Busy Bee's

February has been such a busy month. I know it even looks like I managed to post twice in one day, the truth is that I wrote that post last week and finally finished it today. Haha. So let's break down February thus far.

 The first weekend of the month was Grants pharmacy school formal. It was fun but every year I have the exact same thoughts: these people are going to be doctors?! I mean that lightheartedly, I really do. Everyone needs to have fun but this is a set of people that sure know how to do it.

So, right after my birthday is Grant's on the 9th. I know, I know... It's a bit weird being the older woman by 4 whole days. I was so excited after googling ideas for cakes and what our cake baker was able to come up with. The lady that made Grant's birthday cake is the same that is going to make our wedding cake. We wanted to try out potential wedding cake flavors and man oh man, it was yummy. I can't give everything away. After all you've seen several things but I can't tell you the cake flavor! Haha.

After the cake and other things we went out for the evening which was fun. We were excited because we were supposed to see one of our favorite bands play but it something happened that they couldn't make it. The band that replaced them was pretty terrible but the 2 for 1 drinks helped to make up for it. We ended up having a decent enough time that the night ended up in Grant putting Buddha in Cory's fish tank.

He was quite proud of this accomplishment. Buddha has quite a story of his own. I am happy to report that he will be living with Cory after Grant and I get married.

Earlier in the day we met up with Grant's grandfather, "pappy". Pappy is such a sweet man. He heard that I was looking for a Hoosier Cabinet and low and behold he is completely refinishing one for me as a birthday present. I am SO stinking excited. Here's a picture of the base.

It's being stripped of the old paint then it will be repainted it's original colors. White on the outside and a green color on the inside. I am all over vintage so I am SUPER excited. I love how this one has the two center drawers. I haven't seen one quite like it. I wish I had a picture of the top cabinet, it is lovely with glass doors. Every kitchen we have had has seriously lacked cabinet space so I am looking forward to extra storage space. I am thinking of keeping all of my baking stuff in the bottom. I haven't quite figured out how to best use the tops. My mother-in-law to be uses hers for spices and cookbooks. I suppose we shall see once it is finished and in place. I cannot believe how lucky I am to have found not only such a great husband to be but great in laws as well.

Last but not least- Valentines day:
I made my kiddo's these Pinterest inspired treats.

You know 5th graders... A good majority of them loved them and a few could care less.

Today I only worked a half day. It turns out that I have strep. My students love to share all of the wrong things. Haha.

Birthday Fun

So here I am... 10 days into being 25. A whole quarter of a century old. ~9,128 days I've been "living this life" as a co-teachers 7 year old daughter would put it. It's funny how in days it just doesn't seem so long. I must admit it's all a bit scary.

There's this fleeting feeling that I'm supposed to feel like an adult and do all of these things. I cant figure out what "things" that I feel like I'm not doing. Most of them I am doing. I have my "career", I'm getting married, we're looking for an apartment... now I just need to collect the $200 after we pass GO on the game board. That's how it works right?

Anywho, let's get back on track here. My students made my birthday very exciting. I have bible study with one of my students moms so he knew it was my birthday and brought me a balloon! So darn sweet, right?! Well that balloon was the trigger for the rest of the festivities that ensued. I received several renditions of the happy birthday song, hugs, a shout out from my students on the school wide morning announcements, and some of the best and most meaningful birthday cards ever.

After school I went over to Harrisonburg to go to Blue Ridge Hearing to talk about hearing aids. I know, I know, so exciting on a birthday. I got molded for my nano and everything only to find out that my insurance won't cover anything and my parents only covers $600.00. I was banking on paying $600.00 not the 1,900.00 that I need to come up with to cover the difference. If I wasn't paying for wedding things as well this wouldn't be such a big deal but at this moment it is. I'm pretty bummed but oh well, what are you going to do. Here's a picture of all of the fun the ear mold was. It pretty much felt like they pumped mashed potatoes in my ear. So strange.

