My First Five For Friday... (Yes I know its Saturday!!)

I am linking up for the fist time with Doodle Bugs Teaching. Since I wasn't planning on doing this my pictures are a little bit different. I am going to do it my way... Which of course is what I always seem to get into trouble about. :-) Anyway this is going to be a very long post and FULL of pictures!!! So stay with it and don't give up! I hope you enjoy all the Random things that have filled up my week! Now I am looking forward to the last 23 days of school!! Whoo-Hoo!!!!

1:  I went shopping with my mom yesterday for some cute Spring school clothes!! I am happy to say that I now have a full week of brand new clothes to wear!!! We went to Old Navy!! I have to say that is probably one of my favorite stores to buy clothes at!!! I like the way that their clothes fit, how they are comfortable and affordable!!! My plan is to wear many of these clothes all week and really impress all my other teacher friends! Many of the items I bought can be worn together and switched around, I loved the fact that Old Navy has sample ideas on their walls. I seriously just went into Old Navy to buy two or three pairs of jeans and walked out spending almost $300. I had watched a few YouTube vlogs and they were all talking about Coral and Mint/Teal colors that were coming out for Spring... I saw ALL of this stuff and I was hooked!!! I can't wait for Monday ( I can't believe I just wrote that), ONLY because I want to wear my new clothes!!!

1: The boyfriend cardigan in Coral. 2: Mint Green eyelet dress. 3: Tee shirt Maxi dress. 4: Teal cardigan. 5 & 6: Sheer three quarter sleeve in yellow and teal/mint. 7: Maxi dress in Teal. 8: White Jean jacket. 9: Grey cardigan. 10: Coral lace tank top. 

I also got this scarf and another blue butterfly scarf but I couldn't find the picture online. 

2: I found this post earlier at 2nd Grade Shenanigans and I was inspired to purchase it and use it as a great going away present to my students. So I went out to our local Dollar Tree and bought 21 sand buckets so that I can start getting ready for our last week of school to be creating these fun review buckets with my students. I also bought a bottle of bubbles, two pencils, pencil sharpener, and erasers, this way there is no excuse if they need to use any of these items. 

If you would like to purchase this packet click here and check out Hope King's TPT. 

3: Another product that has come in handy during this past week, since there was STAAR testing going on at our school we had to keep our 2nd graders in our classroom ALL day!!! NO BREAK!!! (Well at least not for me, they got to watch a movie, and then play game day)

One day we used Amy Lemons' Area Robots to introduce area... Let me say that they LOVED IT!!! And it made me look really good to my team mates, who haven't always been so sharing of their resources... Amy Lemons blog is attached. Not only is she an awesome teacher her resources are amazing to, here is a link to her TPT store. 

4: I donated $25 for the Teachers in West, Texas who were affected by the fertilizer plant explosion. It was well worth it because I received all of the units in the photo below. I am including all the links to their products in their TPT stores. The fundraiser is closed but I'm sure you can still donate to the cause if you would like. All of these products were worth $150!!! And many of these products were already in my Wish-list, and from some of my favorite bloggers. I wish that I knew some of these people in real life, alas I don't so I just blog stalk them!! I am planning on using a few of these items in my Summer Review bucket from above as well! I have a few students who would benefit from continuation of practicing their skills and a lot of these products will be beneficial for them!

Kreative in Kinder TPT

A Teeny Tiny Teacher TPT

First Grade Blue Skies

A Special Kind of Class TPT

Kindergarten Lifestyle TPT

Step into Second Grade TPT

What the Teacher Wants TPT

Kinder Craze

A Differentiated Kindergarten TPT

Suesstastic Classroom Inspiration TPT

Live Laugh Love Kindergarten TPT

Kinder Gals TPT

Fun in First TPT

Growing Kinders TPT

Creating & Teaching TPT

Teaching with Love & Laughter TPT

Kinder Alphabet TPT

Little Miss Kindergarten TPT

Kindergarten Smiles TPT

Primary Graffiti TPT

Mrs. Miners Monkey Business TPT

Simply Kinder TPT

Mrs. Jumps Class TPT

Miss Kindergarten's TPT

The Moffat Girls TPT

The Inspired Apple TPT

Kinderglynn TPT

5: I didn't take a picture of this one but we had a Glow Stick Bath at our house tonight! A friend of mine said that she did this with her little girl and I thought what a great way to make bath time fun and change it up a little bit! So while we were at the Dollar Store today we picked up a couple of packages of glow sticks... Let me tell you my 3 year old little boy had a BLAST!!!!! Well worth the $2 I spent on  the two packages. 

