Keeping Up With It All

Teaching a room full of first graders alone is a full time job! Don't let anyone ever tell you differently! There are too many days I have no idea how I am going to drag myself home to make supper for my family - and it's just my husband and I, now that the kids are out of the house (one in the "real work world" and one in college). To try to think about creating new games and activitites to sell on Teachers Pay Teachers has been put on hold for now, for me.  Trying to get a blog post done once a week can be challenging!  It has been a chaotic week in my world.  

Technology has not been my best friend, for the most part.  I DID, however, get the new laptop for our classroom through DonorsChoose!!! It's amazing how quickly it came! After the tech department at our school got our security system installed, we are ready to start using it.  We have a few bugs to work out yet, though. The VGA cords are on the other side of the classroom, and I am not able to use the tablet portion of the new laptop without the base AND still have the image reflected to the Smart Board.  It would be great if it could just magically happen without any wires the way I had envisioned.  Sigh....

We have been very busy connecting with others outside our classroom, however! We had a great visit with another first grade classroom from California on Google Hangout, and we have another one set up for this coming Friday for a Mystery Skype.  I connected with the Media Specialist from their school on Google+.  There are a lot of great people networking on Google+!!  If you want to know more about that, please contact me and I'll get you connected.

I hope you have a great week!!

Participate Learning

How many of you have storage issues like me?  I have things stored everywhere!  When I moved classrooms this summer, I realized I have a SERIOUS problem. I have too much stuff.  I can't get rid of anything!  I need to organize it all!! Since I was in the mood for organizing my room, I went online to Erin Klein's website.  Have you been to it?  It is awesome! http://www.kleinspiration.com/. Erin had an article posted on there about Appolicious, which is now called Participate Learning.  https://www.participate.com  This is a fabulous site!  You can find websites, apps (Apple and Android), videos, etc. other teachers have already collected, or you can start your own collection. Common Core State Standards are embedded in their site, so you can search according to each strand (even if you are not a CCSS school, it is a good place to start, as it will get you great resources which are vetted by teachers in the field).
Another advantage to Partipate Learning is there are so many platforms you can upload.  I've uploaded my Smart Notebook lessons, including some with YouTube videos, word documents upload easily, an Apple app which I use specifically for subitizing I loaded directly into a file just for this, and websites are a breeze to upload! I am loving the organization!

To top it all off, if you have questions, the staff is terrific, too!  I've worked with both Brad Spirrison and Alan Warms, and they both are committed to making sure your experience with Participate Learning is positive.  If you have questions or suggestions, they are willing to work with you to better their product.  No kidding, my friends, these people are the real deal!  Please check it out - you'll be happy you did!

#NPHC - Have You Heard About It?

I can hardly stand it!  My firsties are going to squeal with excitement tomorrow morning when I tell them this!!! WE get to Skype with Jena Ball, author of The Not Perfect Hat Club. Just last week, we started reading it with a large group of people around the globe - YES - around the globe.  It's not too late to join us!! It's an awesome book to get kids talking about being perfectly not perfect.  The main character of the story is a lovable golden retriever.  Here's a link to the book:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/http://www.lulu.com/shop/jena-ball/the-not-perfect-hat-club/paperback/product-22396234.html
Want to know more and get #INZpired? Check out this hashtag at Twitter, as well as #NPHCBlogit
Still interested?  You can see some of the pictures people have posted on Pinterest!
https://t.co/h1uTGAns5D