Big update!

I updated my blog for the first time since February, and there are several posts! Keep scrolling down to see them all!

News!

I have many excuses for not posting for MONTHS, as I mentioned in a post below. Here are a few more:

• my husband graduated from law school
• my husband took the bar
• my husband PASSED THE BAR!
• my husband GOT A JOB!
• my husband got a job in a new city! (60 minutes west of Topeka)
• I had to get a new job!
• I got an interview...and the next day I had a new job!
• I had to move out of my classroom!
• I taught summer school!

Suffice it to say, it's been a busy 2012! I cried a few times during my last week of school. One of my students said a positive part of her day was "getting to spend today with Mrs. Thomason before she leaves." Tears, seriously. Again, SUCH A HARD YEAR, but I REALLY loved them at the end and I was sad to see them go!

So, onto new things! My new school is a BRAND SPANKIN school on Ft. Riley Army Base, and I get to STAY in third grade! We went to see our new school last Thursday, and the excitement was obvious, as teachers ran from room to room taking pictures of their classrooms and everything in between. This was in spite of the fact that the school is NOT complete yet!

Outside of the school, near the main entrance.

In each of the pods, there is a collaboration area. It will have two smartboards.

My classroom! EEEEKKK!! 28 cubbies and coat hooks

Sink area with cabinets

Each classroom has a CLOSET! YES!!!

Only pitfall of the room...not much bulletin board space! The smartboard will go in between the bulletin board and whiteboard.

Gym

Teacher workroom

We are a LEED school (green), so there is lots of natural light!

SPED and coaches room

The art/science room (teachers can use this room when they need to)

Indoctrination

Like any hip teacher, I like to indoctrinate my students with silly Youtube videos.

Let's be honest, usually THEY are the ones teaching me to be cool!

On the last day of school, I pulled out some Carly Rae Jeppsen, in the form of the Harvard baseball players. My kids started doing the dance (ok, and some dances of their own!)

They are so cute!

End of the Year

At the end of the year, our assistant principal and behavior specialist came in to do some fun activities with my kids. It was such a positive 40 minutes!

They danced to a song (Follow the Leader by...ooo, can't remember!)

They played a balloon game where they had to keep a balloon up without letting go of their hands.

They did more dance moves??? (By the way, we did chicken fat friday every Friday the second half of the year. They always talked about it!)

I also discovered a newfound love for Pete the Cat. They read them this story and talked about things being alllllll good! They kids sang the song. And, of course, I thought it was even cuter when they changed the song to "I love my TEACHER, I LOVE my teacher!"

End of the year photos

It's so funny how the class that gave you me so much DRAMA is one of the classes I'll miss the most. They really were sweet and I saw some HUGE improvements.

We did normal, silly, and TOUGH!

Recycling project

Some of the results of our annual recycling project. The kids pick their groups (and they work so much better together, imagine that!)

This group made a model of me, complete with coconut bra! No, I have NEVER worn that to work!

This is a racecar :)

Field Day!

I love field day! Our PE teachers do an amazing job planning the activities and teaching the kids ahead of time how to play them!

The looks on these girls' faces are priceless!

Cooperative Teams/Lego Fractions

One thing my students struggled with ALL year was working together...we still didn't quite have it down by the time we did this project, but I think the kids that could handle it did great, and so that made it worth it! Each team was given a set of legos (random) in four colors. They had 15 minutes to create a structure. They could make their own pieces and connect them (they HAD to be connected by the end of the time), or they could just build one big one together (harder than it sounds with these little guys...hehe). 

After the 15 minutes was up, they switched tables. They had to deconstruct the structure, sort out the colors, and create fractions using the four colors. They got extra "points" for putting the fractions in order from smallest to largest and using the <, >, or = symbols. 

I was inspired to do this by a news piece I saw where a middle school teacher used Legos with her sixth grade language arts class to talk about plot, conflict, etc. 

Angry Birds Writing

I found this project on Pinterest and knew we HAD to do it! HUGE thanks to the teacher that put this together. The kids loved it, loved the writing component, and REALLY loved building their birds! We even had another class come over to see our angry birds and ask questions about them :) 

I even did this project with my 4th-grade summer schoolers...who also loved it! If Angry Birds is still cool next year, we will for sure do it again!

Tangrams

I love doing this lesson with my third graders. The generous teacher in the classroom before me left a laminated set of 30 tangrams, and so I did some research and was led to Grandfather Tang. It's a great story where the two main animal characters change into different creatures as the story progresses. As I read it out loud, the kids manipulate their tangrams to match the creature. For some of them, it's hard at first, but they get better!

Graham Cracker States

We do a lot of "fun" stuff after state testing...at my school it seems like we put so much pressure on the kids to test well, and so it's nice to take it a little bit easier afterwards. Anyway, to end our postcard project, the kids made graham cracker states and marked the capitals with Smarties and water with blue frosting. Some of their states were open to a little interpretation :)

They LOVED it though. It was so cute. I would do this again!

I SO want to be back!

I really, really love updating my personal blog. I like being able to look back at our lives and see what changes we have been through and the things Todd and I have done together.

I have found that I have some personal limitations with this blog, and I'm learning to be okay with that. I really do want to keep a record of my teaching. I really want it to be positive. With that being said, I will probably never:

• own a TpT or Teacher's Notebook store
• host a giveaway
• join a million linky parties and comment on every one (there are some link parties that I think are really awesome and I DO follow those!)
• create incredibly darling unit and post them online

In the blog world, I have felt some pressure to "keep up" with all of the amazing things other teachers are doing. However, that stopped me from even posting. I had a really difficult class this year, and when I came home I just wanted to be home and not think about work. I loved my job, but I needed to leave work at work.

I'm hoping I can strike a new balance. Like I said above, recognize my limitations and not feel guilty about it. Post when I can about things that are working!

So, hopefully I can be back on this blog. I have some exciting things coming up in regards to my job and I want to document it!