A to Z of Me Linky ( AKA: ANOTHER Snowday!)

It's getting pretty ridiculous around here friends. Today we are having snow/ice day number 9!!! And what else do you do on a snow day...certainly not the laundry piled up in the corner...You search through blogs of course! While doing that I found a blog I was not previously following THE POLISHED TEACHER from a comment she made on the COLLABORATION CUTIES 250 follower giveaway.  She is having a linky and I thought I would work on this post throughout the day today and join up. :)

    

( PS: I am having a hard time lately adding a picture link. If anyone can refresh my memory on how to do that, so people can just click the pic and go that would be awesome. :)

A: App: My favorite App is actually the Christmas countdown on my phone. It tells me to the second how long until Christmas. ( As of typing this there is currently 10 months, 13 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes, and 11 seconds) LOL!

B: Book Character: I have a thing for strong female characters. I love Olivia from the Olivia books and Annie from the Magic Tree House books and Clementine from the Clementine series. I love Olivia's tenacious and flamboyant behavior. I love Annie's boldness and kindness. I love Clementine's curious nature and impulsivity. I find all of these characteristics in my daughter too. That's probably why I love them so much. :)




C: Clip Art: I am too new to making things using clip art. I don't really have a favorite one... yet.

D: Dollar Spot Find: Oh Dollar Store...How I love thee....Mine stocks borders and punch-out letters and numbers. They have great baskets in many fun colors. And I love to get stuff for my prize box there. About once a month I take 15-20 bucks and blow it there. It's one of my favorite places to shop. :)

E: Essential to Start the Day: A shower! My hair gets super greasy easily ( Thanks Dad!) and also I need that water to really wake up. Once I am awake though I MUST have my iced coffee. This is the kind that I super love.

Mixed with a cup and half of non fat milk. So Delish!


F: Font:  KB Striped Pajamas by Khrys Bosland is my favorite font.  You can get it HERE . AND best of all it’s a FREE one!!
 
G:Game: We try to have a family game night once a month with my family. Two of the games that we love to play are Apples to Apples and Truth Be Told.

                                                                          

With my classes though I love to play I Have, Who Has games.

H:Holiday: I think anyone who is reading this post will be able to answer this question. Hands down, Christmas. A close second is Thanksgiving for two reasons. 1: I don't cook. My husband slaves away in the kitchen for our AMAZING dinner. 2: Its Christmas Season Eve. :)

I: Ice Cream: Mint Chocolate Chip. Any brand. SO good!

J: Jewelry Piece: First if my wedding ring, second would be the Relic/ Fossil watch my husband bought me for Christmas. I wear both almost daily.

K: Kid-ism: My daughter is 3 so she doesn't always speak correctly. I am not an advocate fo speaking baby talk to your child or encouraging them to say things wrong on purpose. However, my daughter uses she instead of her. So for example tonight she said " Mommy can you put a pony in she hair. I will hold on to she." I don't know why, but I love, love, love when she says it.

L: Location to Travel: I am not really a big traveler. I do like going to Chicago or to Lake Michigan to the beach over the summer.

M: Management Technique: I really got into Whole Brain Teaching over the summer. Amanda at TEACHING MADDENESS is going to a WBT workshop over the summer and I am SOOOOOOO jealous! I watched this VIDEO on You tube ( I found it through Pinterest) over the summer and I was hooked. I have implemented some of the things this year but have a LONG way to go.

N: Nail Polish: Clear is about all I have time for...even though I super love when my nails have color...go figure.

O: Open House Idea: We do a back to school night/ meet the teacher night but not really an Open House where the parents get to come in after school has started. Ours is done before school starts. I leave a treat bag at each seat and an instructional packet. That way I can remember who came and who didn't.

P: Pinterest Find: IMPOSSIBLE to answer. I LOOOOOOOOVE Pinterest. As of this morning I have 95 boards and over 5,000 pins. That's like asking someone who their favorite child is. LOL. I don't have a link on blog ( yet) to get to my pinterest page so you can follow this awesomeness. But if you click HERE it will take you to my boards.

Q: Quote: This was a hard one to choose...because I have so many. I narrowed it down to these three though.

 This is one of my favorite quotes of all time. I know it's not very educational-y ( even though it is from a book) but I had to include it.

R: Read Aloud: I LOVE the Wayside School books. They are one of the few books I have read every year I have been teaching. I love the humor in them. I love when one of my peanuts gets some of the obscure humor and I love being able to do different voices. My kiddo's always LOOOOOOOOOVE them.

