First Guest Post & a FLASH Freebie!

I am so thrilled that I have a guest post over at All Things Upper Elementary! Please go check it out by clicking the images below:

For the fun of it all, I wanted to offer a FLASH FREEBIE to celebrate. This will be available for ONE hour *until 8:30* :) It is a 5th grade standards vocabulary Easter activity! Click image:

Five for Friday

In addition to spring on my mind... Let me share Five for Friday from Doodle Bugs Teaching!!

Been enjoying all of this post-winter storm weather. Outside time with my family is SO important!

Stressing a little that I have had 4 winter days and then a week of Winter Break out of the classroom. Don't get me wrong, I love time with my family, but I needed those FOUR days to conduct a MOCK writing assessment. Now, I am super pushed for time, because on top of that, we have some mock CRCT testing to do for the state in math... eek! The 5th grade State Writing assessment is March 5th, so it is GO time when I return Monday!

On top of creating new materials, I have also been preparing items for an upcoming Kids Consignment sale (for the beginning of March). Inputing items, tagging, items, etc.

Happy about the upcoming weather forecast AND the fact that I get to wear my FLIP FLOPS this week! Oh boy, that means I need to pedicure my toes..

Excited to begin a NEW linky beginning NEXT Wednesday. It is always my goal to walk closer to and have a close relationship with God through His Son, Jesus Christ. To help me (and maybe others) focus more on HIM, I wanted to do a little something as a mid-week refresher. I hope you will join me in order to...

I am also enjoying the Sharing is Caring Sunday each week and the fact that people really appreciate it. Let me know what you think about it, and if you feel it is beneficial. 

Sharing is Caring Sunday!

Every Sunday, I will have Sharing is Caring Sunday! This is where I want to give a few Fulbright Hugs back to all of you! This is a way to say THANK YOU for following along with me:) 

The item(s) I will post will be FREE in my shop (I will include the link) for Sunday only (so grab it while you can). Sometimes it might be one of my older products or it might be a new product I will introduce. Please spread the word and come back each Sunday for a little shared gift! 

*Note: I will try to get it out in the morning from now on. It will be available FREE until 9pm*

Today's Sharing is Caring Sunday item is:

Click image of here:

Winter Animal Writing Graphic Organizers

~ Currently, Love is in the Air ~

Well, time to link up with Oh' Boy 3rd Grade again for Currently!!

I love (haha) February, as it is the month of LOVE! There is still so much to do this school year, and with snow days and all, I feel even further behind... anyone else? EEK!

Here is what is CURRENTLY going on around here:

PS - Can you guess the fib? Of course I love Peyton & look forward to seeing Jimmie Johnson race every Sunday. Our kitten's name is one my daughter created for her!! :)

Five for Friday... brrrr!

Linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday. It has been a CRAZY week! Link up below:

It is COLD here in Georgia AND we had 3 SNOW DAYS!!! I do not mind a little snow, like we had. Although I did enjoy those few days off and a little fun in the snow, I am SO ready for Spring! Anyone else?? Here are a few snow days pics:

I tried the panoramic photo option with my phone... it makes the house look bent...LOL!! This was a shot when the snow just began to stick. 

I now have a TpT shop & Facebook page. Might as well join along since I have been creating items since 2003! Go check them out if you have the chance! Never had the need to have the FB page in the past, so hopefully I can keep up with it, my own personal account, AND the page for our school! LOL!

Read a little further in our class novel, Out of the Dust, and I am very much enjoying this text! There is so much figurative language. My students are having to search throughout the text to identify different types of figurative language AND they must provide 2 examples, giving the type and meaning, as their Exit ticket.

How is BYOT going since we began on January 21st? Wonderfully!! We are slowly implementing different apps. One thing we have tried first is our exit tickets though Edmodo. Edmodo is my new best friend. The quiz portion is easy to use (and grade to give feedback), and when students turn in their exit tickets through Edmodo, I can give them very quick feedback!! They then take my feedback and make adjustments immediately! If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend using Edmodo! Here are examples of exit tickets with figurative language and our novel. 

I RARELY miss work, but took today off to spend time with my daughter on her field trip to see the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus!! We had never seen their show. They did NOT disappoint. It was amazing! Here are a few shots:

Hope you had a wonderful week!! Hello weekend!! :)

Five for Friday!

Been a L..O..N..G while since I have posted a 5 for Friday post. I have been super busy this past fall getting into the 'groove' of teaching a new grade level - 5th grade. I am feeling pretty good about how it has progressed, but there is still so much to learn. #1 to me in any classroom is building positive relationships with students - this is of utmost importance and I feel confident that I have accomplished this with my students. It was pretty easy in Kindergarten, as they LOVE their teacher!!! With 5th grade, it took a little more work in that you have to really build an environment of trust. There are more years of disappointment that they may have gone through that you have to wound in order to gain that trust. We have 77 days left to fill their brains with knowledge that will assist them in becoming College and Career ready ... so here goes!!

Let me share 5 things from this week:

It has been an awfully busy week - even though it has been a 3 day week for me - Tuesday was a planning day and it took my colleague and I almost the entire day to write our 3rd quarter Reading and Writing units... but we feel really good about them!! We are reading Out of the Dust, working with figurative language. During writing, we are working on our last type of writing (Informational) and preparing ourselves for the GA Writing Assessment (beginning of March - yikes)!

My colleague and I are piloting the BYOT at our school and we begin implementation on the 21st!! We are SO very excited. Our students will have the same opportunities as other districts to explore learning in various ways! 

This may sound silly, but I absolutely LOVE solving picture puzzles, word problem, etc. (not math - math isn't my thing). Well, I found this free app and I cannot stop playing it. It is peaceful to come home and wind down by playing this game (okay, I am a total NERD):

Flow Free

My sweet girl was super excited this week when she FINALLY got her ears pierced! She had been begging for a while, but we wanted her to be a little older to make the decision. Santa gave her a certificate if she was ready... she was a trooper!

We are preparing for BYOT, so we worked on a team-building activity yesterday. Students had to work together to put together a 100 piece puzzle WITHOUT talking. They could not take pieces from others, but could offer a piece. They began with a few pieces each. By the end (when we discussed what we learned from the activity) students realized that the more they gave to another, the quicker their puzzle came together. It was an eye-opening experience for my students. They enjoyed it very much and learned a good deal about themselves, others, and how important it is to work as a team!