I hope that you have enjoyed these Random 5 things from my week!!! I will plan on doing this next week so I'll take pictures along the way!!

Currently & My next attempts...

I am linking up with Farley for her Currently... Yes I know it's the 5th of the month... It has been a CRAZZZZZYYYYYY week so far!! I can't believe that it is already April! That means for our school we only have one more month of school... 39 days to be exact!!!

Well here you go... Hope you enjoy!

* Listening: Yes I am still at school on a Friday at 4:30, I need to get everything I can prepped and ready to go for next week so that I can feel some sort of accomplishments... I am also going over to a friends house for dinner tonight with my 3 yr. old son and I don't want to take a lot of work home with me this weekend! 

*Loving: I am seriously happy that I made it to Friday... Not sure what was wrong with me this week but it was an off week and I was about ready to quite multiple times during the days... My kids were off, I was off, it was just an off week! I don't know about y'all but these kids are different than ones that I am use to working with! I know coming from special education the students are different but I mean in general the students are different. My class is just different!

*Thinking: I can't believe that we only have 39 more days left in school! That number is CRAY-CRAY if you ask me!!! I seriously feel like the year just started! I am nevrvous and anxious at the same time... Did I teach them everything that I needed to get in... Did I teach them correctly... Are they going to remember it all in 3rd grade?!?! YIKES!!! 

*Wanting: I don't know about y'all but I wouldn't have any luck if it weren't for bad luck... Seriously I don't think anything "good" has happened to me in... 3 years... When my son was born... Seriously I feel like I am always putting out fires or dealing with the let down of this or that... I just want things to go my way for once... Not asking fro a lot... Just once!!! We put in an offer on the land we want, next day it gets pulled from the market; guy changed his mind... Start working out: Gain weight back! WTH REALLY... REALLY!!!! GRRRRRRR x1000000

*Needing: I feel like there aren't enough hours in the day to get everything that I need to get done accomplished... I am actually looking forward to our calendar for next year because twice a month we have early release days for the kids so that we can actually have time to PLAN! We are going to be using those days for PLC's with other campuses and actually having time to work together as a team to prep for our new units! We are also switching around our curriculum from 9 weeks scope and sequence to 6 week grading periods with 3 week units! I am a little nervous but excited at the same time! We have seen the samples and they look GOOD!!!!

*Advice: My favorite Dr. Seuss quote! I think it is very true and we all need to remember it when we are having an off day (or week in my case)!

Now on to my Next attempts: I am going to a start working on a new TPT *thing*. I wouldn't really call it a unit because I am going to make different 2nd Grade High frequency word cards for your word wall. I will be creating them with different themes. I am also going to try to create some content word wall cards using the same themes. I have an Ocean theme in my room so the first attempt will be to use the words with an Ocean theme. I am hoping that these are things that people will find useful for their classrooms. I know that my handwriting is not always stellar so me writing their High Frequency words sometimes makes it harder for them to read... SO I thought why not print them up and cut them out so that I have them for years to come!!! I might then attempt to create 1st grade HF words!

With that being said if you would please let me know what other themes you would be interested in seeing I will work on finding what I need and creating them!

Hopefully I can have them up and running before school is over! However it's not like the words are going to change in the next few weeks so they should be fine to use next year as well... Of course if they change I would update the packet *Packet* that's the word I was looking for... Blah (ADD Brain). 

My ADD at its best. Guided reading & Easter & Last Break

Well today couldn't go by fast enough if you ask me!!! I know that I am seeing on several different blogs that this is just now your Spring Break! Does that mean you have other breaks before the end of school rolls around? In our district our Spring Break was two weeks ago, then we had a full week then this week was a four day week because we have off tomorrow for Good Friday... However nice that all sounds this is our last break until the LAST WEEK OF SCHOOL!!!! Are you kidding me?!?!?! Granted I have a few scheduled half-days that I am taking off for different reasons. One on April 19th for a roping that we are going to in Llano, Tx (Yummy crawfish!!!) then almost exactly a month later on May 17th about 10 teachers are all taking half-days because we are all running the Beach 2 Bay marathon down at the coast!! This will be the first time that I am running this marathon but I am looking forward to it! If you aren't familiar with this marathon it is a team marathon so each person runs about 3-4 miles and each team had about 6 people on it!

