Finally ... Saturday

Didn't get it written last night again! I was finally watching The Martian. Could've done without some of the language but other than that (I don't know enough about the science to say whether it was accurate or not) I quite enjoyed it. Also when it wasn't super gross. :P

I am learning this morning about the dangers of not being careful with uploads and organizing backups. Where did all the simple little videos I've put on the blog go?

Anyway. Here are some favorite pins for the week. CLick through for original sources. Have a great Saturday. I am working on TCEA presentations and going to buy a new mattress. Will miss Star Wars TFA again. #booonprocrastinationandpoorplanning



I NEED this.



I find myself liking IG more and more. I go in spurts remembering to post myself but I like to look. I follow a few that I know of. Anyone else have acounts?




Debating this as a maker activity. There's always so much going on I wouldn't be able to keep my eyes on it all the time ... would an uncleanable, stain forever mess get made? They are cute. Well. And would KIDs care about it or is this just a grown up thinks it's cute activity. And it is "just" cute. No STEM involved.




Cause here's the odd thing. They check out the books like crazy but if I put origami in #makermornings ... it just sits there. ?????

Itty Bitty Seuss Things

I got something interesting in the mail today. I mean, I got hooked on them through the Star Wars ones, of course. Remember #Yodaontheshelf (I SO should have made it #Yodaonthelibraryshelf but that is kind of long)? But look!

Click on the picture to go to the Hallmark site or check out your local store (they will ship to the store for free, too, if they are out). They might make a cute Valentine. I need to get Rey and Kylo Ren. And BB8. And maybe Charlie Brown and Olaf. Maybe Kermit? I do not need all the things ...

#IMWAYR Jan. 25

It's Monday! What are you Reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at Book Date. It is a great way to recap what you read and/or reviewed the previous week and to plan out your reading and reviews for the upcoming week. It's also a great chance to see what others are reading right now… who knows, you might discover that next “must read” book!
Our Kid Lit to YA version is hosted by Teach Mentor Texts and Unleashing Readers.




The list of finished is ... very short this week.

And then reading and rereading of essay questions/answers. And presentation drafts. Does that count? I will say I thought they were cute. I got them for my cutie patootie youngest nephew who just turned one. His siblings (sister who is 2.5 and brother who is 4.25 years old) liked them, too. I've always loved her illustration style. And it's a wide-eyed little owl. Almost an automatic win.

The list of what I still want to read is long. But to be honest when I haven't watched last night's X-Files yet, let alone tonight's (plus Downton Abbey, plus did anyone catch Mercy Street? Love a good Civil War story) and I still have said presentations to finish and the first of five two hour club meetings on iMovie to prepare? ... I don't know if I will get much beyond finally finishing City of Thirst. Which I am totally enjoying when I sit down to read. We shall see!

#hangsheadsomewhatinreadershame 

Finally ... Saturday 1/23

Ever so behind! A busy, busy week. Still waiting on results from the sleep study and neither answer can be good. "We don't know why you wake up so much" or "Yes, you need to starting sleeping with a big ol' mask on your face." Can you say claustrophobic? The rest of that Saturday plus Monday (and Tuesday and Wednesday night) was spent on a ginormous essay packet. Teaching and its so called "awards." I totally appreciate the nomination ... just not the amount of stress that came with it. Which I then still totally biffed because I didn't read the whole thing carefully enough to understand that I ALSO needed to ask three other people to write letters. Not 14 page essay packets but letters. Oh, well.

At least T-F (and last Th) were fun with 3rd grade Natural Disasters (we're supposed to call it Rapid Changes to the Earth's Surface but that is so odd). Once I make it at least a little pretty (no beautiful TPT packet or anything) and improve the wording on some of it I'll post it here.

Now. Click through for embedded content and original sources. Do I go see Star Wars one more time today? Or just work on my TCEA presentations?


Snape. Alan Rickman. We miss you!






I might have been playing around with some of this. Sort of discovered that there is a CRAZY IG community that goes all out decorating their planners. I do not foresee myself going that crazy but this year I did get a SparkPlanner to try and be more intentional about my time and ultimate goals and it is more fun to have a few little stickers to jazz it up.



The shame. OH THE SHAME. But who has time during the day? And so help me I've had the library taken over so many afternoons "We're having a meeting in here" or just by the afterschool care group that I can't really stay after to do it, either. For a supposed information organization professional keeping my own stuff together is hard. I know I'm overparanoid about it. My first year or two in the library I had a student come take a picture with me before the break ... to come back to inform me that her father said I had a messy desk. "Well, dear father, if I wasn't so busy keeping your daughter in books maybe I'd have time to clean it up!" That and a volunteer who asked me what he could do to tidy things up ... I am paranoid. But other people can't do it or I'D NEVER FIND ANYTHING.



