Teacher Week- Who Am I?

Well, today was our First Day of School and what better way to celebrate than linking up with Blog Hoppin. It's Teacher Week!

Today is "Tell us all about you". 

My name is Cara. I just turned 33 yesterday. I live in South Florida, where it is hot ALL year round. LOL I live about 20 minutes from the beach and rarely go to it (I would much rather live near the mountains). I live 5 minutes from the Everglades, where I see plenty of gators. 

I have a beautiful 4 year old little girl and an amazing husband, whom is also a teacher.

Favorite Things:

I absolutely LOVE me some VOLS. I am a big fan and ready for football season to begin. 

I am a Vera Bradley fanatic. I have over 25 bags. 

I LOVE Disney World.

I LOVE pugs. I had one for many years, but she passed away several years ago. I can't wait to get another one.

I also like Slurpees, good Southern BBQ, crafting, and making hair bows (I have a small side business). 

Thanks for stopping by and getting to know me a little better. Here's the schedule for the rest of the week.

Stop by Blog Hoppin' and get to know other bloggers. Click below and join in.

My aDOORable Door Hanger

After being in PD for the past 3 days, I'm stopping by quickly to share with you my new door hanger. 

I absolutely LOVE it! It is by Young Love aDOORable Decor. They make adorable door hangers for all occasions and seasons. They are made of wood, so they are very durable. You can follow them of Facebook here or check out their Etsy store here. 

Summer Is Almost Over- So Sad!

Well, my summer has surely passed by quickly. Last week, I was looking at this: 

 We took a long weekend getaway to Disney's Vero Beach Resort. Each morning, I would get up and head out to the beach for a sunrise morning walk. Awe, peaceful! Ironically, I live about 20 minutes away from the beach and hardly ever go to that beach. Ha, imagine that! Well, tomorrow it is back to reality, as I will be sitting in PD for the next 3 days. Our Charter School Company does this every year. All of our sister schools in the area gather for PD together, followed by a luncheon on Friday at a local hotel. Then next week, we head back to our campuses and begin working on our rooms and having meetings. I'll have 4 DAYS to setup my room before Meet N Greet. Yup, I said 4 DAYS!!!! I'm going to blog about if I will be able to get it all done. Can you see the sweat pouring down my face right now? I sure can feel it.

Besides making my new clip chart, word wall letters, etc., I have been busy creating for my students. First up, I wanted to revamp something that I started creating towards the end of the year for my students. My students needed more work on building sentences and handwriting. So, what better way than making something that they can practice while also manipulating. Below is the old version. 

In this version, my students had to read the sentence, write the sentence, cut apart and glue the sentence, and illustrate the sentence. Isn't my students illustration adorable! I LOVE the sunglasses and sweat coming off of him. Ha! Now, I started to revamp and added tracing to the sheet. Here is the new revamped version.

This time they read and trace the sentence, write the sentence, cut and build the sentence, and finally illustrate the sentence. Sorry, my illustration isn't as cute a students would be. I'll have to work on my details.

As I was making the new pages, I thought why don't I make some where they practice building words as well. So I created one.

My students will read the word, trace the word, write the word 3 times, illustrate the word, and build the word. This will be perfect for my Word Work Station in Daily 5. I can't wait to revamp my other ones and make more seasonal versions. You can pick up the whole set and get a FREEBIE of it at my TPT store.

While I finished up that project, I also decided to make a new "All About Me" craftivity. I wanted to make something cute and looked like a backpack. My brain got to cranking and I came up with this. 

I LOVE it! Isn't it ADORABLE! I can't wait to see what color combinations my students come up with. I chose a teal and pink construction paper combo for my backpack.

Then I printed out on card stock the items that go inside the backpack pocket. 

First up is the birthday cake. They color their birthday cake and then add their age circle to the center of the cake. On the crayon, they write their favorite color and color their crayon that color.

On the lunch bag, they draw their favorite food. In the photo frame, they draw a picture of themselves on the First Day of School. These are so simple to make. I can't say it enough about how much I LOVE them. You can pick up all of the things you need to make these.

Oh yeah, did you know that there is a SALE going on! I have already bought several items and am going to go back for more. Stop back later to see what I bought and I would LOVE to hear about the things that you snagged.

Well folks, I am off to the gym and then going to run some errands. I'm going to hit up Dollar Tree for paper tray bins like Greg's over at Smedley's Smorgasboard. I'm sure I will get other things as well. Have a great day everyone!

August Currently

August already! I can't believe it. This summer has flown by. Well, you know what time it is. It's that time of the month where many people link up and get to know what others are thinking about and doing. I LOVE completing a "Currently" each month with Farley at "Oh Boy Fourth Grade".

Listening: Whenever I am cleaning, cooking, creating, blogging or if there isn't anything on TV, I tend to have the Food Network on for background noise. I'm not even sure what is on right now. LOL

Loving: Tax Free Weekend Baby! Each year my state has a weekend (it use to be a week), where clothes, shoes, and school supplies are tax free. Of course that means, getting those needed supplies for the classroom, as well as, getting new pieces for my wardrobe. Today, I got a new pair of shoes, a dress, and 2 lightweight cardigans.

Thinking: I'm making a list of any other items I need for my classroom. I want to try and get them this weekend.

Wanting: Of course, I am wanting to get into my classroom to setup. That won't be happening anytime soon. My classroom and several others were used for Summer Camp and today was the last day. Next week, they will be cleaning, painting, and waxing our classrooms, which means I won't be able to actually get into my classroom until August 11th. I'm majorly stressing out, because I will only have 4 days to put my classroom together before Meet N Greet. Ahhhhh!

Needing: I seriously need to finish organizing my house. I'm going to use the next few days to finish going through closets, dressers, and toys and donating things that we no longer need. 

1st day for my is August 6th. I will be attending PD from the 6th-8th. Then, I will be heading into my classroom on August 11th to finally start setting up. I'm sure we will be interrupted with meetings and such. Meet N Greet is on August 15th and the kids start back on August 18th.

Make sure to stop by Farley's site to check out other "Currently"s. 

Flashy Fireflies

Good Morning! Man, can you believe that it is already August? I can't! I go back next week for PD and then I will be at my school the following week to setup my classroom. My brain hasn't fully accepted the fact that I will be back so soon. I guess I need to get my little self into gear.

Anywho, I have been home with my daughter for most of the summer. My husband and I sent her to camp at her school a few days during the week. I still worked with her throughout the summer on letter recognition and sounds. One night when I was volunteering at her VBS, they were doing an activity with flashlights. The kids absolutely LOVED it! We put pictures of farm animals up all of the hallways, turned off the lights, and the kids had to go around shining their flashlights onto the pictures. This got me thinking and I came up with this.

(Click on the picture to go to my store.)

I tested it out with my daughter. I hung up the picture card fireflies in the hallway, turned out the lights, and then had her come in with a flashlight. I would say a sound and she had to find the firefly with the picture that begins with the sound I said. 

She really enjoyed using the flashlight and finding the fireflies. I can definitely see this being a hit with my Kindergarten students. I made 2 versions of this activity for you. One is picture cards for identifying beginning sounds and the other set is an alphabet version for letter recognition.

Check out these beauties that I found in the Dollar Section at my local Target.

They are perfect for $1 each. I got 10 of them all in silver. They had green, blue, red, and silver. I decided to get all the same color so that I didn't have anyone complaining about not having a certain color. 

So, what do you think? I can't wait to use it with my students.