Permission to Pin

So...had no idea that one needs permission to pin something from a blog to Pinterest!  Well, now I know, and I will be careful not to do that.  So, people are jumping on the bandwagon to give others permission to pin.  I want to jump on that bandwagon, too!  So, I am placing the permission to pin button in my sidebar, so permission is granted to pin away! I would actually be quite flattered! :)   For more information on this, click on the pin to take you Laura Candler's blog post about this.



Have a great week everyone!

Could I Possibly Be More Excited?!?!

Yes, there is one excited teacher here!!  First, I'm so very excited because Amber from Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher had a giveaway...and I was a winner!!!  Yay!  I get to choose three things from her TpT store!  I am so excited, she has some really great things in her store, you definitely need to go check it out here!  I already know what I want, so glad to win this great giveaway!
Speaking of winning, I was excited last night because I had the privilege of watching both our girl's and boy's varsity basketball teams win the state championships!!!  Yay, Falcons!  The games were such great fun to watch!  I wore myself out wildly screaming calmly and maturely cheering for them!

I am so proud of them!! :)
And speaking of the championship games, we had exciting times leading up to those games by enjoying Spirit Week this week!  Always makes for quite the interesting week!  We had Disney day, Crazy Hair day, Spy day, and School Color day.  We had lots of interesting looks this week!  It was pretty crazy, especially crazy hair day! :)  Here are just a few of the pictures.

Tinker Bell (top), and King (I'm not sure who) on Disney Day

Third grade spies

Yes, I love to join in the fun!  You probably think this picture was taken with my phone, but, maybe...just maybe, it was taken with my secret spy camera ring!  Hmm.... :)

Senior spies judging for best spy look.

Sorry it's a bit blurry, was taken by one of the second graders.  My friend, the 1st and 2nd grade teacher.

One of the Jr. High boys, who looked like our music director, made me laugh so hard!!

The two of them together! Haha!

Jr. High girl 

So much crazy fun!

And speaking of crazy, I am so super excited because it is almost that time of year... my favorite time besides Christmas!  No, it's not spring, sorry, I'm much more of a winter girl myself.  Hey, stop throwing things at the computer and glaring at me!  I can't feel them or see the looks anyway...well, I kinda felt a couple of those glares.  I can't help it though, I do love winter and snow.  But...since winter has been a bust, I am even more excited for March.  We get spring break in March, but that's not why I'm super excited.  I'm super excited for March because that means..........March Madness!!!!!  I love March Madness!!  I love it so much I have even incorporated some things into the classroom because of that love!  I'll share some of those things later!  So, yes, super excited over here!  Now, I need to get my excited self off to bed, all of this excitement is making me tired, plus my dog is sneezing at me, trying to give me the hint she is ready to go out and then get to bed.  So, goodnight!  Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

Measurement Detectives

 We have become detectives in the third grade classroom!  We are learning to add and subtract measures, and the first step to doing that is to find what we are looking for, or what is missing.  What better way to find it, than by becoming a detective, and using a magnifying glass to search for it.  I found magnifying glasses at the Dollar Store that we used for our measurement adventure.  Once we found what we were looking for, we recorded it underneath each part of the problem, the section I called our handy-dandy notebook.  Then we needed to use our magnifying glasses to find the two measures that were the same and wrote the same number in the blank.  The next step was to use the magnifying glasses to find the two measures that were different, once those were found, we boxed them to set them apart, and solve the problem.  The students enjoyed using the magnifying glasses to figure out their answers...and of course to look at each other, and me, and their desks, and the board, and whatever else they could think to look at through them.

These third grade detectives did a great job and had a great time!  They love to learn, fun for me!!

Valentine's Day in Pictures (late I know...:) and My New Shop!

Here are some pictures from Valentine's Day!

Valentine wreath I made for our teacher's room.

Creating her Valentine's for others

Some of her finished work

Starting his Valentine's

Some of his finished work

How cute is this hot dog with cheese??  It wasn't from my room sadly.  This was from the fifth grade classroom.

My carnations from several wonderful former students and friends!  The Seniors sell carnations, chocolate, and balloons as a fundraiser.  One sweet family bought every student in the school who wasn't already getting something a carnation!  Very sweet day!

Talk about sweet!  One of the parents made these amazing chocolate yummies for a party and I was privileged to get one!

