I've been seriously M.I.A

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

- Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Well, I guess I have been doing a whole lot of looking and not a lot of blogging. Here is what I have been up to at school and otherwise.

School

I've continued to work as a building substitute in two elementary school buildings. I try to make myself available to the teachers in whatever way they need me. That means watching a class while a teacher runs to the bathroom, teaching small groups, or cutting laminated centers. My advice to all substitutes, say yes, to everything you can. You never know where that yes will take you. You want others to see that you are flexible, adaptable and blend in well with the staff. Saying yes will give you a lot more experiences in and around the classroom.

My mom ran a half marathon!

I could not be prouder of my mom for running her first half marathon at the age of 53. I was so happy and honored to see her finish that race especially because she ran for a cause important to her, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.  

This was her moments after she finished with banana in hand.

Food Tour

My boyfriend and I were itching for something fun, new, and relatively inexpensive to do. We found City Food Tours. They do food tours in New York City and Philadelphia. We selected to go on a gourmet food tour around Philly. It was so much fun and opened us up to new food experiences like this Pumpple Cake!

Peppermint

It has become my obsession.

Candles, coffee, chocolate, you name it I want to eat it and smell it. I need to get my hands on everything peppermint before the holidays are over.

Hot chocolate + Peppermint Mocha Kahlua = No words, just yum

I am not ashamed.

Little Time Savers for Little Students

When working with first grade you need to utilize every second you have to maximize learning and practice time for your little ones. If you have your students complete journal entries daily or weekly you may want to try this little time saver.

Here is what the cover of the journals look like.

 

Apologies for the blurriness! Print out journal prompts on sticky labels, enough for every child to have it placed on their journal page. 

Then stick them at the top of the next clean journal page for each student. 

This will give your students much more time to write their responses. Students wont be looking back up at the board and down at their journal a hundred times and they wont waste time writing out the question on their paper. After all, you want to be assessing what they are creating on the paper, not how well they can copy a question that is written on the board. 

Happy Journaling!