April Currently

I can't believe it's time for Farley's Currently linky again already!  Have you linked up yet?  It's one of the BIGGEST monthly linky parties anywhere on the internet that I've ever seen.  Click on the picture below to check it out!

Also, she linked to my March Currently where I showed how to participate on your iPad or iPhone.  How cool is that?  One of my teacher bloggy idols knows that I exist! AHHH!
Now for this month's Currently...

LISTENING: The weather is GORGEOUS here.  It was about 78 degrees today and right now it is the most perfect weather for sitting here with the windows open.   I'll pay for it later with all of my seasonal allergies, but it feels SO good right now!  (also, don't hate because I have nice weather.  While your all enjoying your summer I'll be trapped inside because it's so bloody hot!Like on Thursday when it is already supposed to be 90 degrees! HELP!)


LOVING: We just got back from Denver and spending a week with this sweetie and her mom and dad.  I LOVE them all SO much!  I wish they lived closer.  She's only 18 months but she's HUGE both mom and dad are over 6 feet tall, so it's not surprising, but she's SUPER strong too!  Love this cheeser!

THINKING: State testing, 'nuff said.  Blech!

WANTING: We got tons of crafts done in Denver 4 fairly big projects, all hung on the wall in their permanent places before we left yesterday.  I was impressed!  I was only there 3 full days.  Now I need to do the same at home.  My house is a MESS.  I need professional help!

NEEDING: National Board.  Need I say more?  Have you gone through this process?  Do you know the temporary psychosis I'm living through right now?

ADVICE: This advice is purely for me.  It's what I have to tell myself every day.  Sometimes in my head I hear Dory from "Finding Nemo" saying "Just keep swimming and just say no!" over and over.  I have a yes problem, usually because I know I could do it better myself anyway.

How's your bracket looking?

I'm sponsoring the elite 8 in Diane's March Madness giveaway!

Do you LOVE March Madness?  I do!  I honestly do fairly well with my bracket each year.  This year, however, my Champion is already out of the running and the Sweet 16 isn't even over yet! So my bracket is finished, but I'm super excited about sending out custom made earrings to the winners of the next round.  I hope this becomes a tradition that Diane keeps up!  It's SO much fun to participate and be part of the reward!  Especially when my bracket is failing so bad ;)

Noun Game: Let's Get Acquainted Linky Party

I'm linking up with Latoya again for her weekly get to know each other linky.  I'm having so much fun reading everyone's posts!

Here are my favorite person, place, thing, and animal.

Person
My hubby.  Love this man!  He is SUCH a good guy.  This is a picture of him cooking for a fundraiser for two of the boys in our community that have serious medical issues so that they can attend scout camps this summer.  He's always volunteering and is an EXCELLENT cook!  Not to mention, he loves me completely, despite my faults.

Place
My favorite place... I have so many!  The one I can go to most often is my bed.  I LOVE my bed! However, my favorite place I've been to

San Francisco

 I went to San Francisco for the first time last spring.  I LOVE that city.  We had such a great time.  This picture was taken at the top of the infamous Lombardi Street.

San Diego Zoo

I LOVE San Diego.  It's such a beautiful place.  The Zoo was a life long dream of mine to see the pandas.  However, my favorite place at the Zoo is the Orangutan display! Something about the exhibit just settles my head and my worries.  Weird, I know, but I love them!

Thing
Either my IPhone or my (mom's) Silhouette Cameo.

My iphone is by far the most useful 4 pounds I own!

Source

And you know what a Silhouette Cameo is, right?  It is my BFF!  I can be so crafty with it and it makes me look good! I LOVE it!

Source

Animal

My favorite animals are panda bears.  I just think they're SO cute.  Plus, they are lazy like me! 

However, since I can't snuggle a panda bear, this little dog is my MOST favorite.  I LOVE him.  He is my Tuff-a-roo and my snuggle butt.  Its going to be the worst day when he's not around!

SPRING BREAK!

Holy COW!  Last week was a LONG one and we only had 4 days of school! The children were wild and ready to be outside all day long.  But WE survived! Together.  I sure do love my kids this year.  Thursday I had several of them asking me if I was going to retire this year.  I said, "No, You can't retire until you're 65 and I'm not even half way there yet!"  They were feeling a lot of anxiety, apparently.  For some of them, every single one of their previous teachers have retired or quit teaching.  They were extremely happy when I informed them I plan on being around for a very long time.  Others of course were terrified ;) Cute kids!

I'm feeling extremely relieved that I have no work for 5 whole days.  Thursday after school we hopped in the car for a three hour trip to Bullhead City where I attended the BEST pd I have ever been to on common core math standards.  The two presenters were both middle school teachers from Prescott and they were amazing!  LOVE them! I think it was so good because the presenters were REAL teachers with REAL kids and REAL life experience trying all of these things out.

