So this is Bloglovin?!?

Ok, so I feel really lame, but I JUST started using Bloglovin! I kept seeing it on everyone else's page but I wasn't even 100% sure what it was... Is that sad? haha Well luckily I figured it out (I think) and now I am on Bloglovin' too!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

So far I am loving it! Now I just have to go back and hunt down all you fellow bloggers that I love to read and add you to my read list! Happy Blogging :) 

What I'm Loving Wednesday

Last week was my first time ever participating in Covered in Glitter and Glue's What I'm Loving Wednesday linky party and I liked it so much, I am back for more this week :)

 

 

So here, in no particular order :) is what I am loving this week!

I am loving the weekends! I mean, who doesn't right?!? Last weekend was a really nice mixture of feeling productive and restful with both family and friends. Usually our weekends are crazy busy or slow and lazy so it is great having the perfect combo of the two :) Here is me with some of my best friends from college that I got to see over the weekend:

It is hard to believe that we have been friends for 10 years now! Where has the time gone?!?

Something else I am loving this week...MOTIVATON!

When it comes to being healthy, I usually eat pretty well but I REALLY REALLY REALLY don't like working out. (Like REALLY!) Then, the other day I saw this post on Instagram:

 

 

 I am not going to lie, it was the #whynotyou hashtag that got me! I thought, "Yeah! Why not me? Why not now? I mean, I do have an entire Pinterest board dedicated to working out. Maybe I should, you know, try one or two of them." :)

 

Now on my own, I get lazy. I say things like, "I didn't sleep that well last night, I will just workout tomorrow." And then what do you know? Tomorrow never comes! And that is exactly why I signed up for the facebook group! Starting July 1st there is a whole facebook group full of people that are there to not only encourage each other, but also to hold each other accountable! If you would like to join me, you can contact @apieceoftheapple on instagram - she is the one who put all of this together!

 

 

So lately I have been seeing a bunch of people post on Instagram that they signed up for "SLANT box". Being fairly new to the "teacher side" of social media, I was like, "What the heck is a SLAT box and why is everyone signing up for it?" Well, after typing #slantbox doing a little research I quickly found out that a SLANT box stands for Sending Love Across the Nation to Teachers - and it is AWESOME! This this amazing idea put together by Jameson over at http://Lessonswithcoffee.blogspot.com/ Basically you sign up, and get paired up with two other educators - one person to send a box to and the other who will send a box to you! It is a great way to meet other teachers and I mean come on, everyone likes getting fun stuff in the mail! If you are interested in more info on SLANT boxes you can go check out the Lessons with Coffee blog here.

 

You can also check out the blogs of the two lovely ladies that I got paired up with here:

2 Smart Wenches

and

Tales from 4th Grade

 

I feel extra nerdy posting this, but I am loving the fact that I am getting a jump start on back to school! It just makes me excited to think that doing some beginning of the school year prep now will make me a little less stressed in August. {Hey, a girl can dream right? ;) }

 

 Since my flash drive with EVERYTHING for school on it broke (tear) I am having to make everything over again! This week I created my "Meet the Teacher" letter, "All about Me" student survey, "Student information survey"(just the facts), a new communication binder cover, and new "ANT rules" to go in the back cover.

 

 

 

Monday Meet Up!

One of my goals over the summer is to get to know and network with some of these AWESOME teacher bloggers I see online. I am excited I have frond the Teaching Tribune because they seem to be EXPERTS at linky parties and getting teachers together! With that being said, here my first time participating in one of their linky parties... Monday Meet Me!

Here are a few things your might not know about me... 

Want to learn more about other bloggers and join in on the linking up fun? Head over to the Teaching Tribune!

Oceans of fun!

I cannot believe that summer school is almost over already - I feel like it just started! Noooooot that I am complaining though ;) 

Here is a little rap up of what he have been up to:

In math we made these little "jelly fish" with numbered tentacles to practice making sets, number ID, counting, and number order   

My original plan was to only make them with the students who really needed practice in those areas but after the other kids saw them, they begged me to make them too! I put them in a workstation for those who could complete them independently. It cracks me up how some opted not to decorate them, some drew "jelly fish" faces, and others just drew pictures on them like rainbows or their family:

We also have been practicing patterning everyday in math. As a cute little way to show off our new pattern making skills, the kiddos made these "octopus hats."  They love them because, well, they love making ANY kind of hat and I love them because they get lots of practice creating 8 different patterns (not to mention they look adorable on!)

Science is usually one of my favorite parts of the day! I love teaching the kids about some of the amazing creatures that live in the ocean! To kick things off, we did a very simple sort of creatures that live in the ocean and ones that do not:

Then, we started narrowing in on some of our favorites. We have focused in on sharks, fish, and octopus so far. I haven't taken very many pictures but I did manage to snap a few of our octopus "experiment". I got the idea here and it was a huge hit with the kids :)

First, we made little "octopuses" using pony beads and pipe cleaners. The kids each got their own water bottle and dropped their octopus in. We made observations about how we could easily see them through the clear water. 

Then comes the fun part :) The kids took pipets and practiced squirting "ink" (aka food coloring) into the water until it became difficult to see the octopus. We discussed how many different types of octopuses use this as a way to escape from predators. 

During literacy this week we have been hitting rhyming HARD! Rhyming seems to be such a tricky thing for kids to fully understand. It always seems after hearing it/saying it/doing it 891749837932 times and not really getting it -

one day they wake up and they've got it! So here is to time 891749837933...

