Spring Breaking and it feels so good!!!

It's Friday and that means Spring Break is comin' to a quick close! SLOW DOWN!! At least we have the weekend to kick back and relax. We both took off from our second job to enjoy the last weekend of Spring Break with family and friends. Brittany is going to a wedding today and I'm heading home with my sister who is still in college at FSU (shhhhh... Brittany's rivals)! She came down yesterday and today we're dragging my fiance down to Stuart, Florida to celebrate Easter with my family. Love my hometown! It's so quaint and beautiful and everything about it is wonderful. Of course growing up there, it seemed boring and small, but visiting now I realize how lucky I was to grow up so close to the ocean! Maybe we'll fit some beach time in! **Fingers Crossed***

Let's recap on our spring break so far...

We have done soooo much shopping! We had a lot of catching up to do! We literally shopped til' we dropped. All of our great deals have still yet to be put away!

On Monday we went to lunch at our favorite Thai restaurant Ayuttaya Thai. Yum! The pad thai there is to die for!

Silly girls!! Kelly and Brittany were having a little too much fun at our favorite place!

After a delicious lunch we headed over to Ulta to stock up on some girl stuff! We all need it, right ladies!

I bought this exact item for only $9.00
It's amazing! So happy I got this great deal!

Finally, we went to Panera for some acai berry ice tea and girl time. It was such a great day!

Tea Time

On Tuesday, we were still ready for some more shopping! We took our frugal selves over to Gainesville for a T.J.Maxx/HomeGoods all-in-ONE store! Four hours later... we had done some major damage! After our long TJ Maxx trip we headed to the mall! We got to shop with our favorite little guy. How cute is Landon, Kelly's son?!?! He's too adorable! We love his company!

HomeGoods and T.J.Maxx in ONE store!!!!! Hooray!

Brittany found some great deals!

They had some great stuff!
Check out these
Red Neck Wine Glasses!

Best Friend Necklaces!
Are we too old??

My favorite shopping buddy, Landon! We were having a dance party in the backseat! 

Brittany and I wanted to learn how to do a "smokey eye" so we had a professional at Sephora show us! Getting your makeup done is so much fun and a real "eye opener"... pun-totally-intended! haha!

Ta-Da!

She's going to kill me for adding these close-ups...
but it looked so good!

Finally, we finished off another successful day of shopping with Ballyhoo's! It's was not only fun, but also delicious! I can't wait to go back!

Gator spotting!

Dinner With the Girls!

 We finished off our week of fun with a beach day yesterday! We backed up some snacks and suntan lotion and headed to Daytona Beach for a girls day! The weather was perfect! 

Laying Out with the girls!

Homemade wheelchair??
Random?!?!

Spring break is such a tease... now we're ready for summer! Two more months folks! We can do it! Happy Easter everyone! Hope you all have a great weekend with family and friends!

ABC got it right... CELEBRATE EACH DAY!!!

Spring Break Bucket List Linky!

Hi Friends! We are joining in on Brigid's Daily Lesson Log Linky party to fill everyone in on our Spring Break plans! Since we only have TWO more school days left until a NINE day vacation, we just couldn't resist! Besides, it's pretty *gosh-darn* hard to focus on school right now! 

We are so close... we can almost feel the rays... 

The Frugal Girls Bucket List

**Seems appropriate since we are spending SB together**

1. SHOP for some great deals and spring clothes

2. Have at least two beach days in St. Augustine

3. Tell the second job (Yes, we have a second job at a local restaurant--- TOGETHER) that we are completely unavailable for the next 7 days!

4. Go visit our families

5. Have a boat day on Brittany's boat!

6. Get a tan

7. Finalize some of Brittany's wedding appointments while we're in St. Augustine (hair, nails, makeup, housing, fun places to visit). Hey, it's important stuff!

8. Chinese Buffet (Melissa and her fiancé, Rob gave it up for Lent and can't wait to indulge)

9. RELAX

10. Exercise

11. Blog Hop

12. Wedding Craft Night

13. Girls Night In 

14. Plan a fabulous first grade finale to finish up the last 2 months of school left before summer! 

If we fail to accomplish all of these things we plan to follow through with at least the #9 part! 

