Five for Friday!

Happy Friday All! :-)

I can't believe there are already 133 teachers linked up on Five for Friday!  Here's mine...

I am so excited to be able to check one thing off of my summer goals list!! I have checked all of the teacher blog buttons below to see that they are all valid links and that they are the most current button.  I found a few that weren't functioning right and let the blogger know...hopefully those will be working right soon! Please let me know if I'm missing your button...I'd love to add it! :)

 Today is my 11th Anniversary! :-)   <3  I am so very blessed to have Jim as my husband.  We are going to spend a few nights off by ourselves...no major plans except to visit with my best friend & her family...it's been several years since we've visited.

Through the Fourth of July we are visiting with my brother & his family in Sacramento, California. (My sister is up here right now too!)  Although it was a long day in the car yesterday...about 8 hours!...the kids are having a blast being with their cousins.  

Andrew, Cousin Dylan, Sieanna, Cousin Cameron

Sister-in-law Erin, Me, Sister Julie

The kids will stay here while Jim & I take off for two nights.  Erin, my 'cool beans' sister-in-law & I have been having fun looking up ideas on pinterest & visiting!

 My nephew Dylan just finished 2nd grade and he did this AMAZING  book report.  It is for Shark vs. Train.



  The teacher told them that they needed to use a cylindrical container such as a coffee can or oatmeal container (that's what Dylan used) and decorate it as a character from the story.  Inside they needed four strips telling about the character.

Dylan choose all of the supplies (Danimal Drinkable Yogurt container, M & M minis container, lids, etc.) for Train...mom just helped with gluing and doing Train's eyes! I love, love, LOVE it!!

 As I was 'oooohhing & aaaaahhing' over Dylan's book report my sister-in-law, Erin said, 'Let me show you what he made for Cub Scouts!' Once again Aunt Nancy was impressed!

Have a great week!

A MONSTER Summer Goal!! Organizing Digital Resources!!

Where to even begin...as my banner at the top says...I am a resource-hunting-a-holic...let's just say over the last 8-10 years or so I've "bagged"  a WHOLE LOT of digital resources!!!!  Now to get them all organized!!

I think that my collecting began when I was introduced to Proteacher.net.

I used to frequent the 3rd grade board weekly, if not daily, and scroll down to any posts that had a paperclip, meaning it had a download. I started downloading like crazy!  

Then I discover Teacher Blogs, TN, & TpT!!  Whoa...was...I...in...TROUBLE!!! You see I just can't resist~~

I think any time I see those words they really do look all glittery & sparkly!!  Sometimes I was downloading at home on our old desktop, then on the new one, sometimes on my school laptop, sometimes transferring files & folders onto flash

drives...there are teacher created files & folders all over the place!!!  Now, this doesn't include the teacher resources I've created for my classroom!

In addition I have become quite obsessed with interested in acquiring graphics & alphabets. I must say I DO love Lettering Delights! Every Friday they offer a freebie! :) The frequently run $1 sales too. Another great thing about Lettering Delights is that you can access your goodies straight from their site; you don't need to download & store complete sets just get what you need when you need it.  You can quickly look for what you need with their search button. I have about 1,500 alphabets/graphics sets.

I am not limited in my collection of graphics & alphabets to just LD...NO...I have graphic sets &/or alphabets from:

A-manda Creations

Ashley Hughes Graphics

Cosmic Dog Designs

First Grade Brain Graphic

From the Pond

Fuzzimo

Ginger Snaps Art

Hopie Doodles

JC Sweet Pea Designs

Just So Scrappy Too

Kristin McGrath~~KPM Doodles

LeeLou

Mr. Magician Art

Persnickety Prints

Scrappin Cop

Scrappin Doodles

Snickerdoodles Designs

Snogirl

Storyrock

Super Scrap (couldn't find a link)

TP Designs by Tina Parker

The 3AM Teacher Designs

The Classroom Clips

Thematic Teacher

Trina~Digi Scraps

Whimsy Doodle Graphics

Now...most of those sets come in the nice little Zip files...you know...the ones with the zipper that you have to extract...takes a while...and where DO they go when you extract them!?!?!

It is a LOT to organize...I have begun using 'clouds' to organize all of my goodies. I'm using CX, Box, Dropbox, Sugarsync, Google Drive, & Evernote.

On the Desktop of my school laptop I have the following folders: 

New TN Freebies, 

For Print Shop (files to be copied by our district Print Shop for our grade level), 

In Clouds, 

For clouds, 

Super Scrap Alphabets, 

Picasa Organizing,

 ALL Alphabets, 

Pictures-School, 

Greg Tang Goodies, 

ccs (I was on our District committee dealing with the California Common Core...it had documents we worked on), 

12 13 Year (my common printouts for grading, my weekly behavior & restroom signout sheets, class lists, etc), 

In Dropbox, 

ndw materials (things I've created for our reading series), 

wbt videos (videos I shot at a whole brain teaching conference), 

other ( a hodgepodge of files & folders!), 

OK relief (this was the one through Teachers Notebook), 

test taking, 

Creations using LD, 

Words & Individual Clipart

Apple Management Stuff (all kinds of apple stuff I've made & use in my room)

& of course...

