Tag, You're it!

Eeek I got tagged and I didn't even know I was in the gym playing the game.  I really like to play rock, paper, scissors tag but Erika at The Honey Bunch got me. Here are the questions she asked me.

1.  If you could be any animal what would you be and why?

I honestly think that I would be a dog.  I am very faithful to those that I love and eating and napping are my two favorite hobbies. 

2.  What is your favorite drink?

Wine! Wine, and a little more wine. 

3.  What is the best book you've ever read and why?

Sooo many great books, but probably some that are in my top 5 are:

1.  Still Alice - it is about a lady that suffers from early onset Alzheimers.  It gave me a lot more understanding of this condition. 
2. Ape House - such a great book about apes that have been trained to understand American Sign Language. 
3. The Art of Racing in the Rain - this book made me cry because it reminded me a lot of my dog Ola.  It is a must read for any dog lovers. 
4. Water for Elephants - need I say anymore... LOVE.
5. Left Neglect - same author as Still Alice.  The main character is injured in a car accident and suffers from left neglect (she cant see or use the left side of her body). 

4.  What are your top 5 teacher blogs?

This is a really hard one because I love sooooo many blogs and I cant really narrow it down to 5... but because you are making me..

1. Misty at Think, Wonder, & Teach
2. Farley at Oh Boy 4th Grade
3. Kristin at A Teeny Tiny Teacher
4. Kim at Finding JOY in 6th Grade
5. Reagan Tunstall at Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits

5.  What is your favorite non-teaching blog?

I really like Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara.  She has some funny stories, and interesting quilting projects.  

6.  What is the name of your favorite font?

Right now it is sweetie pie! It is so darling.
 

7.  Do you wear a watch or not?  If so which wrist?

I wear a nixon watch that my mom got my for my birthday.  I can't live without a watch when I teach.  It goes on my left wrist.  

8.  Gold or silver?

It is silver with a coral face and a little diamond.
 

9.  What is your favorite TV show to watch?

Vampire diaries and Greys Anatomy.
 

10.  Dog, cat or other?

All of the above.  I love my doggies, horses and kitty's!

So here is who I am tagging:

Misty at Think, Wonder, & Teach

Courtney at Teaching in Paradise

Miss T at Journey of a Substitute Teacher

Satya at Crayons, Glitter, & Smelly Markers 

Kim at Finding JOY in 6th Grade

Elyse at My Life with a Cherry on Top

Amber at Sparkles, Smiles, and Student Teaching

Emmy at Daydreams of a Student Teacher

Tammy at Forever in First

Barbara at Grade ONEderful

Here Are The rules:

* Post these rules

* Answer the 10 questions that the tagger posted for you

* Create 10 questions of your own to ask the people that you're about to tag

* Tag 10 people and link them with your post (and let them know they've been tagged!)

Here are my questions ladies!  Answer them if you will.

1.  If you could live anywhere where would it be and why?

2.  What is you favorite thing to do on a Sunday afternoon?

3.  What is the best book you've ever read and why?

4.  What is your favorite classroom book and why?

5.  What is your favorite non-teaching blog?

6.  If you could go away on vacation, where would you go?

7. Which blogs do you stalk routinely?

8. What is your favorite subject to teach and why?

9.  What grade do you love teaching?

10.What is your favorite animal?

April Currently

I can't believe that it is already April!! Shocking.  But I am happy to say good bye to the cold weather, and hello to spring (unfortunately it still can snow here in May).  My favourite part of the beginning of the month is linking up with Farley's Currently.  The super power took me a little time to come up with, but I think a CDO button would be awesome.

If you haven't heard of CDO I will fill you in.

So I would really like an instant CDO button.  This would be incredibly useful in the classroom.  I could take a pile of mixed up papers, and have them instantly sorted in alphabetical order before I mark them.  Wouldn't that save teachers a ton of time.

It could also sharpen pencils.

Clean up centres.

Organize theme units.

The possibilities are endless.

One can only dream.

Closet Organization - Update 1

I have to admit I am a little embarassed to even show the before pictures of this closet.  It is bad, I mean really bad.  Prepare yourself.

I decided to reorganize my closet because I have accumulated a lot of junk precious items since university.  I also have a lot of school stuff that I have accumulated over my practicums that still need a classroom home.  Hence, I have spent the weekend throwing out junk, donating a TON of the good things that I no longer use, and making a space that I can actually use efficiently. 

So my first obstacle was making space for my shoes.  I have an awful amount of shoes (even the excuse of being a woman doesn't save me here).  My only real excuse is that I worked in a shoe store for 6 years while I attended university.

Are you prepared to see the before picture... I don't know if you can handle the madness!

So if you look really closely (but not tooo close, it is messy) on the left hand corner you can see my shoe organizer.  I have an identical one on the other side of the closet as well.  I didn't like this system because I couldn't see all of my shoe options at once, and that is very important.

I simply placed my two shoe organizers together and bought a couple more shoe racks to create a shoe wall.

 I tried to find the same shoe organizers that I already had, but unfortunately both Canadian Tire and Walmart no longer carried these.  I was really upset, but then I found a simple shoe organizer and I knew it would be an easy fix.  I purchased 3 of the row shoe organizers and I really like how they display the shoes.  My only complaint is that my super high heels do not fit, so can only place low heels, runners, and flats on this organizer.

 My other difficulty was boots! Does anyone have a great way of storing their boots?? I have yet to find something that I am proud of.  Right now I am using my pants hangers to hang my tall boots.  This system does work but it takes up a lot of space. 

Overall I am very happy with my shoe wall.  It still isn't up to Carrie standards (I would love to have the closet that Big made for her in the first Sex and the City movie) but it is now up to my CDO standards.