Extreme Weather

Florida hasn't been feeling much like the sunshine state lately!  We've been "suffering" through near freezing  temperatures for the past week!  I know... I know... I don't have much room to complain. There are many places buried under several feet of snow across the country!  I actually had to defrost my windshield yesterday before I left for work!  (insert surprised face here) I haven't had to do that since I left New Hampshire back in 2004!  (eww almost 10 years ago)  Yikes!  Anyways... in lieu of these frigid temps... I thought I'd post about our learning on extreme weather.  A few weeks ago, we were studying the ai and ay (long A) phonics pattern and our weekly story from the Treasures series was titled "Stormy Weather".  My kids absolutely LOVED it!  Although weather is not "technically" a first grade standard... Melissa and I decided to roll with it anyway .  It's hard to pass up an opportunity to extend our students' thinking beyond what the curriculum says... especially when they are so eager to learn!!! SOOOO... we came up with this fun project we called "Extreme Weather Organizers".  I wish y'all could have been in our rooms to witness our firsties participating in this activity... they were (drum roll please...) cooperatively learning, researching, sharing ideas, taking on leadership roles, creatively thinking... and most importantly ACTIVELY ENGAGED!!! It was A-MAZ-ING!!! It was one of those moments when, as a teacher, I could actually stop, look around and think WOW!  I should mention that before we started we set the ground rules by stating what cooperative learning looks like, how we should talk to our partners, and what working together looks like and sound like.  So here's a glimpse at what we did... 

We paired our kids up according to how we thought they'd work together best!  They were asked to buddy read "Stormy Weather" with their partner and decide (together) what information they wanted to share in their poster. 




Once they had decided how they were going to design their poster they got straight to work.  I had the organizers previously made on chart paper.  Nothing fancy, I literally wrote them with marker!  It took me less than 5 minutes.  They were asked to write a "Did you know..." question about each storm mentioned in our story (hurricane, tornado, hailstorm, and blizzard).  The "did you know" fact had to reflect a new learning, something they didn't know before reading the story.  We modeled these sentence on the SmartBoard before we let them do it independently. 

Here's an example of what the original template looked like ...

 Here's an example of what the groups created... (their pictures were obviously drawings, not clipart haha)

We had the kids share their work with the class when everyone was finished.  Overall, we were very pleased with how this project turned out!  It was a great summarizer for our weekly reading on weather!  Stay warm fugal followers!!!

Dollar Store *Teacher Edition* Part 2

I got a dollar. I got a dollar. I got a dollar. Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

Time for a little more DO's and DON'T's dollar store style! Since teachers can spend hours searching the dollar store for some great classroom finds, we decided to give a quick guide to some of the amazing deals available. Be careful on your next venture to the Dollar Tree though, not everything is as "frugal" as it seems. Below you will find part 2 of our Teacher Edition Dollar Store Guide. 

Happy Shopping! 

That's one of the best things about the dollar store... you can find so many neat odds and ends that your kiddos will love! Our students love "swatting" site words and reading with themed pointers! Sometimes these things break, but no need to shed a tear over $1! If you are a frequent blog-hopper like us, then you have found many fun Literacy Center activities that utilize dollar store materials! 

Pick up a few of these fishing sets to make "fishing for words"
so much fun! We use this for fishing for digraphs and so much more!
Simply add a small magnet to each fish
(we use dollar store fish die cuts) and there you
have it, an activity your little learners
will BEG for!! 

Some of the die cuts are a great STEAL! You will find the same cutouts for at least $5 at any Educational Store. Just be careful! Beware of the paper thin die-cuts. These are ideal for scrapbooking but not for your classroom!

Enough said. 

Most office supplies at the Dollar Store are reasonable! You aren't hitting the jack pot but you're definitely getting a small savings! Just be aware of the few items that are complete JUNK. The Frugal Girl are all about a great bargain but we don't want to buy something wasteful that won't last. 

The Dollar Tree is your One-Stop-Shop for storage containers. Best deal, hands down! If you find nothing else at the dollar store... the storage supplies alone are worth your visit.
Can teachers ever have enough storage??? 

Stay tuned for PART 3 of our Dollar Store shopping tomorrow! The Frugal Girls are taking a personal day to help Brittany say YES to the DRESS!!! We plan to post more fabulous finds after our day of shopping! 

Things to buy at the dollar store: Teacher Edition Part1

Holla for a Dolla! We have a very good relationship with our local Dollar Tree! MOST of the time we find many great deals and are very happy with the savings! However, it's after reading an awesome blog post from Holy Craft that we decided to make a post ourselves about what we have found to be INCREDIBLE savings and what we think is not worth buying. Holy Craft did a blog post about things to buy at the dollar store and things NOT to buy. We loved her post and thought we should do something similar, but *teacher style.* Hope you find some of our finds helpful! Let us know if we missed any!

FYI: This is only part 1
We have decided to break this post up into three parts!!! Trust me, you'll thank us later!