W is for Winners

Thanks to everyone who entered my 200 Followers Giveaway.

I enjoyed reading all of your summer projects. It makes me feel like I'm not crazy for my long list of teacher to-dos. =)

Congratulations to these winners!

I have contacted you ladies!

Don't forget my Teachers Pay Teachers store is 20% off until tonight.

 Thank you, again, for reading my blog.

P.S. Go enter The Tattooed Teacher's 500 Followers giveaway! I hope I reach that many one day.

Have a great weekend!


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T is for Two Hundred!

Wooohooo! I'm at 200 followers! That is so exciting to me. Let's do a giveaway!

I want there to be three winners. Here are the three prizes:

Since it's summer and we're all adding to our wishlists...the first prize will be a $25 gift certificate for Teachers Pay Teachers.

The second prize will be $10 for Amazon.com. You can get some of those books on your reading list!

The third prize will be 5 things from my TPT shop. You pick!

Enter using PunchTab. The THREE winners will be chosen on Saturday. 

I'm also going to run a 20% off sale in my TPT shop until Saturday.

Thanks for following!



 

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S is for Summer Scheme

I've got to put all my goals down in writing so I can stay on top of them. I sometimes wish I could just turn my teacher brain off for the summer, but it just isn't that easy. I mean, seriously! Look at my list of goals (in no particular order):

1. Catch-up on my blog stalking. My Google Reader says 1000+ and that's just plain sad!

2. Organize my Dropbox files. Have you heard of Dropbox? It's amazing. My world would be over if Dropbox disappeared (that so sounded like a commercial).

 

3. Organize my classroom library using Booksource's Classroom organizer. I love that students can check out my books from my classroom library using our iPad/iPods.

4. Make 2nd Grade Treasures centers for Units 1-3. I started on Unit 3 Week 5 and went through Unit 6. Time to go back and start at the beginning of the year. Thanks to you Treasures users who buy my centers on Teachers Pay Teachers.

 5. Make some Take-Home Math packets that include games that can be played by one person. I've made some that need two players, but there are so many students who have no one to play games with at home. Anybody know of resources for 1-player math games?

6. Study some more Whole Brain Teaching ideas. I've been scouring their website and following blogs of teachers who use WBT. I used a few strategies at the end of the year last year and LOVED it. Anybody else a WBT user?

7. Read and study "The Leader In Me". I want to incorporate the "7 Habits of Happy Kids" into my classroom. There is not enough to be said about helping young learners become leaders.

8. Create some of the things on my Pinterest boards. Summer is the perfect time to make those awesome things I've pinned and have been meaning to make already.

9. Reach 200 followers! I've slacked off on posting and that means  haven't gotten many new followers. I want to do a giveaway!

10. Do non school stuff. (I've been pretty good at this one so far.)

If you have any input/suggestions on my list, please leave me a comment! I love hearing your ideas!

O is for OVER!

Today was the last day of my 7th year of teaching! I guess time DOES fly when you're having fun. Although, truthfully, there were some days when I never thought I'd live to see my eighth year.

Traditionally, I've done two things for my darlings on the last day. We open up our time capsule and I give them a small gift.

It's so much fun to see the physical growth my students make. We spend so much time on data, data, data and watching those numbers grown that we forget how small and cute our darlings really were are.

The first week of school, I have my students write their names as neatly as they can on a name tag. They also have to fill out an info sheet (with minimal spelling help). We trace their hands and cut a string to their height. I put it all in a Ziploc and store it until the last day of school.

I love watching their faces when they see their change in height. We also get a kick out of their handwriting and spelling improvement.

Here is an example of one of ours:

He grew about an inch and a half! We told him he grew more forehead.

I should have been scared when I saw this page. We finally got him to stop talking about violent things around never January.

 Goat meat? Black? Call of Duty? Weight - Strong? That really did crack me up today.

Since I've gotten into creating products for TPT, I've made new pages I'll use next year. Click the picture to get them in my shop for $1.00.

If you don't do a time capsule with your class, I highly recommend it.

I also give out treat cups. I don't remember where I got the idea since there was no such thing as Pinterest then, but I am thankful to the wonderful person who created it. The darlings always love it.

