Ahhh....Sunday!

Normally I would dread Sunday - the day when my focus seems to be on gearing up for the week, catching up on laundry, making a menu of weekly meals, nagging my girls to pick-up so that we can start the week with a clean house....and on and on.  But today I'm actually enjoying my Sunday immensley!  Why?  Because I'm FINALLY getting some planning done!  Woo Hoo!!

I had posted previously about my desire to plan ahead more than one day at a time.  It stresses me out and makes me feel like most days I'm just flying                                                                                       by the seat of my pants.  I seem to never have time.  Today I decided to make the time.  It's cold, windy and rainy here and after spending all day in the rain yesterday watching my girls play soccer, I vowed to not leave the house today unless absolutely necessary!  So here I sit in front of a warm fire while my girls watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the original - oh yea!) planning my entire week!

This week will be a week of new ideas and I'm both excited and nervous!  I'm introducing my students to an author study this week.  We're starting with one of my favorite authors, Chris Van Allsburg!  I've mentioned before that I find our reading curriculum a little....dry...so I'm hoping this will jazz it up a bit and get the kids a little more excited about our reading block.  I wasn't really sure where to begin, so I spend some time researching online and found two really great resources (and they are free, too!).  The first came from www.readingrockets.org and the other came from Jennifer Buoy (love her author study units!).  

Geography is the other subject that's getting a makeover!  I wanted to jazz it up a bit, too!  I found a great set of lessons on Teachers Pay Teachers (I'm addicted!) from Meg Anderson.  I think it will work really well in my class and provides them with some fun activities to enhance their map skills!  The bonus is that it incorporates art, which my class will LOVE!

Maybe these new and fun lessons will help take the edge off of the fact that we have 3 tests this week!  :)

I'm BAAACK!

Oh my goodness!  I feel as though I haven't blogged in WEEKS!  Oh...wait...it's probably because I haven't blogged in weeks!  My fellow teachers will understand how this happens.  I feel as though I've been sucked into this crazy place in the universe where time ticks by much more quickly than it should.  I feel as though I need a few more hours in the day in order to just stay above water.  It's probably  also a symptom of being a first year teacher.  The only way I was able to carve out time to blog tonight is because I'm doing it in the car here:

Thank goodness for soccer practice!  ;)

So, here's what I've been up to.  

1) I'm struggling with the fact that I find myself planning the night before the next day of school.  I just can't seem to get ahead.  I am such a planner that this daily planning is killing me!  I hope that I can find a way to remedy this.  Any ideas?

2) I REALLY don't like our reading curriculum.  It's pretty dull and the kids think so too!  I'm trying to find some supplemental activities to jazz it up a little.  I really would love to do an author study, but am not really sure how to begin.  Does anyone have any advice?

3) I also need a serious nap!  My class spent two days at a great camp right on the river.  It was loads of fun, but I'm exhausted!!  They did some super activities like this:

They (speaking of the boys!) also woke the girls cabin up at 6am!  Ugh!  Needless to say, I'm tired!  :)  

Until next time....

Happy Fall, Y'All!

I may not live in Texas anymore, but who can resist a chance to use "Y'all"?  It's one of my favorite southern words!  ;)    It may not officially be fall yet, but school has started (for me anyway - 1 more day of summer for my girls!), the weather is gradually cooling and college football once again dominates my television!  :)  In celebration, I'm linking up with Farley for September's Currently - better late than never!

Happy Labor Day!

Wow - what a whirlwind this last week has been!  I survived my first week of school, watched some amazing college football on Saturday and yesterday spend the day at a local water/amusement park with my girls!  Can I tell you how glad I am to have this Monday off to just R*E*L*A*X?!  So, here I sit on the couch with my coffee, laptop and GMA.  It feels good to have no agenda for the day.

I have to share this FUN activity I did with my class on Friday.  I used it as a way to introduce group expectations and to build teamwork.  I got the idea from Science Gal.  I also used it to introduce our science jobs that we will be using each time we do an experiment.  Let me just tell you - it was FUN!  The kids loved it!  I had them work with their table groups for the first run through.   Then I used the Random Student Selector from Barry Fun English to pick new groups.  It was fun to see how different kids worked together.

I would suggest you head on over to Science Gal and check out the details of this activity!

Happy First (Half) Day of School!

Woo Hoo!  We started school today!!  I'm partner teaching and only teaching 3 days per week.  Today was not my day to teach, but my partner and I wanted to both be there on the first day to emphasize that we are a team and share the same rules.  SO...I only had to stay for half of the day.  It was a nice way to ease into the year.  My kiddos are SUPER (all 11 of them!).  I can tell it's going to be a great year.  I have 8 boys and 3 girls, which seems crazy to me after spending a year subbing in public schools where class sizes are MUCH larger.  I think it's going to be fun having a small group.  We are going to be really close I can tell.