'My documents'(all these folders inside as well as files that aren't in folders YET) :

Behavior Chart

Blog Stuff

Bulletin Boards

Downloaded books

Downloads (I am going to list everything in here but it's A WHOLE LOT!!!)

Dr. Seuss

Dropbox

Field Trips

For Teacher Appreciation

For TN & TpT (a future goal!!)

GATE

Graphics & Clipart

holiday stuff

homework

labels

Language Arts

Math 

Misc

My Pictures

Parent Letters

Personal

Powerpoints

Questionaing Blooms

Roadrunner Notebooks (link to post about these)

Sub Stuff

Task cards & I have

Vistaprint

WOW....I'm exhausted just trying to look at the size of this MONSTER!!!  I think I can, I think I can, I think I can!!!

Are any of you struggling with this issue?

Do any of your Download folders look like this?

Any tips?

Well I'd better hit the publish button...I started this post yesterday!

5 for Friday on Saturday!

My 5 for Friday...on Saturday!

Yesterday we went to a resort presentation up in the mountains.  It was in an area my husband & I had never been so we were curious about the area.  It was less than an hour & 1/2 away from home.  We did not buy into the resort but they paid us $75 for listening to the presentation! So... we decided to treat ourselves to lunch at the Cheesecake Factory! YUM!!!

Jim ordered the Mexican style lettuce wraps...

I had the Asian style lettuce wraps...they were WONDERFUL!!! :-)

Sieanna chose the Alfredo...it was a big dish for a kid's plate...mom helped her with it ;-) ...what moms do to help their kids out! ;-)

Dessert...strawberries & cream (whipped) for Sieanna & Mango Key Lime Cheesecake for us...you can see we dove right in and when we were almost done I remembered I wanted to a take a picture...YUMMY!!!!  We had such a blessed day wandering around the outdoor mall (Victoria Gardens for you So. Cal. ladies)

 

I love Lettering Delights and used there Love Rocks set to make her invitations. We kept things simple with pizza, chips, water bottles and koolaid/crystal light type powder packs & then cupcakes!

 These were their little goodie bags.

 We got just about everything from the 99Cent Only & Dollar Tree Stores...hula hoops, frisbees & other toys to play with.

 Sieanna was not the only one to enjoy the time with friends...her friends' moms (& one grandma) are some of my best friends!! It was fun for us to talk shop..3 teachers & a mommy helper...and talk life!!

Amanda (her daughter is one of Sieanna's best friends...I had her son in my class a few years ago & will have her younger daughter in my room this coming year)

Me (glad it is not a close-up...so in need of my hair appointment Tuesday!!!)

Joan (her grandson has been friends with Sieanna since preschool & I've taught 3rd grade with Joan 24 years!! She has become one of my most treasured friends!!)

Marylee (her daughter is my daughter's best, best bud!!...they've been friends their whole life...she can be seen showing various claps & cheers on my blog HERE with Sieanna and another friend who couldn't make it to the party...Marylee is an AMAZING kindergarten teacher...she has taught all 3 of my kids!)

Melissa (my dear friend from church who transferred to our school about 5 or 6 years ago...she is an amazing 1st grade teacher who has some great ideas that I hope I get to share here in the near future!...Sieanna has know her son all her life as well!)

 Okay....I said we stopped at Dollar Tree for stuff for Sieanna's B'day party...well...they had these amazing containers back in stock...I grabbed the whole box!!!  

I've had 10 frame cards in ziplocs (basically unused for the last few years mainly because of messed up sets)...well...this is what I've spent the last few days doing...

I've got a container for the 0's, 1's, 2's, etc...we'll see how this works out next year...having the kids grab 4 of each when we play a game...do a math activity!

I kept seeing this really cute Bloglovin button on others' blogs & finally tracked down the source. Melissa said I was welcome to use it.  She has instructions for setting up Bloglovin & instructions to change the standard Bloglovin button into this one!  Click HERE for her post.

 Update on listed goals...

 Posting more~~well I will hit the 'publish' button today...yes a day late for 5 for Friday, but 3 post this week I feel pretty good about this goal!

Wii Dance~~2 today, none yesterday...need to keep working on this one!!

Google Reader Stars~~busy, busy, busy with this one!!! I am trying to check on Google Reader every hour or so to keep the number of unread at 0...I have added a LOT more pins onto my Pinterest boards...July 1st is going to happen TOOOOOO soon!!!

Blog Button Updates~~I started at the bottom of the first column and I've made it up through the first 25 buttons!

Swagbucks~~I'm averaging 13 a day...not too bad!

Another Goal...

 I want to read the following books this summer...






More soon...Thanks for stopping by!!!!