My Saturday Sum Up post is a tad early, since I'll be otherwise engaged tomorrow. Tomorrow morning a group of us will meet at church at 5:15 a.m. We'll pray together then head to New Hampshire for our 3rd Bible Quizzing meet of the season. This month the quizzers will be tested on the entire book of Hebrews.
My birthday was on November 21st. When I approached my desk at work I found a sweet post it from my friend/coteacher. I love my teaching team. When I got home from work, my family had cards and gifts for me. Gabrielle created what she called a "porcupine pack": card, porcupine figurine sculpted by her own hands, a poem & drawing, and a bookmark. She knows I like porcupines. Speaking of which, have you seen these videos?
My husband also made an absolutely delicious cake. The picture does not do it justice. You won't believe the ingredients. For the cake: coconut milk, cocoa powder, cooked quinoa, eggs, coconut palm sugar, and a little bit of milk. The frosting is coconut fat and melted dark chocolate chips. You might be skeptical, and I can understand that. But it was seriously delicious.
Gabrielle turned 11 on November 25th. I think her favorite gift was a set of brush pens. She draws and creates art projects daily.
We had Thanksgiving at our house this year! My husband ROCKED the feast. I peeled and cut up potatoes, rolled a few rolls from the dough my husband prepped, and warmed up corn. That's it. Gabrielle helped roll out the pie crust for the cherry pie. The kids and I tried to watch the Macy's Day parade. When I was a kid, watching the parade was always a highlight. We couldn't do it. There were SO MANY commercials that we gave up.
We went out the day after Thanksgiving to choose, cut down, and lug home a Christmas tree. It's a wide one! As we unwrapped ornaments, we piled the tissue paper next to Sparrow. She was unimpressed.
My school called its first delay AND its first snow day this week. I always hate missing teaching time, but hanging out in my warm house with my family was awfully nice! Thanks for stopping by!
Thirty-seven points I thought. My family had left a triple word score spot WIDE open. I knew nobody else could use the spot, because an s was required and I had the LAST s! My play would create not one, not two, but THREE words: sane, chosen, & zags. I was so totally going to win this Scrabble game. Impatiently, I waited for my husband to finish his turn. Before he had even turned the rotating board my way, I was already snatching up letters to place. I laid down my tiles triumphantly.
Oops. SANN? Sann is NOT a word! I played the wrong letter by mistake. And in our family, there are no take-backs! Rats.
Sassy Seth challenged me of course, even though we ALL KNEW I had messed up! I made him look it up in the Scrabble dictionary on the exceedingly slim chance that SANN might actually be a real word that I'd never heard of. It wasn't.
Tiles back on my rack. Zero points. Then, Gabrielle totally took my spot! Thirty-seven points. Apparently she did NOT need an s to play there.
The moral here is don't be impulsive and smug! I lost that Scrabble game, and it's still bugging me! Thanks for stopping by! For more Slices of Life, or to join in the sharing, visit Two Writing Teachers.
This is my first time linking up with a Slice of Life story, and I don't mind telling you that I'm just a bit intimidated. The butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling helps me to understand how my students feel when they sit staring at a blank piece of paper trying to look thoughtful. I'm thankful to the folks at twowritingteachers.orgfor hosting this weekly link-up.
Her tail lashes. Her teeth gnash and chatter. When the frustration is too great, she stalks around the kitchen with tail high and emits a frustrated muffled meow that is almost more like a squawk. What has Sparrow so aggravated? Leaves. Blowing leaves. On the deck. Where she can't get at them. They're her nemesis. Each fall, Sparrow spends hours staring out at the back deck. Today she stared at me with bright green eyes and mutely pleaded with me to DO SOMETHING about the leaves. Eventually she got fed up and relieved her feelings with a long nap in the recliner. She'll tackle the leaf problem another day.
Sometimes that's all we can do with problems (both the real problems and the imagined ones). We need to take a break and let them be for awhile, then come back to grapple with them another day.
The purpose of this post? To share some Thanksgiving math FREEBIES! Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, I entertain myself by creating cute but useful learning materials, and I felt like sharing! Enjoy! Just click on the images to grab these materials for free. (Note: If you are reading this post through Bloglovin, the links might not work. If you just log in to my blog through your browser you should be all set.)
For more effective math practice, check out the following items in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Have a wonderful week!
Happy weekend! Thanks for stopping by! This will be an all-family, not-classroom-related post. I just didn't take any school photos this week!