It was a very nice day!  We even tried a new game that came to mind to help with multiplication facts.  With 

just two students, some of the fun review activities that I love to do with other classes to review multiplication and division is a bit harder.  This game has become a favorite in the classroom.  So...I have put the game on my new 3rd Grade Times Teacher's Notebook Shop!  I am so excited!  Please stop by to check it out, I would appreciate it!  Hopefully I did it correctly, this is so new for me, so I never quite sure about myself.  We'll see!  As I have said before, all of you amazing teachers have inspired me so much!  I hope to be able to create some fun things for my students and to share them with you!  I'm slowly learning! :) Thank you all for your encouragement and for the inspiration that you have been to me these past couple of months!

You Know You're a Teacher When...

I had to join the party and link up with Jeannie over at Kindergarten Lifestyle because it's such a fun one!  You know you're a teacher when... I'm sure we've all had those moments, so link up with her and join the fun if you haven't yet.

Just a couple of the ones I thought of.  There are many more great ones at her blog, go check them out! Have a great week!

No School - Sick Day! ...and Currently

It was definitely a nice day to get a little extra rest!  Then after breakfast mom and I headed over to the mall to get our nails done, they came out great!  We did a quick run by Sonic before heading back home.  Oh, wait, some of your eyes are bugging out and some of you just spit out your soda or water or whatever onto your computers.  Did I forget to mention that it wasn't a sick day for me.  It was actually a sick day for our whole school!  Yea, pretty sad, huh?  Many students from K4-12 grade have been sick the past couple of weeks.  We have been dealing with Fifths Disease, the flu, and strep!  This week the classes kept diminishing in size.  By yesterday many classes were about half the size, if not worse.  K4-K5 only had 3 students, 4th grade only had 2, I only had one of my 3rd graders, 5th grade only had 4, and many Jr. High and High School students were out.  I heard there were about 15 Jr. High students out, and the only High School class I heard about was the Junior class which normally has 14, but only had 7 yesterday.  Yes, we needed to try to get these germs out of our school.  So, today we have the day off as the school gets aired out.  We did a thorough cleaning of our own classrooms yesterday.  Have any of you had a lot of sick kids these past couple of weeks?  Are we the only one?  Hopefully things will be back to normal for next week.
Farley from Oh Boy 4th Grade is having her Currently February linky party and I decided to link up for the fun!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Under the Sea

Today the third and fourth graders...and their teachers...transformed the fourth grade classroom into a beautiful, colorful, underwater paradise.  We made coffee filter jellyfish with tissue paper tentacles, and paper plate fish.  The students had lots of fun and were very proud of their creations!

Happy Birthday!!

No, it's not my birthday, though it was recently. :-)  Today is the birthday of Laura Ingalls Wilder!!   I love Laura Ingalls Wilder!

These are the days I really miss not getting to have a class all day long.  I loved surprising the students as they came into the room to see it decorated with Happy Birthday banners all around.  Of course that made them curious as to whose birthday it was!  The lights would be off and the blinds up to let in some light.  I would normally be dressed up in an amazing big skirt borrowed from one of my friends, a peasant type shirt and even a bonnet that I bought when I went to Pennsylvania!  I even recently bought a slate board that they could practice writing on.  The students would get a kick out of how I would pretend not to know some of the "new fangled" things they were talking about, such as cars and phones, etc.  For recess I would have them stay in the classroom rather than going out with the other classes...which after the initial shock of not being able to go out... they loved!  We would play all different types of colonial games.  I would buy each of the students a set of jacks.  I would teach them how to play jacks, we would play Pick Up Sticks and Jack Straws.  I would also have a Jacob's Ladder and Whirligig toy for them to play with.  They would end up raving about how fun recess was.  Then, in the afternoon we would make Marbled Paper and Churned Butter, I got the ideas from the book Colonial Days by David C. King.  Sometimes we would even do 100 years stories.  The students would write about what it would be like if they lived 100 years ago, then after they would write about what they think it will be like living 100 years from now.  Those are always fun to read!  And of course, we would end our wonderful day with Popcorn and Milk (putting the popcorn in the milk as My Little House Cookbook states Almanzo did), and watching an episode of Little House on the Prairie.  That is always such a fun day!  I only had one student today, so I did have the lights out, we did work on small chalkboards (a great Valentine Target dollar spot find!),

                             

 and we did make some Marbled Paper.
 I love our Little House days, no matter how big or small, it's always fun!  Happy Birthday, Laura!!

Book Linky Party -Retry with an actual link this time...I hope! Please help!

