Mrs. Tina's Tots

Today we have an ice day! It's not actually icy yet, and my school is not actually closed yet but my son's daycare closed preemptively because the ice is suppose to hit us at 8:00 this morning. I have a 40 minute, one way, commute so I'm going to go ahead and stay home with my babies! :) However, I do hope my littles all get home safely before the ice gets too bad! Today actually gave me this day to decide that my blogging hiatus is over. I miss blogging, but I felt like I had no inspiration this fall. And to tell you the truth I don't really like the fall that much, but I do love the Christmas season and we have been spending a lot of time doing some super fun stuff! Which I have few pictures of, because I've been having technical issues, but I have a few and will be sharing this weekend! :) Is anyone else "enjoying" an ice or snow day today?? (I say that lightly because I know no one wants to be in school in June! ;). Have fun and stay safe today!

I'm late...as usual. Actually I haven't done a currently since this summer, but I'm trying to get back into the swing of things so I decided to just jump in anyway! I love reading these each month! And, I love October...even though it still feels like summer, and has been super gloomy lately. But, I love teaching my October units, and I will have some things to share next week! Anyway, here is my currently for this month! I am of course linking up with Farley  for this months currently!  Listening: to nothing! I managed to get everyone down for a nap at the same time...even the husband and puppy! :) It hasn't been this quiet in ages around my house and I am soaking it all up! Loving: my class! I am so blessed this year. The beginning of the year was a little rocky, but now they are settling in beautifully and they are SO SMART!! Thinking: I had a yard sale on Saturday, and it rained!!! We made a little bit, but we are rescheduling for a couple of weeks away!

Remember to light a fire today! Happy Thursday friends!!

So I promised a little review through pictures of my year so far. So let's start at the beginning shall we? This is what my room looked like right before open house this year. I went with a fairy tale theme at the request of my daughter. She wanted a princess room. We compromised, and I have to say I love it! It's fairly simple, my room is super teeny tiny and I don't have a lot of room so I have to make it count! :) This is my little guided reading corner. The 3 drawer carts hold my guided readers. The bookshelf is holding all of my teacher editions, odds and ends, treasure box, etc. next to that is my mini fridge, a girl's gotta have her diet coke ;), and my reading strategy board. I got those posters from Cara at the First Grade Parade for free on her blog. I love free :). Not to mention they are effective and adorable! This is my computer area. This is my computer as well as my only student computer. My birthday board is over the computer it just needs my k

I have so been looking forwards to getting this blog going this year. I have so many pictures and things from the beginning of the year that I would like to share. However, right now I'm insane. These. Kids. Are Tough. I had 4 in the office yesterday for fighting, like a huge fight, it looked like a boxing match. This morning as we were leaving for our field trip to the fair I had to take another one, and that ended up in suspension for 3 days. Whew....It's only been 22 days of school. Do you know how many social/emotional lessons I've taught this year??!! 22 formal, and a bajillion and one informal. I'm telling you it's been a year. Oh, and plus parent teacher conferences were Tuesday. In the middle of week 5. That's how we roll around here. I've also had one formal observed lesson as well, with a pre and post conference. I'm beat, but I'm not giving up on these little ones. Aside from behavior, my assessments turned out exceptionally well for the f

What's the best thing about my job, you ask?? Everyday is a new day! :) And with that I leave you with this quote this morning my friends.   Found on Pintrest from Technology Rocks Seriously

So, I meant to post tonight about our first week of school last week. But, I can't. I'm not in the right mind set. While we all love our jobs, and our students, and (almost....I could live without the paperwork) everything about what we do sometimes we need t be real. We need to be okay. We need to admit when things didn't go so well. Today was one of those days for me. It's only the 2nd week of school, and I feel nuts. This is my 3rd year of teaching kindergarten. I shouldn't feel so nuts!! But I do. I have a pretty challenging class this year, when it comes to behavior. That isn't bothering me so much. My first two years of teaching really put me in my place, and I've seen A LOT. So I felt pretty prepared for the behavior issues that I've seen. It's something else. Something I can't really put my finger on. I am also having my first formal observation next week. The third week of school. Arkansas changed it's teacher evaluation system, an

WHEW.... The first week of school is in the books! I'll be back to share what we did later, but here are a few of the things I bought at the TpT sale! I hope you all had fun looking around at everyone's shops! I know I did! Let's see, first things first. I bought  Color Me Kindergarten from Abby at The Inspired Apple Alphabet Flip Books from The Printable Princess   Alphaheroes from Growing Kinders (My kids are LOVING these!)  Trace me a to z from the 3AM Teacher  Poetry Stations from Deedee Wills: These are a great addition to my shared reading time. I think I have them all now :). The Bus Stops Here Centers from Cara Carroll at the First Grade Parade. I love all of Cara's stuff, so I'm sure these will be no exception.  So that's most of what I bought! What did you get??

