Hey teacher friends!

I'm so happy to be partnered once again with Scholastic to share a resource I've actually been using for years. It's their on-demand resource site called Scholastic Printables. It's a lot like someone took the best parts of your favorite teaching resource books and magazines, digitized them, categorized and stored them for you. And now all you have to do is search and print!

A few years ago I went on a massive purge and got rid of years and years of old resource books that were just taking up space and collecting dust. It felt so great at the time to get all that cabinet space back but soon I realized that I did miss having all those resources to browse when I was stuck in a rut. Thats where Scholastic Printables comes in for me. I can easily browse through lessons by content, theme, or skill. It's been especially helpful for me when I'm looking for something to help me quickly differentiate.

Along with printable activities, you'll find a wealth of ideas and helpful tips.

Here's a little freebie for you to download. We're going to cut these out, color them and use them for our April bulletin board.  Easy Peasy {Just right click to save or drag to your desktop.}

So, how do you win a year of this awesomeness at your fingertips? Just share this giveaway on your choice of social media then come back here and enter the rafflecopter to let me know how you shared. Earn an additional entry for leaving a comment about how you'd use Scholastic Printables in your classroom. Share on social media by pinning this post to Pinterest, or sharing this button to your Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook accounts. You must leave a link to my blog (SunnyDaysBlog.com). 

You can also visit MY social media accounts using the buttons on the right sidebar and just share the image I'm posting about the giveaway on my accounts. 

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Scholastic Printables give you instant, unlimited access to thousands of skills sheets, activities, lesson plans and more. These classroom resources are created by teachers and vetted by your trusted friends at Scholastic. Save time and money, and browse with confidence. To start your free trial, please click here.

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Whether you're heading into your first year as a teacher, or your 20th, First Day Jitters are real! This will be year 24 for me and although I'm not nervous, per se, I do still get a slight case of the jitters. So what's the cure? Being planned and prepared. In fact, be OVER planned and OVER prepared!

Remember this is a whole new crop of kids who you really don't know too much about. They may be way faster than last year's lovies or maybe they are super slow pokes. You may have to spend some time with a little one not quite ready to say good bye to blankies and cartoons at 8:00 AM (It's hard, y'all!)

So I have a few ideas and essentials that will help you be ready for anything after that first bell rings. This is lots of years of experience talking - if there's one thing I know, it's that the first few days set the tone for the year. You want your new students to feel happy, excited, safe, and secure. This is accomplished by welcoming them with an activity they can start independently right away. Imagine being in your student's shoes. Maybe you're shy, maybe you don't recognize anyone, maybe you're just scared of the "newness" of everything. You walk in, find your seat, and...then what? Wait for everyone else to come in? Let your mind race as your anxiety builds? Start to get a little more upset when you realize your best friend isn't in your class for the first time since Kindergarten? Help ease all of those fears with a simple activity. I've got a few ideas that I've used over the years.

•Play-doh! Put a little party favor style tub of Play-Doh on each student's desk before they arrive. This idea has been around for a long time and some teachers who have WAY more time than I do actually make the play doh themselves. I hear that it doesn't take much time, but for me it's worth the $10 to buy it. I found a bag of 15 party favor sized tubs at Amazon here, but I've also had luck finding generic brand Play-Doh at Dollar Tree. (works just as well). Put a note on the board that directs the kids to make something that is important to them or what they did over the summer. You'll have lots of busy hands, relaxed minds, and cute kid chatter as they start creating. Sometimes I put little baskets of tools out on the tables - plastic forks, knives, cookie cutters, etc. This will also give you the first glimpse of their sharing skills.

 I actually like to save this activity for later in the day, like after lunch. It's a great way to break up the day. After we create, we do what I like to call a "half and half walk and talk".  I totally made that up. Catchy though, right?  Basically, it means that half of us get up and walk around the room while the other half stays seated. Then the "walkers" casually stop and the "talkers" tell about their creation. Then we switch. We do this a lot during the year, so we take the time to really set the standard for acceptable noise level, appropriate questions, eye contact, and having an actual conversation.

• Handprint Puzzles. I wouldn't suggest starting the day with this one, but definitely make time for it on the first day. I buy blank puzzle templates (you can get them here on Amazon in pack of 24 for $12.99). Be sure to tell the kids NOT to break the puzzle apart until they are done tracing their hand and coloring it. 

