Hey! What happened to the weekend?

So this past weekend was the first weekend in a very long time that I didn't have "anything" that I had to do and I was pretty excited to spend the day in my classroom for most of the day on Saturday where I had the copier all to myself...we had some copier malfunctions last week that put a lot of teachers into a bit of a tizzy...so I managed to get all of my handwriting, sight word, and color word papers copied for the next few weeks.  I spent Sunday working on my requirements for my internship....REALLY wish I could use some professional development to take a day and actually follow a principal or two.  My administrators are great at giving me little projects to do and inviting me to open houses etc., but I really feel that it would be beneficial to actually shadow them for a whole day.

Although I woke up this morning a little groggy and forced myself out of bed extra early so I would have time to fulfill my technical addictions (blog stalking, blogging, Pinterest, twitter), I am so excited for this week!

I am probably the last first grade teacher in my building to jump into the reading series.  Thankfully, my principal and district don't mandate when we start the reading series or even request that every teacher is on the same story every week of the year.  With that being said, I don't think there's anything wrong with those who are already chipping away at the reading series, I just think the series moves so fast from skill to skill without a real pause to truly check for understanding...and actually incorporate that "Love to Read" component.  I like to use this first month of school to really get to know my new first grade friends, build up their confidence, create our family atmosphere in our classroom, and hook them onto reading.  I've been flooding the children with a a lot of creative ideas and fun activities found out there in blog land and also immersing them in some amazing literature and it's obvious that it's paying off.  I really do have a great group of new friends!  We're choosing good fit books for our book boxes and are able to read to self for a total of 8 minutes, literacy workstations seem to be running smoothly, math workstations are a hit, and we're really becoming a family.

This week we're going to be doing several activities from Christie's "Wonderland Name Fun" at First Grade Fever and polishing up our Daily 5 components so that I can start to pull some small groups!  I've had the song, Catalina, Magdalena Hoopensteiner Wallendiner Hogan Logan Bogan Was Her Name in my head all weekend!  My kiddos are going to love these activities!

I also just found Jodi's great Teddy Bear Day idea over at Fun in First Grade!  With Johnny Appleseed all next week...and my feeling that I will probably start the reading series the first week of October, I'm going to save this idea for one of those short weeks when we need a little break from our daily routine...but it's oh so cute!  I may not be able to wait!

Hope everyone has a great Monday!
Jenn