them.

We kicked off our Dental Health unit with this writing I did last year. Honestly, one of my favorites of the whole year!! This year's is NO exception!! Love this little tooth fairies!!!

Now we're working on Valentine related skills and having SO much fun!! Our math tubs are FULL of Valentine math activities and we're using some of our Love, Splat centers for our literacy tubs. Next week we'll continue on with our Valentine theme and we'll be doing some awesome little activities from First Grade Blue Skies & Fun in First. They both have DARLING "Froggy's First Kiss" units!! Here are a few little things I made for our literacy tubs. Just click on the pics to grab your copies!! And feel free to leave a comment and let me know if you have any kind of Froggy activities so that I can link to yours as well!!

Froggy Freebies

In other news, I'm 100% obsessed with these cups.

They *might* make me happier than the red cups during the Christmas holidays. Bless you, sweet Starbucks. You and ALL of your overpriced coffee. Dangit.

Now you might wanna head on over to Heather's Heart and enter her giveaway...just sayin'. She's "totes adorbs" {that phrase tasted terrible coming out of my mouth. I promise I'll NEVER use it again.} Heather is always SO dang sweet and encouraging. She always leaves the sweetest comments and she has the most giving heart. She's got TONS of freebies up for grabs so you need to head on over NOW. Enter for your chance to win one of these PRECIOUS tees from Sewing Sassy...

AND a Consious Discipline CD and 5 items from Heather's TpT store. In addition to all that, Rachelle from What the Teacher Wants will be giving away 2 of her units, too!! LUCKY {in my best Napoleon Dynamite voice}. GOOD LUCK!!

I'm still computerless and going through serious withdrawls right about now. Not sure when I'll get my little laptop back, but I miss her so much I can hardly stand it. Sad, I know. Not sure when I'll be back, but stay tuned for some super fun ideas on teaching and introducing dictionary skills! We're LOVING it and having a blast {so far}!!!

TGI{almost}F!!!!

Candy Heart Math {& A Making Words Activity}

I know Valentine’s Day is over, but I like to extend my Valentine-ish activities throughout the month. After all, February is the month of LOVE, right?! Well, that’s what I’m goin’ with anyway. Candy hearts are my favorite February math manipulative and here are a couple of little math printables & activities for you!!

The first is a little candy heart graph. I know there are a GAJILLION of these floating around right now. I like to graph the number of letters in the conversation. I pass out a large conversation heart to each kiddo and have them count the number of letters on the heart. Then we create a big ol’ graph on a giant heart to show all the data. I’ll come back with a pic later this week!!

I also love this little candy heart probability activity. I placed a set of conversation hearts in a brown paper bag. I made 4 bags…one for each table. In each bag, I added a different assortment of colored hearts, but I made sure that there was A LOT of one particular color. For example, in one bag I put 12 pink, 2 purple, 1 white, 1 green, and 3 yellow hearts.

The kids had to reach inside the bag…without looking…and pull out a heart {10 different times}. On the corresponding sheet, the kids had to tally the color they pulled. If they pulled out a pink heart, they had to put a tally inside the heart labeled pink.

Throughout the activity, the kids were having awesome discussions. They talked about how they kept pulling out the same color over and over and then…on their own…started making predictions as to why that was happening. Sweet!! After each person at their table had a turn to pull 10 different hearts, I had the kids empty their bags so they could see what was inside and then they wrote about it.

Click on the pic to download the printables to go with these activities!!

Speaking of candy hearts, I found these darling little heart-shaped boxes at the Dollar Tree and snatched ‘em up. I knew they’d be perfect for something ;) I put these in our Word Work station for a little making words activity.

I labeled each with a different number and filled them with letter tiles to spell different popcorn words or chunk/digraph words. The kids had to open up the hearts, spill the tiles, and spell a word using those letters. After they spelled a new word, they had to write it in the matching heart on the corresponding sheet.

My favorite thing about these little boxes is that I can use them for ANYTHING!! I think I’ll put coins in them next week for a little hands-on money activity!!

Click the pic to download your copy of the recording sheet.

Our “Big Days” Catch-Up!

I got the sweetest email from a darling reader who wanted to know if I was okay because of my lack of blogging lately :) I’m a-ok, but my boys…well…they’re a different story. They both tested positive for type A flu last week and I was one busy momma! No time for anything other than snugglin’ the heck outta those kids. Even though the snuggles were sick induced, I’ll take what I can get! HA! I’m SO happy that they’re finally on the mend and back to normal!! I hope that’s the last of the sickies this season!!

Because I was tending to my mommy duties, our 100th day celebration didn’t exactly go as planned :) I have the most amazing team ever, so my sweet girls took my firsties last Thursday & Friday mid-afternoon so I could leave to be with my boys. I was at school for a total of 3 hours on Thursday {delayed start and left early}, and I was only at school for our field trip on Friday. Even though it was a short week, the kids still had a blast!!

We celebrated the 100th day on Thursday and started the day with some SMARTBoard fun. The kids L-O-V-E-D showing different ways to get to 100 {$1.00} with money & base 10 blocks!

We made our 100 day crowns {courtesy of The Virtual Vine} and glasses. You can find the crown printable HERE.

They got to wear their 100th day gear to the school-wide balloon launch the next day :) Probably my most favorite event of the school year!! It’s the dang prettiest thing…HUNDREDS of different colored balloons {a different color for each grade level} floating up, up, & away! Each balloon is tagged with the email address of our school counselor and a little message. SO…if anyone finds our balloons, they can email our counselor to let her know when & where they found it! SO dang cool!! Unfortunately, I had to miss it this year {BOO HOO} to take care of my boys :( This is the only pic I could get…

I also set out a 100 day chart that we added to during the day. I had the kids write words they’ve learned to spell this year inside the 100. We also wrote about 100 things we’ve learned in the first 100 days of school {around the 100}. Every time they thought of something different, I had them tell me what it was so that I could jot it down on our chart. They LOVED that!! Here’s the unfinished version…

That’s about ALL we had time for in the very brief 3 hours I was at school that day!!!

We celebrated our first field trip of the school year on Friday…BRAIN GYM!! SO fun! The kids loved it!!

After ANOTHER weekend of being stuck inside the house, I returned to school on Monday for our Valentine’s celebration. WHOA. Can anyone say CRAZY?! It was a wild day full of lots of fun activities. We started the day with a little Valentine Vocabulary activity and added several Valentine related words to a brainstorm chart. I’ll keep this up throughout the rest of the month for the kids to refer to when writing.

We had our party at the end of the day which was perfect. The kids decorated heart-shaped sugar cookies and played a few games of Bingo.

They also made these adorable “bags” for their Valentine’s!! My team has been making this for several years so I was happy to jump on board & do the same! The kids thought these were “so cool”!!

And I’d be lying if I said these little “teacher perks” weren’t a favorite part of my day :) I brought home my chocolates and bath bombs and took a long bath…*maybe* with a glass of wine…for a little R&R. After a week like this last one, it was just what I needed!!!