All teachers do is color...

 Right?? Uhh, no.

As I suspected, it is really difficult to blog during the week. With it being the first week back, my out of control Teacher-Tired returned in full force! I keep telling myself (and the future Mr.) that next year will be better. That I'm just ALWAYS exhausted because it is my first year and I'm not used to it/have so much to do. I have no idea if that is true but I am hoping that if I say it enough, it'll happen.

Anyway, my team leader, Brittany, gave us new desktop calendars for Christmas and I snuck in some time this week to write down some of my important dates and reminders. As you can see, I have no scheduled coloring time and we are NOT easing back into our school routine.

Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Go directly to CRAY!

Of course, I know that it could always be worse. My sweet friends that teach 3rd - 5th grade had their worlds turned upside down this week (and for the rest of the semester) in preparation for STAAR. So, here is where my whining stops because the bottom line is this: I love my job. I love my sweet kids. I love seeing them grow.

On to the point of this post: Another plate that we spin at our school (more on that reference later) is our grade level bulletin board. These are the bulletin boards in our main hallway that showcase a "big idea" for our grade level and we're required to change them out every nine weeks. Naturally, we finished it at the very last minute; Friday afternoon at 3:30pm.

It's simple. It's handmade. It's adorable.

We decided to do a math strategies board this time since we've already done reading strategies and writing components. Also because we talk about math strategies ALL. THE. TIME. Since we were down to the wire, we decided to make our own strategies instead of finding something to print. Our team just set aside some time in our weekly meeting for each person to solve a simple math fact using a different strategy on white paper. The fun part came when we put our strategies up and added some decoration. Here's the back story: When I got my job, my future sister-in-law gifted me an awesome Cricut Machine. (MUST HAVE for a teacher/scrapbooker.) Well, I've used it for several of my classroom needs and when explaining to someone how I made the wordle of my kids names and what a cricut machine was, I saw a light bulb go off. As it turns out, our pod (or school?) owns a cricut machine and at least 25 font cartridges. Here's the kicker - NOBODY was using the machine or even knew what it was! Needless to say, we use it a lot more now and decided to use the adorable winter font cartridge to cut out the words for this bulletin board. We (team leader - Brittany and I) cut out the words on white paper and then colored them in during our planning time. Here's what we had when we were done coloring:

If you can't tell, it says, "Math Strategies" in snowman, scarf, mitten, and gingerbread house letters. Aren't they cute? It might just be the teacher in me, but I love them. We put them on black paper and laminated them (so we can use it again next year) and then added some snowflakes to our board. This is what it looked like when I left yesterday.

See? Simple. Handmade. Cute. Very first grade!

Anybody else use a Cricut? Or know of a cartridge that I MUST get? Or create an awesomely cute bulletin board lately? I'd love to change up the work I have in our hallway but there just isn't time right now.