You know you teach first grade when...

Love this linky party at

You know you teach first grade when...

1. You find more plastic coins than actual money in your pockets at the end of the day.
2. You know that the "s word" is not actually the "s word."
3. That song you can't get out of your head is probably from a Dr. Jean CD.
4. Where most might insert a four letter word, you use "bummer", even with your "grown-up" friends.
5. A Diet Coke (or coffee, if that's your drug of choice) is a necessity. And you know what a "three Diet Coke day" means. :)
6. No matter what my college Foods and Nutrition professor taught us, you know that sugar DOES affect behavior (so you may or may not scrape a little bit of the icing off of those ridiculous cupcake cakes...).
7. Every "a ha" moment makes up for that pair of Louboutins that's not in your closet.
8. You spend more time choosing a font/clip art than actually creating the activity or newsletter. 
9. You have yet to find something a first grade WON'T do for one Skittle. 
10. The best purchase you've made all year is a School Pro pencil sharpener.
11. You get compliments like this one...

Here goes nothing...!

Ok, friends. I've put together a mini-unit for spring. It has a math (money) game, a fraction center and a couple of writing templates. I have been SO inspired by the things that others are posting, I just had to head over to Scrappin Doodles and share in the creativity. Since this is my first attempt, I would love any feedback you have to give. Hope some of you can use it! Click here to download.

 PS - I'll probably be adding things to this all week. I just couldn't wait to put it up! :)

It was a sad day in room 113

One of our class pets died today. :(

We started the year with our little tadpole, Jacob, and two guinea pigs, Bella and Alice. (Yes, we named our class pets after Twilight characters. The kids actually chose Jacob and Bella on their own. I may have encouraged them to choose Alice for guinea pig #2...)

This morning, Bella died.

Thankfully, it happened before the kids got to school. And what did I do?


I lied.

I told the kids that I had a friend who was a teacher without a class pet and that her class was learning about animals just like we were. We all agreed that the pets helped us learn a lot about how to take care of an animal and that it was a good thing to let Bella join their class so that they could learn, too.

Question - Was I wrong? I know that death is a part of life, but I also know how attached they were to this little creature and how devastated they would be to know she died. Would you have told the truth? Or would you have created a happier story, too?

It's been a while!

Just stopping in for a second to share tomorrow's morning work. We reviewed root/base words today, and it was obvious we need to do a little more reviewing. :)

I made this little activity for practice. Hopefully it will jog their memories! Click the link below to download.

What's the Root?

One day I will have fabulous units to share like the rest of you, but I'm happy to share what I'm doing for now. :)

This must be my lucky week!

I never win anything. Seriously. Never.

UNTIL this week! I won two give aways and wanted to make sure you knew about the wonderful teachers who hosted them!

Earlier this week I won a copy of Kinder Glynn's Dr. Seuss Unit (just in time for his birthday!) and it is fantastic! So many great K-1 Dr. Seuss activities! My kids loved them all!

In that same give away, I also got to choose something from Erica Bohrer's TPT store! I chose her Laura Numeroff Author Study packet and it looks so great! Laura Numeroff is going to be my April author of the month, and I can't wait to use this resource!


Today I woke up to a comment from Janine over at Faithful in First telling me that I won a copy of Love, Pinkalicious! I adore the Pinkalicious books and can't wait to read this one!

Thanks for hosting these give aways, ladies! I'm a lucky teacher this week! :)))