Fill in the blanks Friday!

1. My most favorite birthday was ...... my 11 th birthday. I had a 50's themed birthday and all my friends came dressed in their poodle skirts and bows. My parents surprised us with a limo to drive us to a 50's diner where we ate hamburgers and drank milkshakes. We danced all around the resteraunt. So much fun! The limo took us home afterwards and we did all the normal bday stuff plus busted out my parents' v-cam to film some pretty rocking movies and commercials. Blackmail material. Seriously.

2. My worst birthday was .... hmmm I can't really think of a bad one! I've always been blessed to be surrounded by friends or family!

3. My favorite birthday memory is .... I dont know if I have a "favorite" but a goodie is definately receiving my MC Hammer tape at my 8th birthday party. Boom. Can't Touch This! We danced around the house for hours. Again- blackmail video- we may or may not have danced like strippers. Where we learned this... who knows?!

4. The best birthday present I've ever received.... When I was 16 I got a new car which was an amazing birthday present!

5. The best birthday present I've ever given was ... I love to give gifts... I think I have given Nick some pretty great birthday gifts! He loves watches and I love to get him different kinds.

6. Birthdays are ... amazing once you have kids! I have loved throwing Reagan birthday parties seriously can't get enough of kid parties!

7. My favorite age so far has been ... I loved, loved, loved 24! Nick and I got engaged, we got Hunter (our first dog), my parents got me a new car for graduation, I became a first grade teacher , and we moved into our first house! It was an exciting year to say the least!! :)

Teacher Tuesday

Hi friends!

I have finished my 2nd day of school this year! Wahoo!! 25/27 have shown up and half of them are from another school in our district. (The district made new school boundries and switched a bunch of the students around.) It is very interesting (to say the least) to see a different group of students from a different school. So the last two days have been spent practicing proceducres and good behavior, touring the school, getting to know you activities, etc. I'm enjoying my new class and am hoping for a great school year.

One of my favorite bloggy/twitter friends , MJ at Teaching in Heels, started a new link-up for teachers on Tuesday. So of course I had to participate and show her some bloggy love! She wants us to share fun and new teaching things for other teachers.... very cool!

The girls on my team have been doing some activities from Babbling Abby's Fun with Firsties this week. One of my favorite new things is the Jitter Juice. The kids LOVED it!! Big time!!

First I read the book "First Day Jitters".

Next, we talked about nerves / jitters / etc.

The kids all read Abby's poem multiple times (too cute).

Then, we made the jitter juice. ( I altered the recipe a little bit - mainly bc I didnt want to deal with scooping sherbert ice-cream! So I just did Hawaiin Punch and Sprite). The students all drank it and were hilarious -- "oh- my butterflies all flew away!"

Last, we graphed our results.

If you haven't checked out Babbling Abby's Back to School Unit I would definately reccomend it! :) Jitter Juice was a BIG hit!

Back to School

I've loved looking at all of your beautiful and creative rooms these last few weeks! After working like an animal in my classroom this past week (in between all of those meetings/trainings of course) my room is complete. I've carried over the apple theme that I started last year. That made things a lot easier- although it didn't stop me from buying an insane amount of new things! Here are the pictures I took today at school. Enjoy!

Room at a glance
Grammar Wall (I am an ELD teacher so I have to have this instead of a word wall.)

Front door, Class Jobs, Star of the Week

Name Station (From Deanna Jump's Unit)

Word Family Station

ABC Order Station, Word Work Station, Rhyming Station
Calendar Math Notebooks (So excited to try this!)

Calendar Math Wall
Calendar Math Wall

Calendar Math Wall

Math Stations

Got these above great ideas from fellow bloggers! Thank you!

Writing Wall

(We are starting Thinking Maps, thus the new posters.)

Carpet Area
(Love the vowel glues from Teacher Wife! Thank you!)

Reading Focus Wall

Small Group Area

Reading Group Tubs

Student Work Display (27 kids so far! Wow!)

Student Book Boxes

They are organized by Table Numbers and I am going to take their pictures and post on the boxes for easy id.

Looking into the hallway

Reading Tree

The kids apple/names will move up or down depending on their ORF scores each week.

Organization (writing journals, wake-up journals, etc)

My Teacher Area
Library Station, Cubbies, Computers


An Example of a Table

Thursday night was Meet the Teacher Night at our school.

Here is a picture of my first grade team this year.

Cori is new to our team this year (she came up from Kinder and replaced Kelli who went up to Second Grade this year), then me, then Kate (this is our 7th year teaching together), and Lisa (this is our 5th year teaching together). We're going to have a great year!

True Life, I'm a General Blogger!

I've seen a bunch of my blogger friends linking up with Mrs. Monologues and Fabulous but Evil today for their blogger-introduction-linky party!

So... never wanting to be left out... I will join in too!

Hi!

My name is Mandy.

If you are new to my blog, here are some important things to get you started....

1. I am 29 years old. (OMG- no way will I be 30 this year. Wow)

2. I have been married to Nick for 5 years.

(Wild frat boy prez marries good girl (sometimes) sorority prez... that story)

You can read about our wedding here. Wedding Post

3. We have a 2 year old son named Reagan.

Yes, he was named after the president. Yes, I am kind of obsessed with him (my kid, not the prez).

4. I teach 1st Grade and love, love, love it.

I start my 7th year on Monday!

You can read some of my school posts here and here and here.

I seriously work with the best girls ever!
Love this pic of Reagan and my class.

5. I am extremely close to my family.

Too some, maybe too close.

We think we are like the Kardashians. Just saying.

My little sister, my mom, and I are BFFs!

The whole clan. In our 4th of July garb- obv!
6. I'm pretty much obsessed with reality tv and all things pop culture.

For being a pretty conservative girl, I love pretty wild stuff. I love hip hop, Britney, Lady Gaga, have a little bit of a trucker's mouth, and married Nick- reformed "bad boy".

NBD- totally here with Gaga and Bethenny.

Just a typical day. ;)

That's me in a nutshell.

Thanks for reading!