Those Things That Make you Say "Ahhh"

We only have 4 weeks of school after this week.  Can you believe it?!  I can't.  It has seriously flown by.  I'm not sure if I have spent it running around like a chicken with my head cut off or enjoying it more.  It's a toss up.  This warm weather is giving my kids all of us the itch to get outside and not be in the classroom.  I'd be lying if I said I hadn't given a thought about how wonderful going to rec programs and the pool with Macy and Jace sounds.

Along with this nice weather being one of those "Ahh" moments, theres been many more.  Here's a run down!

**My kids are reading!  I mean, really reading and I couldn't be more proud and happier for them!!  Ahh!!

**They are putting in lots of effort.  Ahh!!

**They are following directions---for the most part!  Ahhhhhhhh!

**They are getting better at problem solving and letting the little things go!  ( I could spend my whole day micromanaging their lives like they ask.)  Ahh!

**Light bulbs are flashing on all over the place in their little brains!   Some of the things that I have repeated and repeated are starting to click and when they do my kiddos give me the Ahh! sound!

** My laminator!  I'm a laminating fool and it makes things so nice and neat!! Ahh!

**Routines!  Now that we only have 21 (Did you read that?  21!!) days of school left, we are in a pretty good routine!  Ahh!

**Outside runs, yard work, tractors in the field, gardening, and so on!  You name it, I like things oh-so-much-better when I can be outside.  Ahhhh!

**Kerstin and I started our garden (inside for now)!  Now, the guys are supposed to be building us a bed.  Bets on how long it will take? 

**One of my final reading endorsement classes wraps up this weekend!  Ahhhhhhh!! Only one more trip to Des Moines for a while!  Ahh!

**Target's new summer line with lots of sun dresses!! I may or may not have spent WAY to much money there after church on Sunday.  The feeling of a hot classroom though isn't welcoming to anyone though.  Ahh!

**Sandals. Enough said!  Ahhh!

**My family and friends that have supported my through this first 158 days of my teaching career.  I certainly couldn't have done it without you! Ahh!

Happy Birthday to Our Angel!

Happy Birthday to You

Happy Birthday to You

Happy Birthday dear Taylor Lynn

Happy Birthday to You!!!

While some of you may know, I am sure some of you don't!  Kolton and I have a sister that was born between us.  Today would mark her 21st birthday!  Taylor was born with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome.  In a nut shell, she was born with just a little more than half of her heart.  To top it off, she also had Situs Inversus, meaning some of her organs were backwards.  I also was born with this except for all of my organs are backwards so I have no problems with it.  She was also born with 9 spleens.  We normally are born with 1.  My parents learned of most of this when my mom was 20 weeks pregnant and visited Mayo clinic regularly for the remainder of her pregnancy.  They knew she would have an uphill battle to fight but were ready to face it.

At just two days old, Taylor underwent her first of three surgeries in the Norwood Process.  These three surgeries were supposed to fix her heart and help here live a normal life.  In 1992, there was a 70% chance that babies would survive this surgery.  My little sister went into surgery and never came off of the Heart-Lung machine.  On April 24th, 1992,  Taylor earned her angel wings.

Twenty-one years later, the odds are much better for children to survive with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome thanks to a lot of research.  I follow many heart blogs that share success stories and also the pain of losing a child to HPLS.  It's heart wrenching and exciting all at the same time to see the paths these families have taken.  I pray for many of the families regularly, that surgeries go well, that they can find peace that their child is now pain free, and for the kiddos' hearts to keep on a ticking.

The jealous part of me wishes I could have grown up with her but in reality, I know that she has been with me every step of the way and that I have my very own guardian angel.  I know she is there to listen and watch over me.  Either way, it doesn't make it less hard or emotional.  This is a rough one to say the least!

Happy Birthday, Taylor!  I wish we could enjoy a drink together and celebrate your 21st birthday!  I am sure you are having one heck of a party up in Heaven!!  Party on little miss!  I love you and miss you to pieces!

