Prepping for the new year! And Hello again {SMILE}!

I can't believe it has almost been a year since my last post!  I will have to say I have MISSED blogging and wanted to sit down and share with you classroom and life happenings so many times... Needless to say last year was a whirlwind but since then I've finished my Master's Degree and am ready to dive back in!

So as I thought about getting back into my classroom this summer (yes already!) I have done the dots on chocolate theme for a couple years now and wanted to change it up a bit.  I have seen so many CUTE ideas and just couldn't figure out what color scheme I wanted to use.  OH - Did I tell you that we (first grade) are getting NEW desks and chairs this year? {I promise that was not a RANDOM thought} The chairs are ROYAL BLUE - So my new theme HAD to incorporate this color (or at least coordinate with it).

Anyway - I was walking through party city {I adore their lanterns and poms} and saw this:

I LOVED the royal blue with the green and aqua! And I really think a chocolate brown would look great with these colors too.  So I started thinking chevron (I have to admit I am loving all of the chevron stuff) so I started looking for borders.  I ended up ordering these from CTP:

I think they will look great with my new theme... And I plan to layer some to create the effect I want.
So now all of my items that I created last year ... it is to do all over again.  I've had a camping/forest theme for 4 years but the last few years I've been adding in more and more owls. {smile}

So I came up with a few things for my room and thought I'd share them and gather some feedback! Please let me know what you think!

First for some name plates for my new {squeal} desks:

I did these nameplates in all four colors above. See... OWLS!

I decided to change my alphabet line to also fit this color eme but couldn't decide whether to stick with the forest theme or change to owls.  SO ~ I created 2 versions!

Here is the camping version:

And here is the OWL version (which I think I'm leaning toward):

I also created cubby labels, table signs, banners and I'm changing out all my word wall stuff.  I am so excited about my new word wall headers :

I can't wait to hang these banners up!

I guess I went a little crazy and I'm still thinking of all kinds of other things I want to add (labels, charts, etc.) So hopefully I will get them done before school starts. I created a bunch of forest animal items and some BRIGHT owl items while I was at it and added those to my store as well if you are interested.  Here's a sneak peek:

Alphabet Cards 

Nameplates

And the cutest forest animals ever!  I just LOVE Scrappin Doodles!

I am really looking forward to getting back to blogging.  I am SORRY this post is super long!  I hope to get back in the swing of things and be ready for Throwback Thursday next week. I'm attending a Whole Brain Teaching conference in a couple of weeks and I'm the coach for our PBiS team and we are implementing this year {More to come on both subjects}. Hope everyone is enjoying their summer!

"OWL" see ya later! 

P.S. ~ Everything in my TPT Store right now is 20% until Sunday, July 14th!  

OWLS, Reading Street, and a Freebie!

Well ~ we've had a break in the weather... high today 98! At least we are out of the triple digits.  Yesterday, I found some of the cutest clipart and decided I had to make a few things using owls.  {I just LOVE owls!}  I bet you didn't know that!?  So for ALL the owl fans out there, I hope you like these.  I started out by creating some nameplates using bright colorful owls.  I thought these were just the cutest... take a look:

If you notice - some of the nameplates have cute sayings and some do not.  I made them both ways  so you could choose if you wanted the sayings or not.  There are actually even more nameplates in the file.  I used 6 different backgrounds.  Click on any picture above to take you to my TPT store.

As I started using the chocolate brown backgrounds (which I love since it is the theme in my room) I began creating another file using brown owls.  I fell in love INSTANTLY!

I'm not sure which one I'm going to use this year... I may just use one of each!  Again - I created these so there are 2 copies in each file - one with the cute sayings - and one without.  Just print out the ones you want to use.  If you are interested, click on any picture above or HERE to go to my TPT store.

If you teach Reading Street, I created some grammar posters that I plan to use this year as we make our way through each week.  I will post these as references for each unit and then make them available in my writing center either on a ring, or in a binder, etc.  I'm not sure yet.  I wanted something that I could project on my Smart Board as we learn about each grammar concept.  Here are a few examples of what I came up with:

These are both from Unit 1.

These are from Unit 2.

These are from Unit 3.

These are from Unit 4.

These are from Unit 5.

Each unit has 6 different posters for each of the weekly skills.  These are all available in my TPT store if you are interested. 

NOW for the freebie!  I hope all you OWL lovers out there will like this. You can get one brown owl and one bright owl name plate for free by clicking HERE!  I am thinking about creating new book box labels, binder covers and cubby numbers using these cute owls.  What do you think?  Hope everyone has a great week... I am off to take my kids to Six Flags today.  Thank goodness it has cooled down a little.  (Heh heh)!

BEWARE....of a really L.O.N.G. post!

Has it really been over 10 days since I have posted?  WOW!  All I can say is we have been VERY busy and with Parent Teacher Conferences over and done with, I hope things SLOW down a bit.  I am happy to say that I had 100% participation and was able to visit with each and every one of my fabulous first grade parents!  To get caught up, I hope you don't mind that this may be a VERY long post... so read on if you DARE!

First, I would like to share our Zoo Animal Research projects we did after returning from our field trip from the St. Louis Zoo.  If you missed that post, read about it here.  We read a bunch of non-fiction books about animals we would like to research.  We were able to see many of these during our field trip.  After reading the books, we would make anchor charts (tree maps) about the facts we learned about these animals.  They are NOTHING fancy, but here are a few of our anchor charts.

After learning about all these animals, students picked their favorite and wrote down facts about their zoo animal on a graphic organizer that looks like this:

Click on the picture to download.

We were going to take this information and write it in a report format.  I wanted them to have that copy practice and forming complete sentences using our "tree map" style.  However, we just were too pressed on time and we wanted to display our projects during Parent Teacher conferences.  So we decided to keep our information on this piece of paper and create our animals out of construction paper.  The SKY was the limit and I was SO impressed with how these turned out.  I love that they are not cookie cutter and they are each unique and designed by first graders.  Here are a few closeups of their animals.

Here is how we displayed these in the hallway.  I also placed some pictures of our zoo trip around our reports for the parents to view while waiting.

In addition to writing our Zoo Reports, the students wrote some spooky stories last week that we were able to hang up on our OWL display wall in the classroom. 

And here is a close up of one of the stories.  I love how she incorporated "spooky owls" in her story at the end.  Do you think her teacher likes owls?

We also learned about compound words and created compound word bats to "fly" around our classroom.  Students learned to recognize two seperate words in a compound word.  We wrote compound words on the bellies of our bats and wrote the two words that make up the compound word on each wing.  Here is a picture:

Then we hung them from the ceiling on our name clips.  I posted about this on Frogs, Bees, and Under the Seas as a guest blogger during their Spooktober celebration. I also posted about a fun Halloween treat also...(edible eyeballs)!  The kids LOVED them.  So if you have time to swing by there, check it out! :)

Next week is Red Ribbon Week for us.  We had a door decorating contest, so we had to come up with an idea for our door.  I HONESTLY tried to stay away from owls, but when I came up with this saying, "OWL" pledge to be drug free... I just HAD to do owls.  They turned out super cute (I think).  Here is a picture of our door.

And here is a closeup of the bottom of the door.  I took a picture of the kids "pledging" to be drug free.  The winner gets a pizza party so we have our fingers crossed.  Although, there are so many great door creations, it will be tough.  I may just have to make that a separate post and share with you all of the red ribbon week door decorations. 

How do you celebrate Red Ribbon Week?  We have dress up days every day next week - starting with wearing RED on Monday.  Thanks for hanging in there if you made it to the end of this post!  Have a great weekend ~