Summer Goals (Weekly Linky intro!)

I'm linking up with Monica at I Heart Grade 3 this week for her summer weekly linky! This week's topic is "My Goals for the Summer"! My biggest problem with this topic is that I'm going to have to limit myself to a reasonable number of goals to have to type on this blog!

#1: RELAX!

I have been accused of working too hard. I'm sure all of you have the same issue. I normally tutor about 8 kids in the summer, and I usually do a book group or two with our incoming middle school students who need the extra group support. However, I haven't gotten any students to tutor, and as of tonight, only have a tentative book group. I usually do those late in the summer - end of July or early August so students have the book fresh in their minds. 

Anyway, one of the ways I plan to relax is by enjoying some time at our favorite vacation spot, Ogunquit, Maine!

Here's a very brief look at some highlights of the past few years of vacationing there!

#2: Work on TPT Stuff

I have lots of ideas and projects already started, but being the workaholic I am, I am so limited on time to do TPT projects during the school year. I'm so excited to have some time to do this stuff. It's almost like it's not work to me. It's more like fun for me! I'm sure there are many of you who feel the same way! The month of June will actually be very exciting. My birthday is June 11, and I plan on doing an entire month-long celebration for it. There will be weekly giveaways, HUGE sales, freebies, and more fun! Check back each week during June to join in on the fun. It all starts on May 31! :)

#3: Link up with this blog linky each week! 

I'm so excited that there is some summer focus for my little blog now. You are awesome, Monica! Be sure to link up with I Heart Third each week this summer. Here is the list of topics for each week. 

Ok, I told you guys I'm limiting myself to goals. Those are my three biggest! 

I have enjoyed checking out other teachers' favorite vacation spots and summer plans. I hope to keep in touch with all of you and keep learning from you!

Happy (Almost) Summer...Sunday Scoop 5/24/15

I'm joining up with Teaching Trio for the Sunday Scoop! I love the Sunday Scoop - I'm a routine kind of gal!

This past week was a bad week for me. It's why I didn't blog as much as I wanted to. 

I had to put my cat, Jake, down. He had cancer in his liver and spleen, and there was nothing they could do for him. I knew he hadn't been quite himself lately, but to have to put him down was a complete shock. I am heartbroken. He was only 9 years old - not very old in cat years. I've had cats live to be 18 or older! I'm not quite ready to go into detail about it. I'm still in some shock and I'm still completely sad and heartbroken. I will post a tribute to him later, when I feel the time is right. In addition to having to make the horrible decision about Jake, my husband was out of town. I was all alone in having to make this decision. Plus there were other things going on, happy things, like our 8th grade graduation. It was a celebration of a job well done, but I found myself sorta sad about all that too. I was more emotional about it than usual, partly because of my sadness with Jake, but I've known all of these kids for so long. It was hard to see them graduate and move on to bigger and better things. Plus I was so proud of them. They all had their own learning/behavior/social challenges, and they worked so hard to overcome them. It's like being a proud mama of 12 kids!

Anyway, the rest of my week went fine! My literacy kids and I continued our end of the year countdown. I instagrammed earlier in the week about our flashlight reading day. We were supposed to go outside and read, but Wednesday was rainy and almost cold! So we had to improvise. The kids LOVED it though. I bought some of those cheap flashlights from Oriental Trading, handed them out with a (FREE!!) summer-y reading passage from ReadWorks, and voila! There was 100% reading, 100% focus, and 100% engagement by every single student. Maybe I should do flashlight reading more often! :)

In other news, I have to give a shout-out to one of my best friends and colleagues, Mrs. Janna Mathews! She had a "State Fair" with her 3rd graders on Thursday. They've been studying the regions of the United States all year, and she assigned each of her students a state on which to do a report/project. They created posters and presented them at the state fair. It was held in the auditorium, and the students were placed around the room at their "stations". She invited the parents to come in and use the school's popcorn machine to pop popcorn and hand out to people as they went around and viewed each station. She also had patriotic/state/US songs playing overhead, so it felt very stately! It was a great success! Everyone enjoyed learning about the states, and the students were overjoyed to share it a million times with all of the viewers!

And last, but certainly not least, here is MY Sunday Scoop!

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Don't forget to leave love on other blogs that have linked up. And don't forget to link up yourself with The Teaching Trio!

Sunday Scoop, May 17, 2015 + a Little of my Week

So, we have 9.5 days left, but who's counting? I'm putting all of the finishing touches on my end of the year lesson plans. We have 8th grade graduation this week, for which I help all of the 8th graders do their graduation speeches. My in-laws are coming for Memorial Day weekend. It's truly the countdown to SUMMER!
Here are a few pictures of what I did this last week - a little end of the year fun (tic-tac-toe tournament,

My primary technology class did a bubble gum fraction craftivity from Michelle Hudgeons. You can find it here. I gave them all bubble gum and planned on seeing how many bubbles they could blow. Welllllll...it was a big fat ZERO. I didn't want all of them to write "I blew 0/5 bubbles!" :(
Sooooo, I changed the writing prompt to say, "If I could blow a bubble, ..." and they had a blast with that! Since it was technology class, I had the kids write a sentence and draw a picture to go with their writing prompt on TuxPaint! Writing/typing practice? Check! Creative writing response? Check! Technology usage/practice? Check! That's my main goal with my (spec ed) technology students, to get them used to navigating their way around the computer and the internet, and to introduce them to typing in a way that doesn't frustrate them!

Plus, we had our own version of American Idol this week. We call it Summit Idol (I know-very clever, since our school is Summit Academy!). Anyway, it's a big to-do at our school, singing and more talents! The kids love it. We even had a second grader perform a comedy sketch! So brave and amazing!!!!