S: School Supply: Glue sticks, glue sticks, glue sticks. I think I would choose this because they seem to disappear SO quickly and if I got a bunch at the beginning of the year I would be so, so happy. ( My room mom last year stocked up ALL summer long and brought me in an entire take out bag's worth. Yet somehow we are STILL dwindling down this year. I think they grow legs!)


T: TPT product: I would have to say really ANYTHING Amy Lemons makes is fabulous. I have two favorites though. Her WINTER FRIENDS CRAFT and FRACTION SUNDAES . Those were some of the first items I ever bought on TPT, so they hold a special place in my heart. :)

These are pics from when my kiddo's made them. :)










U: Unofficial Hobby: Pinning. I am known for it around my school. Also I am a VORACIOUS reader. I can't get enough of books. I am currently reading the Beautiful Creatures series and I love it!


V: Video Brain Break: We love the Adventure Fitness videos...especially when we have inside recess....for the 4th day....in a row... You can find it HERE and the best part is it's FREE!





W: Way to Spend a Day Off:  Shopping. Is there any better way to spend your time. Second would be cleaning my house. I have a sickness.  And of course over all it would be doing both with my peanut. I love spending time with that kid. :)

X: Xtra Special Blogs to You: Oh goodness, how do I choose.

One is . Angela Nerby is the creative mind behind this blog. Go HERE to follow her. She and I started out blogging around the same time. I don't understand how she doesn't have like 500+ followers by now. EVERY time I check her blog I learn something cool to do with my own peanuts...or bunnies as she calls them.

The holy grail of blogs for me has to be . Who in the blogging world DOESN'T know about this girl?! But if you don't you can check out her blog HERE. She has the cutest idea's and I will probably wind up owning every single item she has for sale on TPT some day.




Y: Yummy Desert: There are very few deserts I don't like. Overall my favorite would have to be dirt pudding. My mom makes this for my birthday every year...even though I am going to be *coughs* 31 * coughs* I know she will still make it for me. :)

Z: Zoo Animal: I  have always liked seeing the bears. There is just something about seeing those massive creatures that I really like. However, we went to the zoo the first weekend after school got out for the summer last year ( and we are hoping to make it a tradition). At the zoo closest to us, John Ball Park Zoo, they have a bird cage where you can go in a feed the birds. They land on your stick and eat right out of your hand. Finley had so much fun and made those girly squeals of delight that tell you a little girl is really having the time of her life. Because of that, those silly parakeets are probably my favorite now. :)

PHEW! There you go. The A- Z's of me. So if you have a snow day like me or an hour to spare. Go link up! :)

Giveaway!

Perusing Facebook while my kiddo watched an episode of Bubble Guppies and came across this sweet giveaway. Go check it out HERE AT TEACHER IDEA FACTORY.

 

Also, I am only 4 followers away from 100! What! That's crazy!!!! When I do hit the 100 mark I will DEFINITLY be doing some sort of  giveaway for that because that is amazing! If you would be interested in helping me out with that please let me know. I only have two things in TPT right now and they are both free so it wouldn't be much of a giveaway. LOL! But I will think of something! In the meantime go check out this FAB giveaway!

 



Another Friday, Another Link Up

 

Happy Friday friends! I hope you all had a good week. I am back to link up again with DOODLEBUGS TEACHING and TEACHING MADDENESS to share about our weeks. I am doing this from the comfort of my own home because....dun, dun, dun...We have another snow day! ( If you are counting, this is number 8, and I think we may be in making this up territory...yikes!) But for now, I am living in the moment and enjoying my day off with my peanut.

 

My BIGGEST news is that I now have a BUTTON for my blog. I am so happy and excited. My husband's friend is a computer whiz and he figured out how to do it for me. So now when I link up I can have a cool picture like everyone else. :) So psyched!

 

On Monday I mentioned that I was bummed about not having my Boggle board done in time for Monday Made It. But that I was excited to bust out my personal laminator for the first time. This baby is UH-MAZING! I think I prefer the lamination on this one. It's much thicker than the one at school, which makes me feel like it will be WAY more durable. Unfortunately, I don't have the board done yet to share. I am still trying to figure out where it is going to go too!



 

Please ignore the horribley beat up t.v. tray and princess bear in this picture and just admire the beautiful laminator....OOOO...AAAHHH! :)

This week in writing we started our research report projects. I have the kid's choose a scholastic science vocabulary reader on a topic. We use this reader to kill many birds with one stone. Obviously, we use it for the research for our project. They also take an AR test on it, earning points, as well as use the book to talk about nonfiction text features. After writing their report they will then create a visual aide (poster) and write notecards for a presentation. The first year I did this I was SO impressed by their presentations that it has caused me to look forward to this project every year since then. This is possibly one of my favorite lessons.

