It's Another Linky Party! Thirteen in '13!

Hey Hey bloggers. So, I'm looking forward to the New Year and remembering everything great about 2013 along with Kristin, Traci, and Hadar for their Thirteen in '13 linky party! So here we go!

I bought a striped maxi skirt from TJ Maxx this year and fell in L-O-V-E! I love me some maxi skirts!

 

I loved the new Superman movie, Man of Steel. Can I also add that Henry Cavill is gorgeous?  I would date that man in a heartbeat. As my former roomie's cousin would say "That is one fine piece of man." So, Henry make your way down to South Carolina sometime soon?

Ok so I said that I loved Man of Steel. Take that amount of love and multiply it by 10. Now you will understand my love for TV. I cannot get enough of it! So many different shows and something to love about all of them. I get hooked on so many of them for so many different reasons. I love to catch reruns of Law and Order: SVU and any other crime show I can catch on tv. On my Hulu Plus right now I am binge watching these:

Mindy Lahiri is a woman after my own heart and I love her sense of humor!

Dawson and Casey????? Can I get an "Amen!" Also, it never hurts to get hooked on a show with gorgeous men in uniforms! 

Just when you think things are slowing down, they throw a new twist in there! I am dying to find out what happens next with Olivia's mom!

My fave restaurant this year has been a local Mexican restaurant called Nueva Villa. At lunch I always get the Pollo Ranchero. Chicken breasts with salsa, and melted cheese served on top of rice. Yum!!

My new thing I have tried would have to be creating my own TpT projects. After falling in L-O-V-E with Teachers Pay Teachers during student teaching and finding so many cool activities to do with my own classroom, I decided to create a few projects myself. Check out my store HERE or with the link in the sidebar!

I think I may have several favorite gifts!

1. My super sweet kids from student teaching brought me lots of teacher resources and gave them to me on my last day. So presh! 

2. My own kiddos gave me some pretty awesome Christmas gifts including a sweet blanket with my name embroidered on it, a Target gift card, and lots of baked goodies! Yum!

3. My last favorite gift will be a gift from myself to myself. 

Cue the music! My laptop I am currently surviving on is about die on me pretty much any second. I don't save anything on it anymore because I know one day it will just crash in the middle of something. So after saving for a year or so with Christmas money and graduation money, I am heading to the Apple Store this week to pick one of these babies up! 

Wow, too many to choose from. Just, way too many.

Probably my recent linky party post with Second Grade Shenanigans about my Christmas list. It has been so long since I sat down and actually made a list. Usually I just think I don't want anything and I feel bad for everyone buying for me. Which, I said the same thing this year before I did the linky party. Writing them all down helped me see which ones I want to save for in 2014!

Also, I started hooking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for their weekly Five For Friday linky parties. I never thought I could venture into the world of linky parties but here I am!

That's me! Second from the right. That's right, I'm a college graduate. Got that diploma now. I'm officially an alumnus of Presbyterian College '13. Go Blue Hose!

This is a picture of me and some of my good friends from College. We all met freshman year and continued to be involved in the same campus ministry throughout the rest of college. Then Senior Year 4 of us all lived together! These girls are the best.

Hmm... I think there are just too many to choose from. I have too many great memories from this year.

Pay off my student loan! I am aggressively paying towards my student loan and I am trying to get this puppy gone and out of my hair! Luckily my awesome mom started paying on it while I was in college, you go mom! 

Also, to pray about how I spend and budget my money. I really want to ensure that I am glorifying the Lord with my money including tithing, giving, and budgeting well.

Growth

I pray that I will see growth in several areas of my life this year. Growth in my relationship with the Lord, growth in relationships with coworkers and new friends, growth in my family relationships, and growth as a teacher and growth in my practices. I pray that the Lord would humble me through a lot of growth.

So that's it! Make sure to check out everyone else's Thirteen in '13!

 

Facebook Page and a Winter Break Find a Friend Activity!

