Nelson literacy, yay!

My board is making a switch to Nelson Literacy. We received our resources just this week, so it's not mandatory to use this year, but it will be next year. I know many of you are American so you've never heard of this, but that's OK. To those of you in the great white north like me, check it out! It features Canadian authors.

I'm really excited because it crosses over into 3 of our 4 Science Units and MANY of our Social Studies outcomes. It will make it much easier to cover these outcomes while giving reading the extra time it requires.

Hence My yay!

Here are my Five kits on the floor of my classroom this week:

If you clicked on the link to Nelson and did some reading, you'll notice there are actually 6 kits available for grade 1 in Canada, but our board didn't order us the missing one for good reason, the subject isn't part of grade one curriculum here! It's about Energy.

What resource do you use? Last year we used Collections, and are still expected to use a bit this year I think.

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Sneak Peak #3: A Mish mash of stuff

Yesterday I showed you a few things I've been working on, and today I'll show you a few more projects I've been working on:

My LEAST favourite part of getting ready for back to school is deciding when I'm going to teach each subject, ensuring I have enough minutes in each subject and making sure that ALL minutes in the week are accounted for. ARGH! But it's done. For this year at least.

This SUPER bulletin board is the display outside my classroom. I saw the idea on Pinterest quite some time ago and KNEW I had to do it for back to school this year. Have to remember to save when I take it down so I can use it again next year. I'm pretty sure the original link was removed, so I can't link it back to the original idea so you can compare.

This was also inspired by a board I found by Pinterest on Queen of the First Grade Jungle. I like my version better because it goes with my decorations. But you can do whatever floats your boat!

And finally, I finished building my bare Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Tree for my Across Canada Letter exchange.

More soon!

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Sneak Peak #2: Superhero stuff

I've been in my room almost all week and I'd like to Give you a sneak peak of a few of my elements this year. I'll do a full reveal when I'm done everything!

I originally planned to hang these guys from my ceiling but decided the day I brought them into the school that they'd look better on the upper bulletin boards and walls, and my door. You'll see that tomorrow though. I used my two-year-old daughter as my template, but she wiggles, so I had to do a lot of trimming. lol.

I was inspired to do these by a few sources I found on Pinterest as well as by School Girl Style. I ordered by 5 lanterns from Partys R Us and made the masks myself by tracing the one surviving silver mask from last year onto black poster board and tying it onto the lantern with some pink ribbon. The other four colours are red, yellow, blue and green.

All of my bulletin boards are covered in this awesome bulletin board paper from Scholars Choice. Can you see the alphabet pennant on it? I'll do a close-up post later about my word wall, but I printed two to a page from Twinkl. If you haven't checked out the awesome resources on this British site, you have to stop what you're doing right now!

For my nameplates, I tried to design my own, but got sidetracked through Pinterest on TPT by Sarah Rucker and found these totally adorable nameplates. I only had to take a black marker and put black lines on one short end of each. Maybe it was my printer though...

Check back tomorrow for more of my preparations!

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My Super Bulletin Border! sneak peak #1

If you've been a long time reader or are just passing through, you may have noticed I like to use Superheroes in my classroom.

As part of my plan to make my classroom a more calming area for students this year but still, keep my theme, I've decided to use the same Bulletin board paper on all my boards, and to make it the scientifically proven calming blue.

I though blue... hmm.... SKY?

I'm still working on my room, but I thought I'd give a sneak peak in the form of a tutorial for the border I chose for a few boards (not all).

Check it out here:

First, I took a bunch of letter size paper and cut it in half.

Then I folded it accordion style. (so there were 4 hills and 3 valleys, does that make sense?)

Then I set to stapling it around my bulletin board. Each piece got precisely 3 staples. 

Ta da! Finished product. Tomorrow I tackle the board on the opposite side of the window to match.

I think the white fluffyish border reminds me of clouds. What do you think?

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Long Summer. glad to be back!

Good morning everyone!

I know I haven't posted in awhile, but I've been having an awesome summer visiting family in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Here are a few highlights:

It was my daughter's first flight ever so I was very excited to create these treat bags to hand out to fellow passengers.

 See how excited our girl is? This is of course before the plane took off and she learned how to undo her seatbelt...

Our first weekend home we went with my mom to learn about African drumming. Our girl couldn't decide if she liked drumming or dancing more.

What summer is complete without a little chalk drawing?

At a local zoo in Saint John when we were visiting my in-laws they had a beautiful garden designed like the Medicine Wheel. So neat!

She really liked the waves at Roseway Beach. We roared at them when the were crashing into us.

On the day we went to the buskers we took the ferry across the harbour to Halifax. No trip to Dartmouth is complete without a ferry ride. Here is my husband purposefully photo bombing my selfie.

We celebrated our third anniversary while home for summer. We had dinner at Jack Asters as part of our evening out, and both got a big kick out of the name they chose to call the Tax. Thank you, Stephen Harper, for the laugh!

Our local Science Centre, the Discovery Center, was hosting a Sesame Street exhibit about the body, so we went during our last week home. Our girl loved the part with the sinks best and the grocery store second best.

A day or two after we got back to Saskatchewan we went Wild Berry Picking. Not a bad end to the summer if I do say so myself! Here's our girl picking eating some.

How was your summer?

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Into school once this summer...

Just a quick post showing I'm not lazy. I've been into school once so far this August and rearranged some of the furniture in my new room. Hopefully, I'll be going back this afternoon to figure out some more stuff.

Here's a 360 of the whole room. I can't wait to see the finished product!

Things I'm excited about with this move to the room next door:
1. the risers in the corner are perfect for story time and Daily Five.
2. I have a fridge and a stove which means I don't have to remember to go back to the staff room to store my lunch and I can do baked ornaments at Christmas!
3. Lots of Windows!
4. Carpet is warm under feet.

Things I'm not excited about:
1. The risers are very tempting for fooling around.
2. I have to figure out again the best/logical places to store things.
3. The Carpet should we do MESSY art with paint or sparkles or BOTH.

Stay tuned for updates as I finish.

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