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

2 blog posts in one day!  That's a biggie for me!  I'm linking with Blog Hoppin for Teacher Week '13.

Today's topic is Meet the Teacher.  So here are 10 must know facts about me! FYI: This is much harder than it seems!

1. I've been married for 4 years to another amazing educator!  We are college sweethearts (we even got married on our college campus) and he is an AMAZING husband!  Like makes my lunch everyday amazing! 

2. I had my first baby this past December.  She truly is the best baby ever! I love being a mommy!

3. I've just started my 4th year teaching.  I've taught 3rd and 4th grade and am currently working on adding grades 5-8 to my license.  Teaching wasn't something I always wanted to do.  It wasn't until I was sitting in my freshman advising session that I realized what I was being called to do.

4. I love to garden.  It started right after we got married and my love for it has grown each year.  I built raised beds this year.  You can read about my garden adventures here, here and here.  We've had wonderful eggplants, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, and zucchini this year.  I love eating homegrown vegetables!

5. I am very much a creature of routine. I do the same thing every morning when I get ready including the order I put my make-up on.  I don't like it when my routine gets messed up.  OCD much?  I have routines at school I follow, too... don't mess with my bathroom breaks!

6. Things I don't like: whip cream, marshmallows, onions, bell peppers, being scared on purpose.

7. I really love peanut butter and any candy with peanut butter!  Reece's Cups are my favorite candy, especially the Christmas Trees and Easter Eggs.

8. I'm addicted to Pinterest!  Ever since my friend turned me onto the site, I've spent countless hours on the crafting and education boards that have transformed my life!

9.  I'm on a mission currently to be more organized.  I'm working on it in my classroom and hopefully my organization will rub off on my house next!

10. I'm new to the blogging world and I'm loving all of the connections I've been making!  

I'm so excited for the rest of the posts for this week!

Monday Made It: Reward Passes and More Owls

I can't believe it's Monday again, already! I had a slightly stressful weekend; I took my Middle Level Praxis to add grades 5-8 to my teaching license.  I may or may not have forgotten about the test until Thursday night.  OOPS!!!!  I did some studying but probably not as much as I should have over the next two days and drove 30 minutes away on Saturday to take my test.  It wasn't too bad.  I only didn't have enough time on the math section of the test - ironic huh?  It was a computer based test so I got my scores as soon as I finished and guess what?  I PASSED ALL 4 PARTS!!!!  I was overjoyed!  I didn't want to spend another $250 on the test if I didn't pass.  Now I've got some professional development to do before I can get the middle school certification added to my license but the test was a huge hurdle!

Now, on to my Monday Made It's!!!!

First, here are my Classroom Reward Coupons!  I'm just loving all of the chevron backgrounds!  We give out tickets for positive behavior at our school and we draw each week for prizes. We were tired of having to buy stuff for our treasure boxes, so we decided to move to reward coupons.  The kids love them and work hard to get tickets.  You can buy these at my TpT store here.

The second thing I was worked on was a paint chip owl project!  I found this little gem on Pinterest a while ago and fell in love! 

 I knew I wanted to make one for my classroom, but I just hadn't found the time yet.  I got my paint chips a couple of weeks ago and also used some of my chevron scrapbook paper to make this little beauty.  I followed to tutorial here at The Homes I Have Made.  I used a canvas for my project that was 8 x 10 instead 12 x12.  I covered the whole thing with a thin layer of Mod Podge after cutting the edges off.

Here is my finished project!

Now I just have to figure out where it's going to go in my classroom!

Don't forget to go check out all of the other awesome projects at 4th Grade Frolics!

Classroom Reveal!!!!

I have officially finished an entire week of school!!!  It's only been 7 school days, but we are already off to a WONDERFUL start!  I have a great group of kiddos that have now had Common Core for 2 years.  Let me tell you it makes a world of difference!  Their mathematical thinking is incredible and they are already proving to be great problem solvers! I can't wait to share some of their work with you!

But today, I'm excited to finally show off my classroom!!!!  Now, it's not perfect and there are definitely some things that still need to be worked on, but overall I am very happy with how it turned out!

This is standing at my door looking into the classroom.  You can see I'm missing a ceiling tile by the windows.  I have a wonderful little leak that continues to be an issue for me since we've had pretty regular rain for the past two weeks.  I love my windows!!!!

Right inside my door to the left is my lunch count.  I used little owl stickers on circle punches and wrote the students numbers on them. They have magnets on the back to stick to the filing cabinet.  The lunch calendar for the month is hanging up.  I didn't exactly think about the size of the lunch menu when designing this, but I think it looks cute and it's easy to take a lunch count in the morning.

