A Little "Award" Tagging and Valentine's Day Surviving....

Honored, Excited, Elated, Ecstatic, Happy....you get the idea:)  Considering I've been slowly getting more followers to my humble little 1st grade blog....1st GRADE ROCKS, I can honestly say that the words listed above truly described my emotions when I received my 1st "Liebster Blog Award" from Jen at  Hooked on Teaching a couple of months ago!!!  Needless to say, yesterday, when I received the "Liebster Blog Award" again from 

Amy @

  The Crazy Adventures of a University Grad

 and Trish @ 

First Grade Frosting,

 I was Exuberant!!!!! 

Here is my AWESOME Award!!! X's 3!!!!!:)

I am posting the rules for the "Liebster Blog Award" and I hope that the blogs that I will be nominating will feel the same Excitement about being awarded as I did!!!

The "Liebster Blog Award" is for bloggers with fewer than 200 followers. 

Here's the award rules:

Thank the award presenter and post a link back to their blog.....CHECK!

Put the award on your blog.....CHECK!

Pick 5 blogs with less than 200 followers, let them know about the award, and encourage them to pass the award on!....CHECK!

Now....onto my 5 Blog pics:)

Jessica @ Glitzy In First Grade

Today In First Grade

The Bubblegum Tree

Littlest Scholars

Michele @ New Adventures in First Grade

These are AWESOME blogs that you really need to go and check out!!!!

Now, onto a little VALENTINE DAY pics:)  Even though I pretty much have NO voice due to a NASTY cold that had me out last Friday....(and I'm STILL sick with:( )....we had a pretty great day!!! 

PS....I started my day at 5 AM baking these beauties.....

We used them to decorate our very own Valentine Cupcakes during a math activity :) I have to say that my handy, dandy, cute as a bug in a rug cupcake carrier which my Honey "Valentine" bought me last year was a BIG  HUGE hit!!!

Here are a few ways that we celebrated....

We did the Morning Calendar using the smart board and thinking of ways that we could make our Growing Number Day of 110!!!! Here's a pic of their thinking....

Here are a couple of pics of our Interactive Writing Lesson summarizing the book The Day It Rained Hearts.

This is a pic from a Word Study Literacy Station activity that I posted last week!!! Reading the Room with Valentine glasses! They LOVE this for some reason...??? "Firsties":) 

Here are some pics of our cupcake decorating....

I hope that your Valentine's Day was VICTORIOUS....just think, we don't have to worry about it again for another 364 more days:)  I {Puffy HEART} this fact!!!

The BUSY Classroom Elf!

UPDATE on our classroom elf, Nicey!!! He has been very busy in our classroom taking good notes for Santa!  Take a look at all of the places he's found to watch my Firsties so far:)

High on the bookshelf....

Way up high on the windowsill....

Uh, Oh, Nicey got caught in our classroom snacks!!!

This was too funny...my kiddo's could not believe that Nicey did this!!!

Some of the comments were...

• "He must have been HUNGRY!!!"
• "I can't believe he stole our snack!"
• "He's gonna get in trouble by Santa!"
• "Great...now we can't go to writing center because if we accidentally touch him or knock him over, he'll lose his magic!"

We have also had a great time with Nicey this week during Writer's Workshop!!!  We've written about what reports that he has given to Santa so far, where we will find him watching the next day, etc.  He's been a great incentive for the kiddos to work hard and get along in class!!!

I have lots of ideas of how I will use our classroom Elf On The Shelf next week....can't wait to get creative:) We will be doing lots of interactive activities at the Elf On The Shelf site!!! Check it out....so fun:)  Can't wait to show my Firsties Monday the email that we got from Santa from that site. Merry Christmas...and be looking for updates to my classroom elf, Nicey:)

Loving our classroom "Elf on the Shelf"

Okay....so how many of you teachers out there LOVE "The Elf on the Shelf" at Christmas time??? I know I do!!! It has proven to be a fun and effective way to help with classroom management during the dreaded "school" holiday weeks!!!! My Firsties LOVE our "Elf on the Shelf", so I thought that it would be fun to do a Linky Party to find out how creative we teachers can be....as well as be an inspiration to me on where to display my classroom elf, Nicey:) (Appropriately chosen by my Firsties!!) Please feel free to post anything about your classroom elf!  All ideas are GREAT ideas! So here goes....this is a picture of Nicey perched high above my dry erase board in the front of my classroom.

Nicey...Mrs. Wallace's Classroom Elf!!

Play along with us!!!