Tomorrow, I pack up my classroom for the summer and then it's 3(ish) months of fun!

I'm so excited that it starts with a blogger meet-up! Yay!

Happy Tuesday!

UPDATE: I caught several more crickets this morning and even found one in my teacher bag when I got home today. They have until tomorrow to save themselves or they are trapped in the portable for the summer!

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C is for Cricket Craziness

My classroom door was unlocked when I got to it this morning. That was not a good sign. We've had a break in this year and I was ready to see a (more than usual) ransacked room and missing electronics.

Keep in mind that I'm in a portable (see picture in header) and let's just say Fort Knox it's not. I was scared.

To my surprise, the laptop was still where I left it. However, I heard a symphony of cricket chirps. It was deafening.

I was so confused. I turned on the light and this is what I saw.

I couldn't believe it! Someone put crickets in my room and they were everywhere! Tens upon tens of them! Who would do such a thing?!

I knew right away they aren't your regular black crickets. They were those pesky little brown ones you get for fishing bait. I know this because I'm a country girl. They are extra feisty because they know they are doomed to be fish food. This was not a circumstance in which critters got in my room over the weekend.

So what did I do you ask? I went and ate the yummy breakfast my team made for me and my (summer birthday sharing) teammate and left the crickets to their chirps.

When I came back it was with 17 (very excited on the day before the last day) darlings. 15 of them ran straight toward the sounds coming from the bookshelf. It was complete chaos as little hands started grabbing crickets and screaming when they caught one. There were hands being stepped on. Foreheads being knocked together and the sounds of chirps and laughter. My head was very close to exploding.

I gained some control of the situation and grabbed the (very much needed in Florida) net. If you can't beat them...join them I guess.

After I caught a few, I put a buddy in charge. He sat there with the net in one hand and a book in the other waiting for one of the little chirpers to be brave enough to come out.

Those suckers were loud! How were we supposed to get any of our end of the year stuff done with all of that racket?

Crickets


We even made a sign for the door.

I was too busy to think about who would have done this to me so I sent out this email to staff (professional, I know).

When I came back from lunch this was on my table.

When I came back from recess, this was on my table.

Then, randomly aged children started bringing more things to my room. By the time I came back from our AR celebration, this is what my stash looked like.

Despite having my request fulfilled, I was still wondering what made someone do this to me! By now we've captured about 13 crickets.

Since the crickets seemed to be mostly in my classroom library, this was our solution.

Not exactly the plan I had for packing them up, but that sure was a way to get the books off the shelf.

My favorite comments of the day: "Uh...we gotta cricket situation over here."
and
"{Yawn!} These chirps are making me so sleepy!"

I made my darlings say goodbye to the remaining crickets and I left to car rider line.

My coworkers asked me if I figured out the culprit, but I was still stumped. They asked what I had done to someone else recently (they know me so well) and I just couldn't think of anyone I've pranked lately.

I gathered some staff kids and moved the bookshelf out from the wall. I expected a few more. Imagine my surprise when there were about 7 more back there. And of course, they wanted to hide behind that gray pipe. I am surprised the dust bunnies did not scare them out of there!

My helpers and I high-fived each other after a solid 5 minutes of no chirping.

Then...it came to me. I KNOW who did this. It HAD to be a fellow country girl. Mostly because the rest of my friends wouldn't touch a cricket if they had to.

She had warned me there would be payback for texting her this picture while she was out of town for the long weekend.

Mind you I was NOT the one holding the toilet paper. Plus I was NOT the one holding the phone and taking this picture. I (could have) innocently jumped in the picture as an innocent bystander.

After I figured out this was that payback my friend warned me about, I sent her this text message. I am the blue one.

So the mystery is solved. I don't know how it took me so long to figure it out! Yes, she is still alive. I do have lots of chocolate after all. And I did need to get started packing up my classroom.

As I was walking out this afternoon, I heard a faint chirping from the math shelf. I guess the fun will continue tomorrow (WOOHOO! THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!) and we'll get the last of those crickets.

Who knows where it may end up. Sometimes one very sneakily hidden one can be more annoying that tens of tens of them. =)

I hope your Monday was not as "chirpy" as mine.



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