Currently: July 2015

Wow it's already July! It's crazy how fast this year is flying by!! It's time (well we're a few days late) to link up with Farley again!

Listening
I LOVE music. My phone has been constantly playing Amazon Prime Music this summer. I love it because I like so many different genres of music. I also like that I can listen to newer and older songs!

Gotta love kitty snores. We're a little pathetic when it comes to our fur babies. We took them on vacation to the beach with us last week! Now that we're back home, they both are curled up sleeping all day. Bella is a little more independent and will lie wherever until she wants to be petted. Percy, on the other hand, is usually less than a foot away if not in my lap.

Loving
This summer is passing quickly, but it's been great so far! We have 4 more weeks to enjoy before school starts (I have meetings and pre-planning before that though). I'm just really trying to enjoy this summer some. I know that when August comes things are going to get crazy busy: school/work, grad school, Lil Man's school stuff, Lil Man's dance classes/practices, TpT/blog, baby planning (maybe? hopefully?), moving (we really want to rent a house and get out of this apartment). So yea enjoying the summer...

Thinking
Although I'm trying to enjoy the summer, that doesn't mean I'm not crazy busy working on things! I personally enjoy working on TpT products, blog posts, and ideas for the upcoming year. We have a few to do lists to cross things off of...We'll get there.

Wanting
I really wish we could have joined all the other fabulous teacher-authors & bloggers at the TpT Conference in Vegas. I hope we're able to plan to attend next year, but then again I hope we have a squishy baby by that time too so who knows!

Needing
I seriously have bad luck with phones! This is the 3rd phone out of the last 4 that I have dropped and cracked the screen. What's so bad is that while we were on vacation, I dropped it, sending it bouncing across the parking lot, and it was fine. The case was a little dinged, but the phone itself was fine. Well yesterday while updating our dry erase calendar in the kitchen, I bumped it off the counter and it fell straight on the screen. This time the case didn't protect it. It's bad...

All 
Yep that's right! I'm an ALL STAR at desiring to be organized. I always have these great ideas, spend time looking for ways to get organized, and spend time attempting to set up a system...I am just never able to stick with it! My ADHD and organization do not get along at all! I'm trying really hard to work on a system that isn't overwhelming and hoping that I'll be able to stick to it!

Well that's all for me, now it's your turn to hop on over to Farley's Oh Boy 4th Grade to link up with the rest of us! 

Ch-ch-ch-changes, a new product, and a giveaway!

Ch-ch-ch-changes!!

We're working to freshen up our blog! We've already made a few changes and we're hoping to stick to at least one post a week!

It's officially summer break!! But we are working hard this summer! I am going to be doing K-1 Special Ed resource next year.  I'm also planning to go back to school this fall to start working on my Masters!! 

This summer is all about growing professionally and getting ready for next year! 

Summer Plans:

• Blog posts
• Lots of ideas floating around! 

• New products
• Already finished 1 and have a nice size to-do list! 

• Read (A LOT) of professional development 
• Now: Whole Brain Teaching
• Next: Read With Sarah training materials 
• This is the guided reading program we use, and I'm not able to attend the training this summer due to a district required workshop. I've used the program and know the basics, but I want to read and grow more proficient in using it. 
• Then: Any suggestions?!?!

• Prepare for next year
• Organize current resources (thinking binders?)
• Put together my binders (IEP, teacher, and sub)
• Put together behavior plan, morning work, centers, etc.

• Prepare for going back to school
• I don't even know where to begin

• VACATION!!
• No explanation needed

What are your summer plans? 

NEW PRODUCT!!

I will be using Saxon Phonics & Spelling next year so I made my kiddos a little book to go along with it. I put the book in alphabetical order, but I plan to use in the order the letter sounds are introduced by Saxon.

^ Click to view on TpT ^

GIVEAWAY!!

Leave a comment below telling us how you would use this product in your classroom, and we'll pick 2 lucky winners to receive a FREE copy! Don't forget to leave us your email!!

Currently June 2015

We're linking up for this month's Currently with Farley! It's been a while (since we posted much less did a currently), but we're back!! 

