sunshine?!!!

Yesterday I spent my morning baking Irish Car Bomb cupcakes.

We have had GORGEOUS weather for 3 days! I am loving it! Today my plan was to spend some time outside and enjoy the sunshine. But it's cold and this morning I got a phone call from the school secretary telling me that one of our teachers passed away last night. We knew it was coming, she has been battling cancer all year. But it came sooner than everyone thought. She was still teaching 2 weeks ago. School tomorrow will be tough-she taught 6th grade for 25+ years in the same building. A wonderful woman-she is part of the reason I have the job I do as she was on the interview committee. 

She will be greatly missed. 

Tonight I am making fajitas for dinner. 

Hope you are enjoying some sunshine! 

I would appreciate it if spring break was coming sooner. (Mine isn't until the 3rd week of April...)

~Allyce~

Spring has not quite sprung...but here is a freebie!

SO yesterday was the first day of spring. Today we didn't even hit 50 degrees.
But it's Wednesday so here are 5 things that are NOT wrong.
1) I wore my plaid flannel shirt today and was super comfortable all day and plenty warm.
2) My kids were quite well behaved today! Sure only 20/25 were present but the ones that were there completed their work and I only had minor behaviors to deal with!
3) My kids got out at 12:30 today which left the afternoon for myself and the paraeducator in my classroom to get stuff done! And we got to have some good conversations about the kids and trying to figure things out.
4) We made some super adorable little chicks today! They make the hall look springy! And after the kids left I made a HUGE woven paper basket to put the eggs in that they painted yesterday. (I wish I would have had my camera to take pictures of that.)
5) I feel like a successful math teacher! I was going over the common core math standards this afternoon and figuring out where to head next in math and I feel like I can meet ALL of these standards by the end of the year.

So now on to my classroom and what we have been up to.
Monday: I don't actually feel like we accomplished much. We are talking about fact families so we did some of that (great way to show more than one way to make a number-and the kids love writing their facts on the "windows" of the houses). We had some play time. Monday was kind of a blur for me.
Tuesday: We did some writing in our journals. We had PE. We read some Mrs. Piggle Wiggle-my kids LOVE the cures! (I wish many of them could actually work-ON THEM. hehe) Then we painted. I decided that doing it individually would be more of a headache than necessary. So I put small sponges, and 5 colors of paint of their tables (4 kids per table) and said Paint your eggs! They loved it! And they did a good job of keeping their paint on the paper (except one little one who decided to sponge on some war paint-there were tears when I took her paper and said she was done painting.)
Today-writing, cute yellow chicks, then they ate lunch and it was time to go home. Love the once a month early release days!

So I have never done a freebie. I hope you will be able to open it. We are working on adding simple numbers and writing math sentences. So here is a cute springy one for adding easter eggs. It's simple but it cover standards and will go with my lesson.

Hope it works for you. If not can someone tell me how to make it work for other people to download. Fonts and graphic all came from powerpoint.
Have a TREMENDOUS Thursday!
~Allyce~

Time out Tuesday.

Anyone else have a hard day today?

It started with me driving to school. We got snow last night-this hardly ever happens here. But it did today, this was the worst the roads have been all year. (I nearly called school today and said that I couldn't get there and needed a half day sub. But I didn't because I had student #25 coming for the first time today.)

Then my morning started with a jewel throwing a tantrum and having to send her to the office before she got physical and hurt someone.
Then they had PE-THANK goodness for specialist time!

But on the way to lunch one little guy got physical with the little jewel from earlier in the day. So he got to eat lunch in the office and visit with the principal.

After lunch jewel from earlier in the day decided that instead of doing her work she would use the computer. The second time that I went over to turn the computer off she actually spit on me. GROSS. So to the office she went again-this time for the rest of the day.

Oh I left out the student who I caught drawing on my floor with a marker today-apparently she was mad at something but she wouldn't say what. 

New student was super easy-fit in with the class, completed work, was quiet (HOORAY!), feels like he has been there all along.

I was missing a few key players today. Hopefully when all 25 are there it will all work well.

We talked about Leprechauns, the president and the alphabet today. Sounds random but it all worked well.

My kiddos are loving learning sign language! We have learned our colors. We are now working on the letters and the months. I love watching them try so hard to make their hands copy what I am doing. ( I wish they were getting to have the kinder experience I did with getting to communicate with a deaf student. That was definitely a huge part of my education k-4. I loved it!)

Sorry for the rant. If you made it this far you deserve an award. Not a funny post today. Tomorrow I am determined to participate in "What's Not Wrong Wednesday."
I hope everyone is having a great week! I am off to make my April calendar pieces because if construction paper flowers can't put a smile on this face then we have serious problems :) 

Oh and if you don't read Journey of a Substitute Teacher then you should because she posted a poem today that made me feel much better!

~Allyce~

in like a lion out like a lamb...

So it's March 12 and it is snowing! Seriously?! I know they say March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, but really? It better be an extra cute and cuddly lamb. like this one.

 

 

 

ok this isn't the lamb picture I was looking for but you get the point.

