Show and Tell Tuesday

I'm joining Barb @Ruby Slippers Blog Design for her weekly linky party Show and Tell Tuesday.

I have been in my new room sorting out my library books. I thought I had my baskets all sorted, but I guess they got messed up in the move. Since I am wanting to paint, I can't do too much to get my room together until it's finished. The classroom I have used to be a computer lab. It had a lot of chairs, a beat up file cabinet and a couple of tables in it. Several of the teachers are going to use tables next year, so I am going to get desks from them. I found an extra teacher's chair (YES!),a nice rolling cabinet that just needed a good cleaning and a couple of other pieces that I think will be everything I need.

My new school has a science lab which is pretty neat! There, of course, are all kinds of materials for teaching science, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that it has a fridge and a full-size stove/oven. I was going to take a picture, but there are a lot of teaching materials on the tables, so I'll wait until later.

I want to share a terrific science blog I happened onto the other day. You may have heard of her blog "The Science Penguin". she is fantastic! She has lots of excellent articles on interactive notebooks. I think between the books I posted last week and her blog, I'll make it through my first year of being departmentalized and teaching science. :)

Monday Made It Week 9

I'm linking up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for her linky Monday Made It. It has taken me a while to get myself started making things. Now I'm almost out of time. Hopefully, I'll get a few more things finished this week. ;)

First up, I bought this chalkboard at Hobby Lobby and decided to paint it to match my classroom colors.

After a little spray paint and chalk marker...I love it!!! 

The best part is I can change the message. Just erase with a damp cloth and write a new message. :)

A couple of years ago, I bought three brightly colored boxes that were different sizes. None of them went with my new color scheme. Here is the middle-sized one. I am going to paint it black or maybe red.

I painted the biggest and smallest ones turquoise. they are much brighter that the photograph.

I found this foam pennant at Hobby Lobby, I used a Sharpie marker to color the edge which was white. Then I used some stickers I already had to decorate it.

I saved my favorite thing for last. I made a banner for my classroom. I really loved the way it turned out. If you can't read it, it says "Welcome to 3rd Grade". I decided to make it a two tier banner this year for something different. No, I wasn't trying to put the letters on straight. ;P

I loved it the way it was. Then when I was going through boxes trying to figure out what I needed to take to my new room, I found these little sock monkeys. Now I love it even more!!! I can't wait to get it hung in my room!!!

Have a great week!!!

Five for Friday, July 25, 2014

I'm linking up with Kasey @ Doodle Bugs Teaching for her weekly linky Five for Friday.

I had this post almost finished and then I completely lost it...here goes again.

Shopping!!!

I went shopping with Delaney the other day and found these. Can you tell I love owls? They came from Catos...I love that place!

    

Later I was at Hobby Lobby and found this picture I thought I would use in my classroom. I thought it would be a good reminder that they can make their day what they want it to be. The only problem is, I like it so much, I want to keep it for home. Hahaha

Thanks Kohls Care for these cute Little Critter and Little Sister! Delaney loved these books when she was younger.

On Wednesday, my new principal had a Visionary Meeting, it wasn't mandatory for you to go, but I thought it would be a good way to meet some of the staff. she wanted us to discuss what the school's vision should be. She went to a  presentation this summer based on Stephen Covey's book The Leader in Me. 

She was very excited to share what she had learned and wanted to see if the staff would be on board to adopting ideas from The Leader in Me and The Seven Habits of Happy Kids. Her enthusiasm was infectious every one in attendance was on board! So we are going to work to make every student a leader in our school. We are going to start slowly this year while the staff is being trained and then try to go full force next year.

The other big thing that was discussed at the meeting was E and I, yeah, I didn't know what it was either. It stands for Extension and Intervention. The students that need intervention will go to reading or math intervention the other students will get to go to Extension. It will be sort of like a middle school student choosing an elective. So every teacher( including music, PE, speech, etc...) and even the counselor and principal will teach either E or I. The principal would like the class to be 15-17 students. All the teachers are supposed to pick something they like for their Extension class, things like gardening, baking, knitting, painting, Spanish, etc... The first session will be September through November, each teacher will have 2 months of Extension and 1 month of Intervention. It will be three days a week from 9:00 to 9:30. The other two days it will be DEAR time. After one month, the students in Extension will change their "elective". We will be using the Star reading and math test to see who needs to be in Intervention. They will stay in Intervention until there scores go up. To get us out of our comfort zone, the k-2 teachers will teach the 3-5 students during the second session (January through March) and the 3-5 teachers will teach the k-2 students (K-2 is my comfort zone so that will be a piece of cake!). I hope I explained it so it makes sense. All the teachers were very excited, I'm still trying to decide what my Extensions will be. I'll come up with one and ask Delaney if she thinks 5th grade boys would like it, so far she has axed all of my ideas...but I'm still thinking! ;)  

Show and Tell Tuesday

I'm joining Barb from Ruby Slippers for her linky Show and Tell Tuesday. Check out Barb's blog, she has a great show and tell about social media blueprints.

I am excited and nervous about my new teaching assignment. When I taught kindergarten, I always did my own thing. If I wanted to teach about Johnny Appleseed and apples, I taught about Johnny Appleseed and apples. Then the last two years in kindergarten the district adopted Treasures reading and with that came a pacing guide. It wasn't too bad in kindergarten. When I started teaching first grade that pacing guide was my arch enemy. I hated that thing, I had to keep barreling through the books to stay with the pacing guide whether the kids master the skill or not. My principal said I didn't have to use Treasures, but the pacing guide was still mandating what skills were taught and when. 

Now I've moved to a new district and grade. I know I keep saying this, but just in case someone missed it, I moved to 3rd grade and I will only be teaching social studies and science. I went up to talk to the principal and while I was there she gave me the curriculum for my subjects. 

