School Visit Fail....

Well, it's that time of year!  You all know what I am talking about.....you go to any given store, and BAM! You get hit with the school supply display.  There is no wake up call to remind you of the ending of summer quite like this.  If you are like me, at first you think..."Oooo, new crayons!!"  which is almost immediately followed by "OMG I only have a few weeks left of my vacation!"

That being said, upon seeing the crayons and other goodies, I went home and started preparing my materials that I had already purchased for next year.  One project I have decided to do this year is create table skirts for all of my large tables in my room (pictures to come soon!)  Well, the table skirts turned out so cute that I could NOT WAIT to put them on the tables, like, not even a day.  Sooooo, off I go to school the next morning to put my cute creation into it's new home.

Fail.
Flop.
Maybe Next Time.

Wouldn't you know they are waxing the floors in the hallway. 

That being said, I guess my cutesy makeover pictures will have to wait a little while.  **Sigh**

On a happier note, Antoinette and Emily over at  4321...Teach have been so sweet to give me the Versatile Blogger Award!  Really, this happened like a month ago, but summer can cause me to really slack!!  Thanks so much Antoinette and Emily!!

There are seven rules for this award.

1)  Thank the blogger who nominated you!  Thanks again Antoinette and Emily!

2)  Include a link to their site.  See above...

3)  Include the award image in your post.

4)  Give 7 random facts about yourself.
   
*My husband and I met while cheering on the Pirates at ECU....Arrgh!

*I have two Ahh-mazing dogs named Jax and Zoey.  They are so funny and I cannot imagine our life without them!!



*I have read all of the Harry Potter books......more than once.

*I have been a third grade teacher for 3 years, and I am about to start year 4.

*I CANNOT WAIT until football season starts so that I can cheer on my Pirates (and tailgate)!

*I heart TOMS:

*My favorite meal of the day is LUNCH:)

5)  Nominate 15 other bloggers for the award.

Pencils, Paper, and Pixie Dust

According to Ashley

A Literate Life

The First Grade Parade

Serenade to Second Grade
Coaching Chronicles

Miss L's Whole Brain Teaching

Second Grade with Mrs. Wade

Miss Stec's Kindergarten Kollections

Runde's Room
Tickled Pink
A Day in the Life of Miss Kranz

A Cupcake for the Teacher

I Do, We Do, You Do

Two Things in Common

6)  When nominating, include a link to their site.

7)  Let other bloggers know they've been nominated.

Well, That's it for today!  Hopefully I will be posting pics of the upgrades to my classroom soon!  Stay Cool and Enjoy **what's left of** the summer!

How Lovely!

Well I am feeling super lovely today since I got the Lovely Blog award!  This is the first blog award I have ever received!  Special thanks to Julie over at The Hip Teacher!  Click on the Lovely Blog Award link to visit her sa-weet third grade teacher blog!

There are only 3 rules to follow once you've received this award :)

1. Follow the person who gave you the award
2. Link back to the person that gave you the award
3. Pass the award on to 15 new bloggers.

Now it is up to me to award 15 of my favorite bloggers!

1.  The Inspired Apple

2.  Mrs. Randall's Learning Library

3.  Mrs. Patton's Patch

4.  One Extra Degree

5.  What the Teacher Wants

6.  Clutter Free Classroom

7.  The 5K Teacher

8.  The Third Wheel

9.  3rd Grade Gridiron

10.  Third Grade Grapevine

11.  Third Grade is a Hoot

12.  Oh Boy 4th Grade!

13.  Adventures in Room 5

14.  Teacher Idea Factory

15.  Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher

Make sure to check them all out!  These blogs are great!

Happy Thursday!  Off to the pool I go:)

4th of July Linky Party!

Happy 4th of July!  So excited for a linky party!  Currently.....

Listening- Good Morning America!

I don't know about all of you, but one of my favorite things about being out for summer is watching the "mid morning" TV shows. I like to immediately follow GMA with Live! with Kelly:)

Loving-Brownie Batter Oats

Please RUN over to http://www.fitfoodiefinds.com/ and check out what Lee has going on.  She has amazing healthy recipes, one of which is brownie batter oats.  I am an oat eater.  Like, every day.  But she has some incredible ways to change up your oats in a healthy way.  There are lots of other healthly recipes and ideas too.  And, her active lifestyle is just downright inspirational!

Thinking-Time to walk the dogs?  My dogs are really digging summer vacation because they get to walk twice a day!  And they get to stay out and play all day too! Prepare for doggy overload....

Zoey after a morning run:)  Tired pup!

Jax doing his "treat trick"!



Both of my babies on watch!  Making sure no one sneaks up on the house!



Wanting-A pedicure

Needing-Oakley running sunglasses

These two go hand in hand!  Next weekend, I am running the XTERRA trail run half marathon in Columbia SC.  Therefore, my feet are in bad shape!  Pedicure could really go under the "needing" category. Nobody wants to see piggies like these. While training for this half, I have been wearing my regular sunglasses that I wear all the time.  No big thing really, but they give me a headache if I wear them on runs longer than 6 miles!  These are what I am thinking I need:



Oakley Miss Conduct Sunglasses

Reading:

1.  Les Miserable
2.  Guiding Readers and Writers in Grades 3-6

Les Mis is my pleasure read of the summer. Read aloud...not so much.  I have read it before, but it has been a while, and I am loving it!  BTW have you seen the trailer for the new movie??

