listening: been on a documentary kick lately
loving: Doctor Who. I’ve loved the Doctor for a while, but the new episode was fantastic. With the work I need to do for school I’ve decided to run away with the Doctor.
thinking: I’m in charge of designing of an invitation for an upcoming school event.
wanting: I need to buy new pants, and shirts for work. I have not patience for finding clothes. I need a personal shopper to help me find nice clothes that fit. Any takers?
needing: April will be the death of me, I have eight ARDs this month. It’s a petal to the metal, get ‘er done month. Is it June yet.
advice: I don’t have a lot of advice. But linking up like I’m today with Oh Boy 4th Grade really helps to bring traffic to your blog.
Have a great month!
I love linking up with Farley’s Currently every month!
Listening – Bones, weekends are my chance to catch up with my TV shows.
Loving- After this next week with Parent Teacher Conferences, and 3 ARDs, I’ll being needing this much needed Spring Break and loving that I’ll be seeing family.
Thinking – My classroom has been rapidly adding students, and the dynamics of my students changed. Now I’m trying to figure out how to help my classroom dynamics be more effective.
Wanting – I want and need to be healthy before Spring Break gets here, being sick over time off is no fun.
Needing – My parent teacher conferences are on Monday, I got to prepare progress reports. Plus, I have a ton of work to finish.
Like, love, hate – Starbucks and coffee what else is there? love all Girl Scout cookies, especially Samoas. The problem is my husband loaded up on boxes this year, and now I can’t stop eating them. I definitely hate stress, don’t we all.
I’m linking up with Jennifer over at Rowdy in First Grade, it’s a couple days late, but after the day I had I need a bit of positive thinking.
Something Good at Home:
I’m blessed that after a rough day at school I was able to come home to a wonderful dinner cooked by my husband and for the quality time we spent together to help refresh me for tomorrow. I don’t like him having to work on the weekends, since its my only time off but the trade off really helps me get through the week.
Something Good at School:
One of the best things about my job is seeing the small moments of growth in my students. Most of the time it’s something that could be taken for granted, like today when a student said “buh-bye” to our librarian. It was small but it showed tremendous growth since the beginning of the year. Its these little moments that make my job so worth all the stress and paperwork.
Happy Fat Tuesday!
Stacy
1. I took a screenshot of a PowerPoint I created to make it easy to launch YouTube videos during circle time. Next week, we will be learning about shapes and I found some great videos from Have Fun Teaching! I introduced the circle song earlier this week, and my kids loved it! One of my favorite tools for watching videos in class is a site called ViewPure. It creates an ad free link to YouTube videos, no more worrying about which ad will turn up when your on YouTube in class. I also use a PowerPoint to aid in music selection at the end of the day. It helps my students to make choices, and wait for their turn to make a choice.
2. I downloaded Monkey Preschool Lunchbox on my Nexus 7 for school, and it really motivated my students to keep learning. It covers colors, letters, counting, differences, and matching. It also continually plays, so the kids can keep playing without getting frustrated.
3. Hulu…not for the classroom but for this teacher planning her next week and watching old Sabrina: The Teenage Witch episodes! Greatest discovery, I used to love watching it every week.
4. Teachers Pay Teachers. It’s a no-brainer that it’s an amazing resource, but I finally broke down and bought some amazing products with the Sunday Super sale. Picked up an incredible cute Owl newsletter for my classroom from MsFultzsCorner, some Chevron letters and numbers and an ice cream graphic (I’m super excited to make a file folder game from the Icecream Pile Up clipart!) from Graphics From the Pond, and a great social story on sharing from Thespecialedteacher.
Have a great week!
Stacy
1. I got “flowers” from one of my students this morning. I was at the door welcoming my students as they arrived at school. One of my kiddos was playing with toys in the classroom came up to meet at the door and said “Ms. A. I have flowers for you. It was one of the cutest things and totally made my day.
2. We had a lice egg scare this morning. Thankfully, the nurse found no live bugs, but it definitely gave me scary flashbacks to the horrible delousing process, and the horrible haircut from some lady at her house. First thing I did when I got home was to wash my hair and then threw all our bedding and towels in the washer. 
