Want to take Better Pictures?

I did this guided 365 about 2 years ago. It was amazing. If your looking to take better pictures check it out...

https://guided365.com/2018-online-photography-workshop-referral-registration/?orid=21902&opid=18

Camping ~Endless Caverns~

So after camping in Hatteras Jamie was a little hesitant to make another trip.  He kept saying it was a lot of work. Which it was but it was also a lot of fun.  Needless to say we planned this trip to Endless Caverns before the Hatteras trip ended so he had no choice. :-) I was nice and gave him a 2 month break. lol

So to make this trip super easy we decided we weren't going to open the camper to pack.  We were going to put everything in the back of the Suburban.  Oh yeah, we were going to get that "fixed" so that it could tow the camper.

To "fix" the Suburban we attached the lowest solid hitch we owned at the time and got my dad to drive the camper around the block with the camper in tow.  And it was "fixed"!!!!  Something about the adjustable hitch, the camper, and the Suburban didn't jive, but a solid hitch was just what we needed.

So on to packing. The weather wasn't going to be very warm to we decided that the boys were going to wear sleepers all weekend so we didn't have to worry about keeping socks/shoes on them.  I also threw in some fleece sleepers to keep them extra warm while sleeping.  So packing for them was easy, some diapers and wipes and they were done. For Henleigh I went for heavy jeans, sweatpants, and long sleeve shirts.  Along with diapers and wipes of course. :-)  I also threw in hats and gloves for all the kiddos just in case.  Good thing too because it was COLD!!! For baby gear we packed 2 of the kids highchairs and a pack-n-play.

As far as packing the camper we keep all of our towels and sheet in the camper so we didn't need to pack any of that, we needed a few chairs and propane and the camper was ready.

The ride to Endless Caverns in the Suburban was awesome!!!  So much better than 3 kids in the truck on a long trip.  Towards the end the boys got hungry and I was able to crawl in the back and feed them.  Which was great because we didn't have to stop and they were ready for a nap when we got there so both Jamie and I could set up.  Win Win!

It was very cold so we sent a lot of time in the MC with mom and dad but it didn't feel crowded or awkward at all. Mechelle and Raylan also met us so it was great to see both of them and finally get to hold my nephew.  :-)  On Saturday we toured the caverns.  I just have to say that we were a sight.  5 adults and 4 babies, the tour guided kept counting to make sure we had everyone.  Garrett loved looking at everything in the caverns, Hunter and Raylan slept and Ms. Hen Elizabeth wanted to walk and then didn't want to walk and then wanted to walk again. Poor Grand-dad.

This would be an awesome picture for someone who is looking to do couple or wedding pictures. Henleigh was nice enough to sit long enough for me to take a picture. :-) 

We got our first cousin shot. And no one was crying. Another WIN!!

We had an awesome, relaxing_much needed weekend.  Jamie also learned that camping doesn't have to be a big ordeal.  We can make it simple for weekend trips, but we still have the space and supplies for longer trips. A couple of things we did learn...if the weather is going to be below 30 degrees at night we need to bring 2 propane tanks.  We did great Friday night but ran out of propane Saturday night at about 1am.  The bathhouse at the campground had space heaters so Jamie went and grabbed one of those so we didn't have to move the kids in the middle of the night.  It worked okay but next time we will be bringing 2 tanks and our 2 space heaters just to be safe.

On the way home we also discussed making some beds for the boys.  Currently the just sleep with us, but what we found was that they are starting to move more and kept rolling into us which didn't give us much space.  So we are currently looking for a solution... how can we make the other bed kid/baby safe? Let me know if you have any ideas.

Oh and by the way I convinced Jamie to take one more trip this year.  We will be heading to Island Resort the first weekend in Dec. I am super excited!!!!

~November 10th-12th, 2017~

teaching: Silly Turkey Party

FROM WAKING UP IN KINDERGARTEN-Nov. 19, 2013

Happy American Education Week!!! Tomorrow my school is having it's open house and knowing me I am rethinking my lessons for tomorrow.  So instead of doing our next Talent and Development lesson (which to be honest is boring) I have decided to do something turkey related.  Not only do I want to change my lesson but I am exhausted from our field trip today and can't decide what to do.  Here is what I have come up with so far...

