I LOVE Your Boobs!

Now that I have your attention, 

I want to thank you for stopping by. 

Today is the last day of the month. 

Tomorrow morning is a good time to do a breast exam when you are in the shower.

You see I do love your boobs. . . but not near as much as you do or other people in your life.

And more importantly, deeper than the physical appearance of your boobs, is your inside health.

The people in your family need you!

 (You know that every time you get sick and they can't function without YOU!)

Get to know your boobs to see what feels normal and what doesn't, and do it at least once a month. The first day of the month is a good day to remind yourself to do it. If you feel a lump or something weird, don't hesitate to call your doc. They will let you know if  you're feeling just tissue or if it is something abnormal. 

I have fibrocystic boobs so everything feels like a bag of pebbles. It's much harder for me to feel if there is a normal bump or a mysterious lump. 

Thank you for stopping in! 

Now don't forget to do your breast exam in your next shower or bath. 

And remember. . . I love love your boobs!

Patty

Nonsense Words Winners

I'm so sorry that no one guessed my favorite number. .. so it will have to remain a mystery. . . Maybe I'll use it again some other time!

But the good news is, that all those who tried to guess became the owners for the set of nonsense word cards. Check your mail.

That's all for tonight. It's looking like we could have a big snow storm come Tuesday, so I'll be back to blog some more then. . . IF we get a snow day!

Patty

New Improved Nonsense Words . . . and they can be yours for free!

Two days in a row that I am posting! 

Stop the presses! 

This can't be! 

But let me explain before you have heart failure.

Yesterday was a snow day. . . 

so there's more time on my hand. . .

Today is Saturday and I seemed to have gotten a lot accomplished yesterday

 so I don't feel drained to do too much today. . . . 

And. . . .

I've somehow picked up a head cold from someone, so I don't feel like doing too much activity anyway.

Dang cold! It stopped me from babysitting my granddaughter tonight because I don't want to get her sick. . . and I feel sad that my kids can't go out on a date because I'm sick. They were very good about it, and will do it some other time. 

So pity party is over now.

Yesterday I beefed up my nonsense words. I have a set that I started using with the few first graders that I work with during Reading Shuffle (RTI time). 

This new set of 66 word parts now has blends that can be put together to make words.

 They are called 

Mix & Match Nonsense Words with Blends. 

Besides using different letters, the backgrounds are also different. 

I picked up the cute daisy backgrounds from Michelle at the 3AM Teacher 

(Pssst. . . it's her birthday today. . .wouldn't it be great if everyone in the blogging world 

stopped in and wished her a Happy Birthday? She's only 34! What a youngster!)

If you'd like this same set, all you have to do is sign up for her newsletter and 

you'll be able to get them for free! 

Yup, that's right, I said FREE!

One more thing, I just noticed that I made it over 360 followers! I think that is so stinkin great! And in honor 

of that nice round number, I'd like to have a mini give away. 

I have a lucky number that I always use for everything. The first person to guess my lucky number will receive this set above for free! And if there is more than one person to guess that same lucky number, then I will give them this set also. . . Get your thinking on . . .  What could it be?

(Don't forget to leave me your email address so I can send this to you).

Would you like a hint? 

hmmmmmm. . . . well it's between 0 and 20. 

That makes it much easier. . . right!

Get ready, get set, . . . start guessing!

                 Patty

Snow Day Freebie about Adjectives

SNOW DAY! Can I get a WHOOP WHOOP?

And that makes this a 3 day week, since we had Monday off too. 

Imagine having a 3 day week everyweek. . ... No, I guess that wouldn't work. 

We would never get enough finished unless we went to school all year round! 

I think I'll stay with the traditional school year.

Now that I am home all day and I've been wishing for some extra time to make some STUFF, 

I plan on being right here in front of my computer all day being creative. . . 

Well, that was my plan and then my granddaughter came over so 

I just had to play with her for a while. Great distraction!

Now, I'm back on track to making things.

But then I thought, hmmmmm, I think I'll update my blog and give you a freebie. . .  

I know. . . . I love a freebie too!

I continue to work with my kids on adjectives and I do believe they are really getting it now. 

Go to my TPT store and pick up these March Adjective pages. 

Leave me some loving so I know if they work for you, please. 

I don't have any other March activities there, but that's what today is for. . .

Yea, right. . . get back to work Patty, You have things to do!