In Oklahoma,third grade social studies is all Oklahoma History. She gave me this book to use.

She told me I can use it or not use or add to it as I would like.

For science, I received these two books.

All of the science lessons use children's books to introduce the lesson! How cool is that! I get to choose the lessons I want to teach...NO PACING GUIDE! What? I can't believe it!

Here's what is crazy, for the past six years I have hated that pacing guide telling me what to teach and when. Now that I have freedom to teach what I want, I am nervous, anxious, even a little scared. What? Yeah, I know it doesn't make sense, I got what I wanted and now I'm scared???  I need to start making some long term plans, but I kind of freeze up every time I think about it. I'm sure part of it is because I am moving to a new school with a new principal in a grade I have never taught before. 

My goal for the rest of the week is to get some kind of plan for science. I can use the Oklahoma book if I need to, but I am thinking about starting the year with the state symbols and then do the history.  I know in the long run, I'll love the freedom, I just have to get over my "First Year Jitters!" :D

Monday Made It - Summer Week 8

I'm linky up with Tara for her Monday Made It linky party. I had a late start with my summer this year. We had so many snow days that we worked until June 9 (should have been out May 31). Then with me changing districts for next year more of my time was spent moving things from my old room to my garage. So this is the first time for me to link up this summer. I had planned to have more things made, but Made It #2 will explain.

Here's my little teaser picture I posted the other day.

Our school theme is supposed to be "Our Future's So Bright" using neon colors. Here is what I came up with. It is a poster, I have been in my new school, but I don't remember is there are bulletin boards, tack strips or what out in the hallways. I don't even know if this will work. I hope it does, my computer/printer was having an "issue" the other day. I was just going to print it out poster size, but for some reason it kept printing without the background so I printed it and had to cut out the letters to put on poster board. I did a google image search for some of the sunglasses. The bright colored ones with the black lenses I got FREE from Ashley Hughes. Here is a link to it at her TPT store. Check her site out, she has lots of great things. 

Here is an close up of the glasses, they each have a different occupation on them.

My final one has no picture and believe me you wouldn't want to see a picture. I have made myself crazy this last week! I need my social security card to take up to my new district. So I went home and looked where I normally keep it, it wasn't there. So I thought about it for a while, the last time I had the envelope out was when I enrolled my daughter last Fall Break into the neighborhood school. Oh, I forgot to mention, the envelope had my social security card, Delaney's social security card and her birth certificate! I have spent three days tearing our house up trying to find them. I couldn't sleep because I would keep thinking about it, so I would get back up and look some more (until 5AM, good thing it is summer!). I never have found them. The only thing I can figure out is that they ended up in our recycle bin. I was going through a bunch of files and getting rid of stuff. I had a little portable file box that I had filed papers from this year. I'm thinking that maybe I had stuck the envelope in the file box intending to put it up later and when I was recycling, I didn't check the box very carefully. Just writing about this is making me want to go look through every thing again for about the 4th or 5th time. On a positive note, I have gotten rid of a lot of junk while searching for them and I also went through Delaney's stuff (supposed to be for a scrapbook) and sorted it by grades.

So this is my very lame Monday Made It. I have somethings I have been working on and hopefully this week will go a little better and I will get them finished.

Five For Friday July 18, 2014

I'm linking up with Casey @ Doodle Bugs for her Five for Friday linky party.

Since I didn't find out until school was already out that I got my new job, most of the stuff in my classroom ended up in my garage. It was a MESS, you could hardly walk around in there. I forgot to take a picture, but believe me, it wasn't a pretty sight. At first I was just going to take the boxes up to my new room when I can get into the school, but then I realized that some of those boxes have 1st grade stuff. So I started the unpleasant and very mess making task of going through all of the boxes.

I'm not finished, but this is after I sort of cleaned up! HA As you can see, I've got a lot to do!

 These are some of the books for my library. I have them sorted out all o fhte AR books by level and the rest of the books by type/genre.

These are first grade things I am giving to some homeschooling friends.

These are the homeschooling backpacks I made up to loan out to friends.

I signed my contract this week!

I've been working on some things for school. Our theme for the beginning of the year is "Our Future's So Bright". Here is a peek at my Monday Made It for next week. Hopefully it will turn out the way I am envisioning it will! 

I'm not going to be able to do much with my color scheme other than paint, but I did get some sheers for the six windows. I then tired to get a  color that was several shades lighter for the walls and the red is for two cabinets. Here's what I have tentatively picked out for my room colors. I can't get into the room until July 30 so there's plenty of time for me to changed my mind! LOL

We are still having a mouse problem!!! Don't worry, I have no pictures for this one. I think it is partly due to the city converting a foresty type field close to my house to a dog park. The neighbor next door said they are having problems too. I don't like seeing a mouse in the house, but I have an even bigger problem with a dead mouse in the house. I can't even bring myself to look at it! I have had to pay my daughter to take them out to the trash. (I know it's crazy, but I really just can't do it!) We tried some of those glue traps...disgusting. I had to pay her $10 instead of $5 because the mouse was still alive. We had to have the neighbor take care of one because Delaney said it was barely stuck on the trap and she was afraid it would come off when she picked it up, plus she said it had beady red eyes (I don't know, because I refused to look at it). Anyway, the other day I left her at home for just a little bit so I could return my laptop to my old district. she called me and said I needed to come and pick her up. She wanted something to eat so she got the box of Slim Jims down and found a dead mouse in it!  So now we are going to scour the house and look for any little hole where they might be coming into the house. I have also set out the trays with poison in the house, garage and attic. I've watched so many HGTV shows that I am worried that they have been up in the attic chewing on all of the electrical wiring.