Things I've Been Working On

I must be crazy, but last week I volunteered to go into school for a few days and work with my teammates on mapping out the CCSS for kindergarten (yup, I'm moving back to K this year!) I have the BEST team - because we were the only grade that had all teachers show up!

Mapping out the ELA standards we are hitting hard this year:

We started out with the "I can" statements we want the kiddos to be able to do in June, then worked backwards from there. Breaking it down to the very smallest goals in September, such as: What is a question? What is a statement? How can I ask a question?

That took 2 days, then we had time to do things like this:

I made a kid-friendly writing rubric based on the school district's rubric. It was pretty fun doing the one-star writing, I must admit, hehehe.

Just had to share one of my very favorite things for my classroom:

I bought this from Pottery Barn my 1st year of teaching. It was my big splurge for my classroom and man do I love this thing. It holds TONS of stuff!! I especially love how I can print out cute paper to decorate it! Gotta have chevron! (That's my Chloe in the middle) I love it so much that I just bought another one for my home office after I redecorated it.

I don't know about you, but this describes me oh so well...

so I was SUPER excited to find this amazing frozen yogurt at the Wal-Mart near my house.

It's called Foxy's Pash and is only 80-90 cals and 0-1g of fat per serving (which is a 1/4 of the tub!)

My favorite is the Sneaky pash. It's wildberry flavored fro-yo with chocolate shavings. Tastes JUST like regular ice cream, but fat-free. I'm obsessed!

Aaaaand - a project that I have been working on all summer! More like do a page here and there in between other things, so it's taken me forever to finish! I first got this fun idea in May - so glad I'm finally done!

This Build-a-Story pack has fun worksheets for 20 fairy tales and folktales. 

I'm already starting to work on the 2nd pack!

 

Summer Lovin'

It seems like FOREVER since I've had time to blog, so I thought I'd make a summer lovin' list to summarize all of the things I've been loving this summer.

#1 - Redecorating

This has taken up the majority of my time this summer, but I'm finally done, and boy, does my house look awesome!!

 Great room before: 

Ugly green walls from when we were into a "Tahitian" theme years ago.

Great room after:

We used "Balanced Beige" by Sherwin-Williams. Awesome paint, only took one coat! And I'm a tad-bit obsessed with that chevron pillow I scored at Tuesday Morning. =)

Next plan: to replace the ugly brown carpet with laminate later this summer, can't wait!

Office Before:

 Really weird tan-pink color. I hated it right after I did it.

 Office after:

Used the leftover paint from the great room. The original plan was to just do the great room, but I started getting carried away. ;)

 Entryway after: 

I unfortunately forgot to take a before picture, just imagine yellow-ish walls with lots of holes and a white door with lots of scratches and marks! 

I repainted the entry and hallways in Aesthetic White by Sherwin-Williams, as it coordinated really well with the beige color. The door got a makeover too with a new peephole installed and 2 coats of Balanced Beige on both sides. Love it!!

#2 - Exercising

It's been one year (and 50 lbs!) since I joined 24 Hour Fitness and faithfully went 3-4 times a week during the school year, but I really wanted to ramp it up in the summer. I've been going 6 times a week and added in some new classes, along with my beloved Zumba.

 #3 -  Reading

 Like many teachers, I have zero time to read for pleasure during the school year, so it feels like a guilty pleasure getting to read whatever I want during the summer! This series came highly recommended to me, so I finally got the series and so far, I'm hooked!

 #4 -  Creating

I had a special request on TpT to create a set of daily schedule cards at the beginning of summer, so that's been my latest TpT project posted. I've since added in other color schemes and am happy to create new ones to match anyone's classroom theme! I'm also in the midst of working on another big project, which I hope to have done very soon.

     

     

 #5 -  Teacher Workshops

I'm in the middle of a big GLAD (Guided Language Acquisition Design) workshop. So far I've attended 2 days of training and will go for another week to observe the strategies being used with students (yes, they actually brought in students willing to attend school during summer! Something tells me they are probably all teachers' kids, ha!). I'm also going to be attending a Kim Sutton math conference in August. More to come about these later!

And just had to share, I was thrilled to find some awesome school supplies in the Dollar Spot at Target today! Check out my loot:

Self-inking stamps, a Suzy's Zoo (LOVE!) book, name tags, a "jingle stick" to use as an attention-getter in class, and the best part - dry erase pockets. Those things are so handy!