Mrs. Ryder's First Grade Funzies

  What you'll need: PowerPoint OR Google Slides   This is not a setting in your zoom account. This is a HACK!  And a super simple one, at that. First things first- when you schedule your zoom meeting, you'll probably want to set the option for participants' mics to be muted upon entry. You will need to turn off the waiting room option and allow them to just join right into the meeting. More on this later. How to make your welcome screen: Open up your choice of PowerPoint or Google Slides. I prefer PowerPoint, mostly because I have purchased lots of fonts that I love to use. PowerPoint is also just much easier and has lots of options that Google Slides doesn't. But whichever you're more comfortable with will work! First you'll want to set your background. My classroom background is from a Clip Art set that I purchases from EduClips on TpT. But you can totally just google the background of your choice and copy+paste it! Here's a watercolor

There are few days as exciting as a birthday when you're a kid. As a first grade teacher, I see that excitement constantly. I know how important birthdays are to those kiddos! My normal birthday routine for my students has been to pass out their cupcakes/treats that their parents sent, do a  Go Noodle birthday brain break , and then sing the traditional "Happy Birthday" song before letting them devour the treats. Note for first year teachers : Wait until the END of the day to celebrate birthdays if possible!! The kids go NUTS!! Once my oldest got old enough to get excited for her birthday (3 years old), I discovered another level of how special birthdays really are to kids. I started thinking, "Would she feel special in her future classroom doing what I currently do for my students?" I think what I was doing was just fine, but I wanted to add something- just a little more 'oomph'! I have done VIP buckets for Class Dojo points for a couple of

How to create your own fonts! For beginners. Like, beginner beginners. Just go with it. I am easily inspired to try new things. I see awesome stuff and think to myself, "I wish I could make that!", or, "I wish I could do that!" I have long admired cute fonts. I currently have over 700 on my classroom & home computers. #ihaveaproblem #afontproblem Recently I finally got the final push to start delving in to how to make fonts. After some googling, I found a free website to help make fonts - https://www.calligraphr.com/en/ . I quickly discovered why it's free. You can only create 75 characters. You really need at least 79 characters for a very basic font. Think 26 letters x2 (uppercase & lowercase)- that's already 52 characters. Add in the numbers 0-9- now we're up to 62 characters. with standard punctuation and symbols added in, you will be over the allowed 75 characters. Who wants to spend lots of time creating a new font that is ext

Teacher tired. It's a real thing, y'all. Teacher poor is another real thing, also. Toward the end of last school year, my hubs and I were stretching every last penny. I would dig around our pantry and fridge and attempt to make dinners out of the ingredients we had on hand. We had several bars of cream cheese, so I went to Pinterest and searched for cream cheese pasta sauce recipes. I came across a recipe that ended up being one of our FAVORITE meals ever!! I was so thrilled to have found a new, EASY staple dinner recipe. Here are the ingredients I use-- I didn't pin the recipe I found, and now I can't find it again. I got inspiration from the recipe but did change it a tad from what I remember: 1/2 bottle of Olive Garden Signature Italian Dressing (we buy ours @ Sam's Club) Cream Cheese (8 oz) 2 tbsp Grated Parmesan Cheese Pasta of your choice (I've made it with spaghetti, angel hair, fettuccine, bow tie, & penne- great with all!) I use 1/2

I am loving the trend of b&w stripes with watercolor flowers. I decided to make a few that I could use in my classroom, and am happy to share them! You can get them FREE in my TPT store, here . :) They download as a Power Point file, and from there you can edit the text any way you want. The two fonts I used are  KG Second Chances Sketch and  KG Neatly Printed . I think a pretty script would be great too! If you've never downloaded fonts, be careful- it's addicting! And I promise, it SO easy! You can just Google "How to install fonts on Windows 10" (or whatever system your computer is). That's how I learned to do it! Usually you just: Click "download" from wherever you're getting the font.  Open up the downloaded file location.  Right click any "TrueType Font" files and click "Install". That's it!  Make sure to have your Word, PowerPoint, or whatever program you're typing in closed or just resta

Things have been so busy lately with school starting. I am trying to take this Labor Day weekend to not even THINK about school and just enjoy time with my family. I have done pretty well so far besides an hour or two of school Pinterest and Instagram browsing... I saw a photo on Instagram of a super cute computer background in a teacher's classroom, and I realized then that I have had the same stock photo on my school computer for SIX years now. I just never thought about changing it. It was a simple and quick task, and something just for me to enjoy. I made a similar one for my home computer, but instead of having "Mrs. Ryder" on it, I simply made it for our family-- "The Ryders". By the way, if you're ever going to use your last name in a sign of any kind for your family, please don't use an apostrophe before the 's'. Just trust me! #grammarnazi Here is what my home PC screen looks like now: I love it. Here's how you can make y

This is so EASY you won't believe it!! Seriously...this took me 30 minutes. Pencil -check. Sharpie - check. All set!!! Alright, let's get down to business.  I was up late last night stressing about school starting in a week and a half and I had only been up to my classroom for 3 TOTAL hours! I have a 3 y/o & a 19-month old, so taking them up there with me is not an option. Hubby has been working OT, & we are so busy with plans most evenings, so I don't have many chances to get up to the school. ANYWAY -- So I was up and restless and started cleaning out our office room. I found these two small canvases that we had leftover from our daughter's 2nd birthday paint party. I suddenly remembered something I had read about using pencil to transfer fonts to canvas, so I figured why not try?!    Here's the step-by-step directions!   First, using a program like Power Point, type out what you want to have on your sign. If you don't already have c