MIA & My FANTASTIC News!

I am so sorry that I have been MIA for over a month now. Today is the first time I have been on my blog since my last post. 



As you all know I was pregnant with our first baby, a little girl and my due date was June. Well my sweet baby girl, M decided to make her appearance early on May 16th so I have been super busy as a first time mom. Miss M weighed in at 6 lbs. 4 oz. even though she was over 4 weeks early. Let's just say that I am truly in love with her. She is my heart outside of my body. Just to give you a fix of my sweet baby M, here are some of her newborn pictures. 

Fully Funded Projects on Donors Choose!!

I am so excited to announce that I had 3 projects on the Donors Choose website and they have ALL been fully funded! I was so surprised when I popped on the site and saw they had all disappeared. A local foundation (The Francis P. Bunnelle Foundation) funded all 3 of my projects along with 12 other projects in our school district. Needless to say this was very welcome news for my classroom.

One of the projects that was funded was for new crayons, pencils, and erasers to start the school year. These are supplies that many of my students come to school missing due to their economic situations at home. Through this project, all of my students will have the same supplies and be prepared to begin learning.

Just wanted to share this good news with you all! Happy Tuesday everyone!

Happy Mother's Day!

I just wanted to pop in this morning to say Happy Mother's Day to all the wonderful mothers out there. I hope you are able to enjoy a day with your families!

It is hard for me to believe that next year I will be celebrating Mother's Day as a first time mom, but this year I will spending Mother's Day with my mom and mother-in-law. I am so grateful for them!

Here is the most recent picture of my mom and me from my baby shower. I am so blessed to say that I have a wonderful mom and I am sure she will be an awesome Mimi to our baby girl! She is so excited because this will be her first grandchild.

Teachers Appreciation Week Purchases

Well I had a great time shopping during the TpT Teacher Appreciation Sale. I found some great things on sale that I have had in my wishlist for a while. Here are the things I purchased.
 

Frog Frenzy Math & Literacy Fun! Nonfiction Unit Aligned with Common Core (Deanna Jump)
This is a unit I have had in my wishlist and it is my first (but definitely not my last) purchase from Deanna. This unit fits in perfectly with our Pond Life unit we do each April.

Fall, Winter, & Spring Sentence Puzzles (Lori Rosenberg)
This is a pack of scrambled sentences for each season of the school year. I tried out a sample sheet a while back and my kinders LOVED it. These sheets have different levels from simple to more complex where the students have to unscramble the sentence and then answer the question. I have already copied 4 of these puzzles to use during the remaining weeks of school.

Insects & Lifecycles MEGA Unit for Literacy, Math & Science Centers (Kreative in Kinder)
This is another unit I have been wanting for a while. I love all the activities included in this unit and I am sure it will be perfect for my lifecycles unit we do each spring.

Patriotic Kids (Krista Walden)
Ocean Commotion (Krista Walden)
Spring Fling (Krista Walden)
I also purchased these clipart packs from Krista. I love her artwork! I have some great ideas in mind for some new products using this clipart so stay tuned!

Five For Friday

TGIF! This has been a very long week with the SC PASS statewide testing so I am very happy to see Friday! I am linking up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching for her Five for Friday.

1 - My wonderful hubby gave me these flowers this week just because! I love when he does sweet little things for no reason at all. Those little gestures mean the most! It has been a rather stressful week so I definitely needed something sweet to make me smile.

2 - I am currently working on organizing all of my math and ELA games and materials into tubs by the Common Core strands. I though this would help me to stay better organized for next year. I have my thematic games and activities in separate tubs but these are the games that can be used at any point during the year when I am working on a specific standard.

3 - There are only 19 school days left for us until summer break! Let's just say I am so excited!!!

4 - Since this week was Teacher Appreciation Week, our administrators brought each of the teachers in our school a Chick-fil-a biscuit for breakfast on Thursday. It was a nice surprise.

5 - One of my sweet students and his family gave me this beautiful pot of flowers for Teacher Appreciation Week. The gift was so sweet but the thought means more than I could ever express. It is always nice when a parent thinks enough of you as a teacher to say Thank You.

I hope you all have a great weekend! Happy Friday!

 

Teacher Appreciation Week

One of our school secretaries sent this to the teachers in our school and I had to share with you all since I know how hard you all work every day.

Thank you for all you do everyday to help these little ones who are trusted to us!

I hope you all found some great deals during the Teacher Appreciation sale. I will be sharing my purchases in a blog post soon.

May Currently - A Little Late!

Well it is officially Wednesday! Can I get an AMEN from my fellow teachers?! This week, SC is doing PASS statewide testing in grades 3-8. Of course, I don't have to test, but our school pulls our assistants to monitor testing so I have been by myself for over half of the day. Plus we lose our special area/related arts time because testing has run over every day so far. Needless to say, I am very ready for FRIDAY!!