It may be Christmas break but I sure am on top of everything that is not lesson plans! Of course, that's just the way it goes. Anyway, big news bloggers! Call Me Miss: A first grade teaching blog, now has a brand new Facebook page! Go like the page and keep up with new posts and things going on in the room as well as any new TpT projects I may be working on. 

Speaking of TpT projects, go grab this new Winter Break Find a Friend activity pack! It's full of many different kinds of Find a Friend activities, great for your first day back at school and a cool opportunity for the kids to share what they did over the break. There are also general winter versions for those of you at schools that cannot recognize holidays!

Click HERE to snatch this up!

So, I'm so excited about the new Facebook page and this new TpT project! Be sure to follow my blog, like the Facebook page, and find me on every other social media site. (It's true, I love me some social media!)

3000 Views! Wow!

Bloggers,

Thank you so much for everyone who continues to follow this blog and keep updated with me in my recent adventures. I have officially hit 3000 page views for this blog AND made my first sale on TpT! Wow! I cannot believe how much has transpired this past year and this past semester. Please continue to support this little blog in the new year, please comment and follow! I want to connect with all of you and support you in return.
Stay with me for more good things to come in 2014!

A Very Grinchy Christmas!

Oh Mr. Grinch! I just love the story of Mr. Grinch and how he ends up loving Christmas at the end of the story. We even have a little girl named Cindy Lou at our school! It makes me giggle! Anyway, I thought it would be so fun to have some fun, Grinch activities to do this last week as we head out for Christmas. So my very first TpT project is up in my brand new store! Ahhh! So check it out here!

I hope you guys like it, please leave some feedback! And I hope that I will continue to improve as I continue to make items. Also, don't forget to follow my blog, follow me on Google Plus, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest!

All I Want for Christmas - A Holiday Linky Party!

What What! Ok, I'll be honest, I love receiving gifts! I like to give them to
o but most of the time around the Holidays, I have no idea what to buy other people. So my solution has mainly been to just not buy people gifts. I don't usually receive them either so it kinda goes both ways. But that doesn't mean I haven't had my eye on lots of goodies this year! I'm hooking up with Hope from 2nd Grade Shenanigans for her Holiday Linky party. So, here's a peek at what I am hoping Santa will be putting under my tree this year!

 

Look at these great watches! I am recently loving rose gold, like this Betsy Johnson one, but I'm digging the Kate Spade with a little bit of bling too!

I have had my eye on this Pink Hacking Jacket from Banana Republic for a while and this super cute Lily iPhone case!

For all of these rainy days that we have been having down South!

 

This beautiful t-shirt scarf!

I love sunglasses, and collegeglasses.com does custom orders of sunglasses for the college of your choice. Can you say "BLUE!" "HOSE!". I def want some PC sunglasses, gotta rep the Bluehose all day every day!

A magnetic, dry erase board. I know you are all probably thinking "What?!" We are a small, independent school, need I say more? The funds are not there for us to be on the cutting edge of technology. If we want it, we fund raise for it. What I have right now is dry erase material drilled on top of a chalk board. My kids and I do not like it. So, if any of you have any tips on good brands and such, let a girl know!

listening center

I have had my eye on Erin Condren's life planners for a few years now. I can never bite the bullet and spend the money on one even though I just love everything I read about it!

Looking Back and Looking Forward

Alright bloggers so for today I am looking back and reflecting on this past semester. My first semester of teaching is basically under my belt and I feel that I have learned a lot! I hope that any of you who have been following for any of this time feel we have grown together! Looking back on my first semester, I am hoping that next semester will be even better. Looking foward, these are all areas that I hope to continue growing in.

Here is a brief look back at my very first day, which was basically a disaster and caused me to breakdown and reconsider what I had spent the last 4 years working towards!


Here are 5 major things that have been revealed to me this semester:

ONE - THERE IS NO ROOM FOR PRIDE

Over the past several years the Lord has wrecked my heart over and over again revealing my struggle with being proud. I have seen that my pride is ugly. My pride has not served me well, has caused me to lose friends, has created wedges in relationships, and has not given other people an image of Christ.

