My classroom is coming along....but I have no pictures to prove it.

I am a little jealous that so many of you have your rooms done, but then I realize that many of you are also already back to school so I get over it.  I have been busy working away in my classroom, and we officially start until the 27th.  Our Open House (Meet the Teacher) will be on the 29th and the little ones start Sept. 3rd.  I can't wait!  I don't know about you, but I can never sleep this time of year.  I am always wondering, worrying and planning throughout the night.  I have learned to write down the things I think about in the middle of the night, so I can get back to sleep-but it doesn't last long.  I don't have any pictures of my room yet. I will post them on Friday, or maybe sooner.  

Back to School Sale!

If you are like me then your wish list if chock full of great things just waiting to be purchased and downloaded. Teachers Pay Teachers is throwing a sale this Sunday and Monday and I am joining in, so you can save up to 28% on any purchase from my store.  Just click on the link below! Make sure you enter in promo code BTS13 at the check out.

A shout out goes to the 3AM Teacher for this banner freebie!

I'm off to add more things to my cart!

Vacation!

Here is a quick photo montage of our trip.

 First stop, Milwaukee Museum of Art. We looked at art,made some art, and found a sculpture of our dog Lola!

We also ate at the Safe House.  You need to know the secret password to get in, or else they make you do a silly dance!

Then we went up north to Houghton, Michigan. We used to live here when my husband went to Michigan Tech.   This is the bridge over the Portage Canal.

The first thing we did was walk some of the homeless dogs from the shelter that I worked at 17 years ago.

This is Covered Road, just Northwest of Houghton. It is really pretty in the fall.

Here we are getting ready to go down into the old Delaware Mine.  I am extremely nervous in caves and things of that nature! I prefer to look for my rocks above ground.

This is me walking as fast as I can in the dark, and my husband trying to get me to stop for a photo!

No, Thank You!

 This is outside of the mine.

Views from Quincy Mine at the top of Mount Ripley overlooking Houghton. 

Here are the girls on top of Brockway Mountain Drive. Every time we go to the copper country we make them sit together for a photo. I need to get them all put together.

 

These next photos are of my favorite rock picking place on the planet!  We came up to do the Ore to Shore Mountain Bike Race for the fourth time.  It is probably one of our favorites. 2,500 people turned out for it this year.

I did have a wonderful time, but I have to admit I was constantly fretting over all the things I still needed to get done before the start of the year.  I spent the entire 28 miles of my bike race/ride thinking about school, well maybe only 22 miles of it. The rest was spent enjoying the scenery.  It was the first time I had been back on my mountain bike since last July, and  I really have missed being able to ride my bike in the woods.

Well, I am off to buy MORE ink so I can run the rest of the things I need to laminate before the beginning of the school year.

Whole Brain Teaching

I have been using Whole Brain Teaching in my classroom for a few years and the kids really like it.  If you want to see it in action, watch the video below.

Check out You Tube for more examples!

To learn more about Whole Brain Teaching visit the creator Chris Biffle's site. 

My students and I go over the rules repeatedly the first few days of school.  I tweaked a few of the original rules to match my classroom needs, and it took me a while to get into the habit of using these practices, but I kept at it.

I'm going WILD this year!

So, I have been struggling with my classroom theme decision and last night is came to me, like at 2 in the morning, and I could not go back to sleep until I drew some ideas up on paper.  Then I proceeded to work on it all day!  I am going to go with a Where the Wild Things Are theme this year, and I just posted much of what I'm going to use on TPT. Monsters are all the rage right now, but the creatures from Maurice Sendak's book have always been my favorite.

Well, I am going to go and get a real good night's sleep!

Take Care Everyone!

I don't think I'll ever get to go on vacation!

This summer I have been working away on a few unit to use this year with my class.  Our district has been working on refining our standards based report card and finalized many of our essential learning targets for K-5. Social studies is one curricular area that we, the second grade team,  have been reformatting to reflect the new learning targets. So all summer I have been trying to develop units that will make learning more fun and meaningful for the students.  I almost have my virtual field trip series for the American symbols wrapped up, but I am still writing fluency passages, poems and assessments on my Tall Tales unit.  I also have two science units all scribbled up on paper, and I can wait to try things out and get it all typed up!

                                                                     COMING SOON!

On top of that I decided to go back to decorating with bees, I had Alice in Wonderland on my mind but only for a few days, and decided to go with something I had already used in the past.  So I have been revamping some things, and creating a few new things to go along with it.

On the home front, my husband has just finished drywalling our basement, and I have been priming and painting away-but only when the weather is yucky.  Otherwise, I try to get outside as often as I can.

Well, I off to my classroom to start organizing books, and rearranging the layout.  As soon as it is all decked out in bees, or Alice..., I'll post pictures.  I still need to compile my final list for Target...I hope there are still a few cute things left!

Class Dojo Freebie

Due to the amount of requests I have been receiving, I have made the behavior tracking sheet I use with the Class Dojo available for download.

If you like what you see, then please pin it to Pinterest and leave me a comment.

Thanks!