Fake It Til You Make It

I thought being a grown up was supposed to be easy.  You were through with all of that "teen angst" stuff and didn't have to spend time self-reflecting and thinking about the kind of person you wanted to be.  Being an adult meant you WERE the person you wanted to be and that was that.  Right?

Well, I must be revisiting my angsty-teen self because I've been doing a lot of self reflecting lately.  And it's kind of gross.  I mean, who actually likes the idea of digging deep into your personality and analyzing the traits that made you do or say the thing that you lay awake at night replaying in your head wondering if it was alright?

Not me, I'll tell you that much.

But, regardless of liking it, it's exactly what I've been doing lately.  I've been thinking a lot about how I treat other people, why I do the things that I do, and (maybe most importantly) if those things that I do are aligned with my personal values, my hopes for my kids, and of course - because I'm a teacher - my classroom rules.

One of my classroom rules that I've always been most proud of is:

I feel very strongly that we owe it to each other to be kind, always.  And I've always thought that we should play by that old rule that our moms teach us: "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."  But I have a big mouth - a VERY big mouth - and a quick wit with a slow filter.  The result? I end up saying all sorts of junk that isn't very kind and that I probably should have kept to myself.  Point being -- I can't live by this rule, so how can I expect a classroom of angsty pre-teens to live by it?  So ultimately, the problem must be with me: how can I teach myself to be silent instead of snarky?

There are several people in my life that I think aren't very nice.  They're grouchy.  They don't say hello when people enter a room.  They don't laugh at my jokes.  And, maybe the worst violation of all: they ignore me.  When I speak to them, they don't reply.  They're silent.

For weeks now I've been considering that maybe they just don't know how to be kind to other people.  Maybe they missed that part of Kindergarten when they learned social skills and how to play nice with others.  But this morning it hit me:  They're silent.  Silent.  As in: If you can't be kind, be silent.

Maybe they're purposely silent because they can't be nice to me.  Maybe they're better at following my rule than I am.


Well.  I rolled that idea around in my head for a while, and let me tell you, I didn't like that at all.  First, how could they not like me?  I'm pretty awesome.  And secondly, how could they actually be better at my kind vs. silent rule than me?!  I made the rule, so I should be inherently good at it.  And thirdly (and most importantly, because the third point is ALWAYS the most important)....if they ARE being silent in lieu of being unkind.....and if that was making me feel so uncomfortable and upset.....then is that really a rule I want to have in my classroom - or in my life?!!!

I'm sure you're wondering how I respond to this silent treatment.  I wish I could say that I respond like a grown up (because I AM a grown up....) and that I simply move on (because, after all, being silent is better than being unkind).

But that would be a lie.

I can't handle cold silence, so I fill it....with obnoxious, happy chatter.  I reply to their silence with chipper, perky excitement, and I just pretend that they're happy about it and eagerly awaiting the next time we get to hang out together.  (What's more grown up than that?!)


Meanwhile, on bus duty....

One of my former students (she's an 8th grader now) stopped me yesterday as she was getting on the bus.  "I have to tell you this story," she said.

(This is why I go out to the buses every afternoon.  It's not "required" duty. so to speak, but it makes the afternoon bus lane safer to have a teacher out there, and it means that I get to see some of my former students...and sometimes they stop to tell me awesome stories like this one.)

"We were reading this book with Mrs. Griffen and she said, 'Mrs. Yeagle taught you this word last year, remember? It starts with an 'F'....' Well, the word was foreshadowing, Mrs. Yeagle, but Kaden said, 'Fake it til you make it!' instead!"

We both had a good laugh over that one, and as I waved goodbye to her I felt pretty good.  Sure, he hadn't remembered foreshadowing, but he had remembered the life lesson I'd instilled in the class:  Fake it til you make it.  And really, what's more important, life lessons or literary terms?  (Don't answer that.....)

Fake it til you make it becomes our mantra in 6th grade right around this time every year.  Hormones are raging wild and no one wants to be nice to anyone else.  The rowdy boys don't want to go to specials, the girls don't want to sit next to each other, and no one has anything encouraging to say to anyone.  It's ugly.  But, we fake it til we make it.  No one has to know that we hate PE or music class, and no one needs to know that we secretly wish that the girl next to us would be sick for a week so we had a break from her - we just have to paste a fake smile on, act with more positivity and enthusiasm than ever before, and pretend to enjoy everything.  And it works.  They get kicked out of music less, enjoy PE again, and forget to be snotty to each other because they're all too focused on faking their way to niceness.


So flash back to this conundrum about my kind/silent rule and it's possible implementation on me.

I'm not a "kind or silent" type person.  Turns out I'm actually more of a "kind....or obnoxiously kind" type person.  And while I don't think I can actually make my classroom rule ("Be Kind....and if you can't be kind, be obnoxiously kind") I DO think that I need to change my rule to something a little more reasonable for us all - and to something that doesn't encourage my students to be silent and rude to each other.  So, new rule:  "Be Kind.  And if you can't be kind, fake it til you make it."  I much prefer the idea of my classroom being full of kids being overly (and possibly fake...) peppy than kids sitting in silence and ignoring one another.  And ultimately, the happier they pretend to be, the happier they will eventually become because it's nearly impossible to fake happiness and not start feeling just a little bit of real happiness as a side effect.

Maybe we all need to remember to fake it til we make it.  We could fake our way into a happier day every day!

At least be sure to fake it with me because the whole silent thing totally stresses me out....

Back to School Jitters

It's back to school time.

One of my college sorority sisters in Kentucky (hi Steph!) sent her little peanut off to her first day of Kindergarten earlier this week.  Another sorority sister in Florida (Hi Trisha!) sent her baby girl to Kindergarten, too.  And my best friend's oldest sister (Hi Jessica!) in Nebraska sent her two oldest boys to school just yesterday.

Yes, Facebook has confirmed what Target has been telling me for weeks: it is officially back to school time, no matter what part of the nation you live in!!! But I didn't need Facebook or Target to tell me that because I'm a teacher, and we've had that "back to school" feeling since July.

For everyone else, the Back to School Jitters settle in somewhere around mid-August when it's absolutely do or die time for school supply shopping (we were out yesterday and let me just say good luck finding a 3-subject notebook on the shelves!) and the excitement of class lists starts bustling through the neighborhood (our class lists go up today!).  Parents and students alike start feeling that nervous feeling about a new school year because, let's face it, new school years mean LOTS of new questions and procedures.  The kids start to wonder if their new teachers will like them, while the parents start wondering if the new teachers are going to give out as much homework as the old teachers.  The kids wonder what new books they'll read and how much cursive they'll have to write, how much computer time they'll get and what day library check out will be.  Parents begin fretting over the costs of school registration and setting up parent-teacher conferences and what if the new teachers don't call home as much - or worse, what if they call home TOO MUCH???  And what if the new teacher doesn't let kids have water bottles in class or doesn't take bathroom breaks or what if MY BEST FRIEND ISN'T IN MY CLASS THIS YEAR???!!!!!

Yes, there are plenty of things to panic about.

And now, I'm going to let everyone in on a huge secret, one that will probably break the sacred code of teachers.....

Teachers worry about all those things, too.

Seriously, I just got the LAST class of kids conditioned!  They laughed at all my jokes, knew when they should sit down and be quiet, had finally stopped asking what time lunch was, and recognized both the joke and the truth in our class motto: It's all about Mrs. Yeagle.  They "got" me.

What if the new class doesn't like me? What if they don't think I'm funny?  What if they can't read my cursive?  What if the new parents want me to call home more often - or worse, what if they want me to call home LESS???  What day will library check out be and what if I forget to have the kids change into their PE shoes and what if I run out of slots for parent-teacher conferences and what if MY BEST FRIEND DOESN'T HAVE LUNCH WITH ME THIS YEAR????!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, friends, teachers also get the Back To School Jitters.  Big time.

