7 Months??

Has it really been seven months since I have been in the classroom?  If you have been wondering where I've been, I have taken a leave of absence for health reasons.  Never in my 12 year teaching career would I have expected to have used up all of my precious sick days in one swoop!  Luckily for me, I have the support of an amazing principal and associate superintendent who encouraged me to take care of myself so I can take care of my children.  Because without being healthy, I can't be a good mom, and that's my number one goal.  {And speaking of moms, I couldn't have gotten so healthy without the support of my mom, so shout out to my mommy!}

WELL, yesterday was the first day back in my classroom after not setting foot in it since August.  To say freak-out and frustration would not begin to describe my mood.  After three substitutes, all of which I'm sure did things to the best of their ability and seemed like great teachers, my room was. a. complete. mess.  Luckily my mom was there to calm me down and direct me to focus on one thing at a time.

FIRST thing to do was move my furniture back the way it is supposed to go.  Have you ever had someone come into your classroom and move your furniture?  I'm a little bit controlling (just a little, maybe?) and I have been itching to move it back since August. That was major.  After that, the nerves were calming down.  I found my things, put my bins back at the correct tables, cut down the table signs.  It was quite exhilarating.

The last thing I did was decorate my office.  I have never done that before.  After having five months of my kids being in school and being a part of their school lives like a stay-at-home mom, it's sad for me to go back to work and leave that routine we have become accustomed to.  SO, I decided maybe if I made my office lovely and inviting with pictures and fun new officey decorations it would make me happy when I walked in each morning.  I bought a few organizational things from Target that are called OrganizeHer and some picture things that I hung on the wall.  Once I get everything all cleaned up this week I will post pictures.  I plan on going to JoAnn's and buying some cute material and making short café curtains for the windows.  I am hoping to find a pretty, bright, floral print.  The hubs even bought me a mini-Keurig for Christmas so I can have my coffee whenever I want.  Now I must find a mug or two that match my office.  ;)

That's it for now.  Wish me luck as I go back to work after so many months of being off.  Pray that my migraines and pain don't come back, and I can teach with renewed spunk!  I will post pictures of my class and office once they're fixed up this week.  Thanks for reading this long post!!

Update and Lens Giveaway

UPDATE - No, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth!!  Hahaha.  I have been taking an extended leave of absence since the beginning of the school year for medical reasons.  It has been a very strange roller coaster.  I've been working really hard with my doctors to get healthy, and to be able to return to work after Winter break.  I sure hope I'm ready by then!

In the mean time, I've been going to doctor's appointments, physical therapy, and trying to do things I enjoy like walking, playing the piano, crocheting and knitting, and photography.  I've gone on a few field trips with my son's kindergarten class and helped in the classroom so I've had a few opportunities to use my Nikon DSLR camera in manual mode!  I would love to own some more camera gear.  A new lens would be a fantastic, crazy-awesome thing to win.  It just so happens that Crave Photography is giving away a lens!!!  YAY!  I entered to win it, and I'm hoping doing a blog entry will give me a little extra luck.  Go check them out, and enter to win the giveaway yourself if you'd like!  They have some beautiful pictures to look at while you're there!

So wish me luck, my friends.  I'm going to go finish editing pictures from the Thanksgiving party from my son's kindergarten class I was the photographer for today.  :)  Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!  Hope you all have a lovely Fall break.

P.S.  My son is the one eating the turkey!  ;)

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Summer Break and Some Chevron

School's out for summer!!  Yahoo!  Time with my own children, park dates, beach trips, and down time.  Do you ever feel like you run a marathon every day?  That's how I feel!  I run around all morning getting lunches, bags packed, kids taken to the places they need to be, run to school, bust booty all day, run and pick up the kids, run home, fly around trying to figure out what's for dinner, homework, bath time, bed time, collapse!  So happy to have a little time to just enjoy life and relax!

I've been thinking about decorating my classroom for next school year already.  I know chevron is uber popular, but I love it!  I have been creating a new alphabet wall to put up in August.  I hope you all love it as much as I do!  I think it's adorable.  You can find it for sale here in my TPT shop.

And speaking of chevron, Mandi of MOORE Fun In Kindergarten is hostessing a giveaway of some lovely chevron goodies!