OK, I'm still pretty new around here, so I don't even know if this will work for me, but I'm going to give it a try anyway.  Since I am still a bit new, I get giddy when I get new followers.  Just this week I got to 12 followers and then 2 more followers came by.   I know that doesn't seem like much, but when you weren't sure anybody would stop by it's exciting! So, since it's 2012 (and I got 12+ followers), and since it's almost my birthday, I wanted to have a party!  I love parties!  I also love books!  I have many of my favorite books on my shelfari shelf on the side of my blog page.  I would love to find out what other great books some of you love that you read to your class every year.  I just found...and bought the Bucket Filler book because of some great blogs about it!  I had never heard of it, but got it, read it, and fell in love with it!  Now I have a new book to share with my students!  So....that's what this party is...please link up with some of your favorite books.  It would also be nice if you can tell why you or your students love the books!  I have my set favorites every year, but I would love to find some new favorites.  Please join my party and share it with others so I can have a great Book Linky Party!  Would love any comments and links!  Let's Party! :-) OK, that was a bit of a fail on my part! Let's try to party again, I hope this works with the link below. So please come back and leave a link...please! i really would like to get some other book ideas for all ages. So now that I think I actually have a link below please help me out! Truly appreciate it!

Adrienne Got Me!

I always thought I was pretty stealth when I had to be...I always thought I was pretty aware of my surroundings... so imagine my surprise.....when.... I got tagged!!  Adrienne over at Wiggins World got me....and I'm so excited!! :-)  Yea, I'm the weird girl who gets excited to be tagged ...Hooray!  As I've said before this new teacher blog world is so much fun, I'm loving it.  So, thanks, Adrienne!! 

Here are the rules:
1. You must post the rules.
2. Post 12 fun facts about yourself on the blog post.
3. Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post, and then create 12 new questions for the people you tagged.
4. Tag 12 people and link them on your post.
5. Let them know you've tagged them!

12 facts about me...hmm...hope I don't bore you to death! :-)


1.  I am an only child.  Although mom is from a family of 6 and dad from a family of 12.
2.  I have lived in the same house all my life, except for the years that I was in college in Florida.
3.  I could eat cereal all day...everyday!  I seriously love the stuff!  It is pretty much my after school snack every day.  My theory is if I eat cereal as a snack before dinner, it will give me the sugar fix I need so I won't feel the need to have dessert later. (That works most of the time, lol.)  Honey Bunches of Oats and Special K are my faves!  I actually mix Honey Bunches of Oats or Special K with strawberries and Special K with chocolate bits...it's like having chocolate covered strawberries for snack each day...yum!
4.  I love animals!  Pandas are my all time favorite animal, but dogs are my favorite domestic animals.  I'm not sure where that love comes from because neither one of my parents liked animals at all.  Mom was afraid of dogs and dad afraid of cats.  I was only able to have fish and newts growing up, but when I got my own classroom, I could actually have "real" pets such as gerbils, hamsters, and green anole lizards (even had a small snake for a couple of weeks).
5.  After waiting about 30 years, I finally got my first "real, real" pet...my dog Bella!  Love her!  By the way, mom likes loves dogs now. :-)

6.  I have held a skunk before!  It was a descented baby one, and oh so cute!!  Bucket list....hold a baby panda!
7.  I have wanted to be a teacher since I was in 4th grade...I loved my teacher!
8.  I play the flute, have played since I was in 5th grade.  Love to play, but get super nervous!
9.  I love winter, and really love snow! (It's been a disappointing winter around here this year!)
10.  One of my favorite times of year, besides Christmas/winter is March Madness!!  I love college basketball...Go UCONN Huskies!
11.  I really love shopping, it makes me very happy!  I love to buy jewelry, especially rings, you can see a picture of most of them here.  Sparkly things make me very happy!  I also have a serious thing for shoes...such love!
12.  I absolutely, totally LOVE blogging!!  It also makes me quite happy!
Phew...that's done...is anyone still here? (crickets chirping)  Told ya you might get bored!

Now here are the questions I am supposed to answer.