WAIT WAIT! One more thing. . .

I am helping Tamara celebrate getting over 100 followers. Go to her blog to join in her giveaway!

Patty

A Little Late . . I hope you don't mind.

I'm back from my whirlwind trip to Houston this weekend. You know, I'm not really a sports fan. . . but even I figured it out when we left from Chicago to Houston and the plane was completely full on Thursday night and then coming back this morning it was full again, that a sport just might be involved! . . I guess that the All Star Basketball game that was held in Houston had a lot to do with that!

I didn't go there for the silly old game! I went to see my daughter and her husband. We had a great time, the guys golfed, and we got pedicures, shopped, ate, shopped, ate, and ate some more!

Yesterday the sun was perfect and we took some time to sit by the pool (fully clothed mind you!). It didn't take long and I was pink. . . no red. . .
no burned bright red! YIKES!

Of course my face looked even worse by the end of the night. After lots of aloe and a few prayers, I decided that I was going to live! Silly me, I know better, and I don't like to burn. . . . but being from Michigan, I feel so pale and sun deprived!

Now on to what we did for Valentine's Day. I read all about everyone's over the weekend, and I was itching to get back and share mine too!

We start the day with a breakfast in our classroom. The kids always think it's so fun to eat in the room, when they normally eat in the gym! It doesn't take much to make them happy!

Do you know Sheree from Peterson's Pad?  She teaches first grade and had some great ideas for Valentine's Day.

I know that there are a lot of activities out there that you can do with the candy hearts, but Sheree's were cute, easy, and perfect for the time we had to do them in our class.

First they had to tally how many they had, then they made a graph with them. I love how this one below actually put the hearts on the chart since that's the way this child sees things best.

Then they had a couple questions to answer that pertained to their actual graph. Each person's graph turned out differently because they all had their own individual boxes.

Our boxes didn't have white hearts as the charts asked for, but they had blue ones which weren't on the charts. This was an easy fix for us to change so it fit our needs.

We also celebrated the 100th day of school in the afternoon on Thursday. 

Our building has only 6 classes 

(2 kinders, 2 firsts, and 2 seconds).

Each teacher planned a 25 minute activity. The classes moved from room to room to do each activity and finished up just in time to go home. (Gotta love those days when the time flies!)

I visited my friend Corinna Gandara in Hawaii. . . well, I didn't actually visit her. . .Truthfully, I visited her blog. . . . and you will want to too. Her blog is called Surfin' Through Second Grade. 

She is very cool and fun and let's me live vicariously through her adventures in surfing!

These next two activities are from her blog.

In my room the kinders made some gorp with many different kinds of foods. It was so cute to listen to them count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 over and over as they got to each bowl.

When they were done, IF they counted right, they had 100 things to eat.

Some kids automatically made patterns all on their own!

We asked some to make addition groups like 3+5 to see what the answer was.

Then the first and second graders had to find 100 ways to make 100.

 I let the 2nd graders just make them any way they could. Some of them caught on and saw a pattern to be sure they didn't miss any of them. I love it when the light bulb comes on and math makes sense to them. 

With the first graders I had them stay with me and watch the pattern grow together. It didn't take long for them to catch on. 

We didn't have time to finish. So I told them to take it home, finish it, and return it to me tomorrow and I'll give them a treat. I sure hope lots of them continued making them at home.

And just look how neat this one below is! Don't cha just wish every one wrote this neatly 

and can keep their numbers inside the boxes!!!

Thanks for hanging in there and reading about our fabulous day on Thursday. I loved reading all of yours too! It's so interesting to see how each school does different things.

Patty

On the Way to Texas, I met a Friend

Hi y'all! My husband and I flew to Houston last night to see our daughter and son in law. We love seeing them and going to a warmer place in February is always a perk.

Our school has today and Monday off, so it makes for a nice getaway!

We left Michigan in the mid twenties, and its in the sixties and sunny here. Love that!

Now that everyone is napping before we go to dinner, I thought I would update my blog....

You know how you sometimes worry about who will take that vacant seat by you in the plane? Will they hog the arm rest? Will they smell funny? Will they want to make small talk when I don't want to make small talk?

I got a great person to sit by me last night. She told me she was a teacher in Chicago public schools! How cool is this....we have something in common!  She teaches middle school reading and writing. She is desperate for resources.