I always have a kid or two try to color each puzzle piece a different color, which kind of defeats the purpose of it being a puzzle - so I have an example to show them the difference. After they color the puzzle, then we break it apart, and seal it up in an envelope (I like these self sealing ones). 

Don't forget to add the little poem. You can snag that here from Dropbox. It's the best part! Day one homework is always to put together your puzzle and talk about your first day. Awww...

•Welcome Back Pack. This little pack has been a lifesaver for me. I typically put a pack on the students' desks with a fresh pack of crayons and a fun pencil. 

This goes back to my philosophy of giving the kids something they can do right away to take the focus off of their nerves or uncertainty. All of the tasks are things that can be completed independently but can also certainly be done with friends. I don't expect them to come in, sit down and quietly do a packet of worksheets. It's just something for them to focus on and chat about with their new friends. Some kids are naturally great conversationalists (for SURE) but some are not. Those are the kids I worry about. The great part about this pack is that they can keep it in their folder and I can have them pull it out and work on it when I need a few minutes of teacher-time during the first couple of days. You know, when you realize you never sent your attendance, or a new second grade friend shows up at your door in the middle of the day, or you really, really, really have the urge to do a one-on-one with a new little friend to see what's up.  The activities in the pack are not-so-much All About Me so that they don't overlap with the other things like that that we all usually do.  It's a great way to practice acceptable behaviors when moving around the room to work in other areas, like laying on the rug, using the stools, or enjoying other alternative seating options. I've got separate packs for second and third grade and you can find them on tpt here and here.

•Icebreaker Game Ok, this one is probably my favorite, especially since it got a fun make-over last year. It's a super easy to prep board game that will help your kids get to know each other. It was meant to be a one time game for the first day, but my kids asked me over and over if they could play the "fish game" so I couldn't pack it up for a couple of weeks. It's also a really great way to set the ground rules for acceptable behavior when choosing parters, personal space, taking turns, cleaning up, etc. You can find it here on tpt.

When I was gathering up ideas for this post, I found so many cute things that I wanted to share, but I feel like this is a pretty good start. I'll do my best to come back in a couple of days to share some other ideas. I'll be in my room most of next week getting it ready and then we officially report back on the 15th. Yikes!

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Even though I teach gifted students I was finding that many of them lacked quick fact fluency for even one digit addition and subtraction problems. It's hard to teach problem solving, multi-step word problems, and critical thinking when the basic math foundation is weak. So back in November, I started creating games that I could use with my kids as part of our math block. I focused on games that I could put together quickly without a ton of cutting and organizing and without a bunch of little pieces I would need to keep track of. As the year has gone on, I've created a set for each month and I've been improving on the basic idea as I go along. I will most likely go back and add some things to the other sets over the summer because this final set that I finished this week is definitely my favorite! It's probably at least partl because of the summery flip floppy theme but also because these games are really appealing to my kids and covering exactly what I need them to focus on before they leave me and head to third grade! #sniffsniff

I still have to create a set of Back to School and October games and do some sprucing up of my existing sets before I bundle them, but yes a bundle is coming. In the meantime, you can check out this set HERE

and past months at the following links: November, December, January, February, March, April.

Hang in there friends, the light of the summer sun is almost at the end of the tunnel!

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So first of all, yikes! I have been seriously neglecting this blog of mine. Real life is a bit crazy right now for sure, but I also feel so connected through Instagram that I think I've forgotten the value of a real actual post that's longer than a few quick sentences under a hastily snapped picture. I'm not usually big on New Year's resolutions because I NEVER stick to them and then I just end up feeling even worse about myself, but I seriously do want to get back to blogging. Now I just have to hope that all y'all still want to check in with me from time to time!

