The One About Still Being Alive

Which I still am in case you were wondering.  

You know how life can be.  Always happening.  Always going on.  I am loving my new job, new school, new kiddos, new friends, and everything.  But I totally underestimated how much all of the newness for my family would equal so much busyness.  Oh well.

So, I've blogged before about my love of Math Journals.  Something I discovered and began using last year.  Well, I'm at it again.  I started them last month and my kids loved them!  I was so excited to begin using my own November Math Journals today!  That is, until the copier and I disagreed.  Oh well.  Life happens, remember.  So, they're copied now and we will begin them tomorrow.  My kids get so excited when I tell them we are doing something that I made.  They always feel as though I have made it just for them.  :)  But they are loving Math Journals.  Every level of student can enjoy them and it is a fun and easy way to reinforce core Math skills.  

I've lamented in past posts about how my TPT progress (making and uploading at least) has come to a screeching halt.  With no new products posted in a while.  Ugh.  Life again. But last month I saw a huge, and sudden, surge in sales.  Made me smile.  This month, just 4 days in, has proven to be the same.  It's beginning to light a fire under me and hopefully I will be able to harness all of the excitement, and find the time, to create and post some new things.  I've got a list a mile-long so the ideas are just itching to get out.  I've almost reached a milestone, for myself at least, in sales and am thinking about throwing a sale to celebrate.  I'll let you know.  Nothing huge, not like some of the big TPT names out there. But for me it's huge.  Just exciting to know that other people also like what I like and enjoy using the things that I have made for my classroom.  Collaboration is always fun, no matter who it is with!

So, I'm back.  I've got posts partially written in my head and a list of topics is always growing.  So, I hope to be back in full force this month.  This little post is just to say hi and make sure everyone, or anyone, is still out there.  

I hope the 1st Quarter, if you do quarters, of your school year is going well.  I am 2 weeks into our 2nd Quarter and all is great!  So, I'll be back soon.  Promise.  

Thanks for hopping by.

The One with a Math Journal Freebie!

Happy New Year!  Again!

Well, today we returned to school after a very short Christmas break.  How about you?  Did you return today?  Tomorrow?  Or are you one of the lucky ones who has off until next week sometime?  Anywho, it's no big deal I guess.  Returning for a 3-day week has its benefits I guess.  It will at least give me time to get all of my mid-year assessments and running records done.  It can also serve as a smooth transition back after a break rather than jumping in head first.  

All in all it was a good day.  My kids were super talkative and very excited to see one another.  You'd think it had been weeks longer than the 9 short days since they'd seen each other.  We took it easy, not starting too many new things.  Tomorrow and Friday we'll get a bit more into things and then fully begin all of our subjects next Monday.

One of the new things we began today was time.  Ahhhhh telling time.  A biggie in 1st Grade.  One of the reasons I enjoy teaching time, and money for that matter, is the fact that the kids get so excited.  They feel special, like they've finally been privy to some grown-up secret.  The ability to read and control time, and money.  It's cute.  Today we started off with the basics - vocabulary, how it works.  time to the hour.  You know, nothing too intense.  Laying the groundwork.  It did inspire me though to finally crank our the January Math Journals that had eluded me the entire Christmas Break.  I truly meant to finish them and have them posted to TPT before the new year, but oh well.  

So, given a new drive, I was able to pound them out today and I'm pretty excited about them.  As I've blogged before, my kids do love Math Journals so much and I find they are a fun and easy way to reinforce some of the basic concepts we are working on in Math.  This month I chose to work with both addition and subtraction word problems, time (to the hour and half-hour), money (pennies and nickels), and growing patterns.  I intended on starting them Monday, but I may begin tomorrow.  One of the first things my kids asked when they walked in this morning was, "Where is our Math Journal?"!  Ahhhhh, I love me some routine!  I was so proud of them/bummed that I wasn't prepared!  That also served to kick me in the butt and get them done!

While I was making them I thought it would be fun to offer up the first week as a Freebie at my TPT store!  You know, to ring in the New Year and to apologize for getting them out late!  Click on the picture below to download the first week of my 4-week January Math Journals.  That or you can head on over to my TPT store here to get it, or to get the whole month!

So, now that I have that finished I can begin working on some other things I've been meaning to make and post!  Hopefully you'll be hearing about those soon.  Until then I hope that you're enjoying the remainder of your Christmas break or enjoying being back in the classroom with your kiddos.  Whichever pertains to you!   

The One Where I Wish You a Happy New Year

Well,  I'll admit that I did have pretty grandiose plans for my Christmas Break.  I was going to blog more. I was going to make several things for my TPT store, namely my January Math Journals.  I was going to actually get out the several posts flying around in my head.  But I didn't.  Oops.

