Newbie Blog Hop

   Can I admit that I'm kind of addicted to Linky Parties now?!?!  At first....I have to say.... I thought they were ST*PID (first grade teachers aren't allowed to say that word, you know?). But....now that I've kind of seen the usefulness of them, they really do help you to find out about new bloggers and collaborate on important topics to teachers.  So here I go with another one!!  Katie and I started blogging just 6 months ago and are still technically "newbies," so I thought we'd link up with Janis at Grade Three is the Place for Me and share a little about us!!

     1. What state you are in
            Beth - Columbia, South Carolina
                  Katie - Augusta, Georgia

We are proud GRITS (Girls Raised In The South)!!   

    2.  Your current teaching position

            Beth - 1st Grade (This coming year will be my 2nd year at the school I'm at.  I've been to 3 different schools in 3 different districts in 5 years, so I've truly seen it all!  Whew! I hated moving so much, but I've gotten to meet great teachers and have learned A LOT about different curriculum and different styles of teaching from district to district. Hopefully I'm here to stay...)

                  Katie - 1st Grade (The school I'm at is the 2nd school I've ever taught at.  I moved to the school I'm at now when it first opened, so it was really neat getting to start up a whole new school and be involved in decisions made about how it would be run.)

    3.  Your teaching experience

            Beth - This coming school year will be my 5th year

                 Katie - Ditto (we graduated from college together, remember) :)

    4.  When you started blogging

           Beth & Katie - We started getting addicted to the teaching blog world at the end of   last year around November/December and then started talking about maybe starting out own blog. (I have to admit...we kind of idolized Cara Carol from The First Grade Parade...We STILL just don't know how she does it all! Basically...we're just a little jealous of her mad crazy awesome teaching ideas and super mom abilities! haha).  We made a goal to have our blog up and running by the first of this year, but we didn't really know what we were doing at first....so it took a little longer.  But basically in January 2012 was when we started.  Boy have we come a long way since then....whew!!

    5.  Share a blogging tip / blogging resource

          Beth & Katie - Basically, if we don't think it would be useful to others and beneficial to others' teaching, we don't post it. That's generally our rule of thumb.  Of course, we post SOME "fun" personal things every now and again, but overall we like to post tried and true teaching ideas and resources that we actually use in our own classrooms, post pictures of things we have made, do giveaways of our new units, etc.  If you've read our blog mission statement, you know that we're not into "fluff."  While we love a good craft every now and again around the holidays, we make it our goal to thoroughly teach the standards in an engaging and creative way!