Mrs. Ryder's First Grade Funzies

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