Blogger Fight

Holy Cow, I came to my blog this morning and my sidebar was GONE! So now all of it is at the bottom.  Sorry!  I'm not really sure how else to combat all of the crap that was going on because I don't read html code.  I should probably learn, but don't have the time now.  One day, I'll grow up and get a real blog design.  But that requires money, which I don't have any extra of right now.  Sorry for the inconvenience!  

It's an InstaParty!!

Come link up with What the Teacher wants and Apples and ABC's for their #teachertalktuesday.

It will be epic! I made a whole new Instagram account just for this. Find me @reyesremarkablerants! Go figure. See ya tomorrow!

Five For Friday April 26th

Its Five for Friday time again!  Today was our last "athletic" Friday (or Friday off school) We've gotten so used to having 2 Fridays off a month I don't know how we'll survive May.  (OK technically we will have 2 Fridays off in May because we only have 18 more school days!!!!!!)

1. So we went up to the Local Food Festival (and by local I mean in a different state, but our closest town). We tried out a ton of new places and got some REALLY yummy food! Also, the weather was perfect and I got some sun, which is a good thing!

2. The weeds in our backyard are ridiculous   They are every year.  That's what happens when your both teachers and you can't finish your back yard and you live in the desert where it isn't practical to have grass! So John, trying to be efficient, set the weeds on fire.  The weeds weren't dead enough and so it just created more work for him.  But it was a pretty ingenious idea to use the dead palm frond to spread the fire out to where he wanted it!  Tuffy and I watched from inside.

3. We had the Roos and More Zoo assembly yesterday. She is an amazing lady who just LOVES animals and she's so good to bring them out and teach us about them! Here are some of the animals she brought, I loved Can Can the toucan. The gorgeous African Cat was my favorite and the Raccoon's cousin from South America walked across a bunch of the teacher's backs (mine included).

 4.This week I chose to have students read with 1 buddy. And we read in the "dark" (as dark as it can be in a classroom with windows and a florescent light for our quick grow seeds!) I try and switch it up every week so they don't get bored with our reading time.  These two girls were chugging along.  It was a REALLY long non-fiction story this week.  A lot of my students had a hard time! But they powered through and didn't give up.  I was SO proud.

5. I've been getting my craft on a lot lately!  Here are the earrings and bracelet I made for my giveaway winners.  (Speaking of which, some of you never emailed me back!  check your spam, I need mailing addresses!!!)

 One of my co-workers is having a baby any minute now, so I made this hat,  I hope she has a girl, or I'm going to have to whip out a blue one pretty fast!  She picked out the yarn because she didn't want green or yellow, but now she's really thinking she's having a boy, so I'm a little worried! Want to make your own? Click here for the pattern from Stitch11.com!

The bad news is.....

I had grand plans about posting of our Zoo assembly today or our letters to our secretary but those will have to wait.

My school life got turned UPSIDE down this morning before school even started.

My partner in crime for the last 4 school years is quitting teaching to home school her kids again next year.

It pretty much shattered my world.

Some days she is THE ONLY reason I go to school.  She's a bright light in the darkness of the world when it gets rough.

And, I for sure felt very SORRY for MYSELF as she gave me the news.

I know this wasn't an easy decision to come to for her, but it is the right one, too.

I'm surprisingly not mad, at all.


Just a little panicked, all morning, until I found out I get to work with my mentor teacher again.  And I'm SO excited... it could have been anyone, but I'm so glad it's her.

Now to figure out what amazing gift to give her as she leaves.  I'm always big into meaningful gifts, ideas welcome!

Tell me Something Good Linky

Today, I'm linking up with Jennifer over at Rowdy in First Grade for her monthly Tell me Something Good Linky Party.

Something Good at School

• State testing is over, my kiddos tried their VERY BEST and I know they rocked it! 
• Tomorrow we have a Zoo assembly!  They've brought a camel and a zebra before, can't wait to see what they bring this year! 
• Our 3rd annual Spring Fling (after school, all grade levels have different dances) this year is Disney themed!  I  LOVE DISNEY! 
• 4 more Mondays!!! AHHH
• No school tomorrow!!! (last athletic Friday.)

