Five For Friday

It's been a very long time but I'm so excited to link up again with 

This was our first week back from a 5-week vacation in Minnesota (yearly pilgrimage to my home state) and it was good to be home.  I'm so fortunate to have my summers off so I can be a mom and do lots of fun projects that just keep piling up in my brain.  Here are my top 5 things I was most excited about and thankful for:

Succulents

A plant whose leaves store water.

This one looks like a sea anemone. 

These were too cute to pass up and will be cute in my classroom!

This beauty of a bookcase.

It is being held up by a filing cabinet but I'm still trying to figure out something better.

I label my fiction bins by first letter of the title and these are wooden placards I made.

I've admired a similar one at a local book store (except it wasn't painted this cute) and finally made my own!

Spray Paint

I'm a lazy painter so this is my best friend because it's paint & primer together and it sticks to anything!

Crumby

$10 at Office Depot

I love to use a DustBuster and have one in my classroom.  I've even been known to use them on my own messy children (to clean and tickle).  But this tiny terrific tool makes me so happy!  I'm changing the lyrics of the Bobby McFerrin song to "Don't Worry Be Tidy".

Pokémon Go

 Hi, my name is Jaime and I'm addicted to Pokémon Go.  But there's a good reason: I was into GeoCaching before this came out and both have the commonality of being treasure hunting games.  Plus, I'm currently working on a series of Pokemon Partner Plays so I've been doing research on this whole Pokémon craze and it's insanely detailed!

Have a FUNtastic weekend!

Five for Friday

I'm happily linking up again with

I love to steam my face!  It's so relaxing and feels great but I don't do it very often because it takes more time than I'd like to boil a pot of water on the stove.  So I randomly googled "facial steamer" and ended up buying this off of Ebay.  You put a small amount of water into the base (I add essential oils too!) and then turn it on.  It takes 3 minutes to heat up and I brush my teeth, etc. during that time.  I absolutely love it and there is also a sinus cleansing part that comes with it that I have not tried yet.

I finished writing another non-fiction life cycle Readers' Theater script, which focuses on the flower, and it's a FREEBIE!  My next step is to take all 8 life cycle scripts and put them together in a MEGA non-fiction pack...

Thanks to an idea I saw on FB, I've set a running goal of doing at least one race a month.  I usually train from March-June for a triathlon, a 5K and a half marathon and then stop running.  But this little idea has kept me going so I can add race bibs to my collection....and keep running of course :-)

Tonight I'll be doing a 5-miler in honor of a local athlete who was killed by a car one year ago right in front of his house as he left to go for a bike ride :-(

It feels good to do races that have a higher cause!

I finally started composting!  I bought a big, outdoor garbage can and drilled holes in it.  I mulched a bunch of trimmings from bushes and mowed the yard and threw everything in to get started (per a Pinterest idea I saw).  I bought a small compost pail for kitchen scraps and have stored it underneath the sink and empty it into the big bin when it's full.  Can't wait to turn it into rich soil!

This is a computer desk for 2 students that I built this week.

I was on a run and started thinking about how I will set up my classroom this year.  I love how I have it EXCEPT one BIG thing....the computers cannot be facing my small guided reading table!  So then I started thinking about how I could kind of 'hide' the computers and came up with this slim desk for 2 that I'll put behind my classroom library and next to my GR table.  

Bought a special drill attachment to drill these big holes for the computer cords.

I bought 3 pieces of wood, which I had Home Depot cut up into the measurements I wanted and then put it together in my garage with my BFF tools Thelma & Louise :-)

If the desk does indeed fit where I need it to fit, then I'll whip up 2 more!  I also plan to hang some cute fabric from them so you can't see them and my library bookshelves (which will be directly in front of the desks) will have a cute fabric backdrop.

Have a FunTASTIC weekend!

Five for Friday

Still loving summer Fridays...but I think it's to the point where there are fewer left than I've already had :-(

My daughter and I had a girl's date today and saw this movie.  From a teacher/parent standpoint it's brilliant and very funny!!  This is like SEL and metacognition coming to life and explained to kids in a simple, fun way. I really want to incorporate this into my classroom somehow this year.

I'll never forget using my dad's typewriter in middle school to write book reports...thank goodness for laptops and iPads!!  I LOVE to write Readers' Theater plays and ideas are always bouncing around in my brain...just hard to make time to sit down and write more often.  But when I do make time, it just flows out of me and, since I can save everything, I can stop in the middle of a play and come back to it later.  I have many unfinished plays because I'm like a cat that sees something shiny and jumps right to it...

 I did make time this week to finish up another batch of partner/trio plays AND I lumped all 4 batches together into a MEGA pack.  I can't wait to use these with my new kiddos this year.  I also need to print some off so my daughter, husband and I can read them at bedtime while snuggling in our bed....it's so fun!

There is nothing like picking your own salad out of your garden each night for dinner!  Yum!

 

 I LOVE taking pictures of flowers and my blog began with a beautiful picture of my mother's peonies.  Peaceful and beautiful they are...

A Dinner Plate Dahlia I grew from a bulb.

Irish Lilies that a student gave me at the end of the year.

Fireweed, the state flower of Alaska.
It's beautiful but actually a weed that can grow in excess of 5 feet tall!

Have a wonderful weekend and hold on to the fleeting summer!