Any way back to my original idea for this post...

Guided Reading!?!?!?!?! Are you all as done with doing guided reading groups as I am??? I know my students are still loving working with me when they get the chance and they will be the first ones to let me know when I have skipped their group for a few days... (shhh I have been doing that quite often here at the end...) My brain is just DRA'd small grouped out!!! So here is where I need your help... another teacher found these really cool foldable she called "Flip-flap" books... I think she found them on TPT, however I have searched and searched and can't find them anywhere!!!! I am always looking for fun things to do with my students and I think they will learn a lot more from doing the different things than me just talking about it and having them write them down in their journals and them me NEVER referring back to them!! (I know you must think I am a horrible teacher! ) (I swear I'm not!!!) So the basic idea is that you give the student a file folder and they cut out different things to be folded up and glued in the folder... examples: "I" can summarize (on an iPhone), Comparing characters, Authors purpose, vocabulary words... all those wonderful ideas!!! However I would really like to get my own copy so that when I leave this school I have an original to take with me!! So if you have anything really SUPER fun and that you are seeing gets your kids to understand and focus and want to work during Guided reading PLEASE pass it this teachers way!!! Like I said we have 7-8 weeks left of school (44 days if you want the EXACT number of days!) and I need to really get back on the guided reading train for the downward slide into summer!! I need to make sure that my students are READY for 3rd grade!!!


Thanks for your comments and ideas!!!

Oh the picture that is somewhere in this post is a close up of our class pet that I had to bring home for the long weekend because I forgot to double check that a student was taking care or it! Yeah!! My son is really excited!!

Hope you have a wonderful Easter with your families!! I am looking forward to trying to relax (even though I brought TONS of works home with me... I even cut my pile of stuff that I was bringing home down a LOT!!! ) We are going up to Buda (south of Austin) to spend time with my husbands dad's side of the family for a mini reunion! I am hoping that on Saturday with everyone being there I can sneak away for a few hours and get as much school work done as possible so I'm not stressing out on Sunday that I have all this work to get ready for Monday!

Well I hope that my random rant/post made your Thursday evening enjoyable!! Almost finished with Team Umizoomi and then its bath and bed time for my 3 year old!!! So we just started him on a real bed time routine! During the week we try to bath him at 8:00 then he gets to watch one "movie" (cartoon) in our bed then he is in his bed by 9:00, granted he doesn't fall asleep right away but he was becoming a BEAST in the mornings... So even though we don't have school and he's not going to his school tomorrow I am letting him slip a little... but not much, still bath 8:30 T.V. 8:45 then bed 9:15 or so...


See this is how my brain works... My ADD is getting worse as the stress builds!!! Not kidding my left eye is starting to twitch... I know when I'm really stressed because it doesn't stop twitching!!!

YIKES here I go again! Ok for real its now bath time and time for this Mommy/Teacher to call it a night! (well at least from writing) I will probably get him in bed then do some work then blog stalk for a little bit!

Night and again have a BLESSED EASTER!!!

Organizing my Chaos!

I can't believe that it's already Friday!!! This week has gone by WAY TOOOO FAST!!!! Last Saturday we celebrated my sons 3rd Birthday! WOW we had so many family members come out to help us celebrate our Big boy! Then on Sunday my parents and I, and of course my son took a road trip up to see my Mom's family up in Oklahoma!! Of course on Spring Break I get sick!! I finally felt better yesterday (Thursday) blah!!! Well today we decided to venture out on a beautiful day, we went and got my Mamma's hair did LOL, then ate a yummy lunch at Jason's Deli, then went to Mardel's! I LOVE THIS STORE!!! My plan was just to look around at all their wonderful things... Well of course I couldn't just do that I HAD to get some things for my classroom.  So here are the pictures from the website of the things that I bought today! I will have an explanation under each picture why I bought these items. 

My ideas for these are ENDLESS!!! However my plan is to use 5 of them to help me stay organized and on top of everything for the week! My goal is to slowly get better and be more prepared for each day. I would like to use one color for each day and then have corresponding folders inside each magazine holder with each subject and all the things that I would need for that day all ready to go and copied if i needed them, or things already cut out for my students. Yes I know that on Monday we are starting our last 9 weeks of the school year, however my hope is to start using them this year and then begin my year using them for the 13-14 school year... I will already have the system down pat! This idea will work for whatever grade level I am teaching next year! (Someone from our 2nd grade team has to move... we have 5 this year and only enough kids moving up to keep 4). What sort of organization do you use to help you keep on track for the week? I have seen several different blogs that use those sterilite stackable things to keep all their papers in. 