As for the student-parent jitters, it's OK.  I have read some recent posts about how difficult it is for parents to hand their kids over to someone else for 8 hours a day - especially those first timers, sending their first babies off to the big, wild world of Kindergarten.  I feel for you - I'm sending my shy, gentle-natured Charlie off to Kindergarten this year, and I'm worried.  He gets scared in new situations and doesn't always make friends easily.  He doesn't like loud noises (even though he is the loudest one in the house!) and he can take 90 minutes to eat one piece of toast and a yogurt tube, so this 15 minute lunch thing is not going to work out....

But it'll be alright, because I know the kind of person I'm sending him to and I know she'll take care of him.  It'll break my heart when I have to read the email that he cried for 20 minutes on the letter rug during center time, but even getting that email will mean one very important thing: his teacher noticed he was crying and did something about it because she cares for him, too.

And this is important for us all to remember: your child's teacher may not be you, but your child's teacher cares for him and will always have his best interest in mind.

Teachers aren't perfect, and I guarantee that I'll mess up at least once this school year.....ok, at least 50,000 times.....but we DO care and we DO try our best to help your children succeed.   So let me calm your fears:

I'll be there when your baby comes in after recess crying because the other girls were mean to her, and I'll hug her tight and remind her that she's wonderful inside and out and that she can't let other people make her feel like she's any less than that.  And I'll be there when your buddy fails his math test because he doesn't understand fractions, and I'll remind him that I myself have failed a math test or two and that I turned out OK and I'll walk him next door to set up a one-on-one tutoring time with the math teacher.  And I'll be there to preview your child's library books (too easy....too hard...too mature...hey, did you get this from the junior high side of the library?!...) and to help him pack his bookbag so he's not late for the bus and to celebrate with her after winning first chair in the band challenge.  AND I'll be there to see them holding hands on the playground.....and I'll be the one to remind them that holding hands is PDA, and we don't do that at school.

And tell your kids it'll be OK, too.  Yes, they'll have to write in cursive, but Mrs. Yeagle isn't some sort of handwriting Nazi, so we will make it work.  We'll have some extra computer time, but not much, and library check out will probably be on Friday.  Water bottles are allowed at your lockers only, bathroom breaks happen after PE and lunch, and if your best friend isn't in your class, it will still be OK....I promise.

School is stressful for everyone, but if we all work together we can make it through. Let's make the deal that I won't judge you when your child's assignment book comes back to class unsigned a time or two, and you won't judge me when you see me in the grocery store check-out line with my bottle of wine and bag of Oreos....

The new school year is starting - sooner than I think we'd all like - but hopefully your Back to School Jitters have calmed.

Now, can somebody PLEASE calm mine down??!!!

Less IS More

School's starting in a few weeks.

There.  I said it.  School is starting, and summer is slipping away a lot faster than I'd like to admit. 

I made a short stop in my classroom yesterday, just to drop off some boxes of things that had accumulated in my house since May, and as I looked around the semi-empty classroom I started feeling pretty overwhelmed with everything that needs to be done before August 18: nametags, seating charts, locker tags, posters reattached to the walls, safety maps and rules posted, last year's vocab words removed from the word wall, my parent brochure and website updated.....  Sometimes it gets to be too much!

Kind of like those darn My Little Ponies....it's just too much!

Somewhere along the lines, education turned away from the idea of teaching something for mastery and instead began focusing on teaching for exposure - kind of like buying 35 My Little Ponies instead of really enjoying 1 or 2.  So, instead of teaching a few skills all year long until the students can practically complete those tasks in their sleep, we started skimming through things: teaching many, many skills in the course of a year and never actually stopping to consider if the students actually mastered any of them.

I'm definitely guilty of this.  It's so easy to look at a novel or a chapter in the textbook and think about all the millions of activities we could do instead of considering which activities would be best suited to the topics or novel at hand.  Even this summer as I sat down to tweak my Reading curriculum and create a new Language Arts curriculum, things began ballooning wildly out of control until my yearly overview looked more like I was teaching for 12 hours a day instead of just 7. 

Less IS more.  So, I've gone back to my curricula to consider where I could pare things down and teach for mastery instead of exposure.  A few less new texts, a few less huge writing projects, a lot more time for student mastery.  Less is more.

I'm also guilty of saying, "You did this last year, so you don't need me to reteach it, and we'll just breeze over it..."  It's easy to do, and easy to assume that a topic covered in a previous year is already mastered.  But if I just admitted to teaching for exposure rather than mastery.....chances are pretty good that my colleagues are doing the same.  And it's no one's fault - we've been conditioned to believe that we must teach every standard every day, and this means that we are often frantically throwing more and more skills into a single project, leaving little room for mastery of one skill, let alone 10.  And this idea that they're experts because they passed the previous year just makes for trouble...

Yesterday I sliced open a peach that we had picked off the tree in our yard.  I started by peeling the skin off - my kids hate the fuzzy texture - and then started shearing off some of the juicy flesh.  (The pit had a large crack in it, so I wasn't going to just cut it down the middle and separate it like I normally would.)  At first, everything was fine.  I shaved off a few more slivers of yellow peach, just dropping them right into the bowl, when suddenly a long black earwig came wriggling out of the pit.  I gasped - because seriously, earwigs are disgusting - and barely had time to inhale before ANOTHER EARWIG game sliding out of the pit.  AND THEN ANOTHER.

Cue the hyperventilating.

It's not like I'm scared of earwigs.  They can't really hurt me.  But dang there were just so many of them!!!  So, there I am carrying this bowl full of peaches and earwigs to the kitchen sink, screaming, whimpering, gasping...and of course LAUGHING because it's so ridiculous to be completely losing my mind over a few earwigs.  That peach pit was like a clown car - it seemed that with every step I took another earwig was squirming his way out of it to see what the commotion was about.

Thank God for garbage disposals is all I can say.

Anyway, that disgusting clown-car of a peach pit is kind of like what happens in my classroom when I say (either out loud or in my head), "You did this last year, so we won't spend much time on it..."  The small issues and skill gaps start pouring out, and soon I'm covered in itchy little pests that all need my attention before we can move on.  (And the missing skills are way harder to take care of than a bunch of slimy earwigs!)

Less is more, and taking the time to teach for mastery - and to check for prior knowledge before jumping into something! - is going to make my school year a lot better off.  For instance, I'm spending the first 4-5 weeks of my Language curriculum working on complete sentences and summary writing.  You're probably saying, "But Karisa, you each SIXTH grade.  Surely you don't need to review complete sentences and summarizing??"

Remember that peach pit full of earwigs? 

The past few years I thought the same thing: a quick review of complete sentences, a glance at summaries, and we'd be good to go, ready to move onto higher level skills and major essay construction.  And then there I was in mid-November backtracking to review those very same ideas that I had assumed the kids already had mastered.  Not this year, friends. 

Aesop was pretty wise when he wrote that story about the tortoise and the hare: slow and steady will win the race, and starting the year off with a gentle but in-depth review of some basic skills might slow me down, but will surely save me time and headache in the end.

So, yes, school is starting in a few weeks.  Two, if you want to put a REAL numerical value to it. 

But, I'm actually kind of excited about it.  It's a new school year where I can start off fresh and make changes and try new things.  And this year I have very big new things to try - like my two new mantras:

Less IS more.

Slow and steady.

New school year?  I got this.  

Peach pit full of earwigs?  We're going to  need some help....

Hello, my name is Karisa...and I have an addiction.

I have an addiction.  An addiction to My Little Ponies.

Maybe it's their cute little twinkly eyes, or their wonderfully brushable hair, or those adorable little "cutie marks" on their hips.  Whatever it is that makes me so addicted to these little rainbow colored forms of molded plastic, I can't kick the habit.  Even as an adult, walking through the pony aisle at the toy store is a dangerous thing for me:


MLP Addict Karisa: Look at this one! It's from that Super Hero Pony episode!