Can you read my mind? Can you see where my conversation is going to go? (I could feel my husband thinking, here she goes, she's going to tell her!)

I asked her if she had ever heard of TPT. . . She had not. Oh my! I have an interested ear now. I explained how she could search the site to narrow down what she was looking for and how she could follow some middle school blogs for help too. She was so impressed she wrote it down in her phone!

People! I found someone who didn't know about us!! And I filled her in. We will have a new friend on TPT....and I bet she tells others in Chicago about us. I was wishing I had free wifi on my plane because I would have shown her exactly what to look for...but I wasn't going to pay $8.00 for it.

Just when I think everyone knows about us, I find out, I'm wrong!

I hope you are enjoying your weekend too!


Patty

Disappointing Day and a Great Celebration to Enter

Today I had to put on my "Disappointed Teacher Hat". It wasn't very pretty either. I'm absolutely sure that you have had to wear this hat too at one time or another.

(and if you haven't then I need your secret so that I don't have to wear this again!)

I was absent from school yesterday, helping my mom and dad back home. The sub I had has been in my room before, she's a retired teacher in our building, she knows this group of kids from last year too. She's a firm teacher and I knew that she could control my class. . . . .

But. . . .

I didn't realize just how controlling my kids were. . . . .and I had a mess on my hands.
Not that things were physically out of place, but that too many kids were out of control.

Here's a short list of what I know happened:

• Too noisy during an assembly
• rude and talking while she read to them
• getting into computer programs they know they are not to use
• taking AR tests without reading the book, then asking a friend to tell them the answers
• reading books in RAZ Kids that were well below their level 
• taking tests on books in RAZ Kids that they hadn't read the book, seeing the correct answers then retaking the test again, just to get the points
• turned my tv on and then disappeared out of view, so the sub didn't know who did it
• fooling around and not working, etc

So you can believe that I was extremely flustered. 

Not sure what you would have done, but here's what I did. We have a short week this week and don't have school this Friday or next Monday. 

I took away their recess for today, tomorrow, and Thursday. I made them write during recess what happened yesterday, what they did wrong, (they needed to admit to things) what they saw others doing, an apology, and try to persuade me to give them the recess back on Thursday.

It was a great quiet recess, and I got a lot done. I also read what they wrote and have 3 names of who they thought turned the TV on. We will talk tomorrow. 

I do plan to excuse a few kids tomorrow who I'm pretty sure are innocent and didn't have problems. As far as Thursday's recess, I'm still not sure what I will do. 

But they got the message. I was deeply disappointed, and I wasn't sure if this sub would ever want to come back. Their writings were very sweet and most admitted to being wrong and asking for forgiveness in a good way. It was clear they understood my feelings. I also sent a letter home to the parents and asked them to review their expectations with their child and to sign the note and return it tomorrow. I'm hoping to see a lot of these returned. 

What do you think? Was I too tough on them? Not tough enough? What would you have done?

Now, on to happier times! 

Marie at The Hands On Teacher is having a big celebration and YOU are invited to check it out! She has lots to give away and YOU will want to enter and YOU will want to win. . . . won't YOU?

Patty

Shaker Bottles from Sunny Days

Woo hoo! A SNOW DAY!

 Ok, enough celebrating. . . Get back to work Missy!

Have you seen Sunny Days in Second Grade before?  She is a great friend and creates a terrific blog. I have followed her from my first days of stalking people on blogs.

If you click on her link you'll see these very cool shaker bottles. And if your kids are anything like my kids, they love to shake and they love noise.
These shaker bottles have words inside that the kids have to try to find by shaking them and moving them around. There is a sheet for them to fill out when they find the word they are looking for.

And as far as the noise goes, it really isn't much, because it is made with rice. Really now, what's quieter than rice?  But even still, I can send two of my  kids out into the hall to play this game and they do very well with it.
So far I've made the Valentine one, but I'm working on the opposites and the synonyms.

I thought I would share with you my step by step process of how to make these. It's very easy, cheap and not very messy.

First you need a bottle like this one. It had Orange Juice in it, but you can buy other flavors of juice. Clean it out well. And let it dry completely. To remove the label, fill the bottle with very hot (maybe close to boiling) water. Let it set for a few minutes. Then peel the label off.  I  had to use some Goo Gone to remove the adhesive residue that was left behind, but it didn't take much.

Then I bought the cheapest rice I could find, alcohol, and food coloring. 

