A Little Update...

Hey there, strangers! Remember me? I bet you thought I was long gone. 

Well, not to worry, I am alive and well and so very happy to be back once again to share a little bit of myself with you!

You may be wondering where I've been all this time (almost a year, if you want to get technical). Well friends, this last year has been nothing short of amazing and to tell you about it in detail would take more time than this little blog post can handle. So, I'll give you a tidbit of my year in quick snapshots.

If you've read any of my latest posts, you may know that I got engaged last year. On November 21st, 2015 my sweetie and I tied the knot in the wedding of our dreams. It was such a fun, beautiful, fantastic blur, and I wish I could re-live 4,000 times over again.

Besides getting married, we have been busy moving into a new house, getting a new puppy, going on a honeymoon, and celebrating all of the other amazing life events of our loved ones. Life has been so good to us and those around us lately, and I really did not want to take one second of it fore granted.

So you see, friends, life has pretty dang demanding of my attention lately, and I've been more than happy to oblige. 

Teaching is such an important part of my life, but for so long it has consumed so much of me. As I embarked on this new chapter in my life I pledged that I would live a little more and work a little less. It was really important to me that I enjoyed all of this time and gave it my all. And that's exactly what I did!

Now that things have slowed down and we've caught our breaths, I can finally get back to this little blog of mine and give it the attention it deserves. I admire those of you who are able to balance it all and wish I had a little bit more of that in me. Trust me, your hard work is most definitely noticed. 

So thanks for sticking with me, friends! I promise I will be back very soon to give you a look at what we have been up to in my class as well as fill you in on more life changing events!

Happy teaching!

Let's Get Buggy

Hey there, friends and happy Monday!

I thought I'd start our week off right by sharing a precious story that my students and I read on Friday last week: Velma Gratch and the Way Cool Butterfly by Alan Madison and Kevin Hawkes. Ever heard of it? 

 

 

 

If not, allow me to introduce the two of you. You won't regret it. This story was completely new to me, and I'm so glad I found it!

 

The story is about a young girl, Velma, who is struggling to stand out against the popularity of her older sisters. Velma eventually finds her niche, butterflies, and throughout the book she goes through metamorphosis right before your eyes. The book really is too cute, and such a great introduction to a lesson on character analysis.

 

 

 

My cuties and I had an absolute BLAST reading and discussing this text. Then, I let my friends get into groups and talk about how she changed from the beginning to the end of the story and how this change was similar to the metamorphosis of a butterfly.

We talked about sentence starts such as :

In the beginning, Velma was like a caterpillar because....

and

In the end, Velma was like a butterfly because...

 

 

 

Their responses were AWESOME and previous to boot. I was one proud teacher of their work.

 

To pull it all together, we did a fantastic art project. To make the butterflies, I folded white construction paper in half and had my little friends draw half of a butterfly. The best part of this project is that it's totally OK if it's not perfect. Then, I mixed a little black paint and school glue. The kids then traced the outline of their butterflies and made little "windows" on the wings with the paint/glue mixture. Once they dried, we added a little watercolor paint and VOILA! We had ourselves a butterfly!

 

 

This book was a great addition to our unit on insects. I loved how engaged my students were in the story. Choosing great mentor texts really makes such an impact on the effectiveness of a lesson.

 

If you want to snag your own copy of this wonderful text, you can click the picture of the book above or the link on the title.

 

Hope your week is off to a great start. Happy Monday!

Back in the Swing of Things...

Hey there, long lost friends! To say I've missed you would be a complete understatement. Boy do we have a MILLION things to catch up on! I promise my blogging, or lack thereof, is completely justified. You see, I have some pretty *BIG* news....

That's right, my friends, the School Belle is officially engaged! My fiance, we'll call him Mr. Appleseed, knowing the obsessive teacher type of person I am, thought it would be completely fitting to pop the question in the place I love best, my classroom! For years, I've been asking him to put a pot on his head, grab a sack of apples, and visit my classroom as Johnny Appleseed himself. Not wanting to embarrass himself, he has politely declined every.single.year. So, when he asked to come this year, naturally I thought nothing of it. Clueless. Imagine my surprise, and my students, when Johnny Appleseed himself got down on one knee. 

So friends, I've been on Cloud 9 ever since, and too consumed with wedding planning to even THINK about blogging. But sure enough, I started to miss it and all of you, so here I am! 

It's so hard to believe that we are already well into the second nine weeks of the school year! This is by far my most FAVORITE time to be a teacher. The holidays are such a great springboard for wonderful lessons and activities. One of my favorites is teaching comparing/ contrasting two stories using The Gingerbread Man. 

Last year, I didn't have much time to focus on gingerbread themed activities, much to my dismay, and I simply refuse to let that happen this year, dang it. 

So, my little cuties are in for a week full of gingerbread fun, and I cannot wait! To help me prepare, I created a packet of 10 math and 10 literacy centers. While we read and write about our gingerbread stories, we will also be seeing them throughout all of our literacy and math center fun.

What I love MOST about these cute little centers is that they are holiday themed, and not Christmas. Perfect for us public school teachers...ya feel me? 

And they still add just enough holiday cheer to make me one happy teacher!

Click the preview below to check it out!

If you follow me on TPT, you may have noticed that I've been posting "Math with Meaning" center packets, and may have wondered why I chose that title.

As a teacher, one of the most difficult parts of our job {in my opinion} is making sure each of my students is challenged. I never want my students feeling bored in my classroom. 

To me boredom= me not doing my job.

 And I certainly don't want to go home with that feeling!

To help with this, I have started creating leveled/ differentiated math centers. Each center is aligned to the Common Core and comes with TWO versions. The TWO versions share the same recording sheet, which means its less work for you and less confusion for our cuties! 

To keep them organized, I place colored garage sale stickers on the back of each activity {pink for the lower level and green for the higher level}. My students are assigned a color, but don't know exactly what the colors mean. Doing so helps my students focus more on the task at hand, and not who is doing the "harder" work.

If you'd like to check out my differentiated math centers alone, I am selling them separately in my little shop! Click the preview below to check it out!

Well, sweet friends, I am off to enjoy my last few hours of Thanksgiving break! I promise I won't be a stranger! 

Happy teaching!