If I had to pick an actual read aloud that i use with my kids that is my favorite, it would have to be The Sweetest Fig by Chris Van Allsburg:)  The kids get such a kick out of this!

For professional development, I am diving into this book by Fountas and Pinnell.  I am going to be changing my reading instruction next year.  I really want to try readers and writers workshop, but I am so nervous.  So, basically, I am a sponge while reading this!  Any tips and advice you bloggies have about implementing reader's workshop would be GREATLY appreciated!!

Please head over to Oh Boy 4th Grade and check out all of the other linkies!!!

HAPPY 4th EVERYONE!!!



Here comes the Common Core!

Well- the year is here! 

Our state has adopted the common core!  I am, as I am sure many of my other co-workers are, SO excited about adopting these new standards!  I have really enjoyed examining the changes in curriculum.  In the same breath, I am SO nervous about new expectations!  I am sure that everything will be fine, but our lack of core aligned resources has me sweating a little bit! 

That being said, I have created some common core objectives to display in my classroom.  Click the picture below to check in out at TPT!

I am dying to hear from all of you that are familiar with the common core.  What challenges did you face when you switched over?  What are the benefits that you have seen? 

That's all for that!  I'm out to stay cool by the pool!

Don't get Crabby!! 5 more days of school!!

Hello bloggers!

I don't know how far along you are in the year, but we are down to 5 sweet little days!!  Now, I love my job but holy wow am I excited for summer!!

These last two week can get really tricky to plan.  EOG testing is over, but now we have to remediate the students who did not pass the test, continue teaching the students who did, and retest the students who didn't.  It can be overwhelming planning for kids that you do not normally teach.  I am the teacher from our grade level who has been working with the students who passed their EOG reading test.  I can honestly say that I have loved working with this group! 

I decided to go with an "oceans" theme, with summer being right around the corner, and figured I would share what we have been up to!

After learning about fish in different zones of the ocean, we made a "can, have, are" poster.

I decided to read "The Magic School Bus On the Ocean Floor".  They love the characters in this book, and they really enjoyed the fun facts throughout!

We learned about tide pools and animals that live in them, and made some crabs!  Paints and handprints!

So anyway, the reason behind the title of my post:  It can be tough not to turn into a crab at the end of the year.  But, if I can stay positive and make the last few days as fun as possible, I think the kids will in turn make it a little easier on me:)

Just keep swimming!

Testing Motivation

Hi everyone!

Well.....the week is here.  The culmination of everything that I do has been crammed into one long test, and it is here.  I am sure you can all sense how truly "excited" I am that testing is going on out in rural land where I teach.  Unfortunately, one of the "perks" of working with third graders is the dreaded EOG.  My kids have been working SO hard on their tests, and I am very proud of them!

Now that I have had some time on the soapbox, I wanted to share a few motivational things that I did for my kids each morning before their test.  I wish that I could say that I came up with these ideas all on my own and made the printables all on my own, but I totally didn't :)  To see the real creative genious behind these cutsie ideas, follow the links!

Tuesday:

Please envision the airhead that was taped to the letter before the kids gobbled it up:)  They were so surprised and excited to see their treat!  I got the idea from Adventures of Ms. Smith.  She has a SUPER cute blog!!

Wednesday:

The boys especially enjoyed this one!  I honestly found this printable one time online and now I cannot find it again!  NOOOO!!  If anyone sees or knows where this came from I would love to give them credit!

Thursday:

Glow bracelets with cutie pie notes from Fun in First.  I like this one because it is not candy;)

To all testing teachers-I hope you are having a stress free experience!  Ciao for now!!

Holy long time no blog!!!

Hello blog world!!  I feel like I have not had a single second to get online and get blogging since idkkkkk January?  (January 9th to be exact:))

The main reason for this is my stress load at school.  This is only my 3rd year teaching, so I only have two other groups of students to compare them too, but this group of kids is demanding a lot of my time.  I have definitely had to learn a lot about differentiated instruction this year, that is for sure!  Not to mention all those little 3 letter acronyms that consume most of my time at home.  IEP, PEP, EOG, PLC......you get the drift.  Anddd to top it all of NC is going over to the common core, which is a good thing, but is something that I am going to have to learn about.

The second reason for my leave of absence has been that my BESTIE was getting married!!!  And, being the matron of honor, I had a LOT of matronly duties to attend to:)

Me (left) and Grayson back in 3rd grade!!

But, I am back now, and have really missed catching up on all of the inspirational things that you all have to say!!  Blogging is definitely an outlet for me to find out what other teachers are doing and going through, and I can't wait to get caught back up!

Here are a few highlights from my few months while I was out of the loop!!

Valentine Candy Heart Graphing

Our class was donated a set of chapter books (Loser by Jerry Spinelli)  from Donor's Choose!!

I've been wondering:

**How did changing to the common core make teaching different for you?

**How do you find it easiest to differentiate instruction??