Mature Adult Karisa: Yes, yes she is.

MLP Addict Karisa:  She's the bad guy! And!!!! Look at Spike!  He's SOOOOO little and cute...with a super hero mask!!!

Mature Adult Karisa: He is awfully cute.....but NO! We don't need him....

MLP Addict Karisa:  SHE'S ON CLEARANCE!!!!  50% off!

Mature Adult Karisa:  But we have literally a hundred ponies already......  What?!  CLEARANCE??!!!




After spending a few days at my mom's house sorting through my worldly possessions and deciding what childhood memorabilia made the cut to transition to my own home, it's finally started to sink in just how many My Little Ponies I have accumulated over the years.  It's no joke that my room as a kid (and even into my teen years, if I'm being honest...) looked a lot like this:

Ponies on top of ponies, baby ponies and glittery ponies and rainbow ponies and sea ponies and boy ponies and ponies with braids and hats and rhinestones for eyes....  After years at college, the ponies had been delegated to a large blue Rubbermaid tub (and when I say large, I mean LARGE...like the size normal people store winter coats in), and when it was time to trek home from our time at my mom's, we threw them into a bag (a MLP duffle bag....) to bring them back home so Ollie could play with them.

Not all of them fit into the duffle bag.  And the giant pony stable, the hat boutique, the perfume spa, the ice cream shop shoe....these certainly didn't fit either.  Which means there is a huge bag of MLP at my house...and probably 20 more still at my mom's, sitting in the giant blue Rubbermaid along with all of the play sets just waiting for the next trip North so they can be reunited with their MLP friends.

Why couldn't I just give them away you ask? After living 10+ years without these little plastic beauties, why do I need them back?  Because I am a My Little Pony addict, remember?

And it must be genetic because Ollie has it too.

On the three hour drive home, Mature Adult Karisa had time to consider some things, and it occurred to her that we definitely have NO room at our home for a collection of retro ponies, even if they are adorable and glittery.  (Score one for Mature Adult Karisa.)  So when we arrived, I set Ollie to the task of sorting through the ponies to decide which ones she wanted to keep and which ones she knew she wouldn't play with.

She found TWO to give away.

TWO.

Out of probably 35 ponies, she could only part with TWO.  And why?

Because we are MLP junkies, that's why.  Completely, totally addicted, just waiting for our next fix whether it's in the toy aisle at Target or the basement of Nonnie's house...WE NEED PONIES!!!!  MORE PONIES!!!!  ALL THE PONIES!!!!


......Oh. .....My.   .......Gosh.



This week, we went (sans kids) to a Cubs game at Wrigley, my husband's first trip to The Friendly Confines.  Taking the hubs to the game got me thinking about my own trips to Wrigley - the night game during the homerun race between Sosa and McGuire when I missed Sosa's homerun because I was at the concession stand getting a pretzel... the game when we got the Cracker Jack hat at the give away tent... the time we stood outside the players' entrance and got our hats signed by some rookie (who turned out to be pretty unimportant in terms of baseball but made for a great memory)... the time the bird pooped on my head and my friend, Mark, called me "Poopy Head" for the entire rest of the day...

And then I started thinking about the ponies.

That purple one, that unicorn with the yellow hair.....why was she important again?  The glittery one with the rocket on her hip....what was so special about her?  That flutter pony with the bright yellow (and tangled) hair....the one I ruined in the bathtub....why did I keep her all these years?

Out of the probably 35 ponies, could I remember a significant detail about any of them?

Not really.

And as I look around at my own house right now, I'm starting to realize something.  Of all these toys the kids have - the dolls and ponies and dragons and hot wheels and DVDs and puzzles - what kinds of memories have we been making?  Will they look back at their piles of things twenty years from now and feel like me......overwhelmed......nostalgic.....and slightly guilty about not wanting to keep everything my parents so kindly bought for me in my youth?

Spending time in the gridlock traffic after the Cubs game (which they won 12-1, btw...), Jonathan and I started talking about all the things that we still wanted to do: see the Grand Canyon, take the kids to Wrigley, visit both oceans, own a giant, furry dog named Captain Frederick Pabst (who, Jonathan claims, will probably eat the cat...), spend a week at Disney World...

There are so many things that we want to do, so many memories that we want to make, and my addiction to small plastic ponies (and his addiction to random DVDs!) isn't helping us get there.  No matter how cute they are and how fun they seem on Christmas morning or after a long morning grocery shopping, tiny trinkets aren't making lasting memories that any of us will look back on fondly.  ("Oh hey!!Remember when you bought me this Hot Wheels car?  It must have been Saturday July 23 and we were shopping for groceries at Meijer... Man, mom, that was an AWESOME day....")

So, I'm sorry, My Little Pony.  Our days together are over.  Instead of dropping another $8.50 on some fantastic rainbow-colored pony pack, I'm going to sock that cash away and save it for something more memorable.

The kids and I discussed it, and they're on board for less toys and more trips.....at least, they say that today, with Christmas morning a solid 5 months away!  But I'm really hoping that we can all subscribe to the idea that less is more - less toys, less movies, less stuff....and more time (and space!) to enjoy the things that are really important.

Like Sunny riding on a giant furry dog named Captain Frederick Pabst as he chases poor Tug all through the house....

Twice Baked Pie, Socrates, and Ice Cream

So, I invented something last week.  Something new, something innovative, something no one else has ever tried before.

How do I know it's never been tried before?

Because I searched for it on Pinterest and nothing existed, so clearly, it's never been done before!

What IS this incredible new invention?

Twice Baked Pie.

They make twice baked potatoes, and twice baked fries, so why not twice baked pie??!

Many, many reasons why not twice baked pie.....

In my head, twice baked pie was going to be a genius way to use my slightly too soupy Bumbleberry Crumble-Thing that I had frozen so it wouldn't spoil while we were on vacation.  In my head, this twice baked pie would be superior to ALL pies because it would have TWICE the crust, some of it even INSIDE the gooey center of the pie, acting like little surprise crunch bombs in your mouth as you ate it.  In my head, this all made perfect sense, so I went along with my half-baked plan for twice baked pie.  I threw together a crust (the no-roll kind from my Grandma Fluegel, because who has the time or counter space to roll pie crust?), mixed up the old (now thawed) pie, tossed it in the shell, slid it into the oven, and waited for this genius invention to come to fruition.

...Let's just say that you won't be seeing my recipe for Twice Baked Bumbleberry Pie on Pinterest any time soon.

Earlier this spring, I was pretty sure that I'd invented something else new, something innovative, something no one else had ever tried before.

I called it.....

Discussion Based Reading Class!!!  (cue Medieval Fanfare...)

Discussion Based Reading Class was developed on the same idea that the rest of reading class was centered around: We do whatever makes Mrs. Yeagle happy (right 2015-16 6th graders??), and what makes Mrs. Yeagle happy is when we get to talk about what we are reading instead of having a giant group read-aloud time where no one pays attention.

Don't get me wrong, I used to teach reading that way - we'd all find comfy places around the room (or sit in our desks if Mean Mrs. Yeagle was there that day...), pull out our novels, and read 5-10 pages together, sometimes playing popcorn, sometimes reading entire pages before passing the read-aloud baton, and sometimes the class would just sit and listen while I amazed them with my theatrical read aloud skills.  This was all well and good, and I justified it that the kids DID need to work on their fluency.....but I was never quite satisfied with it for several reasons...

It did no justice for my advanced reading kids who were forced to sit and follow along as their slower-reading peers stumbled through a novel that was maybe just a reading level a touch too high.

It did no justice for my struggling readers who probably spent the class living in fear that their friend may call on them to read and they'd have to stumble over pronouncing "Hermione Granger" one more time.

