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!

Comparing Numbers... Common Core Style

Hello, Hello! Does anyone have that awful cold going around? You know, the one that never wants to go away... well the frugal girls can't seem to kick it. We're two weeks in and it's still sticking around. The worse thing about colds is that even though you're not too sick to work and do everyday things, everything is a little less fun when you're feeling under the weather. Speaking of weather, Brittany just did an adorable activity with our weather unit last week. I'll remind her to post it tomorrow! It's a group learning map about EXTREME STORMS. The kids loved it and my class couldn't wait to do it after seeing the posters her class made. She's so creative!

We're first year common core teachers and somedays we've found implementing the new standards to be very fun and exciting. However, due to our lack of resources we find most days to be challenging and we can't help but feel our students are missing big parts because we're all learning this together. One example of this struggle is our comparing numbers unit. The greater gator has always been one of the easiest concepts for our first graders. Sadly, this year they are struggling because common core asks for more (I need a shirt that says this, please)! Anyway, our county-wide assessments eww would like our students to compare equations with whole numbers. Since we were unable to find many activities that helped with this new standard online, well we did what any teacher/blogger would do and made our own! Hope all those teachers tackling the common core standards find this freebie to be helpful!


Enjoy!

Click HERE to download freebie!

Superbowl Sunday Funday

Happy Super Bowl Sunday frugal friends!!! I hope you are all prepared to watch the Ravens and the 49ners battle it out NOLA style!!! I wish both teams the best, but I must confess that I'm a PATRIOTS FAN all the way!!! GO PATS!!!  Well, since we're being honest here, I'd much rather watch college football any day over the pros.  I'm a true Gator at heart... goooo GATORS!!!  This is probably the only thing Melissa and I have ever disagreed on... that's right, she is NOT A GATOR FAN!!! hahaha  Oh well, gator fan or not, I still love her!!!  Matt and I have plans to relax at home and watch the game... nothing exciting this year! We are going to make some yummy (aka fattening) "superbowl food" later this evening.  I love any excuse to grub out!  I decided to quickly post some pics of my classroom before we (meaning Matt) started cooking. 

As mentioned in a previous post, I just got my very own fancy-smancy SMARTBOARD a couple weeks ago and I couldn't be more thrilled about it!  Buuuuut... this also meant that I would have to flip around my room to adjust where I did my whole group lessons.  Below is a picture of my word wall (framed in Christmas lights) and my math, science, and social studies focus wall.  Here is where I post my key vocabulary for each of these subjects and our essential questions.  Below my word wall I have my Whole Brain Teaching Rules that I snagged from Stephanie over at 3rdGradeThoughts (so cute and even better... they're FREE!)

 

Here's my behavior system I use in my class.  This clip system is used by soooo many teachers and I love it because students have the ability to move up and down throughout the day based on the choices they make.  I modified my to fit my FROG theme so...

PINK = Role model of the pond

 PURPLE = Frog-tastic behavior

 BLUE = Toad-ily good behavior

 GREEN = Leap into Learning

YELLOW = Splish, splash, slow down!

ORANGE = Don't be a bully frog!

  RED = Out of the pond! 

This is the first year I've used a system like this and it is working great!

 

Here's a quick look at my Book Nook!  I got those adorable reading genre posters from C L Hillard.  The "parts of a book" poster is from Linda McCardle over at A Teacher's Touch.  I sent mine through the poster maker at my school to make it bigger!  Comfy and cozy... the perfect place to curl up with a good book!  

 

Here's a glimpse at some of our anchor charts that we've made so far this year!  These are all inspired by things I've seen on blogs and Pinterest!  Thank God for Pinterest!  It's such a valuable resource... not only for our classrooms but did I mention we're planning 2 WEDDINGS!!!

Here's a shot of my listening center.  I took a normal rectangular table and removed the legs so that the students can sit or sprawl out on the floor and listen to a good book!  Above it is my CAFE board.  Melissa and I are slowly (but surely) integrating CAFE and daily 5 into our classrooms.  It's a work in progress, but we L-O-V-E how it's going so far!  We are continuously scouring different blogs and websites to get ideas on how we can become better at incorporating CAFE and the daily 5 into our classrooms. 

I like to think of my class as a colorful yet comfy and cozy learning environment!  After all, I DO spend a majority of my time here, so it's important it works for me!  And there you have it frugal followers... a quick glimpse of Ms. Peterson's pad!  Now, let the games begin!  I'm ready for a relaxing Superbowl Sunday Funday with the future Mr.!  He wants to watch some football and I can't wait for the commercials!  Hope you all have a Marvelous Monday!