So, what's new, you ask?
Well, if you do follow me on Instagram you already know this, but I have a new class pet! About a month ago, I adopted the cutest guinea pig ever. His name is Mr. French (but we call him Frenchie) and he was purchased by a friend to be a class pet in first grade, but she found him to be very skittish and shy and just not the right fit for curious first graders. Then another friend of ours took him home to be a pet for her five year old son. Turns out he was allergic, so little piggie was back on the market again. On impulse, I decided to take him in. I really thought he would just be a class pet that would live at school and just go home with different kids on long weekends or vacations. But that is NOT what happened. I fell in love with this little stinker and now he comes home with me every night! It takes a few extra minutes in the morning to wrangle him up and definitely takes some planning when I leave school if I had errands planned, but so far it's working out. I took him for a vet visit, just to be sure he was healthy and happy, especially because kids are handling him too. The vet assured me that he would be fine on his own for up to 3 days as long as he had plenty of hay and water. So far that hasn't happened, but it's good to know it's an option if I need it. It actually was a bit of a rough start for us, as Frenchie was super skittish and not used to so much human contact, but he's made a ton of progress. I'm planning a longer blog post with things to think about when considering adopting a guinea pig because they're actually a lot more work than I realized, but to me it's totally worth it. I mean, look at this cute little thing!

On another note, it's December 12 and there is not a hint of Christmas in my house. In fact, there are still several turkeys currently staring me down that I need to pack away. I have purchased no gifts, baked no cookies, have no lights on the house, no elf on my shelf. And for real, all I want to do right now is go take a nap. Instead I will tackle this house and at least de-Thanksgiving it. Maybe. Probably not. I'm in trouble.

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Hey friends! We've just finished up our second full week of school.  I'm sure you totally get it, but I am LOVING the fact that we have a three day weekend!  I changed a few things around this year. I don't have a particular theme, but I was trying to go for a more nature/natural look. As natural as a room could look with yellow cabinetry and fluorescent lighting...

This is the back wall of my room. Above the bulletin board it says #GatorRunRocks, which is kind of our unofficial motto. All of our tech stuff is on the back table under that board (laptops, printer, iPads). Then to the left is our Brain Builders board. I've blogged about that a few times. Here's one that explains it pretty well.  I usually sit on that black ottoman for read alouds. Under the easel are some rolled up partner reading rugs for Daily 5 that I picked up from Really Good Stuff.  The Fadeless brand paper on that board looks like wooden planks, which reminds me of a dock.  Then we have the gator, the pussy willows, and tall grass. All very Everglades  - fitting because our school skirts the edge of the actual Everglades! In my mind, the blue carpet is like a big lake.

 I finally opened up my Silhouette Cameo after it sat untouched for a year! My first project was cutting the words Brain Builders for that gator I picked up from Hobby Lobby. At first it was a little frustrating, but eventually I got the hang of it. It's an awesome little machine. I really need to use it more.

 This is the longer side of the room. The banner hanging across the window is from my set of bulletin board banners. I love how they make a little bunting when they're hung side by side.

This board used to be green. I always felt like it was like an old clinic green, so I was overjoyed when we actually painted it black! I keep my number of the day board here, so I was forever using a magic eraser to get the stray marker residue off the green bulletin board. Now that's not a problem at all. I got that chalkboard banner at Hobby Lobby (of course) and it was my second successful Cameo project to cut vinyl letters for it. The green pocket charts hold my spelling words. The copy/turn it in basket labels are in this freebie pack (along with my clip chart and trash tub labels)

Although not quite as obvious, the nature aspect is represented here as well with a rainbow!

I didn't get a good pic of this area last year. These are the two pieces of furniture I bought at Ikea when I decided to ditch my teacher desk and all my filing cabinets. These are both from the Kallax collection. This year I bought the drawer inserts for the longer piece. All my technology, document camera, printer, the laptop I use to connect to my projector are on top. Those black bins underneath are deep and hold a ton! The smaller piece under the black board holds most of my TE's and other things I need at my fingertips. I use the horseshoe table and the blue stools from Ikea when I meet with small groups.

This is the front of the room. Pretty standard stuff. You can kind of see the backpack hooks I hung under the board. BEST thing ever. Now I'm not tripping over them hanging off the chairs. 

The front board holds some schedule cards from my friend Stephanie Stewart which you can find here.  The clip chart is part of the freebie pack I mentioned above and the date cards are in my number of the day set. Squished in between is the amazing Word Superstars pack from Teacher's Clubhouse which you can find here. The specials signs above the board are just something I whipped up to match the rest of the stuff in that area last year, but to be honest, they eat up some serious printer ink. I need to revise them for this year, but I'm still playing around with a new format that will be a bit easier on the ink budget. Ounce for ounce, I'm pretty sure that stuff costs more than gold!

