Just a few things from the week...

Hi Friends!
Well, I just finished going through my RSS feed of all of the blogs I stalk and WOW!  I've missed out on a lot of cool stuff!  The good news is that I'm all caught up and feeling pretty excited about the fun stuff I found!

FIRST...this is a biggie...
A great teacher over at Ginger Snaps shared that Scholastic is having a $1 sale on just about all of their teacher books!  AWESOME!  Since I've fallen in love with Teachers Pay Teachers and Teachers Notebook, I've been purchasing a lot from those sights (seriously...I'd much rather spend my money on REAL hardworking and creative teachers who are selling their activities because they work in their classrooms rather than spend $15-$20 on each professional book sold at book and teacher stores)...BUT I couldn't pass up Scholastic's deal...especially when Ginger Snaps shared that if you enter the code 10thanks you get 10 FREE ebooks!  YIPPEE!  Needless to say, I spent $7 on 17 of Scholastic's eBooks!

Then, I found some cute Spelling Word Fun activities being sold by First Grade Fever on Teachers Pay Teachers.  You need to check them out because I'm thinking they'll spice up some of my word work stations once we get serious about spelling words.

Cara Carroll over at The First Grade Parade shared some exciting news about her brag tags from Image Stuff.  They now have Teacher Packs!  When I first read about how Cara uses her Brag Tags, I was like I am so doing this!  Now that they have Teacher Packs...I'm in!  $65 a piece feels a little steep for me personally right now but I have an amazing group of kiddos this year and I know I can make it work!  They'll love it!  And really...that's all that matters for me!  I can't wait to get my first set!

We celebrated Constitution Day yesterday...well not "we"...I was at a TEDx Conference at Bowling Green State University, so my sub celebrated with my kiddos...which I'll admit I was a little bummed I had to miss it.  I'm a pretty patriotic girl...my dad is a Veteran of the Vietnam War and patriotism in our family has always been a pretty big deal.  I get teary while watching Band of Brothers, interviews of our men and women serving overseas...especially when they talk about their families, and I'm pretty sappy when I watch those reunion shows...you know the ones where the mom and/or dad surprise their kids at school.  Anyway...we usually spend the day learning the preamble to our Constitution complete with hand motions.    I love this activity but because I had a substitute yesterday I didn't think it was fair to leave it for her...it's one you kind of want to be familiar with before you teach it to the kiddos and I wanted to capture it on video.  I'll share it a little later...I left my file at school and am blogging from home.  So instead, the kiddos read "We the Kids", completed the Weekly Reader about School Rules and were given a coloring book that explained the Constitution.  I found the coloring book on edHelper a few years ago.

If you haven't heard of TED, you should really check it out...it's amazing.  It's a website full of inspiring talks on just about everything.  If you ever have the opportunity to attend a TED or TEDx conference, I recommend it...but it's not the type of conference that you'll come away with a ton of ideas to use with your students...BUT...it will make you think differently about certain things.  It's kind of like this...When I left, I wasn't like "OH!  I can't wait to do that activity with my kiddos!"  It was more like..."Could you imagine if our schools were able to think this way?"  It's a pretty overwhelming site if you're visiting it for the first time so here are two of my favorite talks...because they make me think differently about things!  :)
Sir Ken Robinson...Are Schools Killing Creativity?
Birke Baehr: What's Wrong with Our Food System

Okay...that's it for now!  I have a weekend with no "real" commitments...but oh so much to do!
Take care!
Jenn