Anyway, after the conference we got to spend the rest of the weekend with some of my most favorite people  EVER.  They used to live up here in our little town and he was our superintendent for 5 years.  Man how I miss them being just over the hill.  We stay in pretty decent contact and try to go see them often.  We adore their 5 little girls and love hanging out at their house! We had a great weekend and I always hate leaving.  However, now we get to repack for Denver, and COLD! But it's all worth it because I get to see my brother, sister in law, and my sweet niece.

Lie revealed!

Like I said, only one portion of one of my truths were a lie. And it was #1. I was only 13 and not 15 when I flew to France by myself! Charles dr Gaulle is a very scary airport...FYI. Also, I've been in Spain and France at the same time and the Pyrenees mountains are gorgeous. I wish there would have been digital cameras back then.

I did meet my husband at an orientation dance where I stopped him and asked him to dance. He told me no because he was trying to find his ride home, but I insisted he dance with me. Then, we ran into each other in a random yahoo chat room, he had moved back home. We then had several conversations via instant message and over the phone. We went on our first date 7 months after that dance and I knew immediately I was supposed to marry him. 18 months later, I did! And here we are just a few months away from our 10th wedding anniversary!

And I did in fact finish up student teaching early so I could start working Nov. 1st, even though I didn't technically graduate until December or have a valid license until March.

Surviving Spring Fever Linky

I'm linking up with Mercedes over at Surfing to Success to talk about Spring FEVER!  Boy have my kiddos had the FEVER the last 2 weeks!  Sheesh! 

So, what have I been doing to curb the spring fever?  Be CONSISTENT! 

We've had LOTS of discussions and repeating of our rules the last 2 weeks. 

But the thing that works best, above all others, is Class Dojo.  Do you use it?  

As soon as my students see my cell phone come out, they know points are being given. One of my fellow teachers said, "It's like a magic wand!" and it TOTALLY is.  My kids see my phone and angels they become.  Or, if the speakers are on and they hear that "Ga-dunk" sound rather than the "ding" they shape it up quick! 

I used their reports to talk about student behavior at parent teacher conferences.  It is AWESOME. My parents loved knowing their kid was behaving 87% of the time. I love that it's practically done for me! 

Also, in my room every 2 positive Class Dojo points mean clip up or 2 negative points mean clip downs as well (they do clip up or down for other things, too, independently of Class Dojo).  My students were super excited this week because 6 of our class members finally earned 3 stars so they now have RED clips on our clip chart.  This was a HUGE motivation to the rest of the class.  

I'm sure this is old news for you all, but when I'm not consistent, then they try to push it to see how far they can get before I loose it. 

Go link up with Mercedes!  I can't wait to hear about what you do to curb spring fever! 

Some Bunny LOVES your Blog! Linky

I'm linking up with Christina from Bunting, Books, and Bainbridge for her Some Bunny Loves your Blog linky party.  

I could do 100 of these posts and not shout out to ALL of the blogs I love.

However, one of the newest blogs I've been following that I just love is Angela's blog Hippo Hooray for Second Grade.

She is so sweet and down to earth.  I love how she shares her real life and her teacher/classroom life.  She's got amazing ideas for the classroom.  She is always showing what her kiddos are up to.  She just celebrated 200 followers with a ton of HUGE giveaways.  She also just released the coolest Main Idea Packet.  I was lucky enough to help her edit it and got a sneak peek.  You should totally go by and check out her blog and her fabulous ideas!  Thanks for the inspiration Angela!

2 Truths and 1 Lie

I'm linking up with Latoya from Flying into First Grade for her weekly Linky party.

I'm not a very good liar, but here goes nothing:

1. At age 15, my mom drove me from Indiana to Washington D.C. and put me on a plane as an unaccompanied minor to France where I stayed with my friend's family and toured southwest France with them for an entire month.
2. I met my husband for the first time on my first day of college at a freshman orientation dance, where he was neither a freshman nor even a student at BYU. I asked him to dance and he tried to blow me off.  I didn't let him.  We danced, and 6 months later we reconnected through a random Yahoo Chat room.
3. I started teaching at the age of 21 on November 1st before I was technically graduated from college, so I technically didn't get my real license from the state until almost MARCH! 

So, what do you think?  I will tell you this much, 1 fact about 1 of these is the lie. I'll fill you in on Saturday!

The Computer is back!

Wahoo!  I'm so thrilled to have our computer back!  It's been back for almost a week, but I'm just so gosh darn busy!  Or lazy... both would be correct.  WE just finished up third quarter report cards and parent teacher conferences.  Last week was TOTALLY draining.  Wednesday I only had half the parents show up and 5 of those 6 showed up on Thursday...at the same times of course.  Overall, very productive and fun times meeting with the families.  Yup whole entire families, mom, dad, aunts, uncles, siblings, grandparents, whomever is available.  It was AWESOME to watch parents faces light up as they came to understand how well their child is doing.  I love my kiddos!