Now on to other news, I am linking up with Farley for her May Currently linky party. I am sure that I am once again one of the last bloggers to link up but here goes mine!

Obviously from this Currently, my mind is on the arrival of our baby girl. I just can't wait to meet her. This summer, my bucket list is full of spending lots of time with her. She is my little miracle and I can't wait to have her here with us. She will make our little family complete. I also plan to spend some time in the pool this summer since my inlaws have just gotten their new in-ground pool installed.

Don't forget today is the last day of the TpT Teacher Appreciation sale!

My TpT store

Long Time Without a Post...

Well I have been a bad blogger lately. This is my first real post in over a week! Things have been super busy in my life and I seem to have no energy when I get home from work to do much of anything including reading blog posts or writing one myself. I guess it is the end of the school year combined with the less than 6 weeks left of this pregnancy.

This past week, my wonderful kindergarten and pre-k team teachers hosted a wonderful baby shower for me after school on Wednesday. They did a sundae theme and it was adorable. Here are some pictures for you to enjoy.

My family and friends also hosted a baby shower on Sunday. We got so many beautiful things at the showers. Now I just have to take everything out of boxes and washed. Needless to say I will be busy for the next few days.

A Sale is Coming!

In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, I am holding a 20% off sale in my TpT store. Everything is on sale for 20% off so if you have things in your wishlist you have been waiting to purchase, now is the time. Plus TpT is giving an additional 8% off with their promo code TAD13 so you can get up to 28% off all your purchases from my store! YAH!! The sale starts tomorrow and runs through Wednesday at midnight!

My TpT store

My Teachers Notebook shop is also on sale for 20% off and they are offering another 10% off all sale items so if you prefer to shop over there you will get the same discounts!

Now I am off to add some things to my shopping cart that I have had on my wishlist for a while! Happy shopping everyone!!

Tell Me Something Good

Jennifer at Rowdy in First Grade really knows when it is a good time for this linky. There is so much bad going on not only in the world, but also personally that I really need to just focus on the good right now. 

Something good at school:

• I have such a sweet, loving group of kinders this year. I have a special ed student who comes into our room for 1/2 of the school day and they are so caring and loving to him. They love to help him get down the hall and walk with him back to class. I am so proud of how caring they are. They remind me every day that there are still caring people (even if they are little) in the world.
• Our school is doing a Relay for Life fundraiser in a couple of weeks called "Camp"ing for a Cure after one of our teachers who has been battling cancer this school year. She has been a real trooper and has made it through so much - several surgeries, chemo, and radiation. I am so proud to be a small part of this effort.

Something good at home:

• The baby's nursery is coming together. My mom and I worked on it this week. The curtains have been hung, the glider is in place, and the crib bedding looks wonderful! I am so proud of how it turned out. I was a little nervous until I saw it all put together. I will post pictures soon.

So link up and "tell me something good" going on in your life!

What I'm Loving Wednesday

Happy Hump Day!

Here are some of the things I am loving this week:

 

I am loving that in 7 1/2 more weeks (or less) I will be holding my sweet new bundle of joy in my arms. I can't wait to see her wrapped up in pink!

I am loving that we are about to take my maternity pictures so I have been on Pinterest pinning ideas like crazy. Here are a couple of my favorites:

 

 

 

I am loving the beautiful spring weather that we have been having lately. It has made me want to be outside all of the time. We have had daily average highs between 75 and 80 degrees and it has been fabulous! Now I want to move my classroom outside to be in the sunshine!

So what are you loving this week?

Yah for Donors Choose!

I have said many times on here that I LOVE LOVE LOVE Donors Choose. They are such a great organization that truly helps teachers get materials and supplies that we would otherwise have to purchase with our own money. Don't get me wrong, I still spend plenty of my own money on classroom materials, but Donors Choose does help me not have to spend as much.

Currently I have 2 projects on their site that have not been funded. One of my projects is called Rainbow Paper to Color Our Kindergarten World. This project is asking for cardstock and colored paper for my students to publish their final writings on. They think it is so special to write on colored paper and always seem to try harder to make it neat when it is on "special" paper as they call it. This project only has 18 days left to be funded.

The other project on the site is called Revved Up to Read. This is a project requesting leveled readers for my classroom. If you are like me, you know it is very difficult to find the lower leveled readers (Levels A-C) without paying a small fortune for them. I use these books in my classroom as well as send them home with my students daily for them to practice reading with their parents.

I am hoping that I can get some donations to these projects from some fellow teachers in blog land who have enjoyed the freebies that I post here and on my TpT store.