Nursery Reveal!

So...I promised I'd return with an update about our nursery for those that are interested.

This is one side of the room. I made the name bunting on the crib myself. The tree is vinyl, and the walls are gray (a bit lighter than they appear in this picture.) We are going for a modern forest theme. 

The animal art above the crib is from Etsy. We're keeping her name secret for now! I also need to add the crib bumpers and a mobile to the crib, but we haven't gotten them yet.

The changing table here next to the crib has a chalkboard above it that I made myself. Her name is written at the top, and I will be updating the chalkboard each month with stats about her. I got the idea from my BBB over at Where the Wild Things Learn. 

These are the built in shelves that were already in the room. We figured they'd be great for diaper and other supply storage for now. 

This is the other side of the room. Obviously we still need a diaper pail, a clothes hamper, etc. But most of the decorating is done! 

I'm really proud of this frame that I made from scratch! The art inside can be changed out with the mini-clothespins. I made the artwork inside myself as well! 

I have been doing stained glass as a hobby now for a couple months, and I made these two stained glass suncatchers for the nursery. I drew the designs myself too!

I made these little felt animals for the room myself, and my wife and I made the terrarium together. 

It's hard to believe that there are only 2 months to go until we get to meet our daughter. There's a TON left to do, but at least she has a pretty room to sleep in! 

:)

Big News!

So...I've been gone for a little while. BUT I've got the best reason ever!

We are soooo excited. Just about 2 more months to wait before we can hold our little girl! We have to stay in MO for a couple weeks after her birth for the interstate paperwork to go through. Living in a hotel for a couple weeks isn't ideal, but it will be worth it!

I'll be sure to post an update soon to show off the nursery that has been taking up all of my time! And I'll also be sure to make an actual blog post soon too!

Adoption Update for January 2015

I wanted to share a quick update on our adoption progress! We are happy to say that we have reached the point where we are completely qualified to adopt. All the paperwork has gone through, we've received a copy of our finished home study, and we've started applying for birthmother situations. So far we've tried to match with four birthmothers. We haven't been selected yet, but are hopeful that we will be matched soon. It is pretty much out of our hands at