These two books I bought to help my students with their math skills. Our school is really big on using Singapore Math, model drawing, number sense... However even though I have been to several different trainings I am still not 100% on using all of these skills. As part of my evaluation for my PDAS I now have to do daily warm-ups using Singapore concepts for my students. So I bought these two books to help me come up with morning warm-ups to do with my students. My plan is to type up the same word problem multiple times and then print it off and then have my students cut and paste them into their morning work journals. From a quick glance of the books I am going to use these a lot for the rest of the year! I'll let you know how things go!

Good Writing Traits: These cute mini posters are good ways to help my students to remember all the different things that we have been working on! Again I know its the end of the year but it's never to late to start new things! Since we are going to start our narratives on Wednesday I thought it was a good way to remind them about all our writing lessons since they have had a week off to forget everything that I have been working on!

Hope these things have helped you see how I spent my Spring Break!!! Please leave me comments about how you stay organized with all your paper things for the week!

Thanks!!!!

Currently (Late of course)

Well of course I'm late to the party again!!! I have been so busy with our common assessments being this week, my son's 3rd birthday being yesterday... and of course all of the classwork that I am expected to be teaching along the way!

Listening: My son is watching Jake and the Neverland Pirates on my phone while I am working on lesson plans and grading papers... Clearly I am also blogging along the way! LOL!! I have to say that he is obsessed with Jake and the Neverland Pirates, he watches them all the time on my phone. Thank goodness for modern technology that I can have the Disney Jr. app on my phone & Netflix on my phone for a movie on the go with no need for anything! 

Loving: We celebrated my son's 3rd birthday yesterday by taking him to this cool Inflatable World inside one of our old malls here. He LOVED it!!! My husband, his mom, my parents, and one of his Aunts and cousins joined us for a fun few hours filled with bouncy castle fun! He had a BLAST!!!! I will definitely be taking him back there during the summer if it is going to be 100+ degrees again this summer! However I can't believe that my baby is THREE already!!! I seriously feel like just yesterday I was in the hospital delivering him into this world! Now he is growing up and it's crazy!!! 

 I am also LOVING that we have Friday off!! Not sure why our district decided that we would take the Friday off before Spring Break but hey who am I to complain! It's a free day off to get stuff ready for his birthday party on Saturday! Now lets just hope that the weather is nice and doesn't rain like they think it is going to!

Thinking: My ADD brain is on overload right now! I have SOOOOOO much work that I don't know where to start and then when I do start something my mind wanders off and I am doing something for a good 20-30 minutes before I even realize that I just left the mess behind me! I'm not sure if my ADD is getting worse because of the stress or if it's just because I am getting older and have more things on my mind! I was seriously super stressed about 3 weeks ago I couldn't even form proper sentences when I was trying to talk to anyone! Seriously I called a meeting a wedding, the color grey green, would loose my train of thought mid sentence... I thought I was pregnant because thats what happened when I was pregnant, I would literally forget what I was talking about mid-sentence... Not joking!! FYI I am NOT pregnant, just VERY stressed!!!

Wanting: I am ready to have already lost all this extra weight!!! When I was pregnant I ended up gaining over 50 lbs with my son... I have lost about 15-20 of them and am ready for the other 30 to be gone!!! My husband and I have a deal going on that if I can loose 30 lbs by Christmas I get something that I have been wanting for a LONG time!!! (not going to put it on here because it is a very shallow and vain thing but I have wanted them since I was about 12)

Also when I was driving to work last Wednesday I had a deer jump into my truck... Seriously! He tried to JUMP over my truck and ended up smashing himself into the drivers side of my truck! So now my bed has to be replaced, my passenger door has to be fixed AND my bumper has to be fixed!!! DAMN DEER!!!! All I have to say is I'm glad that he died after he Kamakazied my new truck!!!

Needing: One more day!!! That's all I have to make it through!!! Whatever was blown in with these crazy South Texas winds has made me congested and cough like I am dying!!! I feel like death warmed over!!! BLAH!!! I am allergic to anything air-born, so anything that gets blown in I end up not being able to breath!! GRRRR!!!