It certainly did no justice for my desire to teach the kids deeper thinking skills - how could I foster deep conversation about the book when we were barely getting the book read?!

And it definitely did no justice for my daily teaching which was minimal if I wanted to actually finish the novel.  Simply put, reading a novel aloud in class left ZERO time for discussion about what made the novel great: themes, style, word choice, plot points....  We were doing good just to read 10 pages in class and complete the novel before we all forgot chapter 1.

And then it happened.

We were running short on time, as we always were because we spent all of our spare class time plugging through the novel, and in a moment of craziness, I assigned the students to read the last two chapters of The Lightning Thief on their own as homework.  It was a wild, dangerous assignment, and I knew that only half the kids would actually finish, but I had to take the risk because, darn it, we were going to finish this book before spring break if it killed us!  The kids returned to class the next day, some of them armed with the ending of the book, some of them armed with the ending of the movie (which of course is nothing like the book), and some of them armed with....well, nothing, because they'd watched YouTube all night instead of reading the book.

But as we sat down together and I began the class with, "So, how about that ending?!" and a handful of students' eyes got wide and they all started excitedly talking about the betrayal of the main character, I knew that the wild act of assigning the reading had been a good one.  Heads were turning as the non-readers listened to the readers explain what had happened and soon a handful of them had snuck their books under their desks and were trying to read the last two chapters they'd skipped.

That day we talked about themes of the novel, plot twists, tone and mood.  We reviewed connotation and denotation and looked for foreshadowing that should have tipped us off about who the betrayal was coming from.  We considered the name of the kids sword and why Rick Riordan may have chosen that name - what IS the deeper meaning of a sword called "Backbiter"?  We had a deep discussion about the last two chapters of the novel, and we hit on all of the CCSS Reading Literary standards while we did it.

As the kids frantically packed up that day - because of course we had lost track of time and the other classes were already waiting for us in the hall - I announced, "Guys, I had SO MUCH FUN today!"  And most of the kids agreed:  "Me too!"  "That was awesome!"  "I never thought about the book that way!"  "Can we do this again?!"

And this crazy idea of Discussion Based Reading was born.  I spent my spring break working on guiding discussion questions for The Westing Game, dividing the book into reasonably sized chunks to read, and considering grading and comprehension assignments.  It was going to be the best thing ever.

And - unlike twice baked pie - it was!  It is!  Discussion Based Reading is so fun, thought-provoking, and a way better use of my time than taking turns reading aloud!  Moving my class in this direction is maybe the best thing I have ever done.

And then it occurred to me that I'd really just hijacked Socrates' concept of student-led discussions and my new "invention" of Discussion Based Reading was really the Socratic Seminar/Circle Method.  (Thanks Pinterest!)

Regardless of who invented it, this is the approach that I've decided to take with all of my novels this year.  I'm going to take the first 6-7 weeks of school and do a lot of direct instruction - front loading all the material the kids are going to need to know and use as we do Socratic Seminars for the novels.  After we learn the basics - definitions of theme, foreshadowing, connotation/denotation, plot maps... - we will be able to apply that knowledge to our novels all year as we read (independently at home) and discuss them during class.

Of course, I'm not seeing the world through rose-colored glasses: I know that not every student is going to read.  And how can I help my struggling readers muddle through a text that is still too complicated for them?  I struggled with both of these issues when I first decided to plunge into this independent reading-class discussion format.  I decided to commit myself to giving them 10-15 minutes of class time a day to read the assigned pages, and I agreed to let them do this in whatever way they liked best.  This meant that I had some kids reading independently, hiding under their desks so no one could pester them.  I had some kids reading with a buddy, and some kids reading in trios.  I had a small group reading with me ("Please Mrs. Yeagle, you read it best! Read it TO us!", and I had some students tuned into my YouTube channel listening to the day's reading there.  Giving them time to read during class meant that even if they didn't finish, they were far enough into the reading that they wanted to finish it, and offering so many ways to complete the reading helped me differentiate and reach the many types of learners I had in my classroom.  Did some of them still not read?  Absolutely - this isn't a fairy tale world, after all! But the majority of students did, and that's a win in my book.

At any rate, some inventions don't work out - like twice baked pie.  But some inventions (that turn out not really to be inventions at all...) DO work out.  The most important thing here is that we are never afraid to try something new, even if it may turn out to be the most terrifying, bone dry piece of pie anyone has ever consumed.  Trying new things and testing the waters is never a bad thing, and happily, bad pie and bad school days can both be solved by the same thing: a healthy dose of ice cream!

(For more info on Socratic Method in classrooms, try this article from Scholastic !)

And I'm back!

It sure has been a while.  Actually, my Timehop app on my phone informed me that it was a year ago last week when I bit the bullet and started this lovely blog here, and now so here we are...

Let's all excuse my almost year-long hiatus and chalk it up to a crazy hard school year filled with ups and downs, trials and tribulations, and victories large and small.  And now it's ended....I'm mostly rejuvenated, and although I did go totally crazy and start graduate school, I think I'm doing alright!

Rather than go back and recap everything from the last 11 months, let's jump in to the thing that inspired me to post this morning at all:

My awesome new bulletin board.

I've been toying with the idea of teaching a Harry Potter book for some time now, and I actually tried ending the school year with the first one (The Sorcerer's Stone) which admittedly is not my favorite of the series.  It starts a little slow (and why shouldn't it? Rowling is creating an entirely new world for us and introducing us to a million awesome characters - it should be a little uneventful in those first few chapters!), and it was hard to get the 6th graders swooped up in the excitement of it all.  Needless to say, I felt a little bummed that maybe I'd never be able to teach a HP novel - because if you don't start with the first book, how to do read the second or third without being totally lost??!

Enter grad school, the hero of this short story.  As a final project for my first class, I had to write a short project that would teach character values in my classroom.  I decided to take the approach of teaching about heroes - in real life and fiction - and have them apply that to their own lives.  And that's when it hit me: not only should my entire Reading curriculum be based on heroes in history and literature, but as an ending to this unit and a beginning to my first novel we could watch the first Harry Potter movie and analyze the characters to see who is a hero and who is not....and by watching the movie, we could easily read the 2nd book as our novel study!!!

And that's how this idea was born.

So now, after a short discussion about heroes (and a reprise of the super hero project I did last year!), we will be delving into the magical world of Hogwarts.  And if we're doing that, we need an awesome bulletin board to set the tone, right? 

At first I thought it'd be kind of funny to use the first movie poster and paste my own head on top of Harry Potter's...but seeing as I want the kids to take this seriously, that seemed counter productive.  But I do make a pretty good Harry, don't you think?

Anyway, I went with Option 2: Hogwarts.  Thinking I'd take the easy way out and buy a party backdrop, but I couldn't find any online! I guess the HP craze is dwindling out some?  (SAD!)  So I found this poster from the last movie and decided to base my idea off of that:

Of course, I didn't need my Hogwarts to be on fire, so I used some other pictures to help me create an in-tact Hogwarts.  my poster started like this:

 Nothing to write home about, right?  I just needed a basic silhouette of the castle.  Initially I thought I'd put it on black poster board, but thankfully my kids refused to go to Dollar General with me that day, so I was forced to use the white board I had here...and let them finger paint it.  It actually turned out pretty great!  We used blue, purple, and black, and it kept them busy for at least 10 minutes, so that's a win for me.  I added to the fun by having them paint some paper I could use for mountains: mom and teacher win.

 Next step, put the castle on the background and apply the mountainy paper and letters that I cut out (by hand, mind you!) from my printer.  If only I'd downloaded that snazzy cut everything program for my Cricut before the Provo company got all uppity and banned it....alas, I didn't and thus had to put in some extra man hours.  but they look pretty good, and the jaggedy edges might make them look more Potterish than smooth ones would have.  (That's what I'm telling myself at least!)