Read Steve Metzger's Silly Turkey Party and do a problem solving activity.  Click here for a free copy of the problem solving worksheet.

OR...

I can have students work in groups to sort Turkey's based on one of their attributes.  Then have them graph their turkey's.  

I am too tired to decide now. I guess will will pick one in the morning. :-) 

teaching: Pattern Block Turkey

FROM WAKING UP IN KINDERGARTEN-Nov. 21, 2013

On Tuesday I posted about changing my lesson plan for American Education Week. I thought I would a do problem-solving activity using Steve Metzgers book Silly Turkey Party or doing a turkey sorting activity. But I change my mind again... I found this really cute pattern block turkey activity on Chalk Talks blog. Needless to say I got to school extra early this morning to cut out all of the shapes.

I downloaded the template from Heidi song blog here.

They turned out super cute and the kids had fun.

My Week in Pictures-Oct. 16-20

Gearing Up for Conferences...

Are you getting ready for fall parent/teacher conferences?  I know I am.

I don't sign my parents up for conferences I let them choose what time is best for them.  My district also doesn't require us to have a conference with every student. We do schedule conferences for those students we are concerned about.

I have been using google forms for about two year now for my conference sign up and absolutely love it! With Google Forms you pick the picture and style for your sign up. You also can customize the times and any questions you want parents to answer when signing up.  I always ask if there is something in particular they want to discuss so that I am prepared when we sit down for our conference. I am not a fan of surprises.  I think what I love most about using Google Forms for conference sign up is that I can reuse the same sign up each time we have conferences. A HUGE time saver!!

Want to try Google Forms for your conference sign up click HERE for a copy of my sign up and how to send it to your parents.

Everything Monarch

With moving to first grade came new themes in new units which I’m very excited about. One of them being a unit on the monarch butterfly. Which I have completely fallen in love with! To the point where I brought home seven monarch caterpillars at the beginning of the school year and released seven butterflies. Six were females and one was a male. It was super exciting; my mom and my husband fell in love with them as well. It’s been a great experience and something to look forward to.

At school we have been doing everything monarch so I’m going to share a couple of things with you that we have done along with some pictures of us releasing our monarchs at school.

Work on Writing Paper: Using the clip art as a prompt students write a story and add details to the pictures. Want a copy for your classroom you can find it here, on my TpT site.

Unscrambled Sentences:

Want a copy for your classroom you can find it here, on my TpT site.

Interactive Reading:

 

Click here for Interactive Read Aloud questions for Great Migrations Butterflies.

This one here I absolutely love it’s not one that we read it to our kids but it has tons of great information.

Guided Reading Book:

Click HERE for a Free copy of my lesson plan for this book.

teaching_Literacy Centers

A friend of mine recently asked me about my literacy centers and what my kiddos are doing.  So here it is...

During our Guided Reading/Literacy block students are working at independent centers. I have 6 centers in my classroom

• Read to Self
• Listen to Read
• Word Work
• Work on Writing
• Technology
• Guided Reading Notebook

Read to Self
During read to self students read books from their book boxes.  In their book boxes they have three books on their F&P reading level and 5 "fun" books.  "Fun" books are any other book in the classroom that isn't labeled by level.  My books are in bins based on different themes (pets, favorite characters, etc.).  Students change their books once a week, normally on my long day. Each students book box is labeled with their name and what reading level they are on.  That way when it is time to get new books they know exactly what bucket to go too.

These are my student book boxes (these are from ikea, they were an investment but I have had them for 6 years now and love them!!)

