I heart summer.

  Today was lots of fun! It started off like all days in the summer: sleeping until 10:30! There's not much that makes me happier than that. Then, this afternoon, I went up to my school and had a puppy play-date with two of my favorite students and their mom/aunt. These sweet kiddos are cousins and I had Natalie in first grade and Philip in third grade this year! I love them and their mom/aunt. She always helped me in my classroom and we loved to chat in the mornings when she walked them to class. They're the sweetest family. When we got to the playground, it started POURING! So, we just sat under the porch at school and talked and hung out for a while. Then, when the sun came out, we went down to the playground. Finley was SO WILD! I have never seen her act like she did: she was running so fast, flipping and tripping over her leash and grabbing mouthfuls of grass. She got sooooooo dirty and had to come home and go straight to the bathtub! Now, she's sleeping. My favorite thing ever is when she sleeps because she's all sweet and cuddly. I'm really enjoying being able to be at home with her in the summer :)

 

Here are some pics from the day:

 

Love them!

Wish my eyes didn't look closed: I'm so squinty!

It's raining, it's pouring....

but, that didn't stop Finley!

Does this look like a puppy who played hard? Ha!

She hates baths. Just hates them.

 All clean and ready for a nap!

 

Yesterday, I took a few things up to my classroom. It was the stuff I blogged about earlier this week. Mostly I just wanted to drop it all off so that it wasn't sitting in my house all summer. I hate stuff just sitting around. And, well, one thing lead to another and... gulp... I set my classroom up!

 

This is new and I am in LOVE!

At the end of last year, I worked on organizing all my books in those red and blue containers. I love how clean and organized that shelf looks now!

 

I honestly only stayed for about two and a half hours! It's so easy to set it up when you aren't changing classrooms and you aren't planning on rearranging anything. I'm not going back up there until July, but I do feel better knowing that some of it is done.

 

Well, that's all I've got to share for now. I wanted to warn you  that I'm planning on sharing some pictures of my house soon because I want to have a Home Tour tab on my blog. And, I don't know any other way to do it. So, if decorating's not your thing, just know that those are more for me than for you :)

 

Toodles, Poodles!

 

 

Arkansas

Well, I've been out of town for the last week. The whole family (Finley included) loaded up my grandfather's Buick LeSabre (jealous, I know!) and headed to Springdale, Arkansas to see my brother play minor league baseball. We had a great trip, but it ended a little differently than we expected. My brother got released on the last day we were there. His team had too many pitchers. I know he's disappointed, but we're prayerful that there will be more opportunities for him to play ball. And if there aren't, we'll be totally psyched to have him and Blakely back in Tennessee!

 

Enough about that, on to the pictures!

Matt sent Finley a little text from Hampy before we left. It basically said that she couldn't wait to see her cousin :)

This is my new favorite picture of Finley. She sat and watched me pack forever!

And, she was pretty spoiled in the car! I don't think she spent an hour in the crate that was crammed in the backseat.

Nice night for baseball!

We were even there on Star Wars night!

One day, we drove over to Fayetteville to see the home of the Razorbacks. Can you see that lady? She was taking pictures of her family, who were standing on a roof inside the stadium! We were cracking up. They just, like, tromped through all the bushes and plants and climbed up there. Although, we can't judge because my dad tried to open every single door her could find.  

Oh, this is just the Titanic. We drove about two hours to Branson, MO one day. I have to say, I can happily check that off my list of places I've been and never go back. It was pretty nuts. We basically drove around and looked at stuff, I'm sure it's more fun if you actually do stuff! We did go to an outlet mall, so I guess it was worth the drive, ha!

We ate lunch at this café. Food was great. Entertainment was, well, interesting. There was a lady who was singing live and she was reallllllly chatty with the audience. I have a phobia of entertainers who interact with audience after a particular evening at Shoney's Family Fun Night when my mom had to ask the Shoney Bear to leave our table because I was crying. And I was in 8th grade. Not my most proud moment. So, needless to say, I was pretty busy the whole lunch trying not to make eye contact with this lady.

We got frozen custard at the cutest little shop!

 

In downtown Branson, we went in an old-fashioned 5 and Dime. It was so neat, but really crowded!

Me and my girl :)

I bought a new hat for my beach trip with friends in a few weeks. And, even though Matt's not a Royal anymore, I'm still glad I bought it. It was his team for four years and I'll always be thankful that they took a chance on drafting him when no other team would because he had Tommy John surgery a week before. You know who's not thankful? My grandpa. He's 89 and he's so sweet, but you do not want to make him mad! Yesterday, we were on the way home and my grandpa told us that he left all his Kansas City stuff at the hotel because he never liked that team anyway! We just died laughing.

Me and my "little" brother. And, I just want to say, I look like a COW in this shirt. Moo.