How many years have you been teaching?  I have been teaching for 16 years.  At least three students from my very first class that I still have contact with have gone into teaching!  Yay! 
2. If a student was going to get you a gift card to somewhere, where would you want it to be from?  Ooh, that's a tough one, but I just got some great ones for Christmas!  One to Chili's and the other to Charming Charlie's...LOVE both of those places!
3.  What is the best $1 item that you have bought for your classroom?  I love the stars that I used for my synonym/antonym review (earlier post).  Also excited about a magnifying glass I just got last night, along with some smaller ones.  I plan to use it/them as we learn to add and subtract measurement problems soon.
4. What is your ideal class size?  I would say about 15-22.  I loved my class of 22 that I had about 4 years ago.  The classes have been much smaller since then.  It's not as easy to play games and have challenges with just the 2 that I have this year. :(
5. What is one thing you would like your co-workers to say about you?  Wow, good question...I guess that I strive to be a good teacher, who likes to have fresh, fun ideas in the classroom, but also that I am a friend...ready with a smile or kind word.
6. What is one thing you would like your students to say about you?  That I was tough, challenged them, always expected the best from them, always expected and taught them to do right, but that they knew I truly loved them.
7. What is the best lesson you have ever taught?  This may sound a little odd, but one year I had about 3 girls who got pretty close and actually formed a little sort of clique between them.  They wouldn't include some of the other students, and were even starting to be unkind to them.  I didn't like what I was seeing and wanted to do something to make them realize what they were doing.  I had the girls leave the classroom to go see another teacher and told the other students to ignore them throughout the day, not sitting near them or playing with them.  It took about half the day and the three girls finally started to notice something was odd and started to complain to me that the other kids weren't being nice to them.  We had a class discussion about what I told the other students to do.  The girls were a little surprised that it was my idea to make the other students do that, but I explained to them that their behavior of late had been very similar to that.  I then left it up to the other students, they could, with my blessing, continue to ignore the girls for the rest of the day if they wanted.  I told them I definitely wouldn't blame them if they chose to do that.  I also gave them the choice to go the girls' desks and shake their hands and tell them they did want to be friends and hoped they all could be.  The other students said they didn't want to ignore the girls anymore because it made them feel bad to do that to them.  Each of the other students got up and went to each of the girls' desks and shook their hands and said they wanted to be friends.  The girls, and class, learned something that day about forgiveness and friendship and love...and I must say with tears in my eyes from the sweetness of that moment...so did I!
8. What is the worst lesson you have ever taught?  Not sure, though I'm sure there are many, but a funny story I always share with every class is from about my 4th year of teaching.  I was teaching that water, soil, air, and the right temperature are the 4 things a seed needs to grow into a plant.  We repeated it several times, and I had the kids plant some seeds in a cup.  The kids saw the Miracle Gro soil and asked about it, I mentioned that it was good soil that helped seeds to grow into good healthy plants.  I was so proud of my repetition and then the reinforcement of planting the seeds.  The next day, I couldn't wait to ask what 4 things it takes for a seed to grow.  When I did, my big head soon deflated as I called on one boy to give the answer and he said.....Miracle Gro!  Wow, epic fail for me! :-)
9. What grade do you teach?  I teach third grade and love it!!!
10. What is your favorite way to spend summer?  I love to just relax, go visit a few nice local places with mom.  Ideal would be to travel, but with mom and no money, that can't happen right now.
11. If you weren't a teacher, what would you be?  I think I would be a world traveler and photographer.
12. If you could be a teenager in any time period, when would it be?   I have always wanted to go back to the days of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I love Little House!  But, I would definitely love to go back to the 80's!  I loved the 80's!!  We had 80's day last year for Spirit week, and I was the happiest girl! :)

 Now for my questions to answer. :)
1.  What are your hobbies?
2.  What is your favorite TV program?
3.  What is your favorite thing about teaching?
4.  Who was your favorite teacher?
5.  Who or what influenced your decision to become a teacher?
6.  What is a favorite book you have read lately?
7.  What is your favorite movie?
8.  What is your favorite subject or lesson to teach?
9.  What famous person did/do you have a crush on?
10.  Where would your dream vacation be?
11.  Do you have pets?
12.  How long have you been teaching?

Now for the fun part, I get to tag people...hee hee.
1. Adventures of Ms. Smith
2. Fantabulous 4th Grade
3. From College to Classroom
4. Inside the Classroom
5. It's Elementary My Dear Teacher
6. Miss Knight's Khronicles
7. Miss Third Grade
8. Tales of a Third Grade
9. Teach, Pray, Run
10. Thoughts of a Third Grade Teacher
11.  Teaching First
12. The Bubblegum Tree
Phew, well that was fun!!  Enjoy everyone!