This is my leveled library.  (baskets are from really good stuff)

This is one shelf of my "fun" books. The pink crate is where students return their library books. (book bins are from really good stuff and crate is from walmart) 

Listen to Read
I have ipods in my classroom (parent donations and old ones I had). I uploaed my listening library into iTunes and created a separate playlist for each iPod. All of the iPods are labeled with a number that corresponds to the playlist that is upload on that iPod. Only one playlist in on each iPod to ensure that students are listening to the books that are in their listening box.

All of my books and cds came from scholastic with bonus points.  Here is a letter to parents encouraging them to place a book order, therefore earning you points which you can use to buy listening libraries.

Word Work
For word work I like to keep the "games" predictable, that way I don't have to spend too much time explaining what they are when I change out the games.  Here are a few of the most common games I have.

• stamping- Students use stamps to build the word then write the word on the line.  I keep the stamps in a bead organizer so that they are easy to find. Click here for a FREEBIE!!
• unscramble the sentence- Students use the cards to unscramble the sentence and write the sentence on their recording sheet.  Click here for a FREEBIE!!
• magnets- I have a large oil drip pan attached to my wall.  Using business card magnets I attach pictures.  Students use magnetic letters to build the words.
• clip it- Students use clothes pins to clip the word that matches the picture.
• Build it, Write it!- Students use magnetic letters or letter tiles to build the word that matches the picture.  Then write the word and a sentence that has that word. 
• read the room/write the room- students walk around the room with a clip board searching for pictures when they find one they write the word that matches the picture on their recording sheet.

I change Word Work games about every two weeks.  If when the chimes ring a student isn't done their word work game they put the recording sheet in their red folders to finish the next day.

**you can find clip it, build it write it!, and read the room activities in my Word Work Bundles on Teachers Pay Teachers.  They are sold by the skill, click here to see an example. **

This is the large oil drip pan I have attached to my wall for my magnetic activities. (the oil pan is from walmart).

Work on Writing
For work on writing I lets students pick between either blank paper with a picture box and lines or a sheet with a picture prompt for them to write about.  At the bottom of each sheet is a check list to keep them on track.  When they have all of the things on the check list they can turn it in to my finished work bin.  If the chimes ring and they aren't done they put it in their red folder until the next day.  They are only allowed to have one sheet in their folder at a time. Get a free sample of my work on writing paper here.

Technology
I LOVE LOVE LOVE Google Classroom!!  Anytime my student get on a computer they are getting on Google Classroom.  Check out my post on how to set up Google Classroom for your students, here.

Guided Reading Notebook
This is always a follow up from my guided reading group.  Students do the activity in their Guided Reading Notebook. This is a simple spiral notebook that students glue follow up worksheets into.

Here is a quick look at my rotation board.

The empty column will be for read to someone, which I will introduce later in the year.  The anchor charts are from Tunstalls Teaching Tidbits.

So there you have it.  My literacy centers in a nutshell, I hope you got a few ideas that you can use in your class. 

teaching: What do Mr. Potato Head and Writing have in common?

FROM WAKING UP IN KINDERGARTEN

The answer to this would be details, details, details.  For the past couple of weeks we have been talking about adding details to our writing.  We have done many lessons from Katie Wood Rays book In Pictures and In Words.  This lesson was adopted from Toying with Writing by Nancy Herta. She has some awesome ideas for teaching writing. All of her lessons have a toy that help kids remember the skill.

We started with a very plain potato and talked about what details we could add.

They started by wanting to add feet.  I let them choose what pair of feet they wanted to add.

Then they added a hat and eyes.

In the end we added a mouth and some arms.

We made a couple of other Mr./Mrs. Potato Heads.

When we were done we talked about when we draw pictures of people we need to make sure we draw eyes, hands, a mouth, feet and clothing. This lesson really stuck.  So many kiddos were drawing people with tons of details. 

Glad to See Summer End

If you know me you know that I love summer; I am a warm weather kid.  I love the beach and the pool!! This summer has been less than stellar and I am ready for fall and some positive news. The summer started out on a high note with the birth of my twin sons (Garrett and Hunter) but unfortunately from there it hasn't been the best.

