Suggestions for journal resources?

Yay for time off!! The movie Grease is on, I'm making my favorite healthy granola, and my husband is on his way home!

I have time to assemble one more journal pack before I go back to work... so for those of you that enjoy my journal printables:

WHICH PACK SHOULD I PUT TOGETHER NEXT?

I've got some money resources, time and word problems. Or would you rather have a literacy pack?

Many thanks for your suggestions and Happy New Year!!

Kelli xx    

Looking Ahead!

Well, I've seen this everywhere and just had to jump in. Since I'm behind (no surprise there!), I'll do all 5 now!

TECHNOLOGY:
I would like to give some attention to my blog. The blog thing has been completely learn as I go along (tech things are not my strength) and I started pinning tutorials that have helped a lot. I still have a lot of questions like: what happened to the 'followers' thing and what does subscribe in Google reader mean? Also I would love to be able to create lots of columns on my pages like Ashley Hughes at School Supply Addict has done (how do you do that?)--

Ashley's awesome pages

ORGANIZATION:
I am trying to combat this by doing my lesson plans for the next half term during the winter break and by reading about some of my new topics for the next term now (The Stuarts, Rivers, Recycling, Buddhism, and I need to read the book Holes). 

That is the main focus for me as far as organization with this current job. Just lots of new topics to learn. Luckily they do most of their work into journals/notebooks (so random papers are never an issue), bulletin boards are done/created by them as homework, and the room is soooo small (I should take a picture) that there is not really anything else to organize!

history bulletin board

PROFESSIONAL GROWTH:
There are so many things I would like to do in this area. 

-Read books that Tammy at Forever in First and others have recommended
-Complete a TEFL or CELTA course for teaching others English
-take on a teaching position in a new environment when this job finishes


DOWNTIME:
More research on cooking from scratch/healthy eating!

Very happy we got a crockpot recently and very excited about the Vitamix we are getting with gift certificates!

can't wait for those smoothies!!

 I am also hoping to read more, worry less, and work on 'being in the moment'!

FITNESS:
Something has to change. As we are trying to watch our money (upcoming changes to employment for my husband and I means we gotta be extra careful!)...we have opted not to have things with monthly costs if possible for the moment (a gym membership or a car because of insurance)...no car is fine since England has buses and trains everywhere BUT----

with the dreary winter weather...I need a gym!! I do not feel like myself at all when I don't go to the gym. I'm investigating whether I can do something from home on youtube...any thoughts? I'm not as discipined at home though ; )

Hope to read about your upcoming goals! 

Kelli xx 

K-2 Center freebies

Merry Christmas!! I hope you're all enjoying your break and time off from school! I am thoroughly relaxed and l-o-v-i-n-g it!

Cleaning out the laptop, cameras and files brought me to this: center freebies I hope you can use! Click on picture to download : )

Kelli xx

Silence For Sandy Hook Elementary

4/5th grade history journals

Thank goodness for Christmas break! In my 11 years of teaching, I have not been as sick and tired as I have this year. Sorry to complain, I just hate not feeling like myself. Does anyone understand? I went to the doctor today (again), and am hoping to switch to private healthcare (I'm in the UK) in the hope of getting immediate solutions so I can get my life back on track.

Anyway, enough of that!

It snowed last week! It melted quickly, but for this desert girl, snow is always a bit exciting. 

I feel very blessed to spend Christmas with my husband this year, as that hasn't happened since 2008 (visas and deployments)! I love our little tree and he helped me make ornaments for my students.

I've seen a linky party going around the blogs and one of the questions was a good movie you've seen recently. This made me think of the best movie I've seen all year-ARGO. So good.

OK, to end the randomness of this post-I've cleaned out my camera with some 4th/5th grade history journal activities. Hope you find them useful and can adapt the ideas to your classroom.

they did these as homework...they had many options and choices of what to do. I am very happy with it! I HATE cookie-cutter bulletin boards when students all do the same thing!

Have a good day!
Kelli xx 

questions and answers!

 

 

I have been nominated for The Leibster Award by two lovely ladies, Tania (Mrs. Poultney's Ponderings) and Rae (Mindful Rambles)-how kind!! I will answer 5 questions from each  blogger so that you don't have read too long!

Here are the rules: (eh...it's up to you how you do it)

1. You must answer the questions set for you.

2. You must create 11 questions for the people you nominate.

3. You must choose 11 other blogs with fewer than 200 followers to nominate and link them in your post.

4. You cannot “tag back” the other blog, but leave a comment on this post with the URL of your Liebster post so I can learn more about you & see who you nominate.

 Questions:
1. If you weren't a teacher/educator/your current occupation, what would you be? OH! A job that I always thought would be amazing would be to do soundtracks for movies. Not like the composer, but the person that picks the songs for the scenes, etc. ya : )
2. What is your favorite genre of music? You may have gathered that I like music from the question above. I lOVE many types of music. Fits the mood. 

3. What was your favorite subject in school? What was your least favorite? Fav-reading/spelling. Least-science.
4. What is one way that you do to ensure a healthy lifestyle?

No soda, no fast food.