Since I don't have to teach until Friday, I have a day to spend prepping.  I need to create a fun intro. science lesson.  Of course, I had the perfect lesson in mind - one that we had done in my science methods class.  I came home and realized that I hadn't kept the notebook it was in.  Oy!  Sometimes my purging comes back to bite me!  So, I'll be doing some internet surfing to try and find a good replacement.

Oh - and one last tidbit...we got this cute little gift today from one of our kiddos.  I had to laugh when he said "My mom got this on Pinterest...she gets everything off of Pinterest!".

Maybe the earth REALLY is flat!

I've been pondering this past week (or two) about the shape of the earth.  I think it could quite possibly be flat.  Now, before you call for my teaching certificate, let me say that I know the earth is round, but honestly when it comes to blogging, it feels as though I've fallen right off the face of the earth - hence my thinking it really could be flat!  :)

In all seriousness, it's just be a CRAZY (or in the words of my daughters - cray cray) couple of weeks.  I had a two day teaching conference at Gonzaga (which was FABULOUS) which led into a crazy busy weekend of barefoot soccer (more on that in a minute), which led into a week of having a painter in the house painting every room upstairs (which meant me - just me - moving EVERY piece of furniture and all of the "goodies" hiding underneath).  As if that weren't already enough, we still had 4 soccer practices a week, some back to school shopping, an end of summer basketball party, piano lessons and a couple of meetings at school.  Whew....this is my life.

I'm now trying to savor the last few days of summer.  I go back on Monday and Tuesday for staff meetings and then start school with the kids on Wednesday.  YIKES!  Where did the summer go?!   We have had a nice summer, even though it's buzzed by quickly.  The girls have done some fun things, including a little Barefoot 3-on-3 soccer tournament.  These girls had SO much fun and even won the award for best uniforms!

These are the fun memories we have to hold on to as summer quickly fades into fall.  I'm sad, but really looking forward to crisp days, football games on Saturdays and new fun memories at school!

Teacher Week '13: Let's Talk About Me Monday

I'm excited to link up with some great bloggers for Teacher Week '13 at Blog Hoppin'.  

There is a new topic each day which means an entire week of blogging FUN!

So here are a few things About Me!

1) I'm a wife and mom to 5 girls.  I have two step-daughters who are in their 20's and my three littles are 11, 10 and 8.  WAIT - I guess that means they aren't so little anymore!  My 11 year old will be 12 next month and is entering middle school.  How in the heck did that happen?!  

2) I'm a HUGE (and I mean HUGE) football fan!  I get so excited for the first weekend of college football. I graduated from Texas A&M (Gig 'Em Aggies!) and got my teaching certificate from Washington State University (GO Cougs!) but I will watch any game just to get my fill of football!  I have to constantly remind my husband how lucky he is!

3) This is my first year teaching!  Yes, I got a bit of a late start, but I'm SO excited!  After college I obtained my Masters degree in College Student Personnel Administration and worked in Higher Ed before getting married and starting a family.  It was important for me to be home with my girls when they were little.  In 2010 I decided it was time to go back and get my certification.  I spent last year subbing in several local school districts.

4) I LOVE Pink.  I guess having a house full of girls makes it easy!  Really, pink just makes me happy!

5)We have 2 dogs.  Belle, who was delivered by Santa Claus 5 years ago and Akita who joined our family a few months ago.  I say that Belle is my dog.  She is calm, sweet and loves to nap!  Akita is my husband's dog.  She is wild, strong and loves to play!  As you might guess, they don't get along too well!  

6) I hate to admit it, but I'm a fan of Disney Channel shows.  I often find myself caught up in an episode of Jessie or Good Luck Charlie and then realize my girls aren't even in the room.  

7) I LOVE to travel!  I don't do much anymore, but when I was younger I traveled a lot.  In fact, after I graduate from college I applied for a job as a flight attendant!  I was actually hired by US Airways but before I was able to go to training, the company implemented a hiring freeze so I decided instead of waiting, I'd go back to graduate school!

8) I love coconut cake...but have yet to find one that is as good as my grandmother used to make.

9) I get giddy over school supplies.

10) I'm currently obsessed with School Girl Style.

There you have it!  A few facts about me.  We're off to get 6th grade shots (ouch!) and wade through the bags and bags full of school supplies and new clothes that we shopped for yesterday!  FUN!