MLK frustration and other various topics

Topic 1: Need a great-tasting meal for the crock pot?

I made this Slow Cooker Chicken Taco Soup recipe I got from All Recipes and it was WONDERFUL! I wish you could smell my house. Seriously...who is going to invent smellivision already??

Topic 2: I got a good response from my thinking maps post so I thought I'd include a few when ever I remember to snap a pic. Nothing super original but maybe it will give you a jump start?

The students came up with the words. No laughing at my unicorn!

Can't stand that the basal calls it a naming word so I teach noun anyway. I'm a rebel like that.

Topic 3: Deedee Wills got this email this week:

 I teach in Joplin, which made worldwide news last May when our town was cut in half by an F5 tornado.  Many of our elementary schools were destroyed or damaged, and as teachers, we have had a roller coaster year.  I came from a meeting yesterday where many are struggling with the weight of all we are dealing with.  My request is this:  would you be willing to donate a created pack of your choosing to give away at a drawing at our upcoming district Kindergarten grade level meeting?  The meeting is Monday and I am sorry for the short notice but I did not realize until the meeting how down everyone is feeling.

Deedee had the brilliant idea to ask other bloggers to contribute TpT items to maybe help out the other grades as well.

I have contributed and if you would like to help out our fellow teachers in need you should hop over to Mrs. Wills Kindergarten . 

Topic 4: I could not find the writing paper I made last year for this so I had to remake it.  :-(

I guess this is how I will discover what I lost in laptop death #1. You can read last year's post to see what I do for MLK.  You are welcome to download if you can use it.
I have a dream

Topic 5: I want to thank Lori from Little Priorities, Mrs. Cupcake from A Cupcake for the Teacher, and Kim from The Adventures of a First Grade Teacher for awarding me the Versatile Teacher Award. I have gotten this award previously so I won't bore you with my seven things list again but I do appreciate the nod. :-)


Whew, are you still with me? That was  a lot. Sorry, you just got a peek into the craziness that is my brain.  Off to finish putting Christmas decorations away (don't judge) and cut my brother's hair. Hope you all enjoy your day off tomorrow!!! The big question is...will I get out of my PJs??? I HOPE not to!

A Visit From Conan

This was me this week. Insomnia is my new nemesis (now that my laptop is fixed.)

 

3 nights in a row I got about 3 hours of sleep. I just can't shut my brain off. Being on the computer seems to make it worse. I've even had nights when numbers/letters are running past my eyes like a ticker tape. FREAK, right? 

To make things even more fun, my husband was out of town (again) so this mom was on duty 24-7.

The third night I woke up suddenly at 12:17 AM. My first thought was, darn it, I was FINALLY sleeping!! Then I realized that something had woken me up. I heard voices! I peered into the hallway and saw light coming from the kitchen!

ARE BURGLARS IN THE HOUSE???

It probably didn't help that a friend had just told me that there was a daytime break-in in our neighborhood last week and the woman was home! She had to hide and call the police who then instructed her to run out the front door to a neighbor. Sorry, different story. But it is related because between that, my husband being out of town, and my serious lack of sleep, I was FREAKED OUT! 

I first checked on my kids but they were sound asleep.  I grabbed my cell phone and had 911 ready.... I finally got up the nerve to tiptoe down the hall to investigate. The floorboards squeaked before I took 4 steps. I froze and listened intently. Wait a sec. I know that voice. It's Conan O'Brien! In my hazy state I remembered that I turned the TV off but not the separate stereo speaker. DORK.  But wait, why was the light on?? Even exhausted I didn't think I would forget to turn off the lights before I went to bed.

Still uneasy, I went around testing every door and of course they were locked and everything was fine. I checked every room and I'll admit it, behind the shower curtain.  Those darn movies!

I didn't sleep much after that because I kept hearing things. I swear there was a SPLAT sound I couldn't for the life of me figure out. Anyone else ever play mind games like this when they are home alone?

I am happy to say, the next night I finally slept. The funny thing was, the next day my brain seemed to be misfiring more than the previous days.  First, I accidentally wrote a student's name in the sentence I was writing on the board because I was talking to him. The kids loved that one. Then I spelled ocean without the a. When I caught my mistake one sweetie piped up, "Oh,  I thought you were testing us." Must be all the daily editing. :-) There were some other mistakes that I can't even remember, but the kids just shook their collective heads and said knowingly, "Her brain is just not working right today!"

The light is still a mystery. My boys sometimes sleepwalk so it is possible one of them thought they were in the bathroom. Yes, sleep peeing has happened. Victims have been a closet, out in the garage and a near miss in the refrigerator! I scared the poor kid to death that night when I came running, screaming STOP!!!!! 

 Sweet dreams my friends!

Thinking Maps and Book Clubs

Do you use Thinking Maps? We do and I really like them. Our school has decided to make a big push for ALL students to know and be able to use ALL the maps.

I am trying to use multiple maps a day and incorporate them in my bulletin boards. For example, here is the snow globe inspired by Deanna Jump but I paired it with a tree map that we made on the story structure of The Snow Globe Family.

 Here are the map circles I posted about last year but this year I added a bridge map!