This is my supply shelf.  I love this utility shelf!  I'd really like to cover it with some of that cute teal chevron contact paper, but that will have to come later.  I'd also like to get some cute bins that all match, but I didn't want to spend the money on that this year... maybe next year!

This is my desk area.  I really love this part of my classroom!  I've made it my mission this year to leave every day with a clean desk.  So far I've been able to do it!  You can also see my little owl labels in the kids' cubbies.  Aren't they cute?  I kinda did a boo boo with  my keep calm and hoot on on the front of my desk, but it works.

This is same area but from the side.  You can see some of my MMI projects in this area.  I love my multiplication numbers hanging on the wall.  They have the multiples of each number up to 10 on the big number.  I'll post more about those later.

This is my library. It's not exactly the prettiest, but since I don't teach literacy, I don't worry about it that much. The bulletin board on the back is going to be my math word wall, for all the vocabulary we learn.  You can buy the labels here.

Above the library is our birthday owl wall.  I've taken pictures of my kids and added them to the owls.  they look so cute now!  I need to take a picture and add it.

This is looking at the whole back wall from the front.  My cubbies are split between two walls; you can see the other half here.

This is the far window wall.  My windows look out to the playground and I love to watch all the kids play at recess.  The drawers on the counter are my math manipulatives.  I love having the drawers covered and labeled.  I've never had them quite this organized. You can also see my team tubs on the desks.  I got those at TJ Maxx for $3 each!  They are the perfect size to hold some markers, glue, pens and erasers for each group!

This is the front wall/board of my room.  This is my second favorite part of my room.  There is so much room and I have a Smartboard!

This is a closeup of the left side of the board.  I list our objectives and the days activities on this side.  You can also see my rules here! I love how they turned out!

Even closer!  I used my Cricut for just about all of this.  It's the Mickey Mouse font.  I love having my date displayed like this, makes changing the date super easy!

This is the right side of the board - the time/schedule section.  I really want to make our schedule cute, but that hasn't happened yet.  Maybe by October break... we'll see.  You can buy the clock labels at my TpT store here.

Well, that's my classroom!  There will always be projects in progress, but I think it's a great place to spend the year!

I'm also linking up with a Class*y Collaboration for their Cruise Around the Classroom.  Go check out everyone's rooms!

I'm adding this post to Teacher Week '13!

Go check out everyone's Classroom Digs!

Math is "Real Life"

I'm so excited to join up to math IS real life!  A monthly REAL WORLD math blog link-up hosted by 4mulaFun, Fourth Grade Studio, Teaching to Inspire in 5th, AND MissMathDork,

This blog link is about how we use math in the real world in order to show our students that math is valuable outside the classroom.  

My real world math experience happened at the ATT store today. 

 When the hubby and I bought smart phones 2 years ago, we bought the lowest data plan (we were being money conscious).   It worked for us for a while with only an overage here and there.  Lately, however we have been going over our data almost every month.  Each time we go over it costs us $15 extra each.  We decided to head down to the ATT store to explore our data options today.  At the store, the ATT guy looked at our data usage for the past couple of months (I usually use more data, but some months the hubby uses more.).  He gave us 3 options for upgrading our data, as our 200MB plan doesn't even exist anymore.  Each option contains our minutes and texting.

Option 1: 3GB each $139 per month 

Option 2: 4GB shared in a family plan $136 per month

Option 3: 6GB shared in a family plan for $142 per month

Now in order to weigh our options appropriately, I had to ask a question that may seem stupid to some, "How many MB are in a GB?"  

The ATT guy was kind enough to explain that there are 1000 MB in 1 GB.  Holy Cow!  That's a lot of data! Even if we just got 1 GB each we would upping our data by 4 times!!!!  After discussing our options we went with the 4 GB to share.  Now I don't have to worry about whether or not watching that Youtube video is going to cost me $15. We added about $10 a month to our bill, which is cheaper than going over our data and only getting 200 MB more.  

Even as we were sitting there discussing prices and GB vs. MB, all I could think about was, "Look at all this math we are using!!!!" I'm now trying to figure out a way to turn this into a problem for my students to research and determine the best price/deal on a budget.  

How are you using math in your life?

Monday Made It: 4th Grade Frame, Math Notebooks

It's Monday and the start of my first full week with kids!  It's time for another link up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics!

I always try to get a picture of each of my students on the first couple of days of school.  Well my camera has been MIA this week so I couldn't take my pictures last week.  I figured oh well, that gives me the weekend to make a cute picture frame for them to hold for their pictures. I'm sure we've all seen a variety of versions of the picture below floating around on Pinterest and other blogs.