This is one of my peanuts during our walk around. I spread the books around our tables and let them take 5 minutes to browse and chat with friends about what one they found interesting. They picked their first and second choice in topic. Then I called them after that to choose their book.

 

 

This week we started our forces, motion, and simple machines unit. I purchased a pack by Common Core and So Much More during the big TPT sale. You can get yours HERE. It is a great packet and I highly recommend it. During our unit we go sledding so the kiddo's can see force and motion in action. It's a lot of fun and its FREE. The high school right across the street from us has this large hill next to it. So we walk over and sled on it. The janitor's rope off a section of the parking lot so no one parks there, and we always have plenty of parents who help with crowd control. LOVE this day. :) 

 

After that we came back inside to enjoy some hot cocoa and cookies.

 BUT! The teacher in me couldn't JUST let them eat cookies and cocoa without something educational too. So we started another how-to writing project. ( So I can finally take the Christmas one's down! Ha!) They filled in their organizer while I got the cocoa ready.
I purchased this hot cocoa how to writing packet back during TPT Black Friday sales. I wanted to do it last month but between conferences and snow days we never got a chance. You can check it out HERE.
 

Well, that's all for my week. I need to finish cleaning up a little bit. We are having some of my husbands family over for pizza tonight. YUM! Have a great weekend everyone and go link up!

Monday Made It

Hey, all! Hope you made it through your Monday relatively unscathed. I came in this morning really raring to go and by the end of the day I could have used a few shots of espresso to keep me going! I am linking up with Tara for February's Monday Made It. I have a couple of things that I made a while ago and just haven't had time to share and then an update to something that makes it look tres cute in my opinion.

First up I have my non-fiction text features poster that I made using a couple of Scholastic Newspapers. I got the idea off of Pinterest. It was from the blog What's Happening in Literacy. You can check that out HERE. I made mine a little more 2nd grade friendly. It took me along time, mostly because I am an uber perfectionist. In normal people time it should have taken an hour or so...it took me almost 3.

Next, I have something that was WAY cuter inside my head ,but I love the IDEA of what I did here. This is part of my AR tracking system. The picture on the left has the full view. The one on the right is the close up of the student clips. I drew a little worm on each one. Like I said, cuter in my head. I think for next year I will be on the look out for some little caterpillar or worm wooden cutouts or something. If you have any suggestions for me I will take them! :)

 My last share I am SUPER excited about.  I found this picture on pPnterest last year. It's just an uploaded by user photo so if you know who it is by I will happily give credit to it.

So, last year I made this version of it. I took a keyboard, stuck it on the printer and after a little trial and error made this. ( The paper keypad is glued to a file folder and then laminated.) I stapled blank pages to the top for my kiddo's because I was short on white board markers last year and thought they would last longer this way. They write their spelling word on the top and then " type" the word out on the keypad. My kiddo's last year went nuts for them.

 

I was going through my station stuff on Friday and came across the paper laptops and thought it would be a good idea to pull those out. But then I decided to jazz up the top a little. Today I made this.

I found a computer clip art in Microsoft word that I enlarged. Then I added a text box for the words to practice and VOILA! Total Cuteness! I love how it looks now. I can't wait to introduce this at the ABC/ Word Work Station. I think this year's peanuts will go nut's ( haha, that's Punny!) for them too.

I am super bummed because I was going to have a BOGGLE board to share too, but the laminator at school was out of lamination. I was super bummed for about two seconds and then I remembered! I HAVE a laminator because my super awesome husband got me one for Christmas. So after I put the Finners to bed tonight I am going to bust that baby out and laminate for the first time. I am pretty excited. You'll just have to wait for that until next month I guess. :)

Enjoy the rest of your week friends!

Currently

Sometimes with all of things I have learned while blogging and using Teachers Pay Teachers and Pinterest I start to feel really tech savvy...and then my husband updates our computer and I can't find something as simple as PowerPoint and I am completely stumped and helpless. He has the computer set up so that we each have our own accounts. This way we can keep our own Facebook and email pages up without having to constantly log in and out of each others. Turns out he had only added the PowerPoint to HIS account. Problem solved and I am FINALLY able to link up with FARLEY for February's Currently! Geesh, and at this point I am like number 250 or something! Oh well. There is always next month to crack the top 100. LOL!