 Turned out the mountains were tooo bright, so a coat of black helped that, and I added the tag line, "The Magic Starts Here" to get the kids excited.  And let's face it, my classroom is pretty magical.  I'm like Professor McGonnagal only shorter.  And without the ability to turn into a cat.  (Or can I???)

I did cut the white letters with my Cricut, even though it meant I couldn't use the cool Lumos font I downloaded.  This worked out WAY better.  And then came the stressful part...adding the shading.  I used crayon and added a few things here and there....and happily when it was all over, I managed not to screw it up!  Now I just have to laminate it.....which I'm super nervous about because I ALWAYS mess things up with I laminate them.  That's a class all teachers need in college: Laminating 101.  Some day when I'm a college prof, that will be part of my curriculum.

So there she is, one more time, in all her glory:

I'm going to use the same poster every year and hang it on my door.  Next in the series is the bulletin board for when I'm teaching Bomb by Steve Sheinkin.  The tag line?  "Mrs. Yeagle's Class is the BOMB" with a little mushroom cloud.  I can't wait.

Modify!!

WARNING: For any of you non-teacher readers out there, this may be a pretty boring post.  It promises no pictures, no funny stories, and not much entertainment value, except for the fact that every time I hear the word "modify" I now think of Mater's Tall Tales when he becomes a drifting racer in Tokyo...but again, that's entertaining for me and not really for you, especially if you haven't seen that short.....

Anyway, as I was chatting with my teacher pal today, she was talking about her class load for the fall and how she was worried about how she would modify it all, especially since we no longer work down the hall from each other, making it pretty difficult to bounce ideas off of each other or share materials.  She asked for some help, and while I'm certainly not the end-all-be-all of special ed modifications, I do sort of have a knack for it.  And I started thinking that it might be a good idea to put all of these ideas in one spot so that I (and anyone else who's interested) can come here and glance through them in case I feel stumped one day on how to modify something.  (Tee hee...MODIFY!!)

So, in no particular order.....

1.  Page Numbers - a simple way to adapt any worksheet is simply by putting the page number behind the question.  This guides students in the right direction and prevents them from looking at a page too far ahead or too far behind.  Plus, it's super easy to do, and easy to remove later on when/if the student no longer needs it.

 2. Add A Word Bank - Another easy modification is adding a word bank for the kids to choose from.  Be nice and don't add any words in there that don't belong because having words left over in a word bank can send some kids over the edge, and you're here to help, not make them go nuts!

3.  Dividing the Page - Sometimes kids don't have a problem with the content, they have a problem with the format.  Easy fix - divide the page into smaller sub-sections.  Draw boxes around different groups of problems, leave more white space, anything that is going to segment the work into smaller areas is likely to help!

4.  Divide the page and Add a Word Bank - Split the work into smaller sections and provide a word bank for each smaller section.  This prevents the kids from feeling overwhelmed by too many words AND too many problems all in one space.  Some people may think this makes it too easy for the kids, but trust me, there are still kids who will mix up problems, even if there ARE only three words for them to choose from instead of 15.

5.  Color Coding - Sometimes adding a word bank or dividing the page requires too much cutting and pasting (whether on the computer or in real life), or you don't have an original copy/file to do it with.  Solution?  Color coding!!!  Here you can highlight three or four problems in a color, then highlight those three or four answers in the same color.  This way kids can see that the pink words are answers for the pink problems and they know only to choose from those options.  Fast, easy, and effective, especially for kids who are drawn to color or are easily distracted from the boring black and white page.

6. Colored Pencil - Speaking of boring black and white.....ever try colored pencil to keep the kids on track?  Either by allowing them to use colored pencil to write the answers or by using the colored pencil to underline important words in the directions, some kids LOVE colored things and will pay way more attention to them than boring black and white.  I don't blame them....and I bet right about now you wish I would use colored text too!  It's also a great way to get kids to do math problems if they are forgetting to carry or add/borrow.  Have them write the numbers in different colors and do the first step in one color and the second step in another!

7.  Sentence Starters - Sometimes students struggle with writing prompts because they aren't sure where to start their sentences.  Enter the pre-made sentence starters!  Format a page specifically for your students who need more assistance with their writing and make it more of a guided format with sentence starters and lead-ins. 

8. Make it Cut and Paste - This works for lots of things:  I've made writing sections on a test cut and paste, review worksheets, even fill in the blanks.  Kids love cutting.  Kids love pasting.  And sometimes the tactile sensation of doing the cutting and pasting helps kids focus.  Try making a Venn diagram cut and paste for your strugglers!  The hardest part is knowing what phrases you used in class and getting those written out so the kids are familiar with the phrases they're using.  But it's way fun and a lot simpler for them than having to recall all of the info themselves.  The students still have to recall the details, but now they only have to recall the topic it talks about instead of the actual phrase to write down. 

9.  Either Ors - This modification sometimes works super well and sometimes it's more confusing than the regular way, but it's worth a try anyway.  At the end of the fill in the blank, offer two choices (an either or!) and the student just has to circle the word or phrase that fits in the blank.  He still has to know the answer, but doesn't have to write it, which sometimes is all it takes for the kid to not mind working a little!

10. Multiple Choice - Another easy modification - turn any worksheet into multiple choice.  Not too many choices, but maybe three, so they have to consider the possibilities but can still find their correct answer.  If a kid has a chance to narrow it down from a huge list of possibilities in the text to only three or four, it can help a great deal.

Of course providing highlighted texts for students is always a good place to start too.  This list just sort of assumes that you've got that one covered already.

Now this is by no means the end, but let's face it, I've been up since 5, did a workout DVD, took a 2 mile walk, chased after the kids, survived a no-rest quiet rest time, did a short ab workout, peeled 10 more pounds of peaches....and basically am ready to call it a day!  So be on the look out for 10 or so more modifications as time goes on and as they pop into my brain.

But, before I go...here's a good option for differentiating, even if it isn't modifying exactly:  At the end of a lesson, ask the students to put their heads down and cover their eyes, then ask for a "vote"  as I always called it.  (explain the choices first so they know what to expect)  Ask them to raise their hand if they feel nervous or uncertain about the lesson.  Then ask those who feel pretty ok about the lesson to raise their hands.  Then ask those who felt the lesson was easy and are really comfortable with it to raise their hands.  (I normally things like "raise your hand if today's lesson scared the boogers out of you" - third graders loved that sort of thing....but I may need to MODIFY (tee heehee) for 6th grade!! - or "raise your hand if today's lesson was super easy and you can't believe I had to teach it")  This gives me a chance to assess if I need to reteach the whole thing the next day or if just a few kids are struggling.  Normally I have three worksheets ready (mainly in math) one for the strugglers (that we'll most likely start together in a small group), one for the middle of the road kids (that they'll do on their own or with a buddy if I'm feeling nice), and one for the advanced kids (one that isn't just MORE work, but stuff that makes them think or need to APPLY the skill we learned).  As they raise their hands to let me know how they feel about it, I distribute worksheets accordingly.  Since their heads are down, no one knows which worksheet is the "easy" and which is the "hard" and no one can laugh or be mad.  And I can also gently say to the kid "I think you should try the harder one today, you did really well in class" or "let's start off slower today with the easier work."  It really helps the kids feel like I'm paying attention to their needs and the parents LOVE that their kid is getting work specially for them.

Now....to give in to these pre-school stress eating attacks or to stand strong and just go to bed.....that IS a tough question.....

Hodge Podge of Crafties...