In the beginning of July my grandmother passed, this was a blessing but not something you ever want to experience.  She was 87 years old or almost 87 years old. She had dementia really bad, she never could remember who I was and most of the time barely recognized my mom. It was a blessing but she will truly be missed.

A couple of weeks later Jamie's brother passed very unexpected. That week was hard and definitely not something we expected.  He was only 57 years old! Jamie saw him just before the twins were born and he was doing great.  It was very hard for Jamie and something that he still thinks about every day.

In the beginning of August we took our first ever family vacation as a party of SIX. Because the Suburban isn’t towing the camper very well these days we took the truck.  It was very interesting to ride in a car for nine hours with three kids under the age of two but we made it! I hope to blog about our camping trip soon. :-) We had many first on this trip...First time we camped in the camper for a week.  Jamies first time in the outer banks. Boys first time at the beach. Jamie also got to go fishing on a charter boat.  And most importantly our first vacation as #LahockiPartyof6.  We also got got three stamps for our passport book the last one Jamie will tell you that I almost got us shot ,which is not true I just wasn't following directions very well.

Once we got home we had a blessing and also a scary event; my sister gave birth to her son 10 weeks early. It was very exciting and very scary!! I think this is the hardest thing for me to deal with. You hear stories all the time about babies being born early and being in the NICU but it doesn’t hit you until it happens to you or someone who you are very close with. Above all this is what I am having the hardest time with, especially since I am going back to work knowing that I have three very healthy babies and my nephew is not struggling for his life but he is struggling. It will be a very long road for them and I feel horrible and helpless all the same time.

So as you can see we have not had the best of summers. I'm looking forward to going back to work... I'm looking forward to teaching first grade. I know my boys and Henleigh will do amazing things with Natalie and they will grow so much.  Even though I am looking forward to going back I know it is going to be hard, much harder than it was when I went back after Henleigh was born. I can see it coming and I can see myself already tearing up whenever I start to think about it. My hope for the school year is that I learn a lot teaching first grade, my love for teaching grows, my kids thrive at Natalie's. I know that my daily chats with Mechelle will get harder but she will be in my thoughts and prayers everyday. I hope that we as a family can visit Mechelle, Mitchell, and Raylan as much as possible.   I know that everything will be OK and she will make it through this, she is stronger than she knows. One day all of our kids will be running around and playing in the backyard, we will look back on this with very fond memories and can smile about it.

Preserving Memories

The past couple of weeks has got me thinking about memories, I love capturing memories with my camera but also love looking at memories from the past in pictures. My grandfather and aunt loved taking pictures and we have boxes of pictures and even slides piled high in the basement. With the recent passing of my grandmother and Jamie's brother I have again started to think about preserving memories and ways to share them.

To preserve our most recent memories I love using ChatBooks. The app is connected to my Instagram account and is easy to use. By hashtaging my pictures ChatBooks creates a series for each kiddo and mails me the book every 60 pictures. They email 2-3 days before they print the book so I can edit it if I want. I also have a series for all of my Instagram pictures.

The books are 6x6 and are so easy to keep in a basket. Jamie and I often pull the basket down and just flip through them. Henleigh loves to pull the basket off the shelf and will point to herself on the cover.

I love this idea for storing them too. Now if I could just find pineapple book ends all would be complete. 😉

image taken from Pinterest

Want to start preserving your memories with ChatBooks click HERE to get your first book for FREE!!

I take thousands of pictures each year. Not all I post on Instagram, instead of leaving them on my computer to only be viewed by those who log into the computer I create Blurb books that I will then print and add to our book shelf in the living room. I will often put them on end tables when guest come to visit so that they can flip through them and see our adventures. Again each kid has their own book. With 3 kiddos I don't have time to go through every picture at the end of the year and pick which ones I want in a book. Adobe Lightroom makes it very easy to tag pictures when I download them and will sort them into books based on how they are tagged. Can you say TIME SAVER!!! I love these books and love looking back at the memories we made as a family.

Memories from the past are also dear to my heart. Stay tuned for how I preserve those memories and share them with family and friends.