Have you been shopping yet?  I've already shopped for round 1 and will finish up with round 2 tonight!

Right now, I'm back to link up with Beth for Worship Wednesday.  This linky provides a great mid-week spiritual pick up.

My church gives a quarterly devotional book.  The new one starts in March and I picked it up on Sunday.  While I was flipping through it, the devotion for April 11th stood out to me.

The scripture text is "Owe nothing to anyone--except for your obligation to love one another." Romans 13:8

This is speaking to me right now because I am working hard to pay off my car.  I no longer want to have debt, and thanks to Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace, I have been setting up my budget every month and living on cash.  I'm hoping to have my car paid off this year so I can save up to buy a house.

The devotion ends with this: "True contentment doesn't come from getting all you want, but by discovering the blessings you have been given and learning to enjoy them."  This is something I'm working to do every day.

Have a blessed day!

Read more »

Brandi

I am so excited for the TPT sitewide sale on Wednesday!  My cart is filled and ready to go!  For my first go around I will be picking up a bunch of clip art and borders.  The creative bug has bitten me again and I really want to make high quality resources.  Here are some of the sets I plan to snag:

 

I haven't finished planning out round 2 where I will be picking up resources that I can use in my classroom, but here are a few things I will definitely be picking up:

   

You can check out my store by clicking on the banner at the top of the post.  My entire store is 20% off.  Don't forget to enter the code heroes!

What are you planning to buy?

Read more »

Brandi

I'm linking up with the Teaching Trio again for this week's Sunday Scoop.

Have to:

We start our fractions unit in a few weeks and I want to have it planned out.  I have this product from Totally Sweet Math Centers by Tabitha that I can't wait to use.

I also need to sort through my 3rd grade math board on Pinterest.  I pin ideas but then forget to go back to use them.  Please tell me I'm not the only one who does that?  

Laundry and ironing are boring but so need to be done.  For meal prep, I want to try to get more variety into my snacks.  Again, I'm turning to Pinterest to help me get some more recipes to try.

Hope to:

Our report card grades opened up this week and my goal is to do a few comments a day instead of all 21 in 1 weekend.  They aren't due until March 9 so I'm really hoping to get a head start.  

My daughter is looking forward to spending a few days in San Diego this summer.  We usually go down there for a day to visit one of the attractions.  Last summer we spent 3 days down there and this summer we'll be spending 5!  So far I've bought tickets to a Dodgers-Padres game and the Zoo.  Need to finalize hotel arrangements and Legoland.

Happy to:

My daughter had her first softball game yesterday.  I am happy to spend time each day and practice with her!

Enough about my week.  Click the button below to check out what everyone's up to for the upcoming week.

What plans do you have this week?

Read more »

Brandi

I'm excited to be linking up with Jasmine from Buzzing with Mrs. McClain.  I love all of the fabulous ideas that are shared in this blog hop.

This month I'm sharing about a document sorter that I use to keep all papers that students turn in alphabetized and organized.  It's the C-Line All Purpose Document Sorter.

Like the video showed, this sorter has 31 slots that are labeled in a variety of ways.  

In my class, students are assigned numbers that correspond to their alphabetical order.  For any assignment that my students have to turn in, they walk up to the sorter, find their number, and lift up that flap.  They simply place their paper in the sorter and it's ready for me to pick up!

It's a very simply process, but it makes grading and passing things back out so much easier!  Here's a picture of my math tests in the sorter once all the kids had finished.

To get the tests out, I start on the left hand side and slide them all out.  You do have to teach your kids not to put their paper too far into the sorter because it makes it harder to pull out.  Also, at the beginning you have to remind them that they can't cover the next number with their paper. 

After a few tries, they usually are able to do this.  Then you have a pile of papers in order ready to be graded!

An InLinkz Link-up

Read more »

Brandi

When I was in college, I wanted to major in elementary education which was part of a double major program at my school.  Because of softball (I was on scholarship) I couldn't do that so I only majored in psychology.  When I told my mom this, she said I had to minor in something or I wouldn't graduate.  Thinking that my mother wouldn't lie to me about this, I minored in math.

Fast forward all these years and I still love math!  This year our district is "trying out" Engage NY for math and it's been rough at times, but there are some things that I really like.  One thing I don't is the lack of small group, differentiation in the program, so I've been doing a lot of supplementing.

One of the ways that I do this is with roam the room task cards.  All I do is put a variety of task cards around the room.  For this activity I had 2 different sets, that were working on variables and equations.  Based on what my kiddos needed, they either did the purple or blue cards.

Here they are hard at work:

This set was from my Evaluating Equations Task Cards set which includes 3 different sets of cards.

Another thing we've been up to is adding flip books to our interactive notebooks.  Here are 2 of our most recent ones:

 

 

Both of these are available in my store by clicking on any of the pictures above.  What fun have you been having in math?

Read more »

Brandi

Last week I missed out on linking up with Beth for Worship Wednesday.

Every Wednesday our Pastor along with the Young Adult Praise and Worship team lead midweek service which is called Connect to Refresh.  It's just an hour long with 30 minutes of praise and worship, about 20 minutes of preaching, and 10 minutes of prayer.  It's a great way to get rejuvenated during the week.

One of the songs that the Praise and Worship team often sings is Tye Tribbett's What Can I Do.  

I often listen to this song in the morning before school starts.  It's a great reminder to me that I can't do anything without Him.

Make sure you stop by Beth's blog to check out songs and scripture that have strengthened others.  What stirs your faith?

Read more »

Brandi

I know this post is late, but I wanted to share a few pictures of what we did for Valentine's Day.
We started by using Jenny K's Pop Art to come up with all of the things that we love.

 

Next we wrote compliments for each person in the class.  We cut those strips and passed them out. Students ended up with 22 things that their friends like and admire about them.

 

This was a very powerful activity for many of my students who don't always hear nice things about them.  The smiles on their faces as they were pulling them out of the bag was heart-warming.

Next we decorated our Valentine's Day goodie bags:

I didn't take pictures of our celebration, which was fairly low-key, but I passed out these postcards that I made at Vistaprint.  I love that I have them all ready to go each year since I bought 100!

How did you celebrate in the classroom?

Read more »

Brandi

I've been under the weather this weekend so I'm going to link up with some great linkies from the Teaching Trio.

I'm hoping to be back on me feet soon.  I have a few posts planned on what I've been doing in my classroom and can't wait to share.  For now, I'm going to take some more medicine and curl back up in my bed!

Read more »

Brandi