Pumpkin Patch

Last weekend was the fair. This weekend I used my free time from getting all my work done by Friday afternoon to go with the family to the pumpkin patch.

Victoria liked all the different wood cutouts they had to pose with.

Cristina went with her dad to do the corn maze (which was 4 and older) Victoria tried out each of the 5 different bounce houses.

Hay ride.

Train ride.

Pumpkins! Cristina went with the smallest pumpkin she had ever seen. Victoria walked right up to one and said this is the one I have been looking for. 

Fair Day!!!

I have been working really hard this year to finish all school work by the time I leave school on Friday. And I can't stay late on Fridays because Cristina has gymnastics practice, so I really have to work to get it done. I have been doing it. I leave my classroom with all plans planned, copies copied and filed and everything cleaned up and ready to go. This has left me free on the weekends to enjoy my family. Last week I did that my going to the fair with them. Here is our fair day in pictures.

Victoria has really gotten over her fear of animals and wanted to feed every animal in the petting zoo.

The girls really loved getting to pet this animal.

Trying out the Springfree trampoline is always a favorite.

The girls found these big pillow rocks on fake grass and thought it was the best playground ever. They really loved jumping and falling on them.

Victoria was harder to get a picture of, but I finally got one.

Dressed as a cowgirl.

Posing with a Big Tex head in the Big Tex exhibit.

The Little Hands on the Farm is another favorite.

He really wanted to get one of these last year but didn't. He made sure to get one this year. When no one thought he could finish it he ate it all to prove he could. He then didn't eat anything else the rest of the day. That is a lot of corn dog.

At the end of a long fair day it nice to have older cousins around to help tired little ones.

Catching Up Part 1: Donor's Choose and Hot Dot Pens

This year my schedule is crazy (as I have talked about before.) I really love doing math centers, and at the end of the year last year I had a set of centers and a rotation down that was working perfectly. Unfortunately the minutes are just not in my schedule this year. I may be able to squeeze them in my morning block of time soon, but in the afternoon I have 120 minutes to teach 55 minutes of reading and 90 minutes of math. Obviously that does not happen. The first thing to go was center time, and everything else just gets squeezed in. I may panic every time I look at the clock from 1:00 to 3:00, but my students and I make it work. Even with the time crunch I still have those early finishers. I was at a loss of how to handle it. Should I do some modified centers? Should I just have some early finisher activities? I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. Then my principal gave every teach $100 to spend. I scoured every approved catalog trying to decide the best way to spend my money. I came across Hot Dot Pens and thought that is something that the early finishers could do with no prep work from me. (We have brand new math frameworks for our math lesson this year and that is taking all my prep time and then some!) For $100 I got a set of six pens and a couple of boxes of flashcards. Being the ever greedy teacher, I wanted one for each one of my students. I went to Donor's Choose website. It was perfect timing because Kia was doing a matching promotion. I asked for 20 Hot Dot Pens and a whole bunch of flashcards and in a stroke of genius I asked for enough AA batteries for all the pens. The total including shipping and the donation to Donor's Choose was $666. By far the biggest project I have ever done on Donor's Chose. My wonderful parents donated some money and it was matched by a different organization. I donated some, and it was also matched. An anonymous person donated some and it was matched by a promotion at a local mall. Within 3 weeks 1/2 my project was funded and 1/2 was matched. What an incredible website with incredibly caring people who donate to it to help students they know very little about. A few weeks later I got this in the mail. Awesome!

It's like Christmas for a teacher! :)

I had to figure out how I was going to keep 21 pens safe. I was afraid of pens being thrown into baskets. The teacher who was in my room before had left these stands that she had never used. I put them together, bought some freezer bags, and stuck on some sticky hooks that came with my easel that I had never used. Then to add some extra education punch I put odd numbers on one stand and even numbers on the other stand. Its hard to see in the picture but on the blue strip above the hooks I wrote the number of the bag that hangs there.

Here they are being used. We have had them for a couple of weeks now and the kids absolutely love them.

How did so much time go by????

I can't believe I haven't sat down here since September 21! I have had things to say, just not the time to write it down. How does it get to be so late at night each day without everything getting done? I WILL get better about that. But not now. Ha! Its time to leave to go to school. Here's a peak at what I will be writing about this weekend.
Donor's Choose - I got a project funded!!! Check back to see what I got.
Some fun activities for place value and open number lines. (Some are available on my TpT store)
My Review the Rooms are going really well.
We got a dog!!!
Skate Night at Cristina's school.
We are going to the TCU football game on Saturday and The State Fair of Texas on Sunday.

So much to write about!!!

See you soon.