Like, Love, Hate:

Like:  Bootcamp: It is a LOT like Crossfit if any of you have heard of that! I am addicted to going! There are several teachers at my school who are workout-a-holics. LOL The nice thing is that Bootcamp comes to our campus twice a week! So I have no excuse why I can't remember to bring my clothes and go work out some of my stresses! Seriously that is what I was looking forward to all day today! I was so stressed out about my CA data that I couldn't wait for 3:30 to come around so that I could work out my anger and stress! I can tell you right now I am going to be SOAR tomorrow!!! I can already feel it!!

Love: OKLAHOMA!!! That's where I'm going for Spring Break!!! I can't wait to see my Mamma and family! Yes that is where we are from, (well not really but I don't say that I'm from Texas either) my mom is from OK. I am really just looking forward to not having doing anything for an entire week! I really wish that we ended up staying up there after school! There are so many things that I would have changed about that part of my past, not much but moving back to Texas and leaving behind several different opportunities is a big mistake looking back... Oh well what can you do about it!!!

Hate: Being the "mean" teacher... I had a student tell me that they were afraid of me today!! REALLY!!! This student is pushing all of my buttons and gets angry whenever I make them do their work correctly and stop them from goofing off or disrupting those others around him! So I called him out into the hallway to have a "chat" and he starts to cry because I am making him do his work and he starts to back away from me and when I ask him why he's doing that he said it was because he was "afraid of me"! So at that point I said I'm done talking with you, if you think I'm being mean or going to hurt you in some way then I need to step away from the situation and not engage any more! So I made him come back into class and if he choose not to do his work I wasn't going to say anything to him. What did he do?!?!? Oh you know sit at his desk and SOB until lunch (20 minutes later)! 

Let me just say that after all the stress that I have been under (I'm sure many of y'all can relate) I was thankful that I was able to take out my frustrations during my WOD (workout of the day)! Now every inch of my body is soar!! 

Well that's all I have to post for now! I am hoping to post a few different things during Spring Break... Maybe actually create a few products for TPT... Still haven't made anything since this summer!! YIKES! Again I have NO idea how y'all do it!!!

Thanks for stopping by!!!

Units??

In talking with my 2nd grade team here in Texas (which we don't use Common Core) we were talking about next year already and wanting to do Units! Where we are concerned is how do they work? And will they work in 2nd grade? I know that Kinder and 1st use units and they work, we are frustrated with our scope and sequence because it is confusing and none of them correlate or are on the same weeks for that matter. As the person who plans Writing and Grammar for our team I feel like I plan the red-headed stepchild, because no one really ever gets to either subject because we don't "test" either subject. So I am hoping to get some thoughts from those that use units in their classrooms, do they work and how do you like them!

Thanks for your input!

Currently and What I bought on Sunday!!!

First off I am linking up with Farley over at Oh Boy 4th Grade! for the February Currently. Let me just say that the fact that I haven't done a Currently in easily 4 months is insane!! I can't believe that I've neglected my blog for that long! I still can't believe how so many of y'all blog almost daily PLUS create items for TPT and teach!! I'm slowly getting the hang of blogging and teaching... I guess one thing at a time! I am trying harder to be a better blogger...

Most of my Currently is self explanatory... My pet peeves are pretty much that... smacking bugs the heck out of me!!! I want to go over and say something to whomever is doing it!!! Instead I just stare... Rudeness goes to a few of the other teachers that are getting their Masters degree with me, they come off as rude and arrogant thinking that I don't know what I'm talking about because I'm young in their eyes... Fakeness: people pretending to have more than what they actually do and/or trying to make you feel bad for what you actually have earned and worked hard towards!

Thats the first part of my blog! Now on to the extra fun stuff!!! My purchases from the SUPER sale on Sunday!!!! 

So for this I am linking up with Blog Hoppin' to show you what I spent my money on from Sunday's big sale!!! Let me tell you I think I actually bought things at three different times because I couldn't stop!!! 

Dragon's Den: Its Time for Guided Reading... Now what?

Reagan Tunstall: Daily Math Complete Set

Lory Evans: May Math Stations

Lory Evans: Daily Math Term 1

Lory Evans: April Math Stations

Reagan Tunstall: Edit with Eddie

Everyday February Math Journal Prompts

Laundry Day sentence types and endmarks

So here are my purchases I hope that I you can find some use of the things that I bought!! Let me tell you I am looking forward to using them in my classroom!