We had Bible quizzing in Lowell, Mass. last Saturday. We met up at the church at 5:45 a.m. to pray and set off. Gabrielle was inspired to write a poem as the sun came up, and she said I could share it.
I Watched the World Awaken
by Gabrielle
I watched the world awaken.
It started black as tar.
A streak of orange flashes,
painted by the sun.
The sunshine flew,
and soon the world
was dimly glowing.
The blue soon came.
It grew from the
bottom of the world.
It increased and swallowed
the orange,
And cottonball clouds came.
I watched the world awaken
On a late fall day.
In a prior post, I promised the story behind our shirts. The photos are not detailed enough. Sorry about that. On the back of each shirt it says, "Fam Quizzers". On the front, the shirts say either "Fam Bro" or "Fam Sis" and include the quizzers' names. The front of my shirt says "Fam Mom"! The youth chose the team name because: (1) We choose to love one another and treat one another like family. (2) We have a team verse from one of the books we're studying. "Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters." Hebrews 2:11
An experienced quizzer from another team was giving Gabrielle some "jumping" pointers. In order to answer a question, a quizzer has to be the first to jump off of his/her seat. And those teenagers are FAST! Gabrielle knew her stuff, but often couldn't jump quickly enough.
Seth and Gabrielle both did pretty well. The top 10 quizzers get recognized. Seth came in 5th. Gabrielle came in 11th! The November quiz is always affectionately referred to as the candy quiz. The kids came home with WAY more candy than they needed.
Over the past week, the weather has become downright wintery! Last Friday (when my school day was cancelled) it was pretty nice. Gabrielle and I spent quite a bit of time outside.
We had a harvest dinner after church Sunday. My pastor organized some games. There was Thanksgiving bingo, a gobbling competition, and Thanksgiving and turkey trivia. My favorite was the paper tearing contest. I competed in that one. Each of us had a piece of construction paper. The objective was to hold the paper behind your back and tear it into a turkey shape in one minute! Mine looked more like a rigid and malformed canine. Thanks for visiting! Enjoy your weekend!
My Saturday Sum Up is a day early! I woke up this morning to an alert that school was cancelled. I work in a very tree-laden rural community and there was a high wind warning last night. So, I'm pretty sure the power must be out at the schools. Instead of sleeping in I chose to write lesson plans, drink coffee, and whip up a blog post. Thanks for stopping by!
In the galley of the Charles W. Morgan
Two weeks ago Seth, Gabrielle, and I went to Mystic Seaport. They generously offer an educator's appreciation day each year.
Now, you're probably thinking how do THOSE images relate? Well I'll tell you. Last weekend we had some gorgeous weather. We visited my sister to see how her new house is coming along. I had time to sit out on the porch and read. In the evening, the kids and I visited my friend's house for our annual "not Halloween party". (We've done it for years but only just started calling it that.) Each year we get together to eat pizza, drink cider, munch on popcorn and a little bit of candy, and watch a movie. When the kids were little, we often watched Veggie Tales or some other mild movie. Now that they're older, we can branch out.
Gabrielle was just a might bit young for some parts of this movie. We agreed ahead of time that she would leave the room for certain scenes. Gabrielle agrees with me that it's best not to fill your brain with things that will disturb you, and that you can't UNSEE something you've viewed.
This is my lovely friend and teammate. I work with an amazing team, and they make coming to work a pleasure.
Last year, our principal revamped Halloween. We now have Book Character Dress-Up Day instead. I'm not sure all the families are thrilled by the change, but I've found it to be much calmer. And, as a bonus, there aren't evil-looking icky costumes. I dressed as ROZ from The Wild Robot, which I'm reading to my class. I realize I look NOTHING like a robot, but it was fun to hot glue miscellaneous plastic herbage and moss to my sweater and my headband.
We've been working on the Distributive and the Associative Properties of Multiplication during our math block. Need some Distributive Property freebies? Just click on the images below to grab some!
(Note: If you are reading this post in Bloglovin, the links don't always work. Just go to my blog address through your regular browser and it should work.)
We had a book tasting party so that kids could sample books from different genres. It was fun to watch them get so excited about books. Kids kept coming up to me with books in hand asking, "May I put this in my book bin?" All the decorations came from the dollar store. I made the little genre cards for each table.
And of course... Cats! No blog post of mine would be truly complete without a couple of cute cat photos. Sparrow (top) and Herbie (below) are all about snuggling up in warm spots once cool weather arrives.
Thanks again for visiting! Have a wonderful weekend.