I love a good sale! I mean LOVE it! And it doesn't get much better than a TpT sale! My shopping cart is chock full (don't tell my husband!), and I can't wait to get everything printed out and in my classroom for this year. I went ahead and put my shop on sale for 20% off, but you can get an extra 8% off  Sunday and Monday. I hope you enjoy the sale, and I'll show you all what I snagged this weekend!

So, I've kinda taken a long break, but I have a good reason. We lost our sweet german shepherd last Thursday. Ever since then our whole house has been in an state of disarray. We lost him far too soon. He was only 3 1/2. However, he was not healthy. Food allergies, auto-immune disease, and we found out a few months ago, arthritis. At 3.5 years :(, and it   was severe.  He laid around and cried all the time, and he wasn't responding to the pain medications. The vet told us that he was never going to get any better, and he wasn't safe around our kids anymore because he was getting so snappy if he got bumped. So, we decided to go ahead, and put him down. Hardest. Thing. Ever....But we felt it was for the best for everyone. We are very sad though...so with all of that I kinda got off track. On a happier note. I've still been getting ready for August. I go back to school in 2 weeks, and the kids get there in 4!! I was finally able to get into my room Wednesday, so I put al

 HAPPY JULY 4th!!In honor of the 4th I'm throwing a 20% off sale in my TpT store! It will last until midnight! Check it out, and enjoy your day! I'm going to be taking it easy at home today with my little family, cooking out!

Happy July y'all!! We can start expecting the back to school ads to start rolling strong now! While I'm not quite ready to think about getting back into my classroom I am excited to share my Monday Made It today!! It's my classroom decor bundle! It's fairy tales, and it's presh, AND it's printer friendly!! I tried to make it colorful and adorable without breaking the bank on the ink cost! I'm also in the process of adding all of the elements individually to TpT in case you don't need all of it. That will have to wait until nap time though because my baby is in the process of dragging my clean laundry all over the house :), and I'm not feeling well today :(. So I will absolutely have everything up by tomorrow. But, here are some previews for now, and I hope you enjoy it if you still need a theme, or would like to add one to your color scheme! Click on the first picture to check it out today!

I can't believe this is the last full week of June!! It's not fair! However, I can say that I've had the best month with my kids! Any next month I will hopefully be able to get into my classroom, and get busy! With that said, I am linking up with Tara for Made It Monday! I'm loving this linky! I'm getting so many wonderful project ideas from you all! Now, to be quite honest I haven't done much this week. I've been at my parents since Friday afternoon, and I didn't get much accomplished before that either, but I do have a couple of things done. Nothing mind blowing, but still something accomplished! Made It #1 Glue sponges. I used Mr. Greg's video tutorial to make these babies. I hope they work like I am wanting them to. I HATE all the glue issues in my classroom so hopefully these are the answer to my problems!! I also have a little confession to make. My 5 year old daughter made these. I supervised and bought materials. :) She wanted to help

I just uploaded a sweet little word wall to TpT! It's a light blue and orange chevron word wall, with all of the sight words from Pearson's Reading Street Series (Kindergarten). I'm going to add the Amazing Words (vocabulary), and Dolch and Fry words for those of you that use those as sight words. I hope you enjoy it! Click on the picture to pick yours up!

Better late than never right? I had a crazy busy day yesterday with my kiddos, and today I was out of power for most of the afternoon. :/ Now that the baby is asleep I have a little time to catch up! I was super busy this week making several things that I saw from you all last week! :) I'm linking up with Fourth Grade Frolics! First up my copy/file/grade drawers! I saw these last week from Tara, and I've also seen them on several blogs, and of course pintrest! :) I also finally decided on a theme for my room next year....fairy tales!! SIDESTORY: I teach in a little school where I am the only kindergarten teacher, which means I get to teach my own daughter next year! Excited and nervous...anyone ever taught their own kids before?? Tips?! Anyway, she wanted me to do my room in princesses. I looked and didn't see very much on princesses, I was thinking princesses, princes, dragons, medieval really. So, I gave up, and decided to do bright chevron. I wasn't totally hap

