Well, well, well....

I guess my great plans for daily (weekly?) blog posts went right out the window!!  What a crazy year it has been!  We have 2 1/2 weeks of school left and oh so much to get done.   My new plan is to survive May and then begin blogging again as I 1) Job search 2) Plan for next year 3) begin reading A LOT of books on different teaching methodologies!   Here's to the end of the school year!!

Five for Friday (on Saturday!)

WELL...as usual I feel as though I'm always about a day behind.  But nonetheless, here is my Five for Friday (on Saturday!).

#1 - This was an incredibly emotional week for our community.  Last weekend there was a tragic accident in our neighborhood that claimed the lives of 2 young girls from  our high school.  The only survivor was the driver of the vehicle, also a student at the high school.  These two girls taught Vacation Bible School at our church, McKenzie played soccer in my daughter's soccer club and the mom of one of the girls was the counselor at my daughter's middle school.  It was a week filled with tears but also joy.  The community really pulled together and did some great things to honor these two amazing girls.  It's just tragic to see loss of life at such a young age.  It was also an opportunity for me to talk to my girls about being safe and not taking life for granted.  Lots of prayers and love for the families of Josie and McKenzie as well as prayers for healing to Preston and his family.

#2 - We're continuing on with our author study of Chris VanAllsburg in our classroom.  My favorite lesson this week was using Ben's Dream.  I used the book to transition into a geography lesson using the landmarks in the book.  It was a great lesson...but also one that proved my kids need some extra help being able to differentiate between cities, states, countries and continents.  I can't tell you how many times I had to say "No, South Dakota is not a country".  Oy!

#3 - Still very much in love with the Interactive Math Journals packet I purchased from Runde's Room on TPT.  It has been a great way to incorporate some new, interactive activities into our daily lessons.  THANK YOU!

#4 - I was BLESSED this week at school!  Our school began a new program this year that provides parents with an opportunity to "BLESS"  teachers throughout the year.  This week a family blessed me with Starbucks (enough said!), candy and a gift card to one of our favorite restaurants!  After such a difficult week, it was really nice to know others were thinking of me.  Thank you!!

#5 - It's FALL!!  The weather is chilly and the days are getting shorter.  For me this is EXCITING!  I love fall and winter and am probably one of the few people already wishing for snow!!  

Have a great weekend!! 

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!".