Not the best picture, but this board will be used to track my kids's AR points. It's from my Rock Star pack and it's editable so you can program it for your goals. This year instead of hanging it like a clip chart and using clothespins, I'm just going to use push pins to tack their name around the goal star for each kid. Once we get some name stars on the board, it will start looking a lot more fun. Can you guess where I got the painted canvases to the left? If you said Hobby Lobby, you are CORRECT!

This bookshelf was one of my first Donor's Choose projects. I filled it with these fabric boxes from Target. Perfect fit! Iv'e got all kinds of things in those boxes - math manipulatives, notebooks, supplies, etc. The extra crayon drawers are one of the most used pinterest finds ever! Read more about those here and grab a set of free labels.

My library! The smaller blue bins are from Lakeshore. They're great because depending on how you put the books in the box, you can use them for chapter books or picture books. The larger bins are from Really Good Stuff and have plastic dividers inside to keep the books standing up straight. The tree and branches are vinyl decals that I got from Target a few years ago. The burlap banner and owl are both from good ol' HL! Dang, I spend a ton of money in that place!

This is my new favorite area in the room. This is actually beautiful bulletin board paper from Fadeless. The leaf over the sink is from Ikea. Not sure where I spend the most money, there or HobLob. Which, by the way, is where I got the Zebra picture. There is also a monkey and giraffe in that series and I totally need them! The hermit crabs are in that tank. I've decided to keep some fresh flowers in the room and those beautiful sunflower from Whole Foods go perfectly in that spot.

In a small room, you use EVERY little nook and cranny. This little table from Ikea fit perfectly here. It's a perfect spot for a word work center. We also call this the "resource wall" and kids come here all the time to reference the part of speech posters, math vocabulary, coin chart, and some other stuff I have hanging there. I change out things as the year goes on. In my mind, I have a tpt product idea rolling around for this spot, but it's been rolling around for a couple of year and, well, it's still rolling with no sign of stopping.

So, that's about it. I didn't go crazy with new projects and decor, because I want things to be simple and uncomplicated. I mostly want lots of space for the kids to move around and work with groups or by themselves. I also really want them to feel like the room is theirs and they can easily access everything in it. My focus this year is making my curriculum meaningful and purposeful. My kids are raring to go and I want to keep them that way - engaged and motivated!

I have some more pictures and resources to share from Open House in the next few days. 

Hope you all enjoy the long weekend! If you're anything like me, long days in pj's, coffee, and Netflix are on repeat around here!

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I've been working on my room for a couple of hours a day for the past couple of weeks. I have gotten a lot done, but there's still so much more to do! We report for the first day of pre-planning on Monday but it's ok. I work best under pressure!

I just wanted to share this quick and simple tip with you. My brain does NOT work this way, so I have to give credit to my husband for this one. My dilemma was that I wanted to hang this heavy wooden alligator from Hobby Lobby on my Brain Builder task card bulletin board.

When I tried to hang it with just a push pin and the metal hanger on the back, it was way too wobbly for me. I could just imagine a kid grabbing as set of cards and having that gator bonk him on the head which is a huge no-no.

So Jeff came up with a great idea, that totally worked. We used velcro! But I didn't want to put the adhesive part of the velcro directly onto the painted surface of the bulletin board because if I ever remove it, I don't want the paint coming with it.  So what we did was to first determine where he would go on the board and temporarily place him with push pins holding him up.

But nothing was securing him to the wall and it was way too flimsy. So we then stapled one side of the velcro to the board without removing the adhesive strip.

Then we stuck the other side of the strip on to the part we just stapled. THEN we exposed the adhesive. Then we pushed the gator into place which stuck the velcro to the back. In the end, I left of the push pins too even though it really feels strong enough with the velcro alone, but better safe than sorry!

The finished result:

The wooden alligator is from Hobby Lobby, I picked him up last year. He's our school mascot, so he's been just hanging around with no real purpose until now. I finally opened my YEAR OLD Silhouette Cameo and figured out how to work it (I KNOW!) to make the vinyl letters. Love how it turned out!

