Sunday, November 16, 2014

It's the Holiday Season!

I cannot believe we are halfway through November. I have been a busy little bee trying to get my classroom and home kept up. In addition to all that requires, I have also spent a good bit of time monogramming things for friends and family. If you have a machine, you know how much time and effort go into making just ONE shirt! Even though the jobs can be tedious, I have really enjoyed making special items for people. It's quite nice to be proud of your work!




I have also been reading quite a few books lately. I ordered a few for my classroom and decided to read them before putting them out for my students. I decided on Treasure Hunters by James Patterson and Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage as my first two picks, but I only really liked the latter. TH is probably going to appeal more to 10 to 12-year-old boys than 29-year-old women, and I assume Patterson intended this. The book did have wonderful illustrations though, which made the cheesiness somewhat easier to stomach. TTL was so good I decided to use it for a read-aloud. It starts slow, but picks up speed toward the middle. Turnage creates such lovable characters, and the figurative language included in the novel paints so many pictures in the minds of my students. We have referred to Mo and Dale several times over the course of our current reading unit. I highly recommend this book!

Another thing I have been working on is a Greek and Latin Prefixes/Roots/Suffixes journal. My students are having difficulty with this. Our school uses the Wonders program, and while I don't agree with everything in the book, I will say that this is the one reading program I have seen that truly tests the skills and not the story (looking at you Scott Foresman!).


This isn't complete yet, and my class is giving it a trial run, but I hope to have a few freebies up on my Teacher's Notebook site soon. This Sunday is wet and rainy and COLD. I am not looking forward to getting back out for the evening service, but Acteens calls! I hope you all have a restful afternoon!