Listening--We love Amazon Prime!! Prime Music is the bomb!
Loving--Percy and Bella are glad to have Momma home more!
Thinking--I'm so excited to have the summer to plan this year! We're currently reading Whole Brain Teaching and making plans for next year!
Wanting--They served Blue Bell so they closed due to the recall, but now they have a new brand and will be open this week!
Needing--I really need to clean the house (but it can wait right?)
Summer Lovin'--I love getting to have lazy mornings/days, but this will definitely still be a busy summer. We are looking forward to vacation at the end of June for Lil Man's dance nationals!! And the house hunting has been paused for a few weeks as the last few weeks of school were crazy. We were hoping to be moving about now, but things didn't happen fast enough.

Make It Monday: Stop Motion Animation

We are so excited to share this project with you! We literally spent like two and half hours on this, but this is a project that you can spend as little or as much time on as you would like. We went all out for ours, but it can easily be made simpler.

Yesterday we were getting ready to sit down at the breakfast table when Lil Man made some sound effect. This is a normal occurrence, and we always tell him how awesome he is when he does it without realizing it. Manda made the comment that he needed to grow up and work in sound effects. Then she had the idea to make a stop motion video with him.

After breakfast we headed to his room for "supplies". We grabbed some cars and a camera and got to work!

We set up the pictures and snapped the shots. Then we downloaded the pictures and put them in order and added some audio. Now this was a much longer process than it seems written out here, but we're going to discuss how to make the videos more in depth on a Wired Wednesday post. 

Here's our video:

 Hope you enjoyed our stop motion animation! Have you ever done anything like this? We'd love to see it! 

Also, if you haven't already...be sure to get your entries in for the giveaways we're hosting. You can enter here. 

Thoughtful Thursday: Math Dominoes

Sorry that today's post is so late. Today has been just crazy. Steph got an email response last week asking her for an interview today at the school we completed our student teaching internship last Spring. We were very excited! So she went to the interview today. Less than 2 hours after her interview, they called to offer her the position! She starts in August as a Special Ed Parapro! We went out for dinner with her family to celebrate!

Manda has been working hard on some math dominoes this past week. She has created two sets for our store. She was inspired by some domino manipulatives that were in the room Steph long term subbed in.

Click on the images to check out each product in our store!

Print them out on card stock and laminate those bad boys for a fun, sturdy game! Tell us what you think!

Wired Wednesday

Wednesday already? Manda and I went to the pool to lay out (and to swim of course) while Lil Man was at dance camp. It's been such a pretty day!

Well I'm feeling kind of defeated when it comes to Wired Wednesday. I really want to add a page bar across the top of our blog with drop down menus. I stayed up until 2am trying to get it to work. My plan was to get it all set up and then blog about it for our Wednesday post. But as you can see ^^ it didn't happen. So I don't really have a post for you today :(

I'm off to try and figure it out though. If you have drop down menus on your blog or know how to add them to blogger, I'd love your help!

Also, be on the look out for a poll to be posted towards the top of the page in the sidebar. I'm going to create a "Next week on Wired Wednesday..." poll and let our readers vote!

Giveaway!!

We have 100+ 'likes' on Facebook! We're hosting a giveaway on our fan page! Head on over to enter for a chance to win 5 great products from some of our generous fellow TpT teacher-authors!

Wired Wednesday: Blogging for Kiddos

Wow! Can you believe it is already Wednesday?! I feel like this week has flown by! Manda is home with us today so everyone is happy! Lil Man and I are super excited to share today's post with you!    

**Disclaimer: bare with us this post got a little long winded!**

 

 Last week Lil Man was watching some videos on Brain Pop Jr. He watched one about blogs. Unfortunately, unless you have a subscription to Brain Pop Jr., you won't be able to watch the video. You can read a little about it on the page though. Basically, the video tells you what a blog is (web log), describes some types of blogs (general topics, specific subjects, personal, photo, travel, news, etc.), explains the parts of a blog (title, author/contributors, posts, tags, comments, archive, links, pages, etc), shares ways to participate in blogs (writing and publishing posts, including photos and/or videos, and reading and commenting on others' blogs), and shares a little about safety with blogs (not sharing personal info).

