Hello Summer!

Friday, June 1st was our last day of school.  Today,  June 7th feels like my first real day of vacation.  I finished cleaning my classroom, feeling somewhat organized and looking forward to next year!  I brought home my printer and my laminator so I can work on projects over the summer.  My next step is going to be to steal my mom-in-law's cricut to play with and see what I can create instead of buy for my next theme.  My classroom theme is going to be space!   I've got a lot of great ideas and am excited to get started.

The second best thing about today was that I checked my email this afternoon and saw that I won a $50 gift certificate from Learning Resources!  Can't wait to go shopping on the website!  

I opened a shop on Teacher's Notebook so I need to get busy and start creating!  I have a list of ideas, just need the time to sit down and work on them.  So watch for a grand opening give away soon!

A SUPER HAPPY BIRTHDAY Give-Away!

Hi Blogging friends!  There's only four more days until our Easter Break and I CAN'T WAIT!  I love my little cuties and all, but it is time to give ourselves a little break from each other.  I've been using 1-2-3 Magic for behavior management in my classroom.  Does anyone else?  It works for most of my class, but I have one little guy that doesn't seem to care that he goes to TO, and loses 5 minutes of recess.  I'm at a loss as to what to do with him, and we still have 2 months of school to go!  If anyone out there uses this program and can offer some advice, I'd be very grateful.
So, back to Spring/Easter Break, even though a few of those days will be spent at Dr. appts., it will be nice to be able to go and not have to plan for a sub.  The last sub I had in, did NOTHING that I had put in my very detailed plans.  Does anyone else ever experience that?

Another thing I'll be anxiously waiting for over Easter Break, is if I win the Super give-away at Teaching Blog Addict.  If you haven't yet, you need to hop on over there and check it out!  There are some fabulous prizes being given away in honor of their first birthday.  They're also doing a freebie a day for the next seven days, starting today .  I love that blog anyway, now I love, love, love it!!!!  
This week will be busy with trying to fit my reading lessons into 4 days, but I plan on doing some Easter themed work in my centers so hopefully the kids will really be engaged and work well independently and the week will go by really fast (crossing my fingers).  That's going to happen, right?  I hope that it happens for all of us that have school this week, and the opposite happens for all of you that are on break already.  Have a great week everyone!

Teacher-Hubby, Hunger Games, Planning, Easter Break, and More!

This is going to seem like a random blog, but it's been so long that I feel I need to catch up with all my recent thoughts!
First of all, thank you to the many who have been praying for my husband's recovery.  All I can say is the power of prayer is amazing!  He is doing really well, has nearly all the movement back in his left arm/hand.  He's still working on closing his hand and grasping.  He has to wear his external defibrillator for three months, so one down, two to go!  He has a sleep study coming up as well as a stress test so hopefully we'll find out more about the condition of his heart.  He is walking daily around our farm to get geared up for the stress test.  Please keep him in your prayers, it means so much to us.  We are truly blessed!
So my daughters dragged me out to see the Hunger Games with them on Friday night.  I hadn't read the book, but they both had.  I thought it was a really good movie with a thought-provoking message.  But I have to say, as a mother, it was hard to watch.  I instinctively want to help children, so it was hard to imagine a society that would want to purposely kill/watch children be killed.  I think after seeing the movie, I don't think I could read the books.  If anyone has a convincing argument for me to show why I should, I'm all ears!!!
So, I've been thinking a lot about what theme I want to use to decorate my room for next year, and I've decided on  Space.   We have a really big class coming up from Kindergarten, so I'm also starting to decide what furniture I can put in storage to make room for all those new little cuties!  What theme are you all planning for next year, or I am the only crazy one already obsessing about next year?
So we haven't had any time off since Presidents' Day weekend.  Our weather here in PA has been unseasonably warm, so our cuties have had spring fever for the last week or so!  I have to keep reminding myself that we still have over two months to go!  I am really looking forward to some time off at Easter.  We get Friday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday off.   I want to take at least one of those days and spend it in my classroom organizing and planning.  I've been saving copy paper boxes to put all my papers, crafts, materials for each month in so I'm anxious to get started on that!  
My goal for the rest of the year is to get my cuties reading fluency scores up.  We use StoryTown  by Harcourt, and I don't feel that there is enough fluency built into the program.  I have an idea for some center activities, and if I get the chance this week I want to work on them.  
We also use Saxon Math in our school, and my kids were tuning out during the math meeting.  So I made some worksheets that they do during the meeting to help make them more accountable for what we go over every day.  I'll post an example.  One of my co-workers thinks I should put them on TpT.  What do you think?  

Thank you to Tanya at Mrs. Dwyer's A+ Firsties for awarding me the Lovely Blog Award.  I really appreciate it. If you get a chance, please check out her super blog too!
  
Happy Spring everyone!