Are you familiar with the bridge map? It is for analogies and at first I was like, really? In first grade you want me to do analogies? But my wonderful teammate, Robi, showed me how to make the relating factor more kid-friendly and she inspired me to use them with our phonics/grammar, etc. skill every day and it is working out great!

I took the pic before we filled the bridge in. The two words that make the contraction go underneath them.

I like seeing how others use thinking maps so I thought you might, too even though they aren't beautiful. I could post how I use them in writing if you are interested? I'd love to hear how you use them. It is pretty cool to talk to a student not in your class and still have that common language.

I also wanted to let you know I have some new Book Club packets available to keep those high kiddos challenged. The first is a Ready Freddy 2-pack: Caterpillars on the Move! and Good Morning, Groundhog! There is even a double bubble map in there to compare and contrast the two stories. :-) I got my books through Scholastic Club Shop.

 And for my 3rd grade readers this one is AR 3.1.

 These are available in my TPT store if you are interested.

Fixing Sideways Photos and more

Sorry for the length between posts. If you have been following me for awhile you may remember that my school laptop is cursed. It completely died and I lost data TWICE and now many keys on my keyboard just stopped working. One letter is in my passwords for everything so that was awesome. Not one to give up, I tried writing strategic blog comments to avoid certain letters or copying and pasting letters in from other documents. This took forever and was beyond ridiculous so I was silenced eventually.  The Bane of My Existence {my laptop's new name} is now in the shop {again} and I have a loaner. I am finding this equally frustrating because the things I was working on I saved to a thumb drive thinking I could keep going with the loaner. I forgot the loaner wouldn't have my cute fonts and it has a different version of Word so all my docs are sciwampus {misaligned if you don't care for words that are in the urban dictionary.}

Anyway, enough grumbling. Time to get to the cuteness. We made New Year's Resolutions.

I will make more friends.

I will pass speedy math more quickly.

I will get my morning work done! (Amen!)

I need to get better at math.

First, we read this picture book 

 

Then, we talked about what a resolution was and brainstormed some together. They wrote their resolution on a cute hat template I got from Brooke Perry last year. {SO glad your family is doing better and you are blogging again, Brooke! If you don't know about her blog Primary Perspective you should go check it out.} I was able to change the date on the hat since I had the same font. Do you think the fact that I could name the font immediately may indicate that I spend too much time on the computer?

As I have posted before, I use my Daily Editing Math Word Problems every morning in combination with Cara's Calendar Companion. My math scores have been amazing and I am sure it is all this daily practice. This week, spelling mistakes started popping up in addition to having to correct the capitalization and punctuation, circling the sight words and solving the math problem! The kids feel so proud that they can recognize that the word is spelled incorrectly. I even had one girl who got that New Year's was missing the apostrophe which is a toughie!!!  I look through their binders occasionally and had to share how cute this guy illustrates his math problems. For those that are struggling, I tell them to draw traditional counters and cross them out, etc but for those that are quick, I tell them they can spend extra time on the illustration.

Aren't those precious?

Do your pictures sometimes turn out sideways in Blogger? I am not sure what happens, but sometimes when I upload pics to iphoto they are sideways or upside down. I can turn them around in iphoto but when I upload to Blogger they still end up sideways!  I finally figured out that I can drag the photo to my desktop, double-click on it to open it, go to Tools in the menu bar and drag down to rotate left, right or flip horizontal or vertical. Save it once you like it and now you can upload it to Blogger from your desktop. Deanna Jump, I don't know it you read my blog, but I remember you have been bothered by this problem so I hope this helps! If anyone knows of a better way I am all ears!

Near Disaster and My Top 3

Happy Holidays everyone! My house is still overrun with family but I snuck off for a few minutes to visit blogland. I love my family but a week straight of a loud {booming male voices and babies crying}, crowded, messy {I've lost count on the number of spills}, smelly {I've forgotten how odorous those diapers can be} bustling house is starting to get to me.

We had a NEAR DISASTER yesterday... Picture my husband taking the 20 pound turkey out of the oven. It may have been the disposable foil pan we were forced to use to get it to fit in our oven or it may have been the fact that my husband was partaking in the holiday booze with my brothers....but as he is transferring it to the counter the juices start POURING over the side onto the floor. My hubbie starts to slip on the fatty liquid and just manages to slide the turkey onto the counter before his feet go completely flying out from under him and he lands hard on his butt!  After making sure he was okay, I laughed my a** off! Making my gravy with MUCH less stock and cleaning up that disgusting, greasy mess wasn't so funny but at least Christmas dinner wasn't ruined.

I saw Fern Smith had a good idea to look back on the year to see what our most popular posts were so I'm linking up. You can click on the post name to read the original if you are interested.

My Top 3 Posts

#3 with 6,307 views Sight Word Fluency and Romance Ruined

#2 with 6,316 views Cutest 100 Year Olds Ever

#1 with 20,042 views Me on the Map

I think it will be interesting to see what everyone else's most popular are.  Okay, I am being called back to play Awkward Family Photos. This board game is hysterical to play, at least with my inappropriate family!