Later in the afternoon after watching the video, he made a comment about blogs. We told him that we have blogs that we post on (this one and personal one). He made the comment that he could start a blog. We didn't think much of it at the time, but since then, while we've been working on blog posts for here, he's made other comments.

Yesterday, we were discussing topics for upcoming weeks and he made a comment, "I could make a blog and talk about my family, things we do, and being a dancer." Mind you, he is 7 years old and doesn't really enjoy writing...so this idea is both scary and intriguing at the same time! We've always had the thought that we would like to have classroom blogs so we decided that this would be a great experience for him and us!

I spent some time researching last night about how to help him set up his blog. What he needed to know, what I needed to know, and any information I could find really. I just wasn't sure where to start with him. I actually watched the Brain Pop Jr. video myself so I would know exactly what it had talked about (hence the notes from above). I found a great Blogging Rules printable from Scholastic. I also read a blog post 14 Steps to Meaningful Student Blogging, which is of course directed to teachers getting ready to blog with their students, but I definitely got some ideas.

So then it was time to sit down with Lil Man and get him started!

We discussed about some rules:
    --Only use your first name
    --Don't put the name of your school or dance studio
    --Don't put the name of the apartment complex
    --Don't give any personal contact info (email, phone number, or address)

Then we talked about some things that he can talk about on his blog. He was having a hard time coming up with what to say so we made a circle map:

Then we sat down and wrote out his first post (I had to write because he started tearing up when he realized we were going to write it on paper. Told you he doesn't like writing; it's a big weakness we're working on.) We also helped him come up with a catchy blog title.

Then I sat down with him at the computer and set it all up. I let him choose all the fonts, background, and everything. Then he sat down and typed what we had written. 

We're excited to help him get started. We all talked about some ideas for posts for him to do. We'll keep you updated on how his blog is going! If you'd like to visit, just click the screen shot above!

Teacher Feature Tuesday: The Applicious Teacher

Are you ready? It's time for the next edition of Teacher Feature Tuesday!

Our featured teacher is:

 Leigh Langton

The Applicious Teacher

Leigh is a second grade teacher in DeBary Florida! She also enjoys spending time with her new little boy and running in her "spare time".

Leigh's TpT store The Applicious Teacher opened in September 2012. You can check out her TpT store and her blog

Why do you teach?

"I am blessed enough to have a career I love. I wake up every morning excited to be at school. The smell of crayons and glue remind me that I am making a difference in these kiddos lives!"

Why did you open your TpT store?

"I opened my store after realizing that most of the stuff I created in my classroom other teachers would see and want to use. I wanted to share my ideas and projects with more than just the teachers at my school."

How has TpT made a difference in your life personally and/or professionally?

"TpT has changed the way I teach! It is constantly forcing me to reflect on my activities and pushed me to create better projects for my classroom and ultimately my store.  It also provides an avenue for me to create. I've always enjoyed drawing and sketching. TpT allows me to marry my love for art and school!"

I wish someone had told me...(share some advice for TpT sellers)

"...to have patience! I thought selling on TpT would be so easy and that buyers would fall head over heels for ALL my products. It has taken some time for me to build a (small, but ever growing) following. As long as I keep creating quality products, the sales will come."

We've taken some time to look around The Applicious Teacher store and she has some great resources! Head on over and check out what Leigh has to offer!

Make It Monday: Lunch Skewers

Today we had a really fun lunch and wanted to share it as our Make It Monday! Lil Man was excited about lunch today because it was fun, yummy, and healthy! Our lunch was inspired by this pin...





Our dining room table was covered with a makings of a craft project, so we had a picnic at the coffee table in the living room.

Here's what is pictured above: wooden skewers, Catalina dressing (in the colorful bowls), spinach, mandarin oranges, ham, bananas, vanilla yogurt, mandarin oranges (again), pineapple, and marshmallows! 

Now at this point I've probably lost you because all of that stuff together doesn't sound quite appetizing. Just stick it out a little longer! 

We had like a pack of 100 skewers, but we each took two and kept reusing them.