Well since I missed the first day of school, I made my frame to just say 4th Grade. I have been trying to use things I have at home instead of always going and buying stuff. I took an old chalkboard with frame that we used for Christmas pictures a couple of years ago and decided it would work great for this project!

I took the chalkboard out and painted the frame to match my classroom.  Then I used my handy dandy Cricut to cut out the letters in teal vinyl.  They went on so easy and to keep everything in place I painted a thin coat of modge podge over the whole thing. Here is the final product!

Next, I have my math notebooks.  I started using interactive notebooks when I taught 3rd grade reading.  I really enjoyed using them and the kids did, too!  Last year I knew I wanted to use them again, but there had to be some changes made so that I could use them for math.  We didn't and still don't have a Common Core text book, so these notebooks take the place of a text book.  It was tax free weekend here, so I went and picked up some extra composition notebooks to get ready for the kids to make their interactive notebooks for this year.  I explored A LOT on the pros and cons of using spiral vs. composition notebooks.  I've always used composition notebooks in the past and decided to stick to it this year.

 

Here is how I put them together.  I use two notebooks, stapling the back cover of the first to the front cover of the second.Then I use Duck Tape to hold the two notebooks together.  My wonderful hubby usually helps me put all of these together! After the notebooks are put together, I glue a piece of ribbon in the back for the kids to use a bookmark.  This worked great last year.  I use a different colored ribbon for each class so I can easily identify where it goes if it gets left somewhere.

We will spend part of class this week decorating our notebooks.  I want the kids to feel like they are personalized to them.  I keep separate notebooks for each class because I model the notes and problems for each class.

One last MMI for this week is this little pillow!  I've had it for a couple of years and it didn't match my room any more.  I decided to get out the sewing machine and make a little cover for it to match the rest of my room!  I think it turned out so cute!

Fellowes Saturn2(95 Review

I wrote about buying a laminator at Staples a couple of weeks ago here. I've been meaning to write a review for a while, but with school starting this past week, I've been a little busy.  I have loved having my little laminator at home!

 I bought some 5 mil pouches from Amazon with some gift cards I got at Christmas. The Saturn 95 is a the smaller of the two versions that Fellowes makes.  I've been using the 9 x 11.5 pouches and putting all of my little items with enough space to allow me to cut them all out.  The pouches look kinda fuzzy before they go through the laminator.  I was a little apprehensive about how the pouches would look when they went through the laminator, but I was more than impressed with the results!

 This is how the pouch looks when it goes through the laminator.  The 5 mil pouches are super thick! Sometimes the lamination didn't completely seal, so after being cut out, I would run the small pieces through again to seal the edges. 

Here is a pouch after go through the laminator.  Anything laminated comes out looking great! I have only had one pouch that ended up crinkling but I think it just went in a little crooked.  As long as the pouch went in straight I had no problems.  I'm so happy to have this little tool in my tool kit! 

2013-2014 School Goals and First Day

Today was my first day of school!  August came so quickly!  I had a wonderful day with my two classes.  Spent most of the time doing get to know you activities including a teacher test where the kids are quizzed on information about me (they fail miserably but their answers are funny!) Starting on a Thursday is nice because tomorrow is already Friday and then I have the weekend to recover from my first week back!


I had hoped to get this posted yesterday before school started, but better late than never! I'm linking up with I {heart} Recess for my back to school goals!

Personal: This is my first full school to be mommy and teacher.  I've been pretty bad in the past about staying at school way to late, spending far too many Sundays working in my classroom, and going to bed thinking about school.  Now that I have a little one at home, I want to be able to leave school at school.  It's a transition, but I'm definitely going to work this year on finding a balance.

Organization;  Part of finding a balance is by being organized so I don't waste time trying to find where I put that check sheet.  I'm working on this at home, but definitely at school, too!  Everything needs a home and everything needs to be in it's home.

Planning:  I'm a great planner!  I can come up with the most killer lesson ever on a pretty regular basis.  What I need to improve on is actually getting everything together that I need for that killer lesson.

Professional: With my new technology grant this year, I really want to help my fellow teachers learn all about the technology resources that are available to them.  I'm also hoping that they will be open to learning all the new things.

Students:  I have a different view of my students now that I am a mommy myself.  I really want to get to know my students at a deep level this year.  I think that knowing them deeply is really going to help me teach them better!

Motto: Look for the positive.  It's easy to find things to complain about in the world of education, they are always there.  Focusing on the negative is a total drain on you and your teaching.  I'm going to focus on all the good things happening in my classroom, my school, and my district this year!

What are you goals for the year?