In other news, t -2 days until Spring break (or at least until my PD conference 3 hours away, still in my county, on Friday.  But NO kids! And I get to stay with my most favorite people outside of family on the planet!)  My kids were like this today:  Have you seen Lilo and Stitch? Disney had this picture with the following quote on their facebook page today, which I totally shared with the comment of it being my class today! "This is your badness level. It's unusually high for someone your size. We have to fix that." - Lilo

Source

Have a good night, and I'll probably be MIA except for a few linkies until after spring break.  Not much computer time while visiting my sweet niece, brother, and sister in law which is how it should be! 

My very first Donors Choose Project!

Hey everyone! I had so many good intentions of posting this last week. However, we had lots of traveling, school events, funerals, and a broken computer which all play into why its getting posted now. From my phone.... hence the lack of built in links (note to blogger... id like your app much better if i could put pictures where i wanted them and hyperlink.)


So, have you heard of Donors Choose? basically its a place where teachers can go and write grants for materials they need in their classrooms and people can choose which projects to donate to. So, I've been a member of donors choose for YEARS now, but never written up a project until now. Thanks to some inspiring posts about all the stuff y'all are getting for your classrooms! If you'd like to see my project copy and paste the link below (sorry I can't hyperlink it!)

http://www.donorschoose.org/erikareyes

For today only you can use the promo code INSPIRE and your donation to my project will be matched. So if you donate $20, $40 will be added to my project. Plus, it's all tax deductible! Love it!

If you can't donate now and want to later, you can still use the link. The only difference is, there won't be the promo code for matching.

Thanks in advance for supporting me and my classroom!!

Dead Computer

Help! Our computer (an almost 5 yr old hp desktop) won't turn on. I used it last week, everything was fine. Tried to turn it on Friday morning, nothing... No fans, no noise, no lights, nothing. We've tried everything. Googled it, tried it.


I'm SO SAD/annoyed! We really don't have money to be buying a new computer right now. I don't even know where to begin with figuring out if there's a fixable problem. Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.


Until then, I'm trying to do as much as I can from my phone... It's kind of a pain, not going to lie. #1 pet peeve on my phone, typing comments and capatchas. I'm not a robot!

Currently... March with iPhone/iPad directions

Love this Linky with Farley!

Will have to add all the buttons and such later when I'm on a computer and not on my cell phone app... Sorry.

Also, since I am on my phone... And others of you may be, too, or on an iPad or itouch, here are some directions for you so you can join Currently wherever you are!

How to Participate in Currently... With Farley from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

1. Read Farley's post and click on the blank copy of the month's Currently.

2. Take a screen shot, if it won't let you save the picture, by pressing the power button and the home button at the same time.

3. Open you favorite photo editing app. Mine happens to be Skitch for adding text, if your interested.

4. Fill out your Currently and save a copy to your camera roll (each app is different, but most I've used have use an outgoing arrow as the icon to click to share)

5. Upload your new picture to a blogpost, title it Currently, and link up. (To get the direct link to your post after you publish it, click the title of the post and use the link in the address bar. To get the direct link before you publish your post, choose the permalink option from your right side menu and copy that link.)
Easy peesy lemon squeezy!

Math Night and Navajo Tacos

Not sure when this will show as posted, but we did this Feb, 28th and had an awesome time! My committee was fabulous and so was the food!
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Oh man, did I eat we'll tonight! (Ok, let's be honest, thanks to John, I eat well EVERY night) but last night John got a day off and we didn't have to pay. I didn't take any pictures of dinner, because I was too busy eating! Sorry... But mmmm Navajo tacos are tasty!

It was math night for our school (which I was committee chair). There was SO much going on in our tiny town that (popped up all of a sudden this week) I was freaking out that all our hard work would've been for nothing.

There was a fundraiser dinner for the HS there was a community meeting with all of the big wigs from the county (which is a huge deal, in 9 years living here all these people haven't visited our little corner or the world), and it was the Blue and Gold banquet for all of the scouts ages 8-11. Seriously, we had been advertising math night since mid January. I'm not quite sure why no one else seemed to notice today's date was already taken! Oh well.

We had about 120 people show up (we have 230 students at our school) and not only eat free Navajo tacos, but who stayed and played math games and earned prizes for winning and parents learning with their kids!! It was SUCH a huge success and I'm SO proud of my committee and our planning and follow through.

Our goal for the night was to provide families with a variety of leveled games from preschool level through 6th grade using items they would most likely have in their homes already.
We had four rooms of games:
Egg cartons
Tangrams
Dice
Playing Cards

I was in charge of the egg carton games and plan to share the direction sheet I made at a later date. As soon as my computer will turn on, because today it just won't, at all. This could spell disaster! So, I'm posting from my phone.

Happy Friday!