Merry Christmas!

"Santa" brought me just what I wanted...

 ...a sewing machine! I actually made him give it to me before Christmas. We will be flying to Oklahoma to visit my family tomorrow and I wanted to have time to play with it during the break :)

My mother, bless her heart, TRIED to teach me to sew when I was younger...I just wasn't that interested. But now that I am married, live away from home, and am a Pinterest addict, I have clothes that need hemmed and Pinterest projects that need sewn! I LOVE LOVE LOVE this machine. It is SO easy to use and has a million different stitch options you can do.

My first project was to sew us some Christmas stockings. I made them from some burlap and ribbon I already had here at home. They aren't perfect....but considering they are my first project, I am pretty proud of them!

I hope you all have a very MERRY Christmas filled with LOTS of joy, love and laughter!

Silence for Sandy Hook

Sandy Hook Tragedy

My heart goes out to those affected by the tragedy at Sandy Hook yesterday. I am sending many thoughts and prayers your way. May God bless you and give you comfort and peace. It's comforting to know that those sweet babies are being welcomed with open arms and are now in His care.

David Bowman: "Security"

I have been wondering (and worrying) what to say if a student starts talking about this horrific event on Monday. I'm sure some of you are wondering the same thing. Here is a great article I came across written by a blogger that has had 10 years of experience in counseling. Hope it helps!

Clocks freebie

The first few hours of my day today have been quite the adventure.

I went into work today even though I had lost my voice due to a cold. I have super sweet kids, but I quickly realized that trying to teach 29 first graders with a whisper voice all day was NOT going to work. So I called for a sub.

While I'm waiting for a sub to arrive, one of my students throws up in my room...twice. I shuffled my kids into one of our extra classrooms and lo and behold, about 10 minutes later my aide tells me that one of my boys had dog poop on his shoe and smeared it on the carpet to try to get it off.

And who shows up while all of this is going on? My sub. She sees the janitor cleaning up the vomit on my floor. She hears my aide tell me there is now dog poop in the other room. And I'm sure she was thinking the exact same thing I was...."I should have stayed home today!" Ha! It's one of those mornings you just have to laugh at because it's so ridiculous :)

Anywho. I've got a little freebie to share with ya! I saw a similar activity online somewhere and tweaked it a little bit. My kids LOVED this activity! I told them they got to pretend they had their own TV station...and they had to decide what shows they wanted played on their station and what time the shows would be on. Click the picture below to grab it!

Patterns

Here are a few fun ideas we did during our patterns unit.


We began by making patterns with manipulatives. I always start off with this activity so I can get a good idea of what they already know.

You can snag a copy of the pattern path sheets HERE.

These pattern cards can be found at Mrs. Meacham's site HERE.