 

 

LISTENING: Any other " Gleeks" out there? I am a huge fan of Glee. I love musical theater so I immediately knew this would be a show I would like when it first came on. I really loved the first 3 seasons. This season is just so transitional...I am not as into it as I was. However, one of my favorite song moments was this season when everybody broke up and they sang The Scientist on stage and did the flashbacks...I am SUCH a sucker for a flashback scene. :) I saved that episode on my DVR for the longest time before I realized, duh, I can just YouTube it. So I do. And I listen to it on repeat. Over and over.

 

LOVING: I am such a huge fan of TPT. It really has changed the way I teach SO much. I am so inspired by the creativity and generosity of my fellow teachers. And I LOVE a good sale. So I of course had to shop...and shop I did! I purchased spring and summer station activity packs by AMY LEMONS, a forces and motion mini unit by COMMON CORE AND SO MUCH MORE, a snowflake measuring activity, _ed and _ing packet, and double and triple digit addition and subtraction with regrouping by THE TEACHER WIFE, and elapsed time math problems by ERICA BOHRER. ALL for a grand total oooooofffffff......$24.84. That's a steal!

 

THINKING/ NEEDING: If you read my Friday post you will know that we had school 1 day last week....1 day! We have a 5 day week coming up tomorrow and conferences to reschedule. This week is going to last FOR-E-VER! ( Sandlot anyone?) Also, you will have noticed that in the many, many things I said I did over the snow days getting caught up on the laundry was not one of them. I NEED to do at least 4 loads today...gotta get on that!

 

WANTING: I wanted either a Detroit Tigers case or something black and white and pretty for my Kindle case. I found some great Tigers one's, but they are only for the back and I need something that will protect the screen and let it sit up too....and I haven't found anything else that I really like. The hubs found me a sweet deal on a pack of Kindle accessories on Amazon for $40 ( originally $80) but its just a plain black case. * Sigh* I'll probably get it anyways....and I wonder why my daughter acts like such a princess! LOL!

 

PET PEEVES: I actually have quite a few pet peeves. One of my HUGEST ones is rudeness. I teach my kids ( biological and educational) that politeness will get them SO far in life. I think being a polite hardworking person will get you farther than any amount of smarts will. Saying please and thank you is a must have, both in my home and my classroom. My second biggest pet peeve is my peanuts who STILL DO NOT PUT THEIR NAME ON THEIR PAPER! By 2nd grade they have been doing this for 2 FULL YEARS! It should be as automatic to them as breathing...yet somehow, it is not. What really peeves me though is when I remind them and then say to double check and I still have a paper without a name on it. Any suggestions and I will take them. :)

 

Ok, so if you are like one of the 4 people who haven't yet, head over to Farley's blog and link up. ( Click on her name on the top of my post).

 

Enjoy the rest of your weekend friends!

 

 

 

Friday Link Ups

Ok, linking up again to share my week.
 

 Now let me preface this by saying DON'T HATE ME! but I have had the easiest week ( work wise) ever! Sunday night we had some snowy sleety weather, which resulted in a snow day on Monday that I welcomed with open arms! We had had a super busy weekend at Casa Robinson and we had conferences scheduled for this week so I still had some progress reports to work on. Plus I was able to go to the gym, return some packages to the post office,  clean my house a little from our family game night on Saturday, and play with my new Kindle.:) P.S. ( If you have any suggestions for me on what apps to get go HERE).

Cut to Tuesday morning, more slushy rain and another snow day! It was my sister's birthday so we celebrated with her, I finished a new book on my kindle, and did some general cleaning. I enjoyed that day immensely as well.

Cut to Wednesday morning AAAAAANNNND! ANOTHER day off! Usually on a snow day I take Fin to McDonalds for a breakfast treat so since we hadn't done that yet we got our usual ( the "sandwich with a hole") and then I organized my stockpile of her clothes 4T and 5T. I enjoyed myself, but I was ready to go back.

 Cut to Thursday morning AAAAAANNNNDDD! SCHOOL! HOORAY! My little peanut and I had had about enough of each others faces at this point. She wanted to play with her friends and I wanted to play with my friends. :) Plus I had my late night of conferences scheduled for last night so I was glad to not have to reschedule that. Now, because we were supposed to have conferences this week we had a scheduled day off for Friday ( today) and so I enjoyed this day of. I'm too the peanut to daycare, went to the gym and school for a little bit and then headed off for a movie, a little shopping, and dinner with my BFF! :) See, EASIEST.WEEK.EVER!

So this is what my week looked like.