I know, I know, I have loads of school stuff to be doing.  Let's not talk about that, because honestly sitting here knowing that my classroom isn't finished, that I have no key to get into the building, and that I just NOW got my new school email account up and running (which had emails in it since May, mind you, so I'm just a little behind here!), I'm pretty stressed out about the new school year.  I'm trying to take it a day at a time, a project at a time....but it's freaking me out!  I've worked some on my Writer's notebook, but it's not beautiful enough to post anything on here yet (will it ever be beautiful? probably not, but it WILL be finished...I'm halfway through, so that counts for something, right?), and instead of spending all my time working on school, I thought I'd take a little more time off and do some scrapbooking - crafts are good for the soul, yes?  (So is shopping, but let's not suggest that  I go do that!!!)

Here is a page I just finished about our wedding party. I had this idea that I wanted a long, sort of panoramic shot of the wedding party in the middle that was surrounded by single shots of them individually and with us.  I like how it turned out, but after the fact I thought it may have been more fun to use shots of us in college with them and then include little captions about them as individuals - like their favorite beer or a funny memory of them.  Anyways, there's always time to add that in the form of another page, right?

I hand-drew the frame around the big picture and purposely made it wavy, not only because I can't draw a straight line to save my life, but because I like how things look when they have squiggly lines all overlapped like that.  Then I added the brackets, because brackets are so "in" right now.  I printed out the title and the names and pasted them where they belonged.  Super simple, but I really like it.

 Here's a close up picture so you can admire my squiggly hand-drawn border....

Apparently I'm going through a "white background" phase, because here is another page I did recently.  It took a lot more time and thought than the previous layout, and I'm pretty sure it's just because it was a very specific picture I was using.  It's a page about losing my own dad very young and not having him around for the wedding, but being blessed with the best father-in-law in the world.  I think really highly of John, so I needed this layout to be perfect.  (My type-A personality coming out in full force.)

I normally dont use such tiny pictures when they are the only photo on a layout, but in this case, I did for two reasons:  I already had the 4x6 print, so it was totally free to use, and I thought the smaller picture lent itself to the closeness of the hug and the feeling I was trying to express in the journal.

"How's the kitchen coming?" you may ask.  Well, here is the test run for the chalkboard that will soon be taking the place of my boring all white cabinets.  John stopped by late last week and we did a few tests and then just threw the paint up there, so the job is pretty sloppy and the color isn't right (I promised Jonathan no more green in the house.....) but I love it so far.  It's a handy place to write quick lists and notes, and Ollie was super excited that maybe she could ALSO write on it some day.  Some day, baby.  Some day.

PEACHES!!!  Deb went up to Dave's Supermarket in Fairbury some time last week and got us loads of peaches since we couldn't financially swing a trip to Southern IL to get our own.  Needless to say, my whole house smells pretty great (much like heaven, I think!), and I've been spending a lot of free time peeling, slicing, and freezing these beauties so I can still eat my most favorite fruit even in the dregs of winter.  YAY!

 Yet another home project.....this time made out of a cereal box! I had pinned this a loong time ago on Pinterest and actually forgot about it, but I came across it last week some time and realized I had the perfect spot for it!  THis is the side of my scrapbook table that John promised we could attach shelves to (hasn't happened yet, but oh well!).  I had a small drawer thing that was supposed to be in Ollie's room under it, but it wasn't being well utilized and all of the papers were piling up everywhere.  So I cut a cereal box in half (the back is a little higher than the front) and covered it in a picture that I'd already had printed that used to hang in that very spot!  Anyway, it was super easy, amazingly cheap, and solved my problem!  I made 2 more as well and hung them lower to stash drawing paper for the kids and colored pencils that they can grab easily.  It made the side of the desk look way nicer than before, and all for ZERO dollars!!!  I'm finding places to add more of these around the house - like one for the dry erase boards and markers, maybe one for coupons....the possibilities are endless!  and when they get too junky, I'll just toss them and build a new one!

I wonder if I should work on writing shorter blog posts that focus on ONE thing instead of a million....but guess what, that's how my brain works! 50,000 different things all happening at once!  Now back to the school stuff.......EEEEEKKKK!!!!

Early Mornings Make Me Happy

As crazy as it seems, I love early mornings.  I'm not sure if I'm legitimately a morning person, or if I've just been conditioned to be this way after spending my childhood in a house where "sleeping late" on a Saturday meant 7:30am, but whatever the cause, here we are today: 6:22am typing a blog post in a quiet house, just me, the cat, and the hum of the computer.  It's peaceful.

When I first had Ollie, I was always struggling to fit a shower into my schedule.  It became a stressful fight to make her nap (especially when she got to be older and didn't want to nap) so that I could shower and take care of my vain hair-related needs (a woman's gotta straighten her hair now and then, come on!).  I was grouchy and it wasn't fair to Ollie that I was being a sour-puss just because I hadn't taken a shower.  Finally one day I realized that I needed to treat raising Ollie and being a stay-at-home-mom for the summer months as if it were my JOB (because it is, basically), and if I wouldn't go to my job and expect someone to take over my duties so I could shower, why should I expect that at home?  Since then, I wake up at 5am, shower, do some household chores (dishes and laundry, yay!), and feel nice and awake by the time the kids wake up....except for those days when Charlie wakes up at 5:30....but no one is ever ready for THOSE days!

Basically, I do my best thinking in my 5am shower, which is why it's become a necessity not only for my own vanity and sanity, but also for my school career.  Many a lesson plan has been formulated while I shampoo my hair!  The few things I've been up to lately haven't really been brainstormed in the shower, but they're cool nonetheless.

Last night I worked some more on my writing notebook, where I added a few days about Thanksgiving to the mix.  We'll read an article about the Mayflower and the pilgrims, analyze it for word choice (a review of previous lessons) to assess the author's tone and the mood of the piece.  The next day we'll spend assessing the facts and opinions in the article and then decide if it is a persuasive piece or an expository piece.  And day three we will spend making a class T-Chart about the pros and cons of sailing on the Mayflower, all so they can use their writing station time to write their own short paragraph about whether or not they would be a pilgrim and take the risks involved.  It's a lot to fit into the few days before Thanksgiving, but I'm glad I can give them some immersion into the history of the holiday instead of just glossing over it.  (But sorry Columbus Day...you're getting the shaft again!)

So what else have I been up to?  Let's see...

 I made a mental math stick game to play at school when the kids are just waiting around, lining up, or to start off math RtI time.  On one half of the stick is the problem and on the other end is the answer to that problem.  That way I don't have to test my OWN mental math skills!  I saw something similar to this on Pinterest, but it was more of a station game where the sticks had to go in a certain order because the answer to the problem was written on the next stick.  That was a cool idea too, but I wanted something that I could just as a time filler rather than a complete activity.  Plus, don't you LOVE the colored sticks?!  I snagged them at the LeRoy True Value - 500 of them for only $8!  Based on the layer of dust on the package, I'm pretty sure no one had even looked at the box since the store opened, but their loss is my gain!

 I also used a few of my clothes pins to make a Math Chain Game where the answer to the problem IS written on the next pin in line.  One side is green and the other is pink, so for 10 clothes pins, I have 2 games!  I also thought that I could clip them onto the kids and they have to line up in the order and that way it becomes a whole group activity rather than just a few kids at centers.

 

I finally got my no name paper board created, too!  Thanks to my awesome father in law, John, who came and trimmed down some scrap board and drilled the holes for the ribbon, it took hardly no time at all!  I'm planning on making a few more boards like this to hang in my own house, but instead of no name papers, I'll use them to display the kids' artwork or new pictures that I have printed.  Thankfully, John has left a lot of scrap wood at our house (supposedly for the fire pit!) that I've been itching to use, and now I have an ideal project for it all!

Besides school work, I finished Charlie's birthday banner:

We're doing a super hero themed party for him in December, but while I was in banner making mode I got busy and finished it.  Again I used the dollar store curly ribbon to attach it all, but rather than waste my time with glue and cut out letters, I got smart and formatted it all in Microsoft Word.  I love that you can type words upside down in text boxes now - that's a huge upgrade to the program and I've used it a million times already.  LOVE IT!