Jus those today. If you are in the snowstorm STAY WARM. Read books and watch movies and drink cocoa for me. I'll just go sneeze (cedar pollen is not cool) and get back to my to do list.

MLKJr Day and To Dos

Hope you are enjoying this January day.







We are out of school. It's our only holiday until Spring Break (we have "training" on President's Day). I'd wanted to go see The Force Awakens one more time but I am plodding through a 14 page essay packet ("Congrats! You're our campus nominee for __________ teaching prize. This is due next Thursday." Gee. Thanks.) and my TCEA presentations (I always wonder why on earth I submit to do these things. STRESS!!!).

Speaking of TCEA I only get to go on Tuesday and Friday. Still had to pay for registration but admin is only letting me go on the days I'm presenting. Tuesday's on Google Forms and Choose Your Own Adventure I'm pretty superfluous as no one on my campus ended up wanting to do it. Library Learners is doing 95% of it! Friday's is me and iRead a Book, Now What? and using iPads to show comprehension. That one, at least, I hope I can contribute something useful. I'm just kind of sad about not being able to go to the bulk of it on Wednesday and Thursday. I love learning!


I had a sleep study done on Friday night. That is weird. I don't snore but I don't sleep well. We'll see what they say.

TBT Planning ahead for February

So ... went looking for some bookmarks Friday and couldn't find them anywhere. Or, all I could find was a TERRIBLE preview pic of them on the blog (how embarrassing!) and then no FILE with the pic (worse!). So I made them over again here for your downloading pleasure. If you like them/can use them or anything.

Abraham Lincoln book quote (Google Drive ... use the Google File-->Download menu to download a copy)

(And of course TODAY when I look a decent copy was easy to find on the blog (but why the Google drive search didn't work I still don't understand but anyway). So if you want Scrappin' Doodles instead of Melonheadz go here.)

Black History Month Quote Mini-Posters (freebie download on TPT)

I have a list of books for Black History Month here. It's FAR from comprehensive and more than a little Kadir Nelson heavy. Any suggestions to add? The post is getting some attention on Pinterest at the moment so I'd like to make the best possible. Keep people around and all.

#IMWAYR Jan 11

It's Monday! What are you Reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at Book Date. It is a great way to recap what you read and/or reviewed the previous week and to plan out your reading and reviews for the upcoming week. It's also a great chance to see what others are reading right now… who knows, you might discover that next “must read” book!
Our Kid Lit to YA version is hosted by Teach Mentor Texts and Unleashing Readers.




Got a little sidetracked this week!

I do love the Finishing School books. They're YA so not for elementary ... just YA readers and up that like humor with mystery and the supernatural. I need to look up the Parasol Protectorate series. Anyway. Going to get back to The Nest (SO Weird ... I don't get it?) and City of Thirst over the coming week. I also have the new James Rollins from the library. I have not loved most of my usual adult book favorite authors lately so I'm a little afraid to start reading. Are my tastes changing or their styles? Long live #kidlit!

Happy reading!

TBT Water Stations

This is back from 2012. They changed our scope and sequence so it's not even this time of year anymore. In fact I'd forgotten about it. But if you can tweak any of it to use be my guest. Pretty easy and we had fun. At least now I'd be singing inside of mostly walls. You can still hear the hallway and if it's quiet they can hear us. But it's not as crazy as it was before! I was nerdily excited to have the author of one of the books we used comment. Sure she just had a Google Alert set up but anyway.


These are just a start but I thought I'd share. Second grade has been coming and doing some of these activities. No one finishes all of them but that's OK, too. Ideas to make them better? Comments, please!

(Nice bulletin board, no? But no. I didn't make it. Thank you to CC licenses and Flickr user MissKPrimary for sharing!)


First of all we started out singing (and, let me tell you, Ms. O is not particularly fond of singing in our library space with no walls, everyone in the school and their dog walking through, and having to use a microphone. Not fond at all. But the kids liked it) from the book There Goes the Water, by Laura Purdie Salas.

Vocabulary: this was an easy way to have them start a simple practice with an online dictionary. We made sure to discuss at the end of the activity what was easier and what was harder about a print versus an electronic dictionary. They totally got it. IF they spelled it perfectly the screen opened right to their definition. That's a big IF.

Storytime: I just picked out a bunch of different picture books that had something to do with water, rain, or snow. Kiddos filled out a story elements organizer.

