MIssing In Blog Action! Catching up...

So about that summer we didn't blog at all....

You may or may not have noticed Juli and I didn't blog this summer. It wasn't planned or discussed at all. I imagine it has something to do with our families. Juli has 3 kids and I have 2. We had talked about all the great things we were going to make this summer for TPT and all the awesome blog topics we had. Then summer actually started. I think I speak for us both when I say we just needed to spend all of our time focused on our families.  All you fellow teacher moms can relate - we spend all year frantically putting as much as possible into our classroom while trying to be Super Mom at home. The slow pace of summer allowed me to be completely immersed into my children's world. I decided mid summer to stay there and enjoy the small window of time I get to be with these amazing little people I brought into this world.  Now that summer is coming to a close I am stopping by to catch up.  Hopefully with regular blog posts now that school will be starting.  I thought I would use this post to show what an amazing summer I have had with the 4 men in my life.  DISCLAIMER: no educational value what so ever in this post - just a peek into my life these days.  I personally love when the bloggers I follow show their lives outside the classroom. My apologies to any readers that don't.

Man #1 - my husband

Isn't he handsome?  He is driving the new boat my father in law purchased. Much of our time is now spent on the lake cruising up and down in this thing. I refer to it as a floating play pen because my boys can play and I don't have to worry about them wondering off.  It is a lazy mother's dream!

We are having Juli and family over at the end of the month so maybe we will have fun pictures to share.

Man #2 and #3 - my sons

They are so much fun! And work! And by work I mean mind numbing, endless demands, mess making tornadoes! But I wouldn't trade a single second.  Our best friends have two boys as well so we had a lot of fun with them. Here are some of my favorite moments with them:

Man #4 - my puppy

Turns out Banjo is quite the little lake dog!  He has his own little life vest and jumps right in.  He is still in puppy stage, which has exhausting and expensive.  His latest adventure was eating my underwear. Yep! You read that correctly...he ate my underwear. That was our ticket of fun to the ER vet.  The staff loved it. Anything I can do to bring a little fun to a vet office I guess.

How often do you get discharge papers like this?  The vet asked if I would like my underwear back! With a straight face! I thanked her for offering but decided to leave that pair with them. I prefer my undergarments predigested.  I don't think that makes me a diva or anything.

So that's my summer. We have one week left and then it's teacher workdays. Sigh. I have enjoyed seeing everyone's classroom set ups. Juli and I will have to do a post with our classroom pics once we get our rooms put together.  Thanks for stopping by!

Bloglovin'...I think

So Juli is out of town on single parent duty (for a very cool reason that I will let her share later) and I am left to here to manage this new fangled move to Bloglovin'. As you know if you are a regular follower, Juli is the tech savvy one. She's also the one with all the cool teaching ideas. I am still a little unsure of what exactly I bring to this blog of ours! But back to Bloglovin' and me manning the controls solo...

I just recently quit using messenger pigeons as my main form of communication so this one was tough for me.  Hopefully I have done it correctly. If not - Juli can save the day when she returns. I managed to import all our blogs we follow over. Then I THINK I got us set up to be followed on Bloglovin'. There should be a little thingy over there on the right of your computer screen that says "Follow This Blog With Bloglovin' and then a little box to click under that. If you click that - that is your ticket to following us. I have sent up a series of smoke signals to Juli to let her know that her assistance may be needed in this transition.   If you have any problems or notice anything I have done wrong, leave a comment (or send me a messenger pigeon).  Thank you!

Happy Birthday, Heather!!!

I am just popping in quickly to wish my dear friend and blogging buddy, Heather, a very Happy Birthday!!!!!  I am so thankful that I have her as my coworker.  She makes going to school everyday SO much fun!  She is so funny and you never know what might come out of her mouth.  But rest assured no matter what she says, it is hilarious and it will make me LAUGH OUT LOUD!   More importantly I am so thankful to call her my friend.  She is one of the sweetest people who regardless of what is going on in her own life, will stop and do anything for you!