And, because my life isn't all work and no play...Alex was home from Korea for a few days, so once I pried the kids off of him, we got to hang out.  We actually pubcrawled Farmer City, which was a hilarious adventure because there are only 2 bars in town - that was kind of the point, and we had a good time without getting too ridiculous.

 I finally got some hang out time with my girl, Jordan, too.  Here we are outside of Panera where we had a pretty good dinner of mildly healthy food choices, so yay for us!  We hit the mall (a place I NEVER go with the children), got my hair cut, did some shopping, and had some dinner.  It was great to hang out again, and I'm definitely going to miss her next year when she's at her school and I'm at mine. 

Future projects?  Always.  Here are my kitchen cabinets...tilted on their sides because I didn't change the orientation of the pictures before I uploaded them....oh well.

 Anyway, I'm planning on painting the inside square with chalkboard paint so I can start keeping lists on the doors.  I think I'll do the drawers too, just so there's some continuity with the built in.  And then the kids can scribble away to their hearts content!

I'm also working on spending more one-on-one time with Ollie.  As the oldest, she sometimes gets the shaft I think, especially with Jonathan working 2nds now and me being the only bedtime person in the house.  I'm usually so tired by the time I get to her (because rocking Charlie makes me sleepy!) that she doesn't always get the attention to needs or deserves.  So there's my home improvement goal AND my parenting goal.  BAM.

It has to wait...

I've been MIA on this blog thing for a while, and it's either because I've been too busy....or because I've been preoccupied with facebook and pinterest, my two major vices.  Ugh facebook, why are you such a time suck?  The sad thing is that the majority of the time I'm just gawking at other people's statuses rather than actually communicating with the people who write them, and what good is that.  And Pinterest.....we have a love/hate relationship.  I love it because where else would I find the fine idea to spray paint boring old rain books with glittery spray paint and create amazing glitter boots?!  And where else could I find a delicious recipe for chicken alfredo made entirely in ONE pan?!  And where would I dig up clever teaching ideas to use in my classroom next year?!

Oh wait, Pinterest, I have that last one covered.....and that's why this blog post has to end so abruptly, because I'm in the middle of a pretty amazing lesson plan/project/activity/whateveryouwanttocallit that just can't wait.....which is why this blog post has to!

I'm working on my long-promised Writer's Notebook tonight, and I've made it to week 11.  I'm pretty pleased with myself.  Tonight's project is a review of Topic Sentences and the details that support them, an activity that will have a hold-over effect and be used for a few follow-up lessons as well, assuming it all works out and I can get my thoughts out of my brain and onto the Word document I'm creating.

So maybe sometime someone will be pinning MY great teacher ideas onto pinterest....one can only hope!

And the #1 Reason I'm Glad We Don't Live in an Apartment Building is.....

....because sometimes bedtime sounds like a death march, and any self-respecting person should probably want to call DCFS.

But let's face it, as parents, we've all had to grin and bear it while our children scream at the tops of their lungs, usually the same phrase over and over again, until everyone's ears are bleeding.  Today we suffered through two "I DONT WANT TO GO TO BED" blow outs, one at nap time (which wasn't worth the battle) and one at bedtime (which obviously I won....by the grace of God...), and thus I'm sitting here with some liquid relaxation reflecting upon my day.

First things first:  a huge round of applause to the fine people at Yellow Tail Winery for putting their wine in screw top bottles, because getting a cork out of a bottle was NOT on my list of things to do tonight.

Excitement of the day: two finished craft projects, a trip to the park, and a successful video chat with Nonnie (the kids kind of turn into crazy people when the camera turns on, but we made it work somehow!).

I finished Ollie's birthday banner today!  Here are some pics:

 I made the triangle template in Word and added the colors there, which allowed me to make some fun patterns without wasting my hard earned scrapbook paper.  In retrospect I probably could have formatted the white circle and letters onto the banner template as well, but I didn't think of that until just now.  Doh.

 Oh well, it was fun using the Cricut with Charlie to cut the 2" circles out of white cardstock - he was fascinated by the moving parts on the machine!  Then I cut the letters out as well (1 1/2" size), and Ollie got to help glue the circles and letters down, so she was part of the magic too.

 The first and last triangle on the banner has a small picture of the My Little Pony group on it, so if the color scheme works for next year I could always reuse it by gluing a new picture over it.  I say this now, but of course I'll probably make a new one next year anyway.  I punched little holes in the corners and attached them with curly ribbon I bought at Dollar Tree for - you guessed it - $1.  It worked really well, and I like it uncurled best (I tried it both ways, and even Ollie agreed on straight being better.)

I also have some 5" circle cut outs to glue together and then hang from the tree outside when we get ready for the party, which of course isn't until August 31, but I'm one of those plan ahead kind of girls, so here we are!  I may even start on the Superhero banner for Charlie's party tonight if I can't get motivated about school stuff!

My second craft victory today is my "Becoming a Bride" layout for my wedding album.  Honestly, it turned out exactly how I pictured it would and so I'm not sure why I had such a hard time finishing it, other than I didn't know what I wanted to write on the page or how to make the perfect title for it.  I'm not much of a perfectionist (just as my father in law about all the hideous cakes he's gotten for his Cake of the Month Club gift Ollie and I gave him at Christmas!), but when it comes to scrapbooking, I really become OCD about everything being perfect.  Maybe I don't want people to see things 60 years from now and think I did shoddy work!  Anyway, here are pics of the finished layout:

I was inspired by this original page that was in my Scrapbooks, Etc magazine (that used to come straight to my door until Better Homes and Gardens decided they didn't want to print it anymore.....but I'm not bitter or anything...), and just sort of tweaked it a bit to fit my own needs.  I hand-cut the title out after formatting it as a Word Art in Word.  (I really like Word, can you tell?)  I didn't use my Cricut because I'm cheap and only have one cartridge that doesn't cut pretty swirly fonts that I needed.

 I went over the title with glitter, because everything is better with glitter.

 I think the scalloped/lace trim adds some interest to the page without overwhelming all the other things I have going on...like the glitter!

This is some sort of fuzzy snowflake self-adhesive trim that my dear scrapping buddy Sam donated to me several years ago before she moved away, and I was stoked to finally use it!  I really loved how it looked over the aqua glitter.

So there are my two craft victories for tonight.  On the horizon.....

• As God is my witness, I will force myself to work on this writer's notebook!
• Homemade sour cream....it's gonna be big.
• Maybe the start of a new wedding album page...we'll just have to see...

The School Year Cometh...

Most people feel  like teachers have it easy.  We work from 8am-3pm for 9 months a year and then have 3 full months off to kick back and do nothing.

HA.  I don't even want to delve into all the inaccuracies in that last sentence.  Let's just say that as teachers (good teachers) we work hard ALL year long and earn the breaks we get.  I'm not saying that I'm not blessed to have a full summer off with my kids to spend at the pool and the zoo, and I wish my husband were that lucky, but I do think that I earn that break.  And it's rarely 3 FULL months!

It's usually around this point in the summer when teachers start having "teacher" moments, where we're constantly thinking about the up-coming school year and what we need to do to get ready for it.  Just the other day at the pool one of my teacher friends was telling me about the nightmare she had that it was the first day of school and the new principal was already mad at her and she didn't have any of her work prepared.....yep, it's officially school season.  Heralded by crazy school dreams and middle of the night panic attacks, back to school arrives well before the crazy school supply sales at Staples.  (Which I'm totally excited for, PS.)

For me, I've been having these teacher fits all summer since I'm moving to a new grade and a new school.  I'm trying to organize a reading and writing curriculum for myself so that I don't feel totally lost come September, and it's been fun, but stressful.  There are too many ideas out on Pinterest and not enough time in the day, and I finally said to my husband, "Why do I spend all my time pinning new ideas when I just need to sit down and DO some of the ideas I have??!"  (His sage advice?  "I was wondering the same thing.")

