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!