Non-Fiction Text Features: I have a couple of series that we pulled relevant titles from. The only one I can remember off the top of my head is Bridgestone Books' Weather Update. We just finished talking (in the library, anyway) about text features so this was a good review. The table of contents and indexes are easy to find. Print size is pretty big and there are plenty of captions and pictures to look at.

Bookmark Making: I used the pattern found on Today in First Grade's blog (scroll down just a bit) and copied it at 50% (so that I could get two sets from one sheet of paper). I made a template with four squares (sorry ... don't have that one) that went down half of a sheet of paper set in portrait mode (again, so that I could get two from one sheet ... I copied those onto blue). I precut the snowman squares but you could have kids do that themselves if you're willing to deal with the mess.


So I started making a simple math one for average rainfall. But it never got finished. :/

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday

Tangentially book related ...

My WallyFound calendar is here!



I might actually have a second one. That I will either keep. Or give away. I need to go back to London.

And Ireland.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

#IMWAYR Jan 4

It's Monday! What are you Reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at Book Date. It is a great way to recap what you read and/or reviewed the previous week and to plan out your reading and reviews for the upcoming week. It's also a great chance to see what others are reading right now… who knows, you might discover that next “must read” book!
Our Kid Lit to YA version is hosted by Teach Mentor Texts and Unleashing Readers.




I didn't finish as many this past week.

You can click on the screenshot to go to my actual Goodreads page for a little more info. Mostly YA. The ending of Ember in the Ashes was my favorite. The Undead Road won't necessarily make you a zombie fan but if you already like the genre it was a fun read. I'm thinking I may not be a comic fan cause can't get too excited, even over SW ones. Everything was crazy. Not to spoil but I didn't see parts of it coming!

And I'm actively reading these (got a couple others that I need to just FINISH and stop getting distracted!). The Nest is ... well, to be honest, I find it odd. I like City of Thirst. It's just long.

Currently Jan 2016

Double post on day one. #breakingblogrules
Linking up with Farley.

Waaaaay behind on watching every episode until the new ones. I started with their FB challenge of an episode a day in the summer but 9 seasons? And school? But then again, how much time would that have been wasted? I am on the Christmas episode (with the funny ghosts!) of season 6. Only I forgot to watch the first movie that goes in between.

Returns of TV shows. Sherlock tonight (cause BC is YUMMY!). Downton Abbey on Sunday. And X-Files. Otherwise January would be a big bunch of BLAH, peeps. Stupid cedar pollen even after 22 months of shots and heaven help those who don't get shots,  I'm looking at you.

There is soooo much. Where to start? Lesson planning. Blog improving. READING. Review writing. Exercise. Decluttering. Hobby building. Goal writing. System implementation to achieve those goals.

If you're in TX you know why. I want a sizzling fajita plate. Stat. Actually in a perfect world it would be with Las Palapas corn tortillas. I like their tortillas best, but TC's insides.

Cause that where to start? It's almost over. Some of it done but not enough. Fastest two weeks ever.

I don't always do so well with those. I think last year it was intent. But I didn't put it front and center and of course it got put aside with regular ol' life, and the insomnia and rotten headaches of this year. So focus. Figure out the most important goals and focus on those. Put them front and center. Plan and complete smaller steps along the way. Just have to figure out WHAT those goals might be. I didn't know I would get to go to London in October last January. That was a fun perk along the way. So no overplanning, either.

Only one I know of for sure is ...

Yes, picture books count. I am a teacher librarian, after all.

Finally Friday JAN 1!!!

Wow. Time flies.

So. Click through if anything embedded ends up not coming through.

If you're interested and missed either of them ...

here's the updated Reading Resolutions printable


and here are some New Year's Around the World bookmarks (on TPT but free).




I will be making some of these tomorrow or this weekend. We were supposed to get the screen (one of the things we will display in this "virtual window" are some reading recommendation photo booth pics) installed after school the Friday before break but at the last minute it was nixed by administration. I don't know why, custodial staff were going to be on campus for much longer than the installation vendors. :/ So that will need to be rescheduled.



I actually have a doctor's appointment on Tuesday so I have a sub coming in (used to just be covered by my assistant but luckily the one sub I know of, that covered when I went on my TRIP!, was available). It's for a neurologist appointment that I had to wait three months for. Think he can figure out how to make it easier to sleep? And get less terrible, horrible, no good, very bad headaches? SO DUMB cause they already did all the scary MRI and blood testing and of course that came back totally clear. Someone backed into my car and left during the blood testing but oh well. I feel silly because they'll probably say "stress less." Duh, I know.



This is for fun. Or to go with the resolutions (I actually just ordered Squirrel's New Year's Resolutions but I haven't read it yet. Any good?).


Here are a couple screen shot previews of "My Year In Books."