Here's the first skewer we tried:

We paired the spinach, mandarin oranges, and ham together and dipped it in Catalina dressing! It was really yummy!

Our second skewer was a little sweeter:

We paired banana, mandarin oranges, pineapple, and marshmallows together and dipped it in vanilla yogurt! Again, it was really yummy! 

We went back and forth between the two different ones. We even had to go back to the kitchen a few times for more ingredients! We definitely enjoyed our yummy, fun, and healthy lunch!

Can you tell he enjoyed it?

He decided to enjoy some of the left over yogurt!

What do you think? Do you like skewers? What do you like on yours? 

 

 

 

Weekend Wrap-Up: A Busy Week

We enjoyed our week of "first editions" with our new schedule! Hope you did too!
Make It Monday, we shared Lil Man's tank craft with you. Teacher Feature Tuesday, we introduced you to Katie Orr. Wired Wednesday, we shared a little on Internet Safety Month. Thoughtful Thursday, we discussed recycling. And lastly, Fun & Free Friday, we shared four great freebies!

We are gearing up for this coming week!

Lil Man has the week off from dance this week; here's to a fun week at home!

Wired Wednesday: Internet Safety Month

Did you that June is Internet Safety Month? Well it's perfect timing too! Being home for the Summer, kiddos have more access to computers and internet-capable devices throughout the day. This is the perfect time to teach the kiddos some internet safety. It's always good to refresh their minds on it too. Lil Man watched a Brain Pop Jr video about Internet Safety. It's great for a wide range of ages.

KidsHealth has a short but thought-provoking article. It makes you think about what can happen when your kiddo accidentally types "Legs" instead of "Lego". It also shares a little about safety laws.

Check out the FBI's Kids Safety Tips. It includes internet safety as well as some other ways to protect yourself.

NetSmartzKids is another good resource.

Check out KidzSearch for a kid-friendly search engine powered by Google. Keep those little eyes off unnecessary inappropriate search results. Plus, on the main page, there are quick links to fun, educational games.

Remember it's Internet Safety Month and it's important to teach our kiddos of the do's and don'ts of being on the internet.

Share your internet safety tips and resources with us!

~Steph

Teacher Feature Tuesday: Katie Orr

We are so very excited to kick off this part of our new schedule! We have had such a great response from our fellow TpT teacher-authors and bloggers!

Our first featured teacher is:

Katie Orr

Katie has taught 4th grade previously, but she is currently a reading interventionist for a 5th and 6th grade center. This was her first year as a reading interventionist, and she is loving it! 

Katie Orr's TpT store opened in August 2012. You can check out her TpT store: Katie Orr and her blog: Mind Sparks

Why do you teach?

"Ever since I was a little girl, I knew I wanted to be a teacher.  In fact all through out my schooling, I never even considered another career.  Growing up I had some amazing teachers--and they inspired me to be a teacher. I know it is cliche---but I really do love working with kids. :)  Their love of learning, innocence and positive attitudes is contagious!"

Why did you open your TpT store?

"When I accepted my job as a reading interventionist for 5th and 6th graders, I quickly realized there was a lack of resources for my students.  So......I started making reading resources, lesson plans, graphic organizers, games and more games for my students.  Teachers in my building kept asking to borrow what I was making, and urged me to start a TPT store.....so I did! :)"

How has TpT made a difference in your life personally and/or professionally?

"I can't begin to explain the difference TPT has made for me! Personally it has helped me save money---and who doesn't love that!!  Professionally I have connected with some amazing educators....who have given me invaluable ideas, feedback and suggestions on how to help my students.  I also have discovered some great blogs---with some awesome tips and tricks for teaching.  TPT has just done wonders for me personally and professionally!!!  I LOVE IT!!"

I wish someone had told me...(share some advice for TpT sellers)

"...to upgrade my membership sooner!!  I know it seems like a lot of money at first--but it is so worth it!"

We've taken some time to snoop around her store and we are loving her great resources! Head on over and check out what Katie Orr has to offer! We're hoping she'll be back to share some of her great freebies with us one Friday!

Make It Monday: Tank Craft

We hope you are as excited as we are! It's time to kick-off our new weekly schedule! That means it's time for...Make It Monday!