In addition, when a problem flares up at school, it feels personal. It feels like I'm in an unsolicited fight and the other person has attacked first. Not cool. This semester, I have really had to control my pride, put it aside and try to deal with the problem rather than defend myself.

TWO - LISTENING IS IMPORTANT

All circling back to my pride, when someone states a problem and my response is to defend my own actions, this gives off the appearance that I have not recognized this person's problem or that I deem this person's problem to be illegitimate. Not a good step towards solving a problem or building a relationship with this person.

THREE - TAKE TIME TO LOOK AT THE ACHIEVEMENTS

Often, it is easy to get caught up in where my kids need to be, especially those who came in already behind. This view, while important, has a tendency to make everyone feel frustrated and helpless. Take time to reflect back on how much the child or children have learned this year. One of my students came to me knowing about 3 sight words and had spent the entirety of kindergarten mastering letter sounds. Needless to say I was very worried at the beginning of the year! Now, it is Christmas time and this child is a reader! While they are still not reading at a first grade level, this child is reading successfully. What an accomplishment!

FOUR - SEEK ADVICE WHEN NECESSARY

I am a very sociable person and when I have a problem I am all about seeking advice. But sometimes I have found myself seeking too much advice and then I forget what my own opinion was and become very confused with all of these different opinions running around in my head. I am practicing taking a step back, trying to establish my own opinion and thoughts on a situation and try this first. Then, if I need advice seek out one or two other people to ask.

FIVE - USE YOUR TIME WISELY

I am not always the best with time management which means that a lot of times my downtime at school is not as productive as it could be. I am still trying to practice using my time before school and my planning period efficiently so that I can lighten my load to do after school and on the weekends.

Thanks for reading this post friends and just because I appreciate you, HERE is a little morning work math sheet I made. This is my first attempt at creating anything myself and I have a long road to go so any feedback would be great!

Five for Friday, PTL!

Wow am I sure glad that it is finally Friday! The kids have been extra crazy this week as I am sure you all know with Christmas break just around the corner (10 days for us!). So here's a look at what we did this week in first grade!

I got this fun idea for practicing with nonstandard units of measurement from Cara Carroll over at The First Grade Parade. It is a measure the teacher activity! My kiddos had so much fun using different things to measure "me" and comparing their estimates to their actual measurements. For this lesson I split the class into two groups which made the group pretty large so next time I will use 3 groups for more efficiency and less opinions! My kiddos were pretty opinionated about what they should use as their units and we had a few tempers flare!

We got desks! If any of you have been following my blog you may know that for this entire semester we have had 5 kidney tables in this room for my kiddos to sit at. Now let me state that I am not against tables, I certainly do not have enough experience to see which works for me better, tables or desks. However, 5 kidney tables in this small room took up an incredible amount of space! I arranged, arranged, rearranged, and rearranged them again. There's only so many ways you can turn those tables! I am so excited to finally have desks. I like how the kids can manage their things better with desks, it makes transition time simpler, and the kids have their own space. PTL!

 

We used this super cute writing paper freebie from Whimsy Workshop to write out letters to Santa. My kids kept asking how Santa was going to get our letters and I told them that I was going to mail their letters to Santa. I haven't quite decided how I am going to pull this off. I may just file these letters away and send them home at the end of the year. I also think Santa may write a letter back to our class! Jodi at Fun in First got a little creative with her Elf's appearance when she wrapped it up and put it in the freezer so it would be cold and icy like it was from the North Pole! So cute!

I found this cute elf application from TpT posted by Kindergarten Squared during my planning period so we filled this out today too! One of my little boys got upset because he did not want to move to the North Pole. I had to explain to him that it was pretend and that he was not going to go and live in the North Pole! Whew! Sometimes, I forget how literal they can be and they believe anything you tell them. So cute that he did not want to leave his family! You can grab these freebie HERE

Lastly, we started on our first country from Hope King's Christmas and Other Holidays Around the World paper bag book. I think the kids really enjoyed learning about how other countries celebrate Christmas and all of their customs. We started out by listing all of the customs in America that we participate in to celebrate Christmas. 

Check back in next Friday to see what else we have gotten ourselves into!