Happy Birthday, Heather.  I love you bunches!!!!

Gardens, Butterflies, and Ladybugs, OH MY!

We have had several good days of rain lately!  So when I got to school today, I noticed that we would need to pick some of our carrots.  We headed outside and found these

As I pulled the carrots out, I noticed several little ladybug larvae crawling around in the dirt.  Check it out. (this is in Heather's hand)

We have been keeping busy learning all about the complete metamorphosis of insects.  As I was showing them the ladybug larvae, one of my students said, "look, here's a pupa!"  I was SO excited.  We haven't talked about the ladybug life cycle yet.  When I showed them the larvae it was the first time they had even seen one.  I was so impressed that this student applied his knowledge from mealworms and butterflies to ladybugs.  I turned around quickly and saw what he pointed to.  It was in fact, a ladybug pupa right on the wall outside my classroom window.

So amazing!  Well, we needed to move inside and get to work.  However, work in the garden had to continue.  So I left small groups of students with our full time substitute.  They harvested peas, carrots, and lettuce to take home.  We even got one onion! 

The next amazing thing was what one of my students found munching on some lettuce and dill.  2 monarch caterpillars.  When we study butterflies, we raise Painted Lady Butterflies.  I have actually never seen a monarch caterpillar before!  It was absolutely amazing!

It was just such a fun day of getting our hands dirty and learning about insects in REAL LIFE!  I can't wait to keep our eyes on these two caterpillars and see them go into their chrysalis!  I sure do love those gardens and how much Heather and I can teach to our kids through it!

Easy Explanations ~2.NBT.9

How has everyone's weekend been?  Mine has been good.  Heather was away this weekend celebrating her little sister's graduation.  My weekend was full of soccer games and family time so it was also fun!  What is your countdown down to?  We have 2 more Mondays and 3 more of every other days.  Being a grand total of 14 days left.  We have been keeping our days full with our balloon popping activities.  The kids sure do love it!  What have some of your favorites been?

This week we tackled 2.NBT.9.  The excellent standard for having students explain their thinking.  As always, as we explicitly teach the skill the first week, we place the skill in our stations for the following week.  One of those stations is math games.  We needed a great game for our kids to play that would allow them to apply this skill in game form.  There aren't tons of resources out there for this skill.  And to be honest it is a tricky skill not only to learn for our kids but to teach for us.  We took the approach of having the kids not only explaining their thinking with both word problems and equations.  But we also had students analyze other people's strategies for solving problems.  We had them to analyze and decide why their strategies worked and explain why they didn't work.  

I came up with a little game that allows the students to solve problems and choose multiple choice style the correct answer.  Then they have a recording sheet that allows them to explain why the answer they chose was the correct answer.  Be sure to check it out!  First comment gets a free copy of your own!

Teacher Appreciation Sale

We are so thankful for all of our followers who are teachers!  We are so excited to be able to participate in this sale as well as shop this sale!  Be sure to check out some of our great lessons and units on sale for the next two days!

Happy Shopping!
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Mental Math and a Freebie

Remember this past summer when I posted about Mental Math here?  When I created my unit, I had no idea that so many of you would be struggling with the same concept!  We have started reviewing mental math in our second grade classrooms.  Today we reviewed the adding 10's.  We are going to explicitly teach it for each adding and subtracting until we feel confident that they understand it.  Then we will have them work on mixed problems for adding and subtracting 10's and 100's.  Want to check out the mini unit?  It's a great one in my biased opinion!

As I started preparing for next week, I realized needed a game that my kids could play to review this skill.  I made a quick spinner game that lets the kids make their own 3 digit number.  I think it accompanies the unit well!  Be sure to pick up your own free copy by clicking the picture below.  First comment will also get you my Mental Math Mania pack for free!!

Happy Monday!