New Look!

I am so excited to share with you my new look!!!

I think my blog looks awesome! 

I loved it before, too, but it needed a change to get me motivated to write more. 

Something about me....I really am a teacher who likes change! I get bored easily and I have to mix things up. In my classroom, I am always rearranging the furniture and I actually move the students around every week!  Every Monday, they know they have to put their things away, then go find their new spot. It allows me to quickly see who works well together and who doesn't. I think it's good for them to sit next to and work with everyone. If there are any major personality conflicts or best friends who get in trouble together I remember not to put them together again! :)

Anyway, I want to thank Alicia at dreamlike Magic designs! She had a simple template that was really cute and she installed it fast and free! It was great! If you're looking for a new look for your blog, go look at Alicia's site!

So, how many days do you have left? We have 7!!! Plus a work day! I hope I make it! Next week is going to be loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong!!!!

10 Things

Well I've chosen to come back to blogging again to join Deanna Jump's link about plans for the summer! How fun is that?! Because with two whole weeks still left, I don't really want to think about school right now!!!! So here we go...

1. Spend some time with these cute guys...

And hopefully spend a lot of time sleeping in together.... kind of like this, although there wasn't a lot of sleep going on in this picture.  (The flash was really bright!) :)

2. Read read read!!!!

I really do love to read, but with the three in the above picture, I don't always have a lot of time for that. When I finally get everyone to bed, I am usually so wiped, that I just turn on the tv and veg before I go to sleep. Hopefully summer will give me some time to read these books...

The last book I really want to dive into for many reasons, but mainly because Timothy Shanahan was involved with it. Do you read his blog??? His can be quite controversial and I don't always agree with everything he says, but he sure makes me think! I want to read the 3-5 version but I couldn't find a pic of it. I think I may have a move in my future and I'm Excited!!!! More info later....

3.  

Oh yeah! We aren't going to the beach this year but we found out there's a Legoland in Dallas! Who knew?!  My brother lives there and the boys looooooooooooove their uncle (who is a 40 something bachelor) so we're going to invade his turf and show him some fun!!!!

4. Pool time!

5. Library for the boys

6, 7, and 8. Paint!

So, we've been in our house over 4 years now. Before we moved in, we got the living room, dining room, and kitchen painted, which was so great. Now, all these bedrooms that we skipped over are starting to show some wear. We started with my bedroom. I painted four walls a light gray and an accent wall that our bed is on, a dark gray. Then I got white bedding, working on white curtains and some turquoise accents. I'll post a pic if we ever get completely finished. This summer we're going to do our master bath, the boy's bath, and our guest bedroom. I'm tired already. But you can see why I counted this three times.

9. Maybe in-between take a mini vacay to visit friends in Florida. That would definitely be a child free trip, so it will depend on who's willing to keep my boys. Any takers????

10. And of course, work on my classroom!!! I love working on my classroom in the summer. I like to get it looking great before the kids come in and ruin it all the start of the new year!!!

What about you?! What are your great summer plans?!

It's that time again….

My twins are just waking up from their nap. I love this time when I can listen to them interact with each other without any interference.  Right now they are acting like lions. :)

The weather is so crazy! It is sleeting right now, as it has been doing all day. Snow day #12, here we come. :(

I'm going to finish cleaning and sorting out the boys clothes that don't fit. This seems to be an ongoing process.

My Keurig machine is about my favorite thing on these cold days! I had no idea that apple cider was a choice since I don't drink coffee. I had never paid attention before. But when my friends let me in on this little secret, I had to have one!!! It's great for hot chocolate, too! And so convenient!!!!

At church, I was nominated by our pastor to be the head of the stewardship committee. I'm not really sure why, as I've got absolutely no experience in this area, but I was called to serve, so what can I do?? :) I'll be looking at other churches websites soon, so if you know of any great ones, please let me know!

Finally, the answer to my question that I will blog about in a few days. What do you think the answer is????

Join Farley's party if you blog! It's great fun!!!!

Test Prep

I've posted before about my dislike of some blogs that seem to be intended as only a place to market the products the blogger wants you to buy. BUT, (you knew it was coming, right?) I wanted to let you know I've updated my Test Prep document I made for TPT. I really only made this because I have had a hard time finding quality test prep online, which is where I get the majority of my lessons anymore.
So, I made this…

So if you teach first grade and are giving a standardized test soon and need to do some work in the area of capitalization and punctuation, I hope this helps you, if not, don't buy it. There. No more ads. :)

Our weather in Arkansas is CR-AAA-ZY! Yesterday, it was 60 degrees and my oldest son had his first soccer practice of the season. Today, there are ice pellets hitting my window as I'm typing this post. It looks like we probably won't go to school tomorrow which will be our 12th snow day!!! In my 17 years of teaching, we have never had this many snow days. I love having the little breaks but my goodness, we'll be going to school until the middle of June as it is now! Bye bye summer!

How is your weather???

Beginning (Again) Interactive Notebooks

The weekend is finally here!

Oh my, what a long week!!!

This week, we had conferences, Valentine's Day and a full moon! Too much in one week if you ask me!
So, we did start our new notebooks, (I posted about those last time right here) but didn't do as much with them on Thursday and Friday.

Monday was strictly our decorating day.  This time, since I now teach in a pretty affluent school, I had the students bring in their own notebooks if they wanted and I had some for the kids who didn't bring new ones.  We are using just a one subject spiral notebook. I've tried the composition notebooks, but I don't think those give enough the student enough space because we glue in a lot of modified practice work (aka worksheets) and unless you are always folding those in half, there is just not enough room. I've also heard of using spiral notebooks which I think is a great idea, but I don't like to have to do all the hole punching with my piece of junk three hole puncher, so spirals work best for us (me).

I got out new markers and a ton of stickers and said, Have fun and make it yours! Of course they loved this.  Here was one finished product…

Notice the blue tape on the bottom. I will put a little tape on the side, too, but just didn't get time, to make a pocket. I saw on Pinterest how you could just take the first two pieces of paper and fold them over and tape them down to make a pocket! Such a great idea!!! But I can not find that for the life of me! Please let me know if this idea was yours because it certainly wasn't mine!

This pocket will be so handy for holding our baggies of spelling words, etc.

This took all of the time on Monday.  That's all for today. See you next time!!!