BUILD and a Puff of Smoke

Okay, so my laptop literally died with a puff of smoke.  That sucker was dead!  I rushed it to Staples and they confirmed it BUT said my hard drive was still intact.  So, the next day (after getting a headache looking online at new laptops) I rushed back to Staples with my external hard drive I bought a few months ago (because I use my computer A LOT) and....well, long story short (I do need to talk math during this post)....$458 later and I have my files saved on my external hard drive and my laptop is winging its way to HP to get refurbished.  It was only about 3-4 years old (my husband said I wore it out!).


So, ironically enough, the next day, I went to school to work on my room, logged onto my computer to crank up Pandora....and I can't log in!  My first thought is I'm a computer JINX!  I call the office to check the status of the network, so they send our tech person (imagine my luck that he was in the building!) with a NEW laptop!  (We were getting them anyway for the "fall"....I'm the 2nd to get mine!).  Good thing - I'm having to learn Office 10 and Windows 7.  Yikes!


So, needless to say, I'm typing on my school laptop (hooray!)....and I have been wanting to share with you what I've been doing with BUILD.  If you read my earlier post, I promised to share what I've been putting together....it took awhile, and then I was without files for several days.....so TA DAH!  Here it is! (Well, not literally...read on!).

My HUGE thanks to everyone who has ever offered a freebie either through one of the teacher's online stores or through their blog....all files have their original creator's names on them (if they're a photograph, see my Pinterest page).  I have also created a schedule of what center to offer which week, and which of the letters it falls under.  Some of the games mentioned on there are from Dollar Tree (there's a football one and one with a pyramid).  

Unfortunately, its too big to put on Google Docs, so please comment below and leave me your email  if you're interested in seeing this.  We do "Investigations" in our school, so the first unit is all about addition/subtraction/money (intro/review)/story problems.  Throw in ordinals, calendar, and a few other things to cover our standards.  However, it can probably still work for your classroom, since that's basically the first unit of any math series!


I also created visual vocabulary cards to use on my Math focus wall.  They're available at my TpT and TN stores.  Click on the picture below to take you to Teacher's Notebook, or click here for TpT.

 I'm excited to get my Math focus board done and show you!  Last year, it hid in the back of the room and honestly, I don't think the kids referenced it much.  Looking around my room yesterday, I had the brainstorm to go a little magnet crazy and post it on my metal cabinet.  It will be easier to switch out AND the added benefit that it will be more of a focal point for the kids!