I'm still here, folks!

Hello dear teacher/teacher-to-be friends!

I'm sorry. I've been sucking at blogging lately.  In my defense, I'm new to blogging (valid? hmmm...) and school recently started.  Aside from all the fun and work that comes with THAT, one must also reset body and whatnot.

Overall, I really like my firsties this year.  I had a really rough year last year.  Most of my kiddos last year were great, no real problems, but I had a handful, literally, that were over-the-top with the issues they had.  It made things VERY, VERY difficult.  As a matter of fact, all of the teachers in our whole 1st grade level (4 classes) had several major issues in their classes.  Rough year for all.  For myself, at one point, I had quite a few moments of "do I really want to do this anymore?"  On top of the difficult parts of the classroom, there are budget cuts all over the place and several other school-related issues that made me very unmotivated to go to work.  It was sad, quite depressing on top of feeling helpless with things I had absolutely no control over.

BUT! That was last year!  This year, as each new school year, brings refreshed new hope.  And so far, things are looking good.  No, I'm not without an issue, but that's any year, any class. Comparably, it is waaaay better and that in and of itself is a RELIEF.

We had our Back to School Night a few days ago.  Even though I only had 9 parents show (wah wah wahhh) I still enjoyed how it went.  I had them do a little scavenger hunt between presentations and gave out tootsie rolls.  I waited too long didn't have time to print the "thanks for rollin' in" labels so as I gave them out, I just said with a cheesy grin "Thanks for rollin' in!!"  Most, okay, none of the kids seemed to get it...they looked at me like I was cuckoo...but it was fun for me...and the thought was there! Ha ha!

I did do a fun activity I found through A Teeny Tiny Teacher and Miss Kindergarten called School is Cool!  It's such a cute writing craftivity!  The kids had fun with it!  Miss Kindergarten has the craftivity for FREE in her TPT store!  I changed up the writing part a tad to tailor it to what I needed.  Here are the results :)

Isn't this cute?!

 I'm glad she enjoys homework!

While I was out and about, I just "so happened" to "drop by" the Dollar Tree and found these!!

Magnetic money!!  $1 only! 

There are at least 2 "sheets" in each pack...I left them at school so I'm not exactly sure...may only be 2 but not less.  Just wanted to share in case you wanted to grab some! I did!

I'm also excited that I'm finally beginning weekly homework packets this week. I've been wanting to do them forever and I just finally buckled down and said to myself, Let's do this!  My homework is generally the same daily so why not packet it? I guess I felt intimidated.  This will be a learning/revising/perfecting experience for me...I have to remember that even though I want it perfect right up front, I will like have to make adjustments as I learn.

I suppose that's it for now.  I'll really try to be a better blogger.  Now that school is 2 weeks in, I can breathe a *little* bit easier and take a few minutes for neat things like this :)

Happy Sunday, y'all!