Butterfly Parts of Speech

Parts of speech are confusing, just like our English language!  Nouns and verbs are the simplest pieces but even verb spelling gets tricky because we have rule breakers and some verbs are different words completely.

Add adverbs, adjectives, and now prepositions into the mix and 7 year old start forgetting what each one means!  The truth is, as adults I'd bet money on most people not knowing what those terms mean but just know how to use them in a sentence.  Here's a little run down.  Adverbs are words that tell when some thing happened--first, next, then, last, etc.  Adjectives are our describing words--blonde, blue, round, large, etc.  Our latest speech part is prepositions.  These tell where a noun is at compared to  another noun--The butterfly flew under the flower.

We are getting pretty good at being able to list them about certain objects, places, things and whatnot but identifying these in a sentences is still pretty tricky!  Once they get confused, then even our nouns become verbs, they start throwing other terms such at synonyms and antonyms in there and we have to slow down a bit!

While we spent a lot of this week working on prepositions, I make sure to have them review the others as well.  I read the book Buterflies! by Darlene Freeman to them and stopped to ask what certain words were to help give some ideas for our activity.  It is a non-fiction book so it was loaded with all of the words that we were going to need.

Our first step was to assemble our butterflies!  Must have taken this one a little sideways.

Each wing part then had to be labeled with a part of speech (noun, verb, adverb, adjective, and the body was prepositions).

Then, it was on to coming up with words under each category that explain a butterfly or a butterflies life.  Here were our rules: nouns had to be butterfly body parts, adjectives had to explain what a butterfly looked like, adverbs had to help tell the life cycle of a butterfly, verbs had to be things a butterfly does, and prepositions had to explain where a butterfly could go.

They got to work with a partner or in a small group to help come up with words.

They were encouraged to go back into the book and look for spellings and exact words.

And we added some pipe cleaners to spice them up a little! :-) 

Have a great weekend!  I'm off to Des Moines for class tonight and tomorrow--I can hardly contain my excitement!

Rocks, Sand, and Silt

Our new Science unit has us exploring lots of rocks!  My kiddos have been sorting them, looking at them with magnifying glasses, washing them, and comparing and contrasting them.  I've never seen so many littles be so excited about a rock!

They have been doing most of the work all on their own.  I have quite the little observers!

Now, if we could only get over the tattling about little things....

We started everything off by creating a KWL chart.

They had a pretty good idea about rocks (or at least they thought they did) :-) but man does silt have them stumped!  Also in this picture is their first observations about the three rocks they looked at.

 Look at this!!! 

So exciting!

They loved this!  All of this is part of a FOSS kit so I can't take credit for any of these genius ideas.  They were pretty amazed at how the rocks look bigger under water and you can make them look HUGE with your magnifying glass. :-)

They worked together, were excited, and were great little investigators!

I had them write their observations on the board and we made a class anchor chart when we got everything cleaned up.

We did a butterfly activity today as well so check back tomorrow to see some of their work!  Have a great Thursday night...tomorrow's Friday!!

Things That Make My Day!

I'd be lying if I said each and every day was glorious, that I loved my job every single minute, or that there weren't days that I went home totally defeated.  I have these, its true.  But on the flip side, a large majority almost all of my days are awesome, I love my job, and there are many things that just make me smile!

Here's a list of those "make my day" moments!

**Notes on my desk or handed to me about how much they love me!  What great little spellers and writers I am getting!

**A quiet classroom of working little bodies

**A genuin hug from one of my munchkins.

**Being called mom.  I know this may sound crazy but it makes me feel as if they really value my presence.  Yes, I know it is partially out of habit.