For those of you that come here for the tympanoplasty information, since that seems to have the most hits, here's another update for you. Do not let this discourage you! I just have not had a chance to blog about this recently because quite frankly, I am not sure how to process it. My tympanoplasty surgery was a complete success. I no longer have a gaping hole where an eardrum should be and my hearing did improve some afterward. Here is where my problem lies. My hearing did not improve, or steadily improve as much as we thought it might. From that point my doctor wanted to determine what was causing a decrease in hearing. We agreed that it might be fluid as my ear often felt full so I tried nasal sprays and allergy pills out the wazoo to try to get my Eustachian tube to open but no such luck. Our next thing to try was a CAT scan. That my dears revealed it all. Turns out I have dehiscence of the semi circular canal. My friends, that in itself deserves its own blog post explanation.

Mom and dad took me to dinner at Texas Roadhouse. I absolutely LOVE their loaded sweet potatoes and any cut of steak they serve. To end my day I celebrated by giving myself my first ever lice treatment. Yet another teacher perk! Never found a one but I could only be paranoid about it for so long so I just gave in and it was well worth the 20 dollars for the peace of mind.

Let me leave you with a lighthearted perfect example of how Grant and I must really be becoming real adults:

Yup, we have conversations about vegetables people... conversations. about. vegetables.

Insert quarter life crisis here

A REAL Snow Day

2 in fact! These qualify as the first real snow days I have ever had as a teacher.

What do teachers do on their day off?

Well, what a splendid question. We lounge around in bed all day and eat bonbons of course! FALSE! Perhaps some get to, in fact I hope they do. I woke up at the normal 5:30 and was about to get in the shower when I just had this little tickle of an idea to look out the window before I hopped in the shower. No, no, no, I told myself... I would have gotten a phone call and it would just be a waste of time and a let down. Luckily the child in me just had to peek anyway and low and behold BAM *insert glittery white beautiful snow seen through the eyes of a babe*. It's sad when you check social media for school closures before you check news stations. WAY FASTER. I must admit it was a bit of a roller coaster ride. First udder jubilation at the thought of climbing back in my warm bed then all of the fun fizzled out when I realized our next make up day would use up our ONLY teacher work day in February. Call me crazy but work days like that save my sanity and give me a day to clean my classroom. Oh well, extra ZZZzzzZZZ's sounded okay however, there were none to be found. Emma was determined that I was supposed to be up. I even went as far as to shut her out but then she proceeded to meow persistently until I let her back in. Once back in she and D.C. decided that it was playtime and romped and played for the half an hour I attempted to sleep. Finally I gave up and decided to take a shower and get on with the day. When I came back in this is what I found...

Go figure...Oh well. Anywho. I did managed to get several school things done and Pinterest some school and wedding ideas. While on Pinterest I found a wonderful recipe for Skinny Chocolate Chip Buttermilk Scones. I must say they were pretty amazing and super easy to make. They were barely out of the oven 5 minutes before they were devoured. I must admit I had two myself.

Ingredients:
3/4 c cold buttermilk (if you don't have buttermilk search online, I have read that you can add vinegar to milk to make buttermilk)
1/4 c sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1 c all purpose flour
1 c white whole wheat flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp chilled butter cut into small pieces
3/4 c chocolate chips
1 egg white lightly beaten
sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix together the first 4 ingredients and set to the side. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Using a pastry blender cut in chilled butter until the mixture is coarsely mixed together. Fold in chocolate chips. Slowly add in milk mixture stirring just until moist. Knead lightly four times with floured hands.

On greased or parchment lined cookie sheet form dough into a nine inch circle, about 3/4 inch thick. Using a knife or pizza cutter cut dough into twelve wedges all the way through. Brush with egg white and sprinkle evenly with sugar. Bake 18-20 minutes until golden brown. Best served right out of the oven with a cup of coffee or tea

If you're looking for the link click the following: Skinny Chocolate Chip Buttermilk Scones

Also made some homemade granola. That's a recipe still being tweaked.  Anyone have a recipe for granola that you love?

I managed to be a big girl an get my car inspected on my very own today. Go me! Tomorrow I plan to head to Maryland to shop for the last two bridesmaid dresses and for Grant to look at tuxes. I am so happy to be getting things done!

Snow Day! (Almost)

Well, halfway. There is no snow to be seen as of yet. We had an early release at 1 o'clock, yippie! Now I'm getting all cozy and building a fire before settling down to pay it forward in a way....