What I did do though was have a fantastic, and relaxing, Christmas Break with my family. In the end that's better than my initial plans anyway.  Wouldn't you agree?  Posts will get written.  Items will get made.  Hopefully the January Math Journals will get done ASAP.  But until then I will continue to relax and enjoy my vacation.

Well, the entire 1 day I have left.  Yep, I return to school on Wednesday.  Yikes!  Has the break flown by that quickly already?  What will I do those first 3 days back?  Oh, I mean, I need to check my lesson plans.  No, just kidding, I do have a slight idea of what to do plans for those days when the kids are totally crazy and still all jazzed up on Christmas Break, toys, and candy.  

How has your break been?  Do you return on Wednesday?  Thursday?  Or are you super lucky, like my wife, and have all the way until next Monday?  Well, whenever you return I hope the remainder of your break is good.  I hope you've enjoyed the time away from the classroom and have rested, relaxed, and rejuvenated yourself so you're ready to greet all of those little faces when they return in January.

One half of the year is gone.  The 2nd half of the year is always so much fun as you begin to see the kids grow so quickly and they suddenly gain so much of the independence and skills you've been working on for the previous months.  

But I'm rambling a bit here.  Sorry.  Maybe it's the late hour.  I've got 20 minutes left until New Year's here.  Everyone else in the house is asleep.  I'm too stubborn though and always insist on staying up.  Then about 5 minutes later I turn in.  And again I'm rambling.

So, I think I'll just wish you a Happy New Year and sign off.  I hope that 2013 is awesome for you and you have a wonderful and blessed 2nd half of the school year!

The One About Math Journals

So, Math journals.  Do you use them?  Know what they are?  I have to admit.  I'm still somewhat of a newbie when it comes to them, but I am totally addicted.  I'd been hearing about the concept for a little while, but never made the time had the time to check it out.  However, in October, one of the sellers I follow on TPT was posting weekly Math journals for free!  Free!  I love me some free stuff.  T-shirts, food, and classroom resources.  So I thought, why not give it a shot?  I loved the format and it seemed like a fun way to enrich my Math curriculum.  I dove in and haven't looked back.

I'm sure there are a gazillion different types of Math journals out there and just as many ways in which you can use them in the classroom.  However, for me, I have found that using them as Morning Work is the best.  Since the kids come into the classroom at varying times, the activity should be easy to grasp, self-explanatory, and not too time-consuming.  So that's what I do.  My kids know to come in, unpack, and work on the Math journal entry for that day.  Then, before we begin our Math lesson each day we go over that day's entry together on the ELMO and we have a chance to discuss it and the skills/concepts covered.  It's worked beautifully in this way and my kids have really responded well to it.  They will even go back and work on previous days' entries if they were absent.

So, I used the October freebies and fell in love.  But I begin thinking to myself, I could do this.  I could make my own Math journals.  Not that the ones I had downloaded weren't great, they were, but if I made them myself, I could ensure that they would tie into the skills and lessons we would be working on that month.  So I was inspired.  I made my first set for November and posted those to TPT.  By now my kids and I were hooked.  Toward the end of the month they were already asking me if I had the December ones ready (they know I make them myself as I may or may not have used that to increase the "oooooohhhhh" factor for them.)  November flew by and before I knew it Thanksgiving had passed and I didn't have my December Math Journals completed (or even begun to be honest).  Remember though, I told you I was an addict, and I needed a fix.  Plus, I love me some routine and procedures so I couldn't just not have Math journals!  Gasp!  That would be horrible!  So, I pushed it and used every spare minute of the day I had to get another month done.  Luckily December is so short once you factor in Christmas break, I didn't need to create a full 5 weeks as I had for November.  

Tomorrow we begin them and I am so excited to have them ready to go on the students' desks in the morning.  This month the 5 skills I've covered include subtraction, tally marks, place value (tens and ones), even/odd numbers, and probability (certain, possible, impossible).  As I did with November, each week's entries are progressively a little more difficult while maintaining the same format.  Just in case I've swayed you (as a Math journal convert) or have piqued your interest (as a current Math journal junkie) I have a freebie for you to preview.  It's the Monday and Tuesday entries for the first week.  Click on the picture below to download it.  If you like it, head on over to my TPT store and check out my whole December Math Journal packet!

So, what are your thoughts on Math journals?  Intrigued?  Eager to try them out?  Do you already use and love them?  How do you use them in the classroom?  I just had to share and post about this since it's one of my (many) new addictions!