As I mentioned earlier, I am counting down to summer. So, if that's the case, that means my birthday is very close. Since I turned 30, I stopped getting excited about celebrating my birthday, ...until this year! I am doing a HUGE month-long birthday celebration. I'd much rather focus on giving to others rather than focus on how old I'm getting! :)
If you want to join in on the fun, here's the link to sign up! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1t6V4ONymDAl3OXC1tlRJEqZdpvEN9V1-LnxMs9GmZBw/edit?usp=sharing

 All of the fun will start on May 31st! Get ready!!!

But first, it IS Sunday and it's time for the Sunday Scoop with Teaching Trio!

I think most of those items speak for themselves! What are some of your favorite shows?Are there any summer shows you're looking forward to??? With all of the announcements of returning and cancelled shows for the fall, I'm interested to hear what shows you all cannot live without!

Also, don't forget to link up with Teaching Trio for the Sunday Scoop!

End of the Year Activities, Part 3, with a little FREEbie!

We are continuing our End of the Year Countdown Fun (use your big movie announcer voice here for effect)! I swear, I wish I could do more things like this all year long, but then I guess, it wouldn't be as special when we do these activities at the end of the year! I made up some little awards for some of our activities that we're doing. I included them as a freebie on Google docs if you can make it through the blog post to download them at the end! :)

Anyway, today we had our paper airplane contest! My students really got into actually making the airplanes. It takes a little work and a little practice to fold them, sort of like origami (not that complicated, otherwise this girl wouldn't be doing them with her students!). You can find many designs for FREE on this website! They provide instructions as well as PDF printable templates!

I created these awards for them and told them about each award before we went outside to fly them.

There's one for the FASTEST airplane:

Then there's one for the airplane that flew the farthest:

For this one, we all stood on the same line and they let their airplanes go. I measured the end point to see whose airplane flew the farthest in a straight line.

Then, there's the award for the most unique airplane. I wanted them to take some time to decorate the airplanes. It gives them more of a sense of ownership and more importantly, I like to have something to award students who are not exactly aerodynamic-friendly! :) Also, last year, I had a student add paper clips to certain parts of the airplane. He thought it would make the airplane faster, so I thought that was pretty creative!

Here is my group showing off their paper airplane flying skills!

Here are some of the other awards for upcoming activities. I print them out on bright, colorful paper! You can download these awards here. The Rock, Paper, Scissors award is separate from the others. You can download that award here.

Hopefully you can find some use with these awards. My students sure did have a lot of fun getting them!!! :)

How to Go Out with a BANG! {EOY Activities, Part 2, with a quick FREEBIE}

It's been a crazy week, but a fun one! We are continuing with our daily End of the Year Countdown Activities!
On Tuesday, we did a science experiment. Wait! A science experiment in literacy class? Absolutely! I don't do it all the time, but if I can find a way to show students that life isn't separated into classes, that everything is connected, then I'll do it!
We used Stephanie Elkowitz's Easter Science Egg Experiments, Crafts and Coloring Fun. Again, I know it's not Easter, but I needed something simple, something my students could read and get a tiny bit of background knowledge on in one sitting, and I love the fact that Stephanie included coloring activities. It's very hands-on, and my kids loved it.
We did the Incredible Unbreakable Egg experiment. They had to try to squeeze the egg to see if it would crack. 

On Wednesday, it was SIDEWALK CHALK Day! BUT, I don't let them just go crazy with the chalk. Before we go outside, we read a few poems by Bruce Lansky - "How to Torture Your Students" (Lansky & Pomazal) and "How to Torture Your Teacher." You can find both of these poems here or by clicking on the poem titles. When we first go outside, we write a poem titled "Top 10 Ways to Annoy Your Parents."

Each day, we also have been doing some Summer Challenge Countdown lists. I decided to make this another *FUN* activity for the end of the year, and each day I have the kids enter their paper into a raffle. The next day, I read the papers, draw one out and that person gets a small prize. 
I might have had too much fun myself ... and I might have gone overboard with end of the year prizes. Here's a picture of what I got:

I found these cool plastic pockets at Office Depot. They were having a Store-Closing sale. Bittersweet shopping experience! :(  :)
I thought the pockets would be perfect for my little raffle. 

I made a cute little cover for it and I have my kids fold their papers and put them in pocket each day. Here's what it looks like with the cover on it:

I made one for all of you if you want a copy. Just click here to download from Google Docs.  It's a little more generic, but it says basically the same thing. Heck, you could use it for any raffle you are having where students have to turn in a paper! :)

We Appreciate Teachers (& Some Freebies)

It's Teacher Appreciation Week next week, not only at our school, but at my son's daycare as well. So while I'm wishing and hoping for Starbucks gift cards, my son's daycare does things a little bit differently.

On Monday, kids bring in flowers for the teachers. On Tuesday, the daycare board provides breakfast for the teachers. On Wednesday, the kids bring treats, and Thursday, they bring in cards. On Friday, the parents provide a BBQ lunch for the teachers.

I know some of the students won't (or can't) bring in thank-you items, and I get that. However, I want to make the week special for all of my son's teachers. After all, they take good care of my baby every day and they deserve to be pampered, at least for one week out of the year!

I made some cute little cards to give the teachers this week. I also made a few signs to put in their teacher's lounge to go with some of the treats we'll be providing.

(The real file looks better than these screen shots I took. Sorry - confusion between home and school computers!)
You can download these cards and signs for FREE here.


On the same note, I'm sure it's no surprise that the amazing TPT is throwing a little Teacher Appreciation sale on May 5th and 6th. (Aren't we thankful for them???) Use the code ThankYou to save up to 28%! My store will be 20% off!

Click on the picture to check out my store! Stock up on your wish list items while you're there! :)
Oh, and Happy Derby Day!