January 8, 2016!!!

This is how we use technology to tell a dad who's out of town that someone just read the most minutes for the month of December and won the Thunder Reading challenge!

                                               Do you sense any excitement in that voice?

Whew!  I'm finally to the year 2016 in my "ketchup" I mean "catch up" blogging process!  These pics were from January the 8th. Yes, it was another eventful day! You shall see by reading and looking below!

The kids are painting with pudding. Cathy Laxton, a former teacher at OCA, always comes and teaches chapel for us at the beginning of the year. She brought this craft for the kids to do. 

We were reading the story "Big Moon Tortilla this week. Each year, on Friday of that week, we make homemade tortillas. Here are some pics. 

Smash the dough into a circle. 

Yummy!  Homemade tortilla with butter, cinnamon, and sugar on top! 

Yikes!  Mrs. Ruff had to stop taking pictures because somehow she sliced into her finger while cutting the dough!  It's hard to believe that I did so much damage using a butter knife!  My little nurse daughter came by to look at my finger and said I needed stitches!  Yikes!  Good thing she came, because I couldn't drive myself. I had to keep pressure on my finger!  How ridiculous! 

 I'm waiting for my stitches! 

Wowie, wow, wow!  Such a big bandage for 3 little stitches! 

 Ha ha!  This is me driving my car home from school afterward!  

This is me resting at home after an eventful day!  Just another day in the life of a first grade teacher!  

Back to school!

I love my job!  Sometimes it drives my family crazy that I "work" on school stuff over a break. I tell them it's not "working" because I enjoy constantly finding new ideas and fun things for the kids.

We were struggling with center papers this year, so I came up with an organizational plan!  I went to school and got it all set up before time to start back to school. I found these cool magnetic folders at Lakeshore to put on my white board. I put the number of each center above it. We do 8 centers a week.

Of course, I have to stick with my "dog" them and use dog print numbers!

 Then, a generous parent gave me a Lakeshore gift card to purchase this cool organizer. It has 8 trays!  I labeled each of them with a corresponding number and color!  Now the kids know exactly where their center work goes and we don't have to spend hours sorting it all! I LOVE it!  

Once again, coordinating "puppy print" numbers!  

I get so excited about these kinds of things!  I think the kids will love it, too! 

Star student

Here's our STAR student for thriftiness!  Congrats!

Thunder Reading Challenge!!

We are participating in the Thinder Reading Challenge for the first time!  The students log how many minutes they read each month. It starts in November. The Thunder organization sends great prizes!  Here's our first winner!  Congrats!

She got a T-shirt, a bracelet, and a ponytail holder along with a certificate!

December 2nd & 4th of 2015

Here are some fun things that we did on December 2nd and December 4th!  First, here's our STAR student for "justice". 

Here are the kiddos painting their Rudolph. They turned out so cute!

  

Here is one of my sweeties using ten frames to subtract. 

Silly girl!  There is nothing like static electricity to mess up a girl's hair! I'm glad she was okay with all of us laughing with her!

Center time!  This group is listening to their story while the rest are working on their learning centers. 

She's working on her cut and paste spelling word center. 

                          He is, too!  

This little group is reading aloud with whisper phones. 

"I'm all finished with my Roll-a-word center!"  

Here's our hallway Christmas tree with the "names of Jesus" ornaments and our reindeer. 

Here's my Christmas tree!  I love Christmas time! I love being able to talk about Jesus' birth at school! 

Eventful Thankful November!

Normally, I have more pictures than this for the month of November. However, this was not a "normal" month in my household. My niece was getting married in Atlanta, so I took 2 days off to attend the wedding. One of my daughters is a nurse, and she was able to set her work schedule so that she could go with us. Since the trip was SO long, we decided to break it up into 2 days of driving. We stopped in Birmingham to spend the night. Here is my sweet hubby, Mark, getting our room.

After eating dinner, Mark became ill with intense stomach pains. He was up all night and even made a midnight run to a Walgreens to ask a pharmacist what he could take to alleviate the symptoms. When nothing worked, my daughter decided he needed to see a doctor.  I'm thankful we had a nurse along with us!   Afraid that he might possibly be hospitalized in Birmingham and not know any of the doctors, he decided he wanted us to drive him back to Oklahoma. So that's what we did! 

 It was pretty miserable for him!  Kara and I took turns driving. We didn't arrive home until around 10:00 p.m.  He was feeling a little better, so he decided to wait until morning to see a doc. We went to the walk-in clinic on Memorial because it was a Saturday. He had a fever of 102 and the doc was pretty sure it was appendicitis, so we had to go to an ER. Of course, I had to let my daughter know. She insisted we go to Integris because she knows the doctors there. I'm so glad we did. The doctors and nurses were wonderful. He DID need an appendectomy. Poor guy! 

 He's never had surgery before!  They stopped to let us pray with him before he went back. My sweet son-in-law, who is a medical student, led the prayer. He also was very proud of the fact that he was able to correctly diagnose an appendicitis  before the doctors did!  He will be a great doctor someday! 

After the surgery, Mark's fever kept spiking to 102 and he didn't feel well. I stayed home with him to take care of him. I called the doctor and he determined that there was probably an infection and antibiotics were needed.  Our dogs - Gracie and Rumble - were worried about him. Look how sweet they are! 

They kept his spot safe and secure if he left it!

After a couple of days of antibiotics, he felt much better!   Our children's minister from church brought us dinner and a card that the kids at church made for him!  So sweet!  We are so blessed to have such an awesome church family at New Hope!

So, because of all of that, I didn't have a ton of pics of my firsties for November. Here are their cute turkeys hanging in the hall!  I have a LOT to be thankful this Thanksgiving. We all do!  Thank you, God, for your daily blessings!  You never stop amazing me! 

The kids did a STEM project and created a boat for the pilgrims to come over to America in. Their boat had to be able to hold 102 pennies. Here are pics from that.