Place about 2-3 tablespoons of alcohol in the bag and several drops of the color you want. Seal the bag and smoosh it around until it is all covered. Repeat for each color. These are sandwich bags so they aren't very big. These 4 bags were the entire contents of this box.

Spread them out on newspaper to dry. It really doesn't take long, since the alcohol is 

 a drying agent anyway.

When they are dry you can mix any combination of colors that you would like to go into your bottles.

Denise is so creative and giving. She even includes a label to laminate and hot glue to your bottle.  There are cards to copy, cut, fold, and glue before laminating that you will put into the bottle. There is also a worksheet to match to the words inside the bottle. 

It really is a fun activity and I will gladly post more pictures of my kids using it when I get back to school. If you want to know more about these Shaker Bottles and what Denise does with them, 

go to Sunny Days in Second Grade.

And if you like what you see, be sure to sign up for her free newsletter. She's a very generous lady and I'm glad to have her as a bloggy friend.

Patty

What do You do for Your Valentine's Party?

Many of us are gearing up for the Valentine's Day party.

That got me to wondering how others do their parties. So here's your chance to share with me and others what you do. 

I hear many people get crabby about the parties and complain, so there has to be a better way.

You know how you get sick of hearing your kids asking "When is the party?" or "How much longer till the party?"

This is how our school has done it for years. 

We start the day with the party. . . . .

Yup, it's the very first thing we do. . . and it's over and done with and we can go on to other activities. 

We got real tired of all the sugar that was consumed on Valentine's and Halloween Parties. So that's why we start with the party in the morning.

And here's the best part. . . There is no sugar invited at all. . . No cupcakes,  No cookies,  No bags of candy, nada!

We have our food service prepare a breakfast for us. The kids get to practice the Core Democratic Values by voting on what they want. They are given a choice of 5 entrees, and 5 fruits. The majority rules and the winning choice is what we have.

They eat the breakfast in the room, which is a special thing because we usually eat in the gym. Then we clean up the room and are ready for the Valentines. We pass them out to our friends, then we open them, laugh, share, giggle, and really have a chance to enjoy ourselves. We can be done with the party and ready to move on to the rest of the day. We usually do other Valentine activities so that we can keep the theme alive. 

We love that our day starts with a healthy party and the kids have something good in their stomachs. 

Now remember that I said we don't invite any sugar to our parties? 

Well it still shows up! Parents will just send in cupcakes, cookies, bags of candy, and what ever else they feel our poor children have to have! :) Without us even asking!

It's ok. We try to space it out for the rest of the day. And again, they did start with a good solid meal first!

So that's it, that's what we do for both the Halloween and Valentine parties. Now if you want to have a breakfast and your food service won't prepare a meal for you, maybe you could get some parents to make some breakfast casseroles to serve.

Patty

Earn Credits for Buying at TPT

Did you know that when you buy from Teachers Pay Teachers you can earn credits by giving feedback on your purchase? Then you can spend those credits on new goodies! You might have money to spend on TPT right now if you've bought items and not given feedback. Go to TPT and find the link called My Purchases. Then look for the items that have a blinking "Provide Feedback" link. Better get that done today before the 

SUPER sale is over!

P.S. If you find a flaw in someone's work, please ask them a question in the Q & A part first. Don't rate them down before they have a chance to correct the mistake. They will want to make it right. We are all human and we all make mistakes. Lowering someone's rating for this reason is hurtful.

And if you want to go directly to my store, you can click right here!

Patty

Super Super SUPER Sale on SUNDAY!

If you have been living under a rock, you may not know that this Sunday is the SUPER BOWL . . .  . yaaawwwnn!

I am not a fan of football or watching it on TV! But I do like to watch the commercials. So if you're a fan of the game, maybe I can entice you to step away from the TV for a bit and come to my sale! I am offering 20% off and TPT is offering 8% off. . . so you get a full 28% off what ever you buy. You can get to my store right here!
When you check out just don't forget to use the promo code: SUPER.

I think that's pretty amazing. I am updating my wish list right now, so I can go back on Sunday and grab some of those things I've been wanting for a while now.

I have several Valentine things available in my store and they work great for some first graders, all 2nd graders and some 3rd or 4th graders.

You can see some of them here. My prices aren't high on a regular basis, so with the 28% off, you're really getting a deal.

Patty