Today we started a schedule with Lil Man and a chore/allowance system! (More coming on all of that soon!) But we are super excited about getting it all set up!

Summer has set in for many of us. Have you heard the dreaded "I'm Bored" yet this summer? Thankfully, with everything we've had going on to start off our summer, Lil Man is pretty good at entertaining himself. For instance, one of the first days of summer he came to me and asked for my help with a making a tank. We thought this would be the perfect opportunity to share a inexpensive, quick, and easy craft for kiddos.

Therefore for our first edition of Make It Monday, we're going to share the small craft that Lil Man wanted to make...

Here's a short little "interview" video of our Lil Man sharing his tank:

He wants to add some type of wheels/track to it and color it, but here's what the "finished" product looks like: 

Here's what you'll need:

                                                      --empty tissue box

                                                      --tape (preferably packaging tape)

                                                      --3 toilet paper rolls 

                                                         (probably could use 1 paper towel roll)

As I said, this is an inexpensive, quick, and easy craft. All of the supplies we had around the house. He actually convinced me to take some tissues out of the box and put them in a basket so he could go ahead and use it. Then he gathered the toilet paper rolls. And we had packaging tape because we were packing boxes getting ready to move. 

Here's how to put it all together:

Slide the three toilet paper rolls together or use a paper towel roll.

Fold in half on one side of the tube. This makes it easier to attach.

Tape around where the rolls meet on each end.

Tape the folded end into the tissue box.

And you're done! Decorate and/or add some tracks/wheels if desired!

I hope you enjoyed our first edition of Make It Monday and this quick craft to curb summer boredom! If you make this craft (or anything) we'd love to see it! Share your Summer Fun ideas!

~Steph

Fill in the Blank!

Let's have a little bit of fun the next couple of days!

Fill in the blank in the following statements...

Goals for Summer 2013

1. I would like to go ______________. 

2. I want to read _____________. 

3. I want to do ______________. 

4. I need to do ______________.

5. I want to learn _____________.

Tuesday...already? Almost Wednesday here...

Due to some technical complications and lots of craziness we were not able to launch our summer line up yesterday. We have decided that we are going to announce the weekly line up today and hopefully a few interactive posts this week. We want to hear from you! Some of it will simply be questions that we are asking and want your opinion on!

Now let's discuss what to look forward to for the Summer line up...
Being home with Lil Man this summer, we're going to try to focus a great deal on fun and educational activities with him. The majority of our posts this summer will be about things we do with him throughout the summer. We're hoping this will be a great resource for parents, babysitters, camp counselors, etc as well as still great stuff for teachers :)

Make It Monday--We will discuss anything that can be made. We will highlight some of our projects over the summer. Each week you may see foods, arts, crafts, etc. Lil Man is excited to debut next week with our first edition of Make It Monday with his small, quick Tank craft!

 

Teacher Feature Tuesday--Each Tuesday (June-July) we will feature a new teacher (TpT teacher-author and blogger {blog is not required}). We're hoping to continue this weekly feature after July, depending on how many responses we get so keep them coming! (So far it's looking pretty good!) If you would like to be one of our featured teachers, please complete the form! This will be a fun way to get to know other TpT teacher-authors and bloggers in the cyber world!

Wired Wednesday--We are going to be working on researching various technology (devices, programs, apps, etc) to share with you. We will be doing reviews and/or tutorials for different technology. We will be adding polls to ask for input on what you'd like to see next!

Thoughtful Thursday--Each Thursday we will discuss things that will get the kiddos thinking! Most of the time this weekly post will have a subject (reading, language arts, math, science, social studies) theme.

Fun & Free Friday--We will share something fun we have done with Lil Man. This may include things such as a game, nature walk, or going to the zoo. We will also be sharing some TpT freebies each week! If you would like your freebie to be featured, please fill out the form.

Weekend Wrap-Up--For our weekend posts we will share things that we did throughout the week that didn't make it onto a different themed day, but that we really want to share. We will also review snippets of our weekly posts and look forward on what's to come!


We are so excited about this new schedule!! Are you ready??


~Steph & Manda