If you're interested in the task cards, I've got tons in my shop, but you can find the main bundles HERE and HERE.

Well, I'm off to enjoy my last weekend before we report back on Monday. If anyone sees my summer, can you please return it?  I seem to have misplaced it and I'd really like it back!

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This past February, I had the honor or working with the Carson Dellosa family and some of my blog besties yet again at Annual CD Blogger Summit 2015. It was a whirlwind weekend, but some amazing things came out of it! I was asked to work with two adorable sets - Colorful Owls and Color me Bright. I created a snapshot of how you might use some of these decor products in your classroom. The picture above shows the finished product as it appears in the lookbook.

This picture below is how I left things at the Carson Dellosa offices. They did some picking and choosing and tweaking to make everything look incredible for the lookbook. So much work goes into the production of that book. Make sure you take a peek through the whole thing!

Here's a close up of one of my favorite little parts. This bookshelf serves as a great place to store your math games and manipulatives. I used the owl cutouts to label the area. If you're using an owl theme, these decorative eggs in a jar make the perfect estimation station!

This was my favorite board! I have to give a big shout out to my husband. He came with me this year and was a giant help. He's a teacher too, so he totally gets it. We used the giant letters from the welcome set to create the top of this board. So cute for a back to school board! Love the addition of the artificial tree leaves to the tree cutout. If you look closely, you'll see some little bird nests on the board too! The little owls are sitting in them on the tree. 

I thought this was a clever way to use the pennant banner and library pockets. Just clip the pockets to a ribbon. I used laundry line clips I picked up at Walgreens. Now you have all those little things you need handy at your fingertips - bandaids, passes, bookmarks, stickers,  reward pencils, etc...

If you love these little owls as much as I do, you can win the entire collection! Just enter via the Rafflecopter widget below.

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Fitting in handwriting practice is becoming more and more difficult due to the forty bajillion other things that we have to fit in each day, but it is really important. Yes, the world is going digital, but does that mean we are going to just ignore handwriting and raise a generation of kids who can't write legibly? I sure hope not.

I've been searching for something to integrate into my routine to help strengthen handwriting, but couldn't find quite what I was looking for. So I made my own! The practice pack I've created has 180 pages of practice that all follow the same format: a short seasonal or content based rhyme to trace, then copy, then label and color. Coloring is optional, of course, but it might be motivating for some kids and make the practice seem like less of a chore.

I used a special licensed font to create this pack, so all of the letters should match the Zaner-Bloser style of manuscript handwriting.  {After sharing this pack on Facebook and Instagram, I've had several requests for cursive versions and a d'nealian version. I have those in the works and should be able to post those in the next couple of weeks!}

Here's a page from the first few days of school. You can see how the rhyming words are right at the end of each line, making it really easy for the kids to read and find the rhymes.

Now here's a page from further in the year. You can see that because we're now using longer sentences, the rhyming words don't appear right at the end of the line. This is a great opportunity to remind the kids to read through to the punctuation, not to stop at the end of the line. To reinforce this concept, consider having them use highlighters to identify the rhymes. I'm planning on modeling this with the kids for a bit until they pick it up on their own.

I specifically made these practice pages rhyme because I found that my kids really seemed to be having some difficulty with the concept over the past couple of years. Now this can be another way to work on that skill. You can also work in some mini-lessons on word families and spelling - see how wear and hair are the rhymes here but are not spelled with the same pattern? Little opportunities for a word work discussion are present throughout the pack.

I included a cover page for each month just in case you want to print out a little pack for each student for the month instead of keeping track of and passing out individual pages each day.

Get all 180 days of practice and cover pages for each month for just $9.50. 

Click HERE to see it on TpT.

This year Im going to start off by using these handwriting activities for my whole class for a few minutes each day. I'm not sure what my schedule looks like yet, I'm thinking maybe when we come back in from lunch or those awkward few minutes that you always have somewhere in your schedule. As the year goes on, I may just move to having the kids who really need the practice work on the pages, or even just send them home with a few. It all depends on the needs of the kids. How do you think you might incorporate some handwriting practice this year?

Also available in Modern Manuscript (similar to D'Nealian) and now Cursive!

Happy Handwriting!

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