Bugs & Hisses..It's Time for Place Value

It's a Sunday night, the house is cleaned, laundry is done, lunch is packed for tomorrow, && I got to go shopping today. How could this day get any better? Uhhh it's National Coffee Day, duh! It's true that I've developed a serious addiction to the stuff, but thanks to my six month cleaning at the dentist I've been reassured that my brushing skills are keeping my pearly whites pearly and white. Typically the Sunday night blues would have crept into my life by now, but I'm so stoked that I don't have to teach word problems this week that I could do a few back flips. Word problems aren't horrible...I loved teaching my kids how to solve them. . .until I had to teach it for 3 weeks in a row...horrendous idea that had everybody frustrated and ready for a change. Some of my sweet little things just aren't ready for all the brain work that goes into solving them and that's perfectly fine (after all it is only week 6).

Our next district wide focus is place value && I finally have a math unit ready to roll out from last year. October will be here shortly (in one day) and with it comes the Halloween madness. I've loved Halloween since I was a little teeny tiny thing and after watching Hocus Pocus on Friday night I have the itch to spook things up (just a little) with my Bugs and Hisses unit. You can snag up the spook-a-licious fun {{here}} It's a kid favorite year after year so I have high hopes that this week is going to be a good week for teaching math. With a craftivity, games, and some of my favorite read alouds how could it not be?!?

One of my personal goals for this week is to be unplugged from technology by 9:00 and it's 9:06 so until next time...live, love, and have fun teaching!

Ladies & Gentlemen... A Substitute is in the Room

One of my most recent blogs talked about how I don't like to take days off because of the sub situation. I can only hope and pray (and pray again) that I had someone in my room today that could follow directions and keep my kids doing the same. My sub plans are so detailed that they tell someone what to do in every second of the day. All of the ladies that I teach with leave detailed sub plans too, but still somehow things go coo coo kangaroo up in the building when a sub walks through the door. We've had subs show up in their pajamas (tucked into their boots), with bags of magazines, or not even show up at all. I've had subs give my kids coloring sheets to complete (instead of the work I've planned for them to do) and others have had subs fall asleep. Which leads me to question where exactly they find these candidates that fill in for us.

Anyhow, instead of drinking my coffee and successfully conducting a three ring circus I spent my morning in the dentist office...having cavities filled. I've only had 2 in all of my 28 years until today. . .now the total is up to 4. It was kind of a sad moment even though it technically definitely wasn't my fault (three out of four that I've had were due to a cavity forming underneath the sealant on my molars). Having a cavity filled is probably not a big deal to most people out there. I'm not bothered by the drilling sound at all, but I am bothered by needles && unfortunately getting a cavity filled means numbing medicine admininstered by NEEDLE! (Insert panic attack here).

I may just be the only adult in the entire world that gets this worked up over needles && to be honest I'm not quite sure how this whole "being a mom" thing is going to go in the future when delivering the kid becomes a reality. Thankfully I survived. . .1 hour, 2 fillings, 2 numbing shots, 1 panick attack, and 1 extremeley numb mouth later I was free to enjoy the rest of my day. When I say numb, y'all I could have been drooling all over my face and I would have n.e.v.e.r known. I quickly figured out talking wouldn't be an option and sadly eating wouldn't be one either. What does a starving person with a numb mouth do? Why visit Chick-Fil-A to get a delicious milk shake of course! There's no chewing involved with a milkshake so my tongue and cheeks were safe and my stomach was happy! After a glorious nap my mouth is back to normal and I can finally focus on everything else in my life. Like what I'm going to walk into tomorrow morning (I kid, I kid. . .word has it my substitute did fine).

 

For me, a day off really isn't a day off. I'm constantly in school mode. True, I got to sleep in until 8:00 today, but I was up at 7:00 thinking "Ok the kids are walking into school. . .please let there be someone to greet them!" && I did the same thing all day long. . .oh it's 10:00 they're doing writing. 11:35 already? They're eating. It's crazy. . .or maybe I'm crazy. . .but I'm always thinking about the day as if me thinking about it is going to make everything go as planned. Besides being a maniac today, I've also been working on polishing up my "Hoot, Hoot, Hooray" place value unit to go into my TPT store. We've done plenty of prior lessons on place value, but for the 4th nine weeks of school we start moving into expanded form. I was really worried about how my kids would grasp this, but shockingly they nailed it! It was such an "Aha!" moment for them that they could do "big kid" math and it wouldn't be as hard as they thought it would be. As you could probably guess from the title, this is an owl themed unit packed with stuff to hoot about! I found some cutesy owl books to incorporate literacy into my math lessons. They don't have mathematical concepts within the text, but they do provide the perfect opportunity to quickly review story elements(characters/setting/problem/solution/setting) &&& with math being the first official thing we do with our day it gets my kids pumped up about learning something. The books that I used are included at the end of the unit- -all of the books were purchased from Barnes and Noble or Scholastic and they're super, super cute!

 

One of the books inspired the owl craftivity that is also included in the unit (it also inspired a trip to the craft store for more scrapbook paper)! Here's a closer look at the craft portion of the activity. In other news. . .I've almost been married for an entire year! How does a year go by so fast? Since it rained on our wedding day we didn't get a chance to have a lot of fun with the pictures. There was a small pocket of time to get pictures and to do the whole ceremony outside like we planned so pictures were very formal. I love them all don't get me wrong. Our photographer was awesome and got some amazing shots despite mother nature being a witch, but we aren't the "formal" stiffy stiff couple that the pictures depict. I'm fortunate enough to know a very talented and amazing lady who just happened to be coming down for a Charleston visit this past weekend. She shot our 1 year anniversary pictures and I'm in love, I'm in love and I don't care who knows it! Every picture that she's edited so far has become my new favorite and she's not done yet. I could seriously print them all out, plaster them to all of our remaining wall space, and look like the maniac picture loving fool that I am. But for now, I've got to go to the gym for my weekly training session. . .and by that I completely mean my weekly sweat session where I look like a dodo bird lifting weights and jumping around. Until next time, live, love, teach!