Remember if you haven't entered already to hop on over to my GIVEAWAY! I am loving reading about the types of stamps you would like, it is giving me a lot of ideas.

50 Follower Giveaway!!!

I am so appreciative and thankful for all of the support that I have received for my little blog!!  And I am happy to say that I will be having my Giveaway!! It will start today and the winner will be announced on Saturday, April 7th.

So here is what you could win:

My experiment book

 You caught me doing something great PUNCH CARDS

And your choice of anything you want from my TPT or TN store.


SPOILER ALERT!**********************************************

 I have already talked to Ian from My Rubber Stamp about my next Giveaway! Some of you may recognize his work from Farleys blog.  I just love his creative stamp designs and I think every teacher needs a sweet customized stamp from him.

My favorite right now is the Green Owl - WHO did AWESOME???  YOU DID!!! Get this awesomeness signed and returned!!!

So part of my 50 follower giveaway is finding out what kind of stamp YOU would want,  so that I can get the details sorted out with Ian for my next giveaway (I really love planning ahead). 


Now the important part.....Here are the ways you can enter my Giveaway:
1. Leave me a comment that you follow my blog
2. Leave a comment that you blogged about my giveaway 
3. Leave me a comment that you follow my TPT store
4. Leave me a comment that you follow my TN shop
5. Leave me a comment on what kind of rubber stamp you would like for my next giveaway

That is 5 different ways you can enter your name into my giveaway draw!!

Remember to leave a separate comment for each entry (along with your email) so that you have more chances to win!!

Good luck :)

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

I am sooo sooo soooooo excited because I won Misty's 31 Bag Giveaway!! I have been wanting a 31 teaching bag for a loooong time, so I could barely control my excitement as I found out the great news.

I happened to be minding my own business shopping for some organizational items for my closet at Canadian Tire (I am in a MAJOR spring cleaning/CDO mood, the Clutter Free Classroom would be proud).  Then my mad search for the prefect shoe organizer had to be put on hold because I received an email from Misty.  Of course she didn't tell me that I won in the email.... that would be tooo simple... she sent me a "code" so that I could find out for myself on her blog (she is seriously funny).  Well, needless to say I was soo excited that I left Canadian Tire without purchasing anything (Thank you Misty, my bank account really appreciates it). 

I also can't wait to share my before and after pictures of my "CDO" project.  I am sure it is going to take me a little bit longer.... but I will absolutely love it when it is done. 

Have a wonderful Friday night,

March Madness!!

Professional Development.....

Sometimes I hear those two words and want to hide, scream, jump for joy because I can learn something new.  In my short time being a professional teacher I have discovered ONE important fact that I want all newbie teachers to learn quicker than I did.

Are you listening??

If you want the really good PD sessions at the conferences..... you need to get there early and if need be push other teachers out of their chairs, scream and yell if you don't get in, skip earlier sessions.  I saw an amazing lady talk about her carpet lesson idea and I definitely wanted to learn more so I put her on my list of must go to conferences.  Sadly a lot of other teachers thought the same thing as me and even though I got there 15 minutes early, it was standing room only.

Needless to say, I learned my lesson.  Next time I will come prepared (to kick and shout)!!

Any who, one great thing that I took away from this conference was Box Cars and One Eyed Jacks.  These ladies have published several books that use games in order to teach math.  This was perfect for me because my Professional Development Project for the year was "How can mathematical games affect student engagement and math learning?".  So I was hooked! I also loved that these books only require dice, cards, and some teacher created materials (so thrifty me was happy that I didn't have to spend too much money on additional resources).

Here is one  game that I have used and loved, if you want to learn more or have questions you can check out their website or email me.

Make 20: 
This is for Grades 1-3 and requires the students to do addition and subtraction up to 20 and understand odd and even numbers.  You can have 2-4 players and all you need is some cards (ace to 5 for Grade 1, or ace to 9 for Grade 2 and 3), paper and a pencil.  Using the game board (there is one already made in the back of the book, you can download one from the website, or you can use mine), students start at 10 and try and make their way to 0 or 20.  Each player turns over one card from the deck, if it is an odd card the player must subtract and move back the number of spaces indicated on the card.  If it is an even number they must add and move forward the number of spaces indicated on the card.  The first player to get exactly to twenty or zero is the winner.

 This is a super easy game to teach, and a fun way to play with number lines, addition and subtraction, and odd and even numbers. The only problem I had with this game was that some students found themselves "outside" of the game board if they got a lot of even or odd numbers in a row.  My rule was that if they were stuck a number for example 1, they would have to wait until they got an ace or an even number to move them forward.  If they got a 3, they wouldn't move into the negatives, instead they would miss a turn. 

Also...

As a way to celebrate the end of March and the start of April I am having a March Madness TPT & TN sale!!!! Everything in my stores will be 20% off until March 30th. 

Guess WHOOOO is almost at a Giveaway!!

I am super excited because I am almost at my FIRST EVEEER giveaway!! I have been planning my 50 and 100 follower giveaway for a little bit now and I am SUPER excited that I am almost there.  I am so proud that my little blog has such dedicated followers (that always make me giggle with their cute and supporting comments).

So here is my sneak peak at my 50 follower giveaway!!

The lucky winner will recieve:

A copy of My Experiment Book:

 This can be used with any science experiment from Grade 2-5! It contains a title page, templates for the students to record their: materials, variables (independent, controlled, and dependent), prediction, observations, conclusion, and future experiments.
 
A copy of my "You Caught Me Doing Something GREAT!" Positive behavior punch card

This package includes 10 different themed punch cards. 

Can you tell I am a little excited???

I will post more details about my giveaway once I reach the 50 follower mark!