3. Sorry for the bad picture, but snapped a quick photo of my wonderful hubbies work on boots for my Puss in Boots small group patterning activity. He cut like 60 out by hand, yeah he’s pretty awesome! ❤
4. We finished up our Ballads, Folktales, and Fables unit with Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed. Babe the Big Blue Ox helped us work on size differentiation. They did great, this little one worked on his handwriting skills!
5. My students help make Applesauce for today’s large group activity, and it went really well. “Cooking” is an interesting process with 3 year olds, but they enjoyed it and they actually a healthy snack today.
Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!
I’m using the day off to check things off my to-do list. It’s definitely starting to be the busy time of year with ARDs and assessments.
When I wasn’t busy trying to get caught up on ARD paperwork, I created a new token board system. I will be completing a lot of assessments in the next couple months, and I will need a good motivator to get my little ones to work.
So, thanks in part to: 
Here is what I created (sorry for the glare): 
The hearts are from Kady Did Doodles and the stars are clip art. One of these days I will figure out how to post it for others to use, especially if there’s interest.
I also made a Valentine’s Day themed file folder game using the hearts. I heart great freebie finds!
I’ve still got to make the motivator choice PECs, but most of the pictures I need are on my classroom camera. Oh well, more work for another day.
On non-school related topics, this three-day weekend was much-needed. I enjoyed spending as much time as possible with my husband. We enjoyed a trip into the city and great food. After my hubby comment that I needed at new purse, my current Vera bag has seen better days. I’m now enjoying the search for a new handbag, apparently I need a nice sophisticated one.
My dream purse, if I had no budget, would be the MARC BY MARC JACOBS ‘Classic Q – Natasha’ Crossbody Flap Bag in Cinnamon Stick.
But for now I dream, and add purses to my wishlist for my hubs to buy for me! 🙂
Wishing everyone a great week!
Stacy
Thought from a Monday…
Trying my best to unwind to prepare for all the paperwork I have to finish.
Hope you had a great start to the week,
Stacy
I had a post going for the whole week, but I realized I had clue which direction to go in so I decided to start a whole new post.
First…I finally got a Scotch Laminator and I love it! I don’t know why I didn’t buy one before!
Second…if you are needing plastic storage containers, Michaels is having a 40% off sale. Plus, you get a teachers discount. The scrapbook 12 x 12 boxes were $4. I’m so glad I had to wait for Ulta to open this morning otherwise I would have totally missed out on this deal.
I don’t know about you, but this week felt really long. I guess this is normal for the first week back but by Friday I was completely wiped of energy. I spent whole day yesterday to recover, and watch Downton Abbey! I can’t get enough of this show, even though the premiere was two hours long.
Short and sweet this week but l’m just trying to survive this season of assessments and ARDs. Now off to finish planning and finish working around the house.
Have a great week!
Stacy
listening – these are welcome sounds of my husband being home from work
loving- that we finally own a grown-up dresser instead of just Itzo storage cubes
You can get your very own “Currently” by visiting Farley at http://ohboy3rdgrade.blogspot.com/.
As 2012 came to a close, I reflected on what areas of my life needed improvement. What I came to recognize is that I need to practice the art of reflection. I learned during my student teaching that reflection is a critical part of being a teacher. After taking my current teaching position I have thought many times about my need to reflex but hadn’t found a way to incorporate it into my life. I’m turning to a blog to help make me accountable to this process in order to better myself as a teacher.
I’m a new teacher, although I’ve been out of college now since 2009. I started wanting to teach in Elementary school, I even student taught in 3rd and 4th grade, and graduated with a degree in Elementary Education. But that’s not the path God created for me. God finally led me to a place where I would become a Pre-K Special Education teacher.
Never in my whole life did I ever consider this as a career path, but I’m so glad that God led me to this place. The past few months have been an amazing journey of growth, discovery, and a huge run-in with the first year teaching crud. (Yes, I was sick for over a month and a half. No one said this would be easy).
Going forward I plan to post updates once a week, probably on Fridays, to chronicle the learning explorations going on in my classroom and reflections on my teaching.
I hope this post is the start of many new explorations. Thanks for stopping by!
Allons-y!
~Stacy
Pre-K Explorer
Pre-K Explorer 