Something Good at Home

• It's almost my 10th anniversary! 
• My dog will be 6 soon!  (I'm so attached to him!!)
• I got to hang out with my little brother last night, LOVE him!
• I got released from my major church calling (So much responsibility) and now am only teaching the ladies once a month (SO much LESS responsibility) rather than dealing with teenage girls twice a week (or more).  I miss those girls though!

Go link up! I can't wait to hear all the good happening in your lives! 

We Survived! And Giveaway Winners!

Hey everyone!
I'm not sure why testing week is SO exhausting.  However, this year it seemed even more so. (And this was the group I thought would do really well and was the most prepared).  Maybe it was the fact that we didn't start testing until Wednesday.  Or maybe it was the fact that I had a couple kids take HOURS longer than everyone else. (Not a timed test... here in AZ) Whatever it was, I'm SO glad it's over!

GIVEAWAY WINNERS!
Here are the winners of my giveaway for earrings!  (and yes I did say I was only picking 5 winners but only 7 people entered, so I couldn't leave the last two out!)  I emailed all of you, but I've only heard from a few of you.  Be sure to get me your mailing addresses and any color preferences.


Katie


Crystal


Diane


Aypos


Ashleigh



Tracey


Barbara

Thank you for Following!

After a frustrating weekend and not a lot going right today, I'm extending my giveaway through Wednesday at 11 pm PT. Thanks for following along! Click here to enter.

Five for Friday Linky

It's time again to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday. 

1. We are in the depths of test prep this week.  But we made it SUPER fun! I have all of these task cards that we haven't had time to work into our regularly scheduled programming so we've played scoot, done classroom hunts, and we even did a hallway hunt this week.  THEY LOVED IT! We used Task cards from Hello Mrs. Sykes. Be sure to click the link under the pictures to her store. 

Click on the picture to be taken to the source of our hallway hunts this week. A while back I won one of her giveaways and chose a bunch of her task cards.

2. The weather is all over the place.  This was Sunday.  Monday it POURED rain. (Indoor recess, my duty day, 90 kids in my room. not awful, surprisingly!) Which would sound normal for spring, until you remember we're in AZ. It was also COLD (40ish) Monday, and Tuesday. Today it's supposed to be 90!  CRAZY 

3. Do you have a Kroger affiliate store near you?  You MUST try this ice cream. Its so yummy!  All of the Private Selection ice cream is delicious, but this might be my favorite one because it's so different.

4. These are some of the earrings my fellow teacher and I made.  We actually made a lot more this day, I don't know why I didn't take a picture of more of them.  Want to win a pair?  Follow my blog and visit this post to enter!  I will give away 5 pairs! 

5. In another attempt to make test prep fun we played "I have.... Who has?" for the first time this year. My kids LOVE it! The first time was a HUGE fail. But that's okay, because then they wanted to play again and again until they got it right. I have a bunch of these games covering various topics and will be getting some more, seeing how much they like it!


Can't wait to hear how your week was! Go link up!

Currently in the Classroom

My students and I have been using Farley's Currently...for the classroom for the majority of the school year. They LOVE it!

A midst all of the test prep we're in the middle of, and having an AWESOME jump rope assembly during our designated art time, my bulletin board was STILL covered in leprechauns and pots of gold on Monday.

So, when we had a few extra minutes and we'd already accomplished above and beyond what I had planned to cover, Currently was the perfect time filler and fixed my bulletin board problem, at least until after AIMS testing. All the other teachers have commented about how much they love my board.  Go figure, the simplest one for me to complete this year, I get the most comments about. Thanks, Farley for a great linky each month and for the great classroom activity!!

Click here to get your own copy of Currently for the Classroom! 

