The Good Life

February 22, 2013

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!

January 25, 2013

About a Month Late...

Here are some pictures from Christmas. My blog was having issues: mainly, I couldn't post pictures. And, I was having issues: mainly, I didn't want to blog. But, I hate to not post all these pics about our holiday. It really was good.

This little creature gets very nervous when I bring out the luggage. She KNOWS what it means and she always wants to make sure she's coming with me!

And, here's her first ornament! It looks a lot like her, I have to say!

We spent a lot of time watching sports. Well, they did. I was mostly upstairs watching stuff on Netflix.

This was her favorite place to lay when the tree was set up. I don't know why, but she kept going back to it! She's weird, guys.

And, she spent so much time playing that she would have to take a little siesta in her crate. So cute :)

Christmas morning smiles :)

Matt and I found a bunch of pictures of us from when we were kids at my grandpa's house. So, we had a lot of fun tweeting these and making fun of each other.

We had a hey-day with this one! Look at the boy's weenie socks!

The Fam.

Aunt Blakely got Finley and Hampton some snowflake pajamas. Check out that shaggy hair. She got groomed soon after and looks much better now :)

See! This is her "Best in Show" pose, I'm pretty sure. Don't tell her she's not a pure-breed!

How's that for comfy?

Playing with kiddos

Her grandma is pretty much her best friend.

We had a great holiday!

I can't believe it was a month ago....

January 24, 2013

The Thunder Girls Club

This week has been rough, guys. Just one of those weeks where we've been OFF. Nothing major has gone wrong, but then again, nothing major has gone right. I think having Mondays off are great. Nobody loves a lazy day more than me, honestly. But, it does throw off the whole week. And, then you go home on Tuesday and you realize half the week has gone by and it's now Thursday night and I still don't have lesson plans done for next week.

Uhhhhhhhh.

And, to top it all off, we had a resurgence of the Thunder Girls Club. I don't think I ever told you about the Thunder Girls Club.

Sit back, this is good.

About two months ago, I found a piece of paper on the floor in my classroom after school. I, of course, did what every self-respecting teacher does when they find a note on the floor and ripped that sucker open hoping for something juicy. I found a note that basically said:

Dear _____, You're invited to join the Thunder Girls Club. We will meet at recess. Don't tell anybody.

Like I said: JUICY.

So, the next day, I called over the little girl who I thought had written it based on handwriting. I asked her about it and she IMMEDIATELY burst into tears. Like, burst. Oh, and she denied it. So, I finally get out of her that she and another little girl had written it. I wasn't mad or anything, I was just asking them about it.

They told me that the club meets at recess and sit together at lunch. I asked them who was in the club and they named every girl in our class except one and they said they were working on her invitation next.

So, I just casually asked out loud, "Who's heard of the Thunder Girls Club?" And, I looked out and every girl was raising their hands... and TWO BOYS! I honestly just laughed out loud. I mean, the image of all the girls and then two boys with their hands up was the funniest thing ever.

I asked them what they would do if somebody from another class wanted to be in their club and one of them said "Well, we already got Mariana!" She's a kid in the class across the hall. And, excuse me, you "got" her?

It's too funny. And, I think what impresses me most is how organized they were! Goodness, they had handwritten invitations that they worked on one at a time! And, all the girls started pulling out matching bookmarks that someone had made them that said "Bring this to the meetings." HA!

And, the name. Where did they get the name? That's too funny.

I know what their club song could be:

Third graders love AC/DC, right?

Sadly, I put an end to the Thunder Girls Club.

Or, so I thought.

Fast forward to today. I went to pick up my kiddos from lunch and the cafeteria lady was waiting for me at the door. Never a good sign. She said "The Thunder Girls are all crying! They've been fighting all week."

WHAT?

How does the cafeteria lady know about the Thunder Girls??

Why are we still dealing with this 2 months later?

Needless to say, we had a looooong talk after lunch and, fingers crossed, we took care of it. I've got to say, this is all new to me. We did not deal with this stuff in first grade at all.

To top it all off, we spent some of the afternoon learning about Europe. We're working our way around all the continents. I said something about the Queen of England. One little boy goes "I think her name is Queen Latifah." And the kid sitting next to him goes, "Yeah. It is. I'm pretty sure."

So, just to clarify:

The Queen of England

NOT the Queen of England.

But, I bet she'd love to be in the Thunder Girls Club!

January 14, 2013

Catching Up is Hard to Do-oo...

So, I remembered I had a blog today.

Not even kidding.

I was home sick from school because I've had an awful stomach flu. I started to finally feel better this afternoon... so I got on the computer.

And, I was like "Oh yeah! My blog. Wow, it's been a loonnggg time since I posted on there!"

And then I fell asleep.

But, I'm awake now and it's icing like crazy outside and fingers are crossed that we will not have school tomorrow! Why is it that you feel so much more cozy on nights when it's freezing and sleeting and snowing outside? Because, I feel pretty dang cozy right now.

Anyways, I went to post some pictures... and my picture upload bar is missing? I looked into this (read: I googled it) and apparently this is happening right now? On lots of people's blogs? Is it happening to you, too? It's seriously irritating, I'll tell ya' that.

So, since I can't post any new pictures and update you on what's been going on (don't get excited: the answer to that is pretty much nothing), I'm going to take this chance to post some pictures from Matt and Blakley's wedding via Facebook. The pictures finally came in and they are GORGEOUS! And, I wanted to do a post to share them so... now's as good a time as any, right?