Here is a pic of her huge chevron set she is giving away.  There are also goodies from Miss Kindergarten and A Cupcake for the Teacher.  Check out the blog post here for the giveaway details.

Have a wonderful summer break, everyone!

Mother's Day Ideas

May is such a busy month!  Our school does Open House, an art and author's faire, and not to mention all the spring projects, caterpillars, plants, and Mother's Day!  {It's also my husband's and my birthdays this month!  YEAH!}

So who needs a Mother's Day project idea??  I made these adorable sunflower handprints last year, and the moms I saw who opened it {I rolled it into a scroll, and tied it with yellow ribbon} had tears in their eyes.  As a mom myself, I would have cried too!  I glued a little poem onto the bottom of it as well, and have uploaded it onto google docs for you in case you'd like to use it, too.  {Click on the poem down below to download your copy.}  SO! here's the idea I got from my favorite website, evuh! Pinterest, of course!

Cute, right??  I modified it to fit my tastes and time frame, but you can totally have the kids glue sunflower seeds or black beads in the middle too.  I had them use their finger to dot on black paint into the middle of mine.  I also just had my students paint a stem and leaves with a paint brush and green paint instead of gluing on construction paper ones.

I think handprint mother's day projects are super cute, and moms love them.  And it's all about the momma's, right?  Check out my Kindergarten Mother and Father's Day board on Pinterest for some more adorable ideas.  You can use the poem I typed up for any of those activities as well.

ENJOY!!  Happy Mother's Day to all the mommas out there.

No. Post. Since. January??

Holy moly, I have fallen off the blog train. Things have been cruising along in my classroom, and I have no good excuse to tell you why I haven't been blogging. Just life!

SPRING has sprung in our classroom. We have painted lady caterpillars, and are knee-deep in a plants GLAD unit. The kids are LOVING IT. And, I have to admit I am loving it, too. I am working on a flower garden in math for numbers 11-20, which is a ton of little pieces and my kids have lost a bunch {no pun intended} even though they were supposed to cut out and put each piece in a baggie immediately. :( Here is where I snagged this adorable activity from Kroger's Kindergarten. She has some adorable activities on her blog. I will snap some much needed pics this week and get them up ASAP. I think spring cleaning also struck my classroom, because I was moving furniture around on Friday. ;)

I will be participating in the #teachertalktuesday fun with a few other kinder bloggers on Instagram. If you would like to join in the fun, simply take a picture of something you do on Tuesday and include the hashtag #teachertalktuesday. You can follow me on instagram, I am monkeyshine2.

Winter Penguins and Other Plans

For some reason over winter break I could not get myself to work on anything for school, but now that I'm exhausted and back to work, I feel like blogging?  Heehee...  This week back was kind of up and down for my class.  Monday we came back from break, and the kids were SO GOOD.  Like angelic good.  Tuesday we had an inservice and they had a substitute for whom they were even more angelic.  The rest of the week? no bueno.  I do not know what it was, because there was no full moon or wind, only super cold weather which we are not used to here in sunny Southern Cali.  It's been in the 30s in the mornings!  Brrr!!!  I'm chalking it up to that, and hope they come back on Monday as angels.

So what were we up to this week?  We were getting back into the swing of math tubs, lessons, and reading group rotations.  Back to their long days with me, and a few wanting to go home.  Lots of hugs and I love yous, and a few calling me mom {which melts my heart...}  And...penguins!  I love how interested kids are in animals and learning new things about them.  So, I chose penguins to focus on this week, as there is a multitude of holidays and things coming up.

I bought these two adorable books from Amazon {children's book junkie, I am}:

We watched Emperor Penguins speed launch out of the water on YouTube...

And made these absolutely UH-stinkin-dorable penguins I saw a pin of on Pinterest.  Here's the link to the pin, and here our a few of my kiddos penguins.

Cute, right?!  And, yes, I still have my Santas up.  I need to take them down and get my snowmen up we made before break.  {Have you seen these?  They are so cute.}  You mix half and half of glue and shaving cream and let the kids go to town making a snowman.  They love it!

Well, that's what we've been up to this week.  Next week I plan on doing a directed draw on Martin Luther King, Jr. and read the kids a little about him.  I found this cute video on YouTube about him, too.

Have a great week, Everyone!!