Five for Friday: July 1st

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for another Five for Friday!

Last week was really busy with creating for the classroom, so this week was a little more focused on relaxing.

 I made the best find ever at Five Below this week! Check out my giant foam dice!

I am so excited to use these in the classroom next year! I am thinking about making a giant 120 chart mat for some math floor games. I think it would go perfectly with these giant dice!

 Next up, I have been working on some new phonics resources!

We use a phonics notebook daily in my classroom, but I wanted a way to make it more engaging for the kids, so I started making some interactive notebook sets.

So far, I have made sets for letter ID/sounds, CVC words, digraphs, r-controlled vowels, beginning blends, and ending blends. The goal is to have the rest of first grade phonics targets done by the end of the summer.

I am really enjoying them so far, I especially like printing them on bright paper so I can make my example notebooks!

I recently spent some time organizing the closet in my office, so all of the colored paper was easy to find!

Is it bad that I sometimes just stand in the doorway and look at the pretty paper? :)

 I recently started a free trial of Audible. I'm not usually a big fan of audio books, but they were offering 3 months and 3 books free, so I figured I'd give it a try.

The first book I got is one that I have been wanting to read for ages!

I plan on starting it this weekend, maybe another beach trip is in order?

 I have been spending more time outside lately. One of my favorite things to do is go for a walk around the lake by my apartment.

About half of the trail is out in the open, but the back is in a very shady area with lots of trees. It is a very peaceful place to walk. I've even seen otters in the lake!

This was taken as the sun was rising. I think it is one of my favorite pictures I have evern taken!

Last up, my sweet Maggie just had her 11th birthday!

Naturally, being a teacher's cat, her birthday presents were Dr. Seuss cat toys. :)

She quite enjoyed Thing 1 and Thing 2, but the mouse in the hat was her favorite!

She liked it so much that she was willing to dive under the entertainment center when she accidentally knocked it under. That doesn't happen... ever. I have the piles of toys under multiple pieces of furniture to prove it! :)

That's it for this Five for Friday! Thanks for stopping by!

Dollar Store Confessions

I have a confession. I have tried to deny it, but it just won't stay hidden any longer. I am a dollar store addict!

 

 

I go in for one thing, and come out with 20. Every. Single. Time.

 

This morning I went over to get some pool noodles so that I can make some card holders for my word work center. I ended up leaving with all of this-

 

 

and forgot the pool noodles! Sigh. I am going to have to go back in.

 

 

Jokes aside, I can always find lots of goodies for my classroom. I am going to make letter cubes for word work with these:

 

 

 

 

I have always wanted the unifix cubes with the letters on, but at about $16 a set, I think I will stick to these! They don't connect, but I like that they came in 4 colors so that I can make 4 sets and have different letters on each side of the cubes. I plan to store them in my new green tubs.

 

 

 

 

 

I also found these sentence strips in bright pink, green, and blue. How perfect! We use the Reading Street series, and I plan to make cards to go with our spelling words each week. They will go very nicely with the (forgotten) pool noodles that I plan to make!

 

 

 

I saw these cut-outs and I thought they would work well for some kind of matching activity, maybe contractions or place value.

 

 

 

 

I've seen a lot of pins about cool down cubes and have always wanted to make them. I think that these bright cubes will look nice and be good for giving kids options for when they need to cool down.

 

As for the rest of my purchases, I am still thinking about how to use them! I will have to make another trip to the dollar store this week to get those noodles... maybe I will make it out without buying anything else this time!