50 follower Thank You Giveaway

I honestly can't believe that after blogging for 4 months I already have 50 of you that care about what I have to say enough to follow along! I've blogged in general for about 6 years now and never really had followers, but always felt like my voice was worth sharing but then that blog was mostly for my family who was spread out all over the world at the time!

Blogging about teaching makes me think about my teaching in a whole new way. Reading teacher blogs is why I continued teaching last year and this year. It's renewed my faith that there are other good teachers out there in the world and they have hard days, too! It's a lot of hard work, with very little credit given, if any, to all of the sweat, blood, and tears we put into our sweet kids!

So, while I'd love to give you all something, I don't really have the means to do that. I don't have a TPT or TN store with anything in it or even anything that's ready to share with anyone outside my classroom! Nor do I make my own fonts, borders, or clip art...

However, my one of my BFFs and I like to make earrings when we have some spare time. So for the 50 of you, if you live in the USA (or if you want to pay your own shipping to somewhere outside the USA), I will custom make 5 of you your very own pair of dangly earrings. Just enter below and good luck!

Soap Box Alert

Yup, I'm doing it! Climbing up on my soap box. Please don't be offended, I'm not meaning to offend anyone!


-------soap box begins------
Please, please, please proofread your facebook and blog posts! I know we're all super busy. I know we facebook and blog on the go, but for the love of all that is good in this world... Proof your posts!

I follow over 300 blogs. Errors are bound to happen. However, there are less errors in all my other categories of blogs I read combined than in the post on a teacher blog I just read.

I will forgive one or two errors... But not 12 or 17 in one post. Yup, 17 grammatical/spelling/misuse of homophone errors in 1 single blog post (3 paragraphs or so)! We are TEACHERS! We cannot be okay with that... Can we?

I wish my brain didn't pick out all of your errors while I am reading, but it does. It places a glowing aura around each and every one of the errors. Maybe it's from 9 years of seeing/correcting errors or maybe I have some weird super power... Either way, for my sake, please proof your posts!

****Disclaimer: I also know I'm not perfect and often have errors of my own, please tell me when I do!****

Does it not drive you crazy? Do you want to know if you have errors in your post? How would you like to be told?

-----------end soap box-----------

Thanks for listening!

Getting Ready to Test

What data do you use to prepare your students for state testing?

I use all kind of data, but for the final push this year. I'm using the data from our "mini AIMS" to drive instruction. We use Galileo to develop our yearly pre/post tests each year as well as quarterly assessments for our students. However, this year we transferred all of our Galileo assessments to be common core standards based, except the mini AIMS which is still AZ standards based. So I've had way less (compiled) data to use then the last two years. But, I've made do and we've (myself and the two specialists that pull my kids during the day) been reviewing and reteaching to our little hearts content.

Here's my print out from Galileo by student and standard. It's been EXTREMELY helpful. Here's to 6 more days until the test!

Favorite Things

I'm linking up with Latoya again for her weekly party!  Click on the picture below to join in the fun! 

This week it's all about my favorite things!

Favorite Stores
For everything:                                        

Best Deals  Dresses for $7.00 shirts for $0.10 can't beat it!      

      


For Layering and Staying covered up

Best quality (as in lasts for 10+ years) cute clothes where there's ALWAYS something I MUST have!

Favorite TV Show

I more loyally follow 'normal' TV shows now that we don't have TV than I did when we did pay for it! I usually watch an episode of which ever show while waiting for my ride every morning before school :)

Comedy: Last Man Standing

Malibu Country

Drama: The Good Wife

Blue Bloods

Favorite Sweet Treat

Ice Cream (especially BYU Creamery mint cookies and cream shakes!)

Favorite Food

Chile Relleno (this one is home made by John! he's amazing!)

The last one is favorite restaurant... however, even after asking my husband the conclusion is "It depends on what mood you're in!" I like food,  A LOT. I have several places I like to go and favorites at each of them.  However, we live in Rural America, but Vegas is an hour away. Needless to say I like the local places as well as lots of national chains.