One night, my dad saw a player's family go out onto the field after the game to take pictures. I turned to my mom and said "Guaranteed, we'll be out on that field by the end of the week." Sure enough, the next night, there we were.

 

Some people saw Matt out there and he had to sign autographs for a while. Sorry, Matt!

Pool time was plentiful.

While we were there, I got brave and tried something new. Has anyone tried this stuff? It's spray moisturizing lotion and it is AMAZING! It smells soooooo good and it's not greasy at all. I highly recommend it!

Finley Girl did a great job in the hotel.

I took a picture of her one night in bed with my parents because it will probably never happen again...

Think she needs a haircut?

My grandpa, who never liked the Royals anyway.

Another day, we went to Bentonville. It's the home of Wal-Mart! This was the original store opened by the Walton's.

Inside was a museum. This was Sam Walton's office.

Bentonville has a really nice little square!

Finley was praying that we could go home! It was a looooong week.

Matt and Blakely's dog, Hampy. Isn't she cute?

I think mine's pretty cute, too :)

 

It was a fun trip.

 

Before I go, I want to wish my daddy a Happy Father's Day! He's the best and I love him so much!

Remember that time?

 

When I didn't blog for basically a month?

 

Yeah, me too.

 

Sorry about that.

 

 It's just that, well, there's been a lot going on. For starters, this happened:

 

 

I really don't want to talk about it.

 

It hasn't been fun and it happened three weeks ago - the darn thing still hurts like crazy. I walked around with it broken for five days before I went to the doctor. Not my best moment, ha. The good news is that the cast comes off a week from today. The other good news is that the kids in my class are finally learning how to read my "new" handwriting :) The kids were honestly pretty impressed by the whole thing. The first day I walked in with a cast they all wanted to sign it. I, of course, let them because I was thinking ahead. I purposefully chose purple because I figured the kids would sign it and it wouldn't show up. Don't judge me. So, as they were signing, they all kept saying "Why did you pick purple? You should have picked a lighter color!" Darn it, why didn't I think of that :)

Then, this little angel puppy

 

did this to my carpet:

 

 

and I cried. Little punk :)

 

Another reason my blogging life has ceased to exist is that my world revolves around a third grade classroom. We've been knee-deep in test prep and projects and data and all that good stuff. I haven't even thought about blogging, to be honest. But, we had Junior Achievement all day so I had a little time on my hands today and I decided to snap a few pictures of what's been going on.

 

My kiddos worked really hard on writing animal reports. They researched all the information themselves and sorted the facts they found on index cards. Then, we organized the cards into paragraphs based on topic. I was really proud of how hard they worked and how into it they were!

 

Look at that big kid writing!

 

 

 

We've also spent a lot of time working on prefixes and suffixes. I made a bulletin board (based on an idea I saw on Pinterest) and the kids have really used it a lot. We've also been working on this skill during our grade level intervention.

 

 

 

 

Last week, we worked on using non-fiction text features. The kids were so into it! I decided at the spur of the moment on Friday to let them research any topic they wanted to and make an informational poster about it using the text features we talked about.

 

These boys chose tornadoes!

 

I love this one! They did such a god job.

 

 

This week, we've been tackling poetry.

 

 

 

We've really, really been working on reading long text. So, poetry has been just another avenue for us to break up text and explore it. I've been explicitly teaching comprehension strategies lately and I'm finally seeing my kids actively use them to understand what they're reading. It's so exciting!

 

 

We used this poster this week to help us with poetry. We've also talked about visualizing, schema, making connections and asking questions. As we talk about each one, I add a poster to our back wall for the kids to refer to.

 

In guided reading, we've been using the 3-Read strategy to further work on tackling long text. I think it's really been helpful for my kids. As we learn new comprehension strategies, we add them to our third read.

 

 

In math, we've been working on the properties of addition and multiplication. The commutative property and associative property are not too hard for them. They know how to recognize it and they know how to solve them. These posters have helped them a lot!

 

 

But, the distributive property? I'm sorry to tell you that it really confuses me. Ha! The first two times I tried to show it to my kids, I messed up. Whoops! Whatever, it was a teachable moment (everyone make mistakes, blah blah...). But, I somehow got it together and figured it out and discovered that my kids really enjoy it. Who knew! They literally begged me to practice the distributive property today!

 

We used marshmallows to make arrays and then I had the kids find different ways to split the arrays and show the distributive property.

 

 Sorry that's sideways, iPhones are poo sometimes.

 

When they found a way to show the distributive property, I told them to come write it on the big board at the front of the room. I pretty much did this just to get them excited and into it.

 

 

Look at my smart kiddos :)

 

 

On an unrelated note, I want to wish my mom a happy birthday! We had a fun weekend planned but she got sick today so we're going to have to postpone. The same thing happened on my birthday! We're jinxed this year when it comes to special days, I guess :)

 

It's just as well, though. Finley's pretty tired:

 

 

 

 Thanks for reading!