So I sat down and started this Interactive Writer's Notebook.  I have grand ideas to have notebooks like it for reading and math as well, and maybe even social studies, but those will have to wait.  For now, I'm trying to focus on finishing up the Writer's Notebook.  It's got neat little flip-tabs where notes about punctuation go, some fun charts that we're going to make and glue in, and a few places where we get to bridge the gap between subjects and analyze writing within our social studies content.  My latest addition to my lessons (not necessarily to the notebook) are my Publishing and Peer Editing anchor charts.  Take a peek:

Truthfully this is one place where I scoured the internet and couldn't find anything that I was happy with, so I created my own.  They aren't gorgeous by any means, but I'm planning on creating them as large anchor charts with my class and these just served as a formatting guide for me anyway.  Plus now I can throw away the ratty notebook paper that I scribbled all my notes down on.

I'm trying to set up Daily 5 in my classroom for the fall, and these anchor charts and the notebook go along with the writing mini-lessons I'm creating to teach.  So far I have pretty much the whole year mapped out and I'm just going back in and actually designing the lessons and making the notebook entries so I have a sample book to teach from.  I'll be sure to add more about it once I get it finished.

I'm especially nervous this year because I'm going back to middle school, where I haven't taught since I was a student teacher.  It's common knowledge that most third graders are just pretty happy to be at school and have a teacher who smells nice and gives good hugs, but something tells me that the 6th graders are going to be a little more discerning.  I'm trying to gear up some more behavior incentives and some start of the school year activities that they'll enjoy.  And I guess the bright side is that if they don't like it.....there's always next year to get it right! (Good thing I'm a Cubs fan and am used to that mantra!)

So here we are again...

Hello again, blog world.  I must say that I'm pretty proud of myself today; I feel like I may have actually earned a bid for Mom of the Year - a REAL one, not just the sarcastic one I usually award myself when something devastating happens, like Charlie falling down the stairs and scraping his face up or Ollie eating nothing but peanut butter sandwiches all day long.  No sir, today, I may have earned an honest-to-goodness Mom of the Year nod....or at least a Little Mom on the Prairie Award. 

I usually wake up with the birds but have fallen into a sloppy routine this summer (I'm blaming Jonathan's new and seemingly ever changing work schedule), but today I was up at 5:45 (still late by my standards, but I'm breaking myself in easy), did my cheesy early 90's workout DVD, showered, retrieved Charlie from his crib, made homemade blueberry muffins, made yogurt (in the crock pot!), washed some dishes....and that was all before lunch time!  Yes, let's just say I feel like I've had an insanely productive day.  Go me.

I never thought I'd be the chick to make homemade yogurt, but as I started realizing just how much I was spending each week on plain yogurt, it made me a little ill.  Compounding the sick feeling was the sheer amount of waste it was creating - 2 or 3 large plastic tubs each week??!  I tried making myself feel better about the plastic tubs by washing them and coming up with ways to reuse them: storing bulletin board trim at school, stashing craft supplies, creating station tubs and games for center time at school....all of those were great ways to use those 24oz tubs I was accumulating, but I was running out of storage room in my kitchen, and since I'm currently between classrooms (left my old job and waiting for the new school/classroom to finish being built so I can get in it), it was getting ridiculous and something else had to be done.  Cue pinterest (of course) where I started looking around for homemade yogurt recipes.  There was one in a Mason jar....seriously.....but it wasn't nearly as simple as turning on my crock pot, taking the temperature every hour or so, and letting the "live and active cultures" do the rest.  I was worried that the yogurt might taste funny, but today's batch is my 2nd, and I think it tastes even better than the stuff from the store.  And not only am I not wasting those silly plastic tubs, I'm also getting WAY more yogurt for WAY less money.  It's awesome.

So to get back on track here, the REAL reason I started this blog was to post about some of the cool things that I do/find/make/want, and one of the coolest things I've done so far is throw Ollie a pretty rocking Mario Brother's themed birthday party.  Now don't get me wrong, not all of these ideas were original, and certainly not all of it was my own doing, but it turned out super well, and since I was in charge of the application of it all, I'm claiming it all as my own personal victory.  Before I get too far into this, I should explain that we are OLD SCHOOL Mario at our house.  None of this new-age Wii Mario with their blue overalls.  At our house, Mario rocks out the red overalls, Luigi the green ones, and there's only ONE princess to save and that's Peach.  So this is the kind of party we threw.  Old school, vintage Mario a la Captain Lou and The Super Mario Brothers Super Show.

No party is complete without a birthday banner, so here I made one out of squares to mimic the blocks that Mario is always breaking apart.  I flanked it with 2 Piranha Plants with a Goomba trapped between them.

It was pretty easy to construct all of these items using construction paper and various shapes that were easy to cut - I didn't even use my Cricut!  The pots were just rectangles overlapping, then the stems and leaves.  I cut big red "U" shapes and topped them with white hearts and polka dots of different sizes (using my 3/4" and 1" paper punches).

Food is always super important.  The fare this day? Italian, or course.  A yummy pasta dish from a Kraft magazine I had lying around, salad, bread, plain noodles for the youngsters who were opposed to saucy pasta, and some fruits/veggies.  Now I know you're looking at this and thinking...."yes, but what about that GIANT Mario head poking around back there???"

What? This guy?  Just an awesome paper machie Mario head that one of my friends from school made.  Pretty sweet, huh?  He was destined to be a pinata, but I didn't have the heart to smash him to bits, so he made a great table decoration instead.  And there's a vintage Mario coin bank standing next to him.  Cute, huh?  I'm sure glad my brother decided he didn't need such a childish collectible anymore!

The cake (made by my awesome mother-in-law) was a real hit.  Simple, but really spot-on for the party, even if the characters ARE wearing their new-age blue coveralls.  She got the little figures at the local party store and cut the stars and dots out of fondant.

Cake is never enough, so we also had some Question Blocks made out of rice krispie treats.  Clearly I made these, which is why they are lopsided.  Had my mother-in-law made them, they would have been precisely trimmed into perfect cubes.  I'm more of an estimator, myself.  Especially when it comes to measurement.

Extra cake batter meant little star-shaped cakes too.  The cupcakes aren't pictured, but they had the same blue icing as the cake with little cake toppers made from stickers and a 3" scalloped paper punch.  Super cute.  And before you ask, the answer is No, there is NEVER too much cake.

 Ollie was just turning 4 and so most of her friends are the same age, which means they're too young for any crazy party games, but we did have one: Smush the Goomba.  I think I snagged this one from somewhere else online, but I decorated orange balloons with Goomba faces, attached brown feet to them, and set the kids loose to try their hand at Goomba Stomping like the Marios do.  Ollie told me it was her favorite part of the day.

 More Goombas and Piranha plants decorated the windows!

 Such a fun idea.  WE made mustaches out of black felt, hot glued them to color coordinated straws, and let everyone wear their mustaches in pictures.  You can't really tell, but the Mario mustaches are extra ruffly on the bottom (like his real 'stache is) and the Luigi ones are smoother.  It was a huge hit, even with the adults.  My fantastic sister-in-law made Mario and Luigi hats for the kids out of fleece, so the kids had hats to wear for the party too.

All in all, a super fun birthday theme, and Ollie totally loved it.  Here we are as a family sporting our mustaches and Mario/Luigi hats.  The Toad hat was left over from the previous Halloween when we all dressed up as Mario characters.  Ollie was Mario, Jonathan was Luigi, Charlie was Toad, and I was Princess Peach.  We got quite a few compliments.

Maybe that gave someone out there some ideas for their own Mario party!  For now, I'm off to tackle my still unfinished Interactive Writer's Notebook.....