1. I started making muffin tin breakfasts for Fin this summer. She loves them. So I made them for her on Monday and Tuesday. I took her picture with them the first couple of times I made them, so now she expects it. However, when we stage a picture she has the most forced smile. But I chose this picture because you can see what weird things we put in her tin. She LOVES black olives so those are in there. They were jumbo and she put them on her fingers and ate them off like Bugles. ( Anybody else ever do that?) She also has pickles, ranch dip, yogurt, strawberries, and a banana. She helps me pick out foods to put in there and as long as they are healthy I put them in. ( Hence this interesting breakfast combo!)

 

 

2. Tuesday was my sister's birthday and since we didn't have school we met her, my mom and my grandma for lunch at Applebee's. I jokingly refer to my sister as Finley's real mom because Fin looks SO much like Julie did when she was little. This is them sharing Aunt Juju's birthday desert.



 



3. On Wednesday I mentioned going through my 4T stockpile. I had 4 LARGE garbage bags, and 2 boxes full of stuff that I paired down into 3 totes ( which still seems like a ton, but when I think about how it is a full years- spring, summer, fall and winter- wardrobe it doesn't seem so bad.) This is the amount that I decided not to keep and I sold it on a local mom swap site. This was an ALL day project!

 


4. I try to focus on an author every month or so. So far we have studied Tomie De Paola, Marc Brown, and Jan Brett. This month we are doing Ezra Jack Keats who I LUH-HUV! I love his illustrations. I love how socially conscience he was. Most of all, I love that his stories are definitely written at a level that 2nd graders can read independently, but they have interesting ,well written storylines.
 
One of the first books we read was The Snowy Day. Afterwards we did the Winter Craftivity by Amy Lemons that I posted about last week. You can check that out HERE. Last week Friday we read Goggles. Goggles is one of my favorites because it is one of the first EJK books I ever read. I remember loving the illustrations even as a child.

  

Get your own copy HERE.

After reading Goggles I put an activity for them to do at the pocket chart station. I do not remember where I got this idea from, other than it was something I purchased from Scholastic two years ago. If someone finds it I will happily give credit. They buddy read the book. Then they talk about what they would do if they found motorcycle goggles while they decorate a face and goggles. They write a first copy and peer edit and then write their final copy. I like this because it gives them a chance to be creative and gets them reading and writing. ( I made this photo extra large so you could read all the pieces.)

5. As I mentioned earlier, my best friend Rhea and I went to see Breaking Dawn part 2 today. Don't judge, but this was my 4th time watching it. We went on opening day and watched all 5 movies in the theater as part of a marathon. It is JUST SO GOOD! This has one of my favorite movie endings of all time. I think my favorite part is actually the credits! I don't mind admitting that I LUH-HUV Twilight.

 So, there you have my SUPER easy week. Not a lot of education happening, but Fin and I got some good mommy/ daughter time which is just as important, if not more!

Link up with TEACHING MADDENESS and DOODLEBUGS TEACHING and tell us about your week.

Happy Friday friends!

Kindle! Kindle! Kindle!

I am SO SO excited! This little baby is ALL mine! :)

A little backstory... 

Yesterday was my husband Kelly's work party. They always put on a nice party for their "members" ( aka employees) and this one was no exception. They had it at a place near us called Cran Hill Ranch ( or " Ranchy Hill as my daughter and nephew called it all day...too cute!) They had several different sledding hills, pony rides, rock climbing, ice climbing, marshmallow roasting ( yes, even in winter!) and many other things. In the summer they have more activities. We had never been there before but after yesterday, I am sure we will go again. We had a blast.

After all the sledding we headed over to their banquet hall for lunch and the prize give away. They always make sure that everyone leaves with a prize. They have gift cards and grand prizes. ( At the party this summer my husband won a $25 LOWES gift card and that was the standard prize!) I saw them bringing in some of the prizes when we got there. One that I was eyeing was a carpet cleaner and so I told Kelly to get that one if he drew a grand prize. Well, he did. But before he had gotten called someone else had chosen a Kindle Fire. I looked at the table and there was another one left. I was in a room off the hall and when he went up I shouted " get the Kindle Fire instead" as he was reaching for the carpet cleaner. So he did and I was so excited.

One of my teaching partners and I were talking about how great it would be to have a Kindle in our classroom for the kids to use during station time or as a reward. I knew I would be able to use his Kindle but I didn't know he would let me have it AND use it in my classroom!  He is truly the best!

Today we have a snow day and I am going to spend a large chunk of time playing with it. But my question for you all is this: What apps do you recommend? I was thinking of using it during literacy work stations but I would put any interesting school appropriate apps on it. I also want to put some on for my 3 year old daughter and, of course, any suggestions for me would be appreciated too! :)

Happy Monday!