I try to incorporate as much rhyming stories/songs/text as possible. The more they hear it, the easier it is for them to understand. I taught them this little song and we circled the rhyming words with Wikistix. It's an oldie but a goodie :)

Then I gathered a few objects that were fairly easy to rhyme with (a shell, cat, ball, dog, fish, block, mug, man, and pig) and loaded them up into my "rhyming basket" 

Then, we passed around the rhyming basket as we said this adorable little chant form Grown Kinders: 

And the kids took turns picking an object and producing a word that rhymes with it.

We have also been watching this video on youtube EVERY.SINGLE.DAY!

I showed it to the kids the third day of summer school and they LOVED it! They ask if they can watch it every day (over and over and over again if I would let them)!

Next week we are focusing on alliteration. Only 7 more days with kids! 

What I'm Loving Wednesday

I am loving the hubby's new work schedule that started last Sunday! I get to see him soooo much more during the week now! Before, he would not get home until I was getting ready for bed or in bed asleep. :( Now, he is already there when I come home from work so we have been able to go on bike rides, walks, and cook dinner together...it has been SUCH a nice change!

 

 

This past weekend we went to east Texas for family reunion. Not only was it great getting to see everyone but since it is potluck, there is always the BEST food! And it's alllll comfort food (aka anything unhealthy). Hey, one weekend won't hurt right? ;) Alway, what I am LOVING is this brownie recipe I got from one of my aunts. I went home and fixed up my own batch as soon as we got back! There goes the whole "one weekend" thing...

 

 I am loving my Starbucks gift cards I recieved as end of the year gifts from my kiddos. I usually just make my own coffee in the morning but this morning, right after pouring a nice big mug of coffee, I knocked it over and it went all over the kitchen and all over me! After a change of clothes and a trip to Starbucks, I was all better and ready to start my day :)

 

 

After a LOT of use during small group instruction over the last school year, my old gel bags bit the dust. So today, I made a couple of new ones! The kids looooooooooooove these so I am looking forward to using them tomorrow during summer school small group. I am sure they can't wait to get their little fingers on these!

 

 

Oh, and we don't have summer school on Friday so tomorrow is my Friday. You know I am loving that ;)

 

 

Diving into Summer School!

While many people were celebrating their last day of school this week, our summer school session has already begun! 

After looking over my new group of students' end of year assessments, it seemed like the main areas students needed extra practice in were rhyming and letter ID in literacy and counting and patterns in math. Here is a little peak at some of our "Ocean Themed" workstation we have been working on this week:

For this letter ID workstation, I wrote letters with permanent marker on dollar store shells and buried them in a tub of sand. The kids love "digging them out" with those cute little shovels and matching them to the ABC mat.

In my "rice table" I have plastic store bought shells that have letters and numbers on them along with a few sea creatures. Students use the tweezers to pluck the letters from the rice and match them to an ABC mat during literacy or match the numbers to a number line during math. They can also pull out the sea creatures and sort them by shape or by color.

Here is a cute little freebie by Lovely Literacy and More that you can find here on teachers pay teachers. First, I have students put together an alphabet train puzzle (not pictured) to practice ABC order, then I have them line these little guys up underneath an fill in the missing letter using magnetic letters. 

In this workstation, students first line up their ocean alphabet cards (found here) in ABC order, then go fishing for letters and match them to the letter line they created. I think that those magnetic letters and fishing pole both came in a set from Lakeshore. 

This workstation is a student favorite! They pick a letter seashell (that I made), then find the Fridge Phonics letter that matches it. While the Fridge Phonics song is playing, students sing along with the letter song while they write the letter in the sand. I put a piece of scrapbook paper in the bottom of the pencil box so that students could see the letter that they wrote better. I just used what I had in the classroom but I want to swap it out for a brighter piece that really stands out through the sand! 

For my students that don't need as much practice identifying letters, I have some vocabulary, word builder, rhyming, syllable, and sentence writing workstations for them. 

Here, students use magnetic letters to build the ocean words.

At this workstation, students use ocean stamps to either find the words that represent the stamp in this "Sea Life" book and write the word next to the picture or write the sentence "I see a ______." and fill in the ocean animal that they stamped (depending on their level). 

 In math, students can....

Use ocean stamps to make a pattern. I love doing the patterns on sentence strips because then you can staple the strip into a loop to make a hat. My students proudly wear their patterns on their head all day and then beg me to make another one the next day! 

Here, students place the numbered seahorse in numerical order, then match the correct number of "bubbles" to the number beside the seahorse. I found the seahorse number cards for free on teachers pay teachers here. For the bubbles, I just broke apart a string of blue beads in sets from 1 all the way to 20. 

In this "treasure hunting" workstation, students first match the different jewel shapes to the treasure chest, then graph which shapes they used on this graphing tray.

They can either graph by color or by shape.

In this workstation, I provided students with plastic sea creatures in several different colors. Student can sort the sea creatures by shape or by color. (I promise I actually do know my colors and the top two sections in the picture on the right are different colors! They just look the same in the picture.)

This last one I am going to show is another student favorite. I printed the shells off of Sparklebox here and got a bag of small mixed shells from the dollar store. Students put the numbers in numerical order and count out the correct number real shells for each paper shell. *If you have never checked out Sparklebox before, I highly recommend it! They have resources for basically every theme imaginable and almost everything is FREE!*

This first week was a bit of an adjustment for both the students and myself but I am hoping now that we have established a routine, we can dive into more learning this coming week! Dive, get it? See what I did there? ;)