SO I relaxed all weekend. Filed a TON of papers for future use and easy access. And got a new "rug" for my classroom. It's not really a rug it's those large foam squares with letters in them. (great deal at Ross)

So that was how we started the day, a new rug. Then just after lunch it started snowing. Yes you read that right! I thought we were done with that stuff (I only like snow when I can curl up at home and watch under a cozy blanket). Then one of my little jewels threw a fit-and the principal was out of the building for the day. Oh and just after I get her down to the office I got a visit from the secretary to find out that I am getting student number 25 tomorrow.

This could get interesting and crowded. But I am just going to hope for the best and try not to lose my mind.

What do you have ready for when you get a new student? Do you have a baggie ready with all of the labels and things? I am just trying to figure this out since I have gotten 3 new ones since January.

Hope your week started great!

Sorry it took so long!

Well it has been a very long week so I am just now getting to my post about last Sunday. I got to take a tour of the local Coast Guard station! It was fun and interesting! I love by one of the biggest stations-they house the surf rescue school because of the dangerous conditions we have to train them in.
Lewis and Clark named the area Cape Disappointment.
We got to see the boats, the housing, the offices, more boats, the dining area, the insides of the boats where they put the survivors they rescue, the lighthouse (even got to go inside), and the watch station (with the biggest set of binoculars I have ever seen!).

So here are some pictures of our adventure!

Some of the boats for the surf rescue school.

Chamber for the survivors.

One of the little boats.

Inside of the biggest boat there!

Cape D lighthouse. We were on the lower of the two outer decks.

Up in the lighthouse.

The helicopter was doing some training over the water.

biggest binoculars EVER! in the watch building.

Had a great day at the Cape!

I have now survived my second conference week. Now I need to decide what to do for St. Patricks day... There will definitely be a visit from the Leprechaun I just can't decide how many times he will visit...

Have a great week!

currently in March...

So I have a blog post floating around in my head all about my trip to the local Coast Guard station. It was super fun! I have lots of pictures. But for now I have my currently.

( I was supposed to be doing my report cards tonight-but I logged in after school to do this and found out that I am not allowed to input grades until Saturday...but my report cards are supposed to go home on Friday and we have conferences Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. It's stressing me out a bit.)

Happy Birthday Dr Seuss!

I got to spend the day at a different school today since I am on Mid-winter break. I had a BLAST! My mom works in the special education classroom so that is where I spent the majority of the day. But I did get to read with one adorable little kinder.
They did a one hour read-a-thon. So they invited parents/grandparent and volunteers to come in and read with the kids for that hour. (Note that this school has a TON of volunteers. I live in an area where lots of people come to retire so then they end up volunteering in the schools. There are lots of grandma and grandpa so and so's helping out in classrooms all the time.) It was PERFECT! Kids either wore pajamas or came to school dressed as their favorite book character. I think the Lorax costume was my favorite.

So I spent the day reading, watching the Lorax movie (not the new one but the animated version of the book that I bought at costco yesterday), helping with in the Special Ed classroom and visiting with the staff.  So here are a few pictures that don't show faces :)
(UPDATE: Just a little side note. This is not the school I work at. I work an hour away from home this is the school in my town.)

My little reading buddy and I. (awkward picture of me but oh well)

I loved all of the bulletin boards!

kids who's parents couldn't come or that didn't have an adult had an older student to read to them.

My mom made this board free hand...

Watching the Lorax. They loved it!

 

One fish, two fish, red fish...

Hope everyone had a FABULOUS Seuss day! Two Seuss day's for me in one week means I need a nap.
HAPPY FRIDAY!

100th post! and as usual it will be RANDOM.

So I had no school today (or tomorrow) because it's our Mid-winter break. Just in time for report cards to be due next week and parent teacher conferences-only with kids we are worried about or in my case also my two new students so I can get to know their parents...

My plan today was to head across the river (this is the closest "big" city) to do my grocery shopping in the morning. Well when my alarm went off at 5am-why do I always forget to turn it off! - I looked outside only to see that it had either snowed or hailed or both and then it froze. And I mean really froze-like the school district here in town had a 2 hour delay. So I went back to bed for about 2 hours then I went and curled up on the couch in my PJs and a cozy blanket. I watched some shows apparently I fell asleep sometime between CSI and the end of revenge and finally really woke up at 11am! Holy Cow!
I then did some blog stalking, worked a little more on my family tree and watched a little bit of the news.

Then got up got ready and headed to the store finally. I made it to Fred Meyer, Cash and Carry, Dollar Tree and Costco today, oh and of course Starbucks. Pretty successful in my book.

While in line at Dollar Tree the man behind me was staring at my stuff. He then said, "You must be an educator." I said yes and laughed a little. He responded with, "I just came from a school, I saw your stuff and I just knew you must be shopping for school." I can't figure out if he is in education or if he is a parent or what. (I would have chatted with him more but I was headed to Costco to meet my mom and sister.) I guess I will never know-although it is a small town I will probably run into him again sometime.

Oh and I found the original Lorax cartoon video on DVD today! I can't wait to let my kiddos watch it. They LOVE the book!

Tomorrow I will be spending the day helping at the school my mom works at. It's their Read Across America Day and they need some extra help. Then it's home to hopefully get some report cards started/finished.

Hope everyone has a GREAT Friday!