"Pay it forward?" you may ask. Yes, pay it forward. The internet has provided me with so much inspiration on my newest school project this year, math journaling, that I thought I would share what I have done to maybe help someone else out.  Last year we used power points and cloze notes which was all fine and dandy but just didn't feel like me. Some people said I was crazy when I mentioned journaling and sometimes with the cutting and pasting it can seem a bit crazy but after a few go arounds and getting organized it has defiantly paid off. My students enjoy journaling because they have a book that they have created. I also find that they actually use it as a reference where as before the notes ended up in the trash or lost in their binder. If they are smart they will take it to 6th grade with them; I won't hold my breath on that one though. So, here is everything I have done so far. Feel free to use anything you like :-)

I have 2 journals. One for my homeroom one for my second period. Some people have one that they plan their journal out in. I tried that and decided that it's just too much work. I like letting it flow and adding what is needed as we go. Plus in my mind if you are typing out pages you already have a guideline for how everything is going to play out. 

 My title page. One the first day of school we set up our notebooks. Each student was able to decorate their own title page however they wished; it just had to include their name. We then set up our table of contents, there are 2 pages front and back of this, and finally the math journal contract. I found this online and apologize to the person who I owe credit to because I have lost the link.

Place Value- Sometimes things were fill in the blank and we filled them in together. 

 I am flipbook obsessed and love making them for some odd reason. Luckily my kiddos love them too.

 Decimals

 We paused decimals to hit on multiplication for a bit that way we could continue with the multiplication of decimals. I am thankful to have a great teammate who comes up with journaling pages too.

 Notice the lattice multiplication at the bottom. Oh my gee, I LOVE LATTICE MULTIPLICATION! If you have not used it before you need to seriously check it out. It makes life so much easier.

 Distributive Property

 Word Problems

 Ordered Pairs

 Graphing

 Stem and Leaf

 Mean Median Mode and Range

 For this page I handed out different objects to different groups IE frogs, coins, beans, etc. Then we found the mean, median, mode or range for each so that they would have a worked out example.

 Circles

 This one didn't turn out quite like I had plan because I got lazy. Originally I planned to use a brad and two pieces of laminated paper on the top half of the page to create a space where they could make the different types of angles. I took too long debating whether or not the brads were going to pull through or mess up the rest of the pages. Instead we just drew pictures of each of the types of angles and left it at that.

 Triangles

 Isosceles is my favorite, my little ice cream cone

 Variables

 Order of Operations

And that leaves us off to where we are now, order of operations land whose page came off of pinterest land somewhere. If I can figure out how to add downloadable worksheets so that you could print them off. If anyone could explain this to me that would be grand! My students math journals are a lot more colorful. They have time to color and add drawings while I am often running around helping my students who need help cutting or writing. 

This is how I store all of my things for journaling. During the back to school sales I picked up these pencil cases for 10 cent each. Inside of each there are scissors, colored pencils, crayons and a glue stick; everything they could possibly need for journaling. Each box is numbered for a reason. Originally they were unnumbered and each period would just grab a box. This ended in disaster and boxes being super messy and missing materials on a daily basis. Nothing is more annoying than someone complaining of a messy box or missing material when they were just as guilty of creating a mess themselves. Now boxes are numbered so they grab their according box (each student has a number based on their place in the alphabet). This makes them responsible for the box. If the next period finds a messy box it is easy to pinpoint who it was and their task is to then come in at the end of the day and straighten up all of the boxes to make sure they have all of the needed supplies. No one wants to do this so it has yet to be a problem. 

Last but not least is my RI creation. I decided to make a "math quilt" type of assignment. Students have an assignment list that goes with the quilt page. They have 5 weeks during RI time to complete the assignments. As each assignment is completed they color in the corresponding number on the quilt page. I am hoping this cuts down on the "Ms. Jenkins, what do I do nowwwww?!?!?!" questions that seem to happen every day during this time even though there is a list on the board. When I am working in small group it makes it very hard to re-direct someone and keep my groups attention. You all know how it goes, or perhaps I'm the only one with that problem! There are 23 assignments that are all kept in a crate (pictured below) and numbered as to what assignment it is. Smaller tiles blocks equal smaller assignments and larger blocks equal larger more difficult assignments. I anticipate this to last 5 weeks or so (hopefully) which is great because that means I do not have to plan for RI for the next 5 weeks! Go me! The other big bonus to this is that I used leftover worksheets from this year and last year so that I did not have to create anything new.