**Being a shoulder to cry on when someone is sad.

**The lightbulb flicker on in one of my student's minds.  Man, does the excitement soar when this happens!

**Students that are willing to try difficult things.

**Good behaving students.

**Specials--art, music, PE, guidance...

**OUTSIDE recess and nice weather---all of this rain has us cramped up inside and boy does it make for a long day

**A loving boyfriend that will listen to me brag, complain, cry, vent, and the list goes on.

** A really hard workout---always starts my day off on the right foot!

**Advocare Spark!  Man do I love this stuff!



Eeekkk, this inside recess is about over and I've heard enough animal noises to last me a while!  Better go teach math! :-)

Have a great day in this rain!

~Toodles

Spring Fever!

We have welcomed this spring weather with open arms!  Nothing yells Iowa spring more than 70 degree and sunny yesterday, thunderstorms and rain all day today, and the possibility of snow on Thursday.  I am praying to the good man upstairs that he keeps that white stuff away!

We have been talking a lot about the weather, storms, and using our descriptive words to explain all of them!  I don't have anything real cute or crafty to share but man-o-man have we been hard at work.  Writing complete sentences is tough, not very fun for them, and I've became a bully at making them make lots of corrections.

Here are some funnies, cute stories, saying, and more from the past week or two. (Not only from my classroom but life in general.

• Mr. Wonderful and myself at back at 5am class at Next Level Extreme Fitness.  I absolutely love the mornings.  My alarm goes off at the butt crack of dawn and I am ready to get the day going.  I am reminded of how much Gavin is not a morning person.  I hide carefully in the bathroom/closet when I attempt to wake him.

• I fold a load and start a new load each morning before workouts.  I pray that Gavin remembers to switch it over when he gets home from workouts.  Every once in a while, I rewash loads of laundry.

• I'm on an even bigger health kick and am attempting to follow a Paleo diet.  No sugar, No grains, No dairy.  While some of these are on the healthy side, many of them have been proven to cause health issues and are often very processed.  I'll keep you updated.

• I crawl into bed once in a while and wonder at what point it is too early to go to bed....Gavin seems to think that any time before 8 is.  I like to remind him of what time my alarm goes off each morning.

• I had two munchkins switch desks today in the afternoon seeing if I would notice.  I didn't.  Whoops...they were pretty proud of themselves!

• I attempted to double dutch jump rope out at recess saying that I used to be able to.  Needless to say, I about lost my head.

• I couldn't be more proud of how well behaved my kiddos have been lately.  We are pulling things together after a rough couple of weeks.

• I am now selling Advocare.  Sales promo:  If you would like to know more about the products or  order any of them, let me know!  I would love to help you on your nutrition or weight loss journey.

• We have been covering the Food Pyramid for a couple of weeks.  I wish I could talk to my class about it all day long.

• My class has become quite the group of readers and it almost makes me tear up!  I am so proud of them!

• Girlfriends and boyfriends at 7 years old?!?!  What?! We've had to make some different seating arrangements!

• We read the Magic Tree House Book Civil War on Sunday and boy were they intrigued.  I definitely wasn't prepared to answer all of their questions but managed!

• I have fully implemented 5 round of the Daily 5 into my classroom and my children are in LOVE!!  We have always done bits and pieces but I dove in head over heals and wonder why I didn't earlier.

• I LOVE LOVE LOVE getting to run outside instead of on the dreadmill!  Simbah loves to get to tag along.  He is getting much better at not acting like a dork when I hook his leash up.  He still loves to stop and chat with the kids at the park though.
• Mud, mud, mud everywhere!  My kids at school track it in.  My dogs at home track it in.  Gavin refuses to take his boots off and tracks it in.  It's a losing battle!

• It rained!  My uncle and dad and any other farmer have to be having a good day!

• It rained!  I had 15 kiddos glued to my window the minute they walked in this morning like they hadn't ever seen it.  They again were glued to the window when it hailed.  (I had a minor heart attach!)  They were then glued to my side when a huge crack of thunder scare the living day lights out of them!

• I love my job!  

• We are 143 days into the school year.  I only have 36 days left of my first year of teaching and I can't believe how fast it has gone.  Its been a whirlwind to say the least!

• I am truly blessed!  God is good!

Have a great rest of your week! ~Toodles!