5. How many hours of sleep do you get a night? 7-8

 6.What is the scariest thing you have ever done?    Getting married: being the center of attention, doing it without my best friends (in another country). Worrying if everyone would have a good time. (it was great!) 

7.Do you play a sport? I played volleyball, basketball and softball in high school. 

8.How many stamps in your passport? I am a blessed girl : ) 

9.What is your favorite season? Fall/Winter 

10.Who was your favorite teacher when you were a student? I loved my third grade teacher Mrs. Nakamura. She was sweet, nice and I learned how to do my times tables really well.         

 

Katie's great blog is here!

Renee's fantastic blog is here! 

Here are my questions:

1) What word annoys you?

2) What is the best movie you've seen recently?

3) What is your idea of a perfect Saturday morning?

4) What is the best concert you've seen?

5) 3 things I always have in my fridge are...

Have a great day!!!                                              

Thanksgiving Sale!!

Hello teachers in the States! I hope your Thanksgiving holiday is great! Thanksgiving is my favorite dinner ever-turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and pumpkin pie...YUM! Check out my sale if get a minute!

Kelli xx

Writer's Workshop {10 & 11 yr olds)

I've been inspired by Tammy over at Forever in First. She was talking about spelling the other day, and it's something I've been thinking about as well. Go check out her post.

That leads me to........I love learning about Writer's Workshop with the older kids!! We are continuously working on Revising & Proofreading. I am so happy to see them finally do this a bit more independently now (circle words you want to look up later for spelling, and underline words you want to 'upgrade' in vocabulary later.....in addition to editing for punctuation, etc). 

Here are some photos from the weekend (before I graded them):

Hope you have a nice Thanksgiving week! I wonder if I can find some pumpkin pie around here...........

Part time work sounds pretty great

The last few years, I've been thinking how great part-time work sounds. Now, in a sense, that is what I've kindof been doing. 

Because of my lifestyle (loved one--deployments, long-distance relationship, several moves overseas)..........I have had an erratic career.

Day-to-day subbing, long term subbing, really long-term subbing, etc. I have not had my own class, from start to finish, in several years. 

The above jobs mentioned (long term subbing and really long-term subbing), while being wonderful, they have also been ALOT of work.

How could a long term be a lot of work?

Depending what the job is, there are not always plans, contrary to belief.

Depending on the school, the approach could be completely different.

Depending on the grade level, there could be a whole lot of curriculum you've never taught before.

The latter seems to create the most amount of work for me.
 

the journey is the reward

Let me reiterate: I would never change the experiences I've had for anything.  I am positive that God has placed me in every class purposefully. There have been some messed-up situations that I've walked into where students were crying out for stability. Other situations where students were sad and confused about why their teacher had left. 



Anyway, cut to my current job. September to Easter (not sure what month that is), covering maternity leave. Covering the English Coordinator. At the top of the school.

I'm a K-2 teacher.

However........
I'm loving this year with my Year 5 and Year 6.

Of course it helps that it's a private school, and for the most part they are literally angels.    

But the curriculum.

There is so much new curriculum that I've never taught before. It takes all my time to reteach myself the curriculum, but don't forget there's all the writing to grade! In all fairness, it's not that much grading because of the wonderful Writer's Workshop (Ros Wilson's Big Writing model)........but it's a lot more than I've had in K-2.

Anyway, I do not have a balanced life. Who does I guess?

But I want more of balance. 

Do you feel this way? Perhaps this is mainly in part to switching grade levels all the time?

I've been thinking a job share would fit me perfectly.

Especially after this week of report writing and conferences and getting ready for Friendship Week and our Christmas Fair coming up.

And the fact that I'm sick all the time does not help.
 
I could cook again.
Go back to the gym.
Bible studies with the ladies group again.
Have more time to focus on my portfolio business.
Read.
Clean the flat.
Not go to sleep at 7 at night.

I am very interested to see what happens when the teacher comes back (that I'm covering). Perhaps she'll want to go part-time?!?! 

Would love to hear your thoughts--

I know the money would be less. But I feel like a hamster on a wheel.

I'm off now to London to check out Churchill's Cabinet War Rooms (WWII) for our history field trip next month. Have to see the museum to plan, etc.

And then maybe I'll do something for myself.

If I'm not sleeping : )     

To all the new bloggers out there..........

I just noticed that it's been about a year since I started blogging. Technically more than that because I started in the summer, got frustrated, gave up, and started again.

It was soooo hard for me at first, all the codes and jibber jabber to get my blog going (I'm still learning). Then I saw these other blogs with thousands of followers and thought, how will I even get 1?

I still don't leave comments on other blogs as often as I should (I will get better at that!), but I am very happy about all that I'm learning from you great teachers out there and the fact that I don't care anymore how many comments or followers I have.

Don't give up new bloggers! It will get easier!

Kelli xx 

2 {small} journal freebies!

Hello!!

I've returned from a two-week trip to the States (fall break) and I'm trying hard to kick this jet lag!

I'll just share these 2 freebies quickly, and share my reflections from my vacation in another post.

 
Hope you're having a nice weekend!

Kelli xx