Door Designs!

Hello! Teaching Happily Ever After is hosting another linky party: this time, DOOR DESIGNS! Head over to her blog to check out all sorts of eye-candy that you could use for your classroom door this coming year!

I have two doors that I would like to share: and yes, I've shared them before... but, it's okay!


First, my drug free door :) "We Would Rather Eat Bugs Than Do Drugs!" covered with spiderwebs, spiders that my students made, and a picture of them eating a gummy worm. We won 1st place too!

This was my classroom door this year :) "We Are WILD About Kindergarten!" And all of the students' names are on the monkeys. So fun!

Head over to Teaching Happily Ever After to check out all sorts of fun doors!

Last week, last week, last week of school!

Imagine me doing a happy dance.

I never thought I would make it to this point! The LAST WEEK OF SCHOOL! Can I get an amen?! I am so ready. Not even because I need a break from work and/or children. I'm ready to live with my husband again! And the sooner I'm done with this job, the sooner I am outta here to the Burg!

I'm ready to be done with this school year... to get things finalized, put away, and ready for next year. In a way, it's not too stressful simply because I won't be here next year. I'll have a new school (hopefully) with new students and co-workers and parents. This school year has been an amazing learning experience and I'm hoping I get to start fresh with a brand new job in the fall. I have one lead that I am reallyyyy hoping works out! I've already e-mailed the school twice (I got a reply the first time but I was waiting for a new e-mail from the new principal and it didn't come), but I don't want to be annoying, so I'm going to give it one more week... Aghhh!

In other news, Nathan is loving his job! Hooray!


Our ONE YEAR wedding anniversary is two weeks from today. TWO WEEKS. I can't believe a year has flown by! It has been an amazing year in our marriage. I love love love being married to him: he is my absolute best friend and I can't imagine life any other way. As you can tell, it is killing me that we have been apart! It feels like we're dating again (womp womp). But, 6 more days and I'm with him again for good! We are going to take a mini-trip to San Antonio for our anniversary and do touristy stuff.. Yup, we're lame :) Since we took a fantastic trip to Disney World in the fall, we just wanted to keep it low-key (especially since he has to be at church the following Sunday). We're so excited! Nate also already bought my anniversary present!

We are in the home stretch!

Thanks be to God.

It has been one crazy, rollercoaster of a year, to be an understatement. I am very glad that the journey will be over in 10 days (after tomorrow). Technically, it will be less than that because of the following activities:

1. Class picnic

2. Talent Show

3. Class Awards

Those three major events will take up a good chunk of the day. Hooray! PLUS Field Day is tomorrow, which will take all morning. I had to give my kids the "good sportsmanship" speech today. I doubt they will remember!

Like I was saying, it has been an emotional year. Having to move grades/campuses only days after starting my dream job w/amazing co-workers... being thrown into a new grade with new people... having a very tough class for my first year of teaching... Nate getting a new job which made him move away... Crazy things! Some good and bad, but overall helped define my first year of teaching. In two weeks, it will be AMAZING to say that I finished my FIRST REAL YEAR of teaching.

My kids have grown SO much. It is amazing to see the kinds of things they can do! At the beginning of the year, it was a struggle to spell kindergarten words like "the", "and", and "so". Now they are writing huge sentences with words like "because", "friend", and "please"! Their reading has gotten SO much better too! It'll be bittersweet to leave them at the end of the year because I won't be there to greet them when they start 2nd grade. But they'll be in good hands!

Now the next part is to get a job in the 'Burg... I've applied to 8 DISTRICTS. 3 have already told me there are no openings, but to keep checking in case something comes up. In one district, they had a KINDER POSITION!!! :) I e-mailed the principal and she forwarded it to the assistant principal (she's retiring and the AP will take her place). The principal said I seem highly qualified for the position! Cross fingers! Pray! I'm just waiting for the AP to send a response!!!

NOW for the summer! We have many church events planned in Sburg: Youth Camp, VBS, and various youth outings (Schlitterbahn and an Astros game for example). PLUS hopefully we'll be moving into our house at the end of June! We qualified for a USDA loan and our mortgage lady (I'm not sure the official term) said if everything checks out, we'll be closing in June :) HOORAY. I'm already starting to pick paint colors, make "furniture" (i.e. a coat/leash/scarf/hat hanger for our entryway: it has different colored knobs on it to hang our things when we come inside)!

The middle knob has a "J" for Johnson. Aren't I cute? :) I'm really excited to keep purchasing/creating items for our first home. I'm following (in blog terms) different home decor blogs and there are great ideas out there! Luckily, I'll have the summer to make some!

Bums.