Hey guys! I'm linking up with Tara over at 4th Grade Frolics for Monday Made It!!  I finally got my act together, and made a teacher toolbox! I. LOVE. IT! I am going to redo the labels with a cuter font (new computer, and wasn't sure what I wanted or how I wanted to dress the labels up!) , and straighten up that tape. There were a few minor issues that went with this little project. My daughter picked the bubble gum pink color :). The main problem was the painting. I live out in the middle of nowhere, and there are a lot of bugs. A LOT! They kept getting stuck in my paint, and I would have to add another coat of paint, and so on but I finally got it all together. I also couldn't decide what use to dress up the labels. My classroom theme is chevron {along with everyone else :)}, and I found some bright and cute chevron duck tape at Walmart! It was perfect!! If you look at the very bottom left box I wanted to totally frame the label, but I think it looks much better doing

So I am finally on summer vacation! I am loving being at home and doing nothing! Well, I have 2 kids, 2 dogs, a husband, grad school, and a house so I'm not ever doing nothing BUT this is as close as it gets ;). I am so excited about the things I have planned for this summer, and I'm going to be sharing all of them with you! I'm going to blog as much as possible. One of my goals for this next year is to keep up my blog, and start participating in the online fun! I was going to put off Currently until next month since I'm late, but I decided to just jump on it and do it anyway!! So, here it is my very first Currently!!! 1. Listening: I'm listening to The Hunger Games in the background! I love this movie, and it's nap time for my kiddos so it's perfect for blogging to! :) I absolutely cannot wait until the next movie comes out!!! 2. Loving: Staying with my kids all day!! We have so much fun together!! I have a 5 year old daughter, who will be starting

I know teacher appreciation was last week, but I haven't had time to share what I got! Now, my school doesn't have a PTO that supplies us with treats all week long so it's solely up to the kids to get things for me, which is totally the best anyway right?!! I got an array of things from flowers pulled up from the yard that morning (with the roots :)), to a princess frog piggy bank! But my favorite had to have been from two little boys that were working in their literacy center. I have these cool magnetic words that I let them build sentences with on the white board. Check it out!! Isn't that the sweetest?!?! They ran up to me as I was finishing with my small group, and said, "Come look what we built for you!" They were both so sincere about that sentence, gave me big old hugs, and it made my heart melt!!  Nevermind, that they replaced "pretty" with "crazy" in their next sentence. Ha! Boys!! ;0)  With only 4 days left until kinde

Hey everyone! It's been forever since I've blogged!! I feel like I shouldn't have even started this blog until the summer so I'd have a little more time! Anyway, I made my way over to dollar tree {for very important things I'm sure :)!} and I found a few cute things for my classroom!! 1. First up those dice are super cute! They roll very well, and are a good size for my math tubs! Plus they will be fun for my kids to use. 2. Timers: I've been wanting some small timers for my kids to use in centers, but I had a hard time paying $37 for 6 timers. These are a steal at $1 a piece. Not sure how well they will hold up. I've been using them for a couple of days and they seem to be fine. Hopefully I will get a whole year of use out of them!! 3. Ice packs, because who doesn't need a cute ice pack for those bumps and bruises! The nurse at my school loves  that I have them in my room. Saves her some time :). Anyone else find any good deals lately??

I'm still here folks! It has been CrAzY around here, and I haven't forgotten about your cloud freebie either. It has decided to stay winter here in Arkansas, and I am not pleased. Not only was it 36 degrees this  morning on my way to school, it has rained every. single. day. Which all the clouds have been perfect, except I had an outside activity for you, and well, we haven't been able to go outside. On top of the bad weather the 1st and 2nd graders have been testing in the mornings this week. I share a wall with the 2nd grade (I teach in a teeny, tiny school!) so I've gotten kicked out of my room this week during the morning time so our schedule as been all messed up. Which is never good, especially when the kids can't go outside, and they've been hit with an unhealthy dose of spring fever! Also, yesterday during my math block I heard a POP, POP!!! I quickly scanned the room to find a very large bookshelf pretending it was the Leaning Tower of Pisa!!! I cal

My lovelies have had a case of the crazies this week!! They are having a rough time coming back from spring break. I had four kids dissolve into uncontrollable tears by 10 am! After the fourth one I made them rest until recess. Whew! Other than our little meltdowns we have been studying weather using the All About Weather unit from the fabulous Caitlin from Kindergarten Smiles . If you haven't checked her out, she's a MUST read. :) Here are a few picture of my kids working on some of the centers that are included in this packet! They LOVE them. In fact, after the first day of this unit one of my boys told me as they were leaving, " We sure did a lot of work today, but I'll tell you what....it was more fun than seesaw'n with a magical unicorn!" :) See, worth every penny! We have done the sun, and are working on cloudy. Stay tuned for a little cloud activity that I'll be showing you later this week (or weekend!).

I have moved over from teachingtots01.blogspot.com so that my teaching blog wouldn't be linked with my personal blog! [Still trying to figure all of this mess out ;) ] So grab a Coke and enjoy! I have a lot of awesome blog posts coming up!