Well, as it turns out, the house situation will not work. We were really excited about it but it's just not in the cards. It's a bummer because we were really wanting to be on our own in Sburg and feeling like we actually moved, but we are also appreciative of the place we will be staying :) It's a super nice apartment (two bedroom, bath, living room, kitchen, dining, laundry room, balcony) so it will be great! (I'm trying to be positive)

This weekend, I am throwing a lingerie shower for one of my absolute best friends from DBU, Laura. She is getting married in June and I am so stoked for her! I will post pictures (if they're appropriate... haha just kidding!). I love throwing parties for people, so I hope everything goes off without a hitch.

The end of the the six weeks is approaching. ONE MORE SIX WEEKS TO GO AND I WILL BE DONEEE WITH MY FIRST YEAR OF TEACHING. Praise God. I'm not sure how much more I can take! I have learned SO. MUCH. I just wish I had the time/energy to re-vamp everything and start over! It has definitely been a learning experience and I can think of about 25 things I will do DIFFERENTLY next year. My poor kiddos, haha. Here's hoping a job opens in the S'burg/surrounding area. If not, I am going to try to sub. We'll see what happens!

Inspiration

After reading some of my cooperating teacher's (from student teaching) blogs (check her out on my inspiration's list: Chalk Talk), I have been re-inspired to take pictures of the things we do in my classroom and upload them. Here are some things that we have done throughout the year that I have taken pictures of... (I will have to start getting better about this!) Oh yeah, they are in no way, shape, or form in any kind of order... :)

In the fall, we made turkeys out of construction paper and wrote about them.

We also wrote what we were thankful for on a "feather" made out of construction paper, then I fashioned this humongous turkey and laminated it for us to use for the bulletin board.

We studied rocks and did a complete investigation with rocks we brought from home. In this photo, we are comparing the mass of our rocks to snap cubes.

We also learned about solids, liquids, and gases. We made "Oobleck" and wrote in our science journals about what we thought it was: a solid or a liquid.

At the end of October, we dressed up as literacy characters. The 1st grade team dressed up as the Three Little Pigs!

We talked about pumpkins and how they grow. We even carved a pumpkin (my first time...) and dug out its guts! Then I took the seeds home, baked them, and brought them back to school for the class to taste them. We wrote about if we liked them or not.

We also do math tubs to further our math skills. This math tub works with place value. The students pull two numbers out of a baggie, place one in the tens place and the other number in the ones place, then use base 10 blocks to make the number.

We did a study about plants and how they grow and we worked in groups to find the roots in small plants.

Another math tub (I told you these weren't in order!). The student rolls the dice to get two numbers, then adds them together.

Literacy Stations. We have an ABC/Word Study station. This student is putting cards in ABC order.

Buddy reading literacy station. Two students work together to read a book. They can echo-read, read together, take turns, and even find word wall and rhyming words.

Handwriting. We work a LOT on handwriting to make our writing look even better!

So there's the beginning of my mini-collection of my first year of teaching. Hopefully I will get better about taking pictures of the things we actually make and create! (And I'm not sure why this is underlined...)

When is Spring Break again?

Boy, did I take MLK day for granted last week.

It was nice having a four-day work week last week. I know it's only Monday, but I can tell it's going to be a l.o.n.g. week. Today was such a dragginggg day! Let's see what's on the agenda for this week:

-The Water Cycle
-Writing about our favorite fruits
-Comparing maps and globes
-Repeating and Additive patterns
-Entering TPRI data into D2SC (blegh)
-Tutoring Tuesday and Thursday

And I'm sure about 1732 more things will come up. That doesn't seem like much, but... it is (I don't really have much more of an argument...) LUCKILY I get to come home to Nate and Chloe everyday, which makes for a much better day :)


This weekend, we were able to hang out with two very good friends of ours, Ashton and Roger. We went to DBU with them (Ash & I went through college together: EDUC majors) and they were married about 10 months before us. They also have a dog, Bella, so we were able to take Chloe too and they had a fun dog play date! We enjoyed watching our dogs play, eating at Johnny Carino's, and going back to their house in Mansfield to watch a movie. Spending time with friends is the absolute best!

I have made two decisions this past week.

#1. I will shut down "teacher mode" around 4:30 everyday, unless something MAJOR is going on. I really enjoy preparing activities and whatnot for my class (sometimes) but when the "required" content/materials are forced down my throat, it makes teaching a lottt less fun. Not the reasons I became a teacher. So I've decided I (and Nate for that matter) will be a lot happier if I shut down "Mrs. Johnson" before I get home.

and #2. I will use my weekend time for me, not just my job. Yes, I have to work over the weekends to prep for the following week... BUT this does not mean my ENTIRE weekend. I have committed to doing one craft/DIY project a weekend. This past weekend, I painted/covered a plain white serving tray with brown paint and scrapbook paper (and quite a bit of mod podge). It was very therapeutic and I enjoyed it! I've been getting a lot of ideas here at YHL (the young couple who has completely renovated their home and posts all sorts of DIY projects). I'm addicted!

Hopefully this week proves to be better than last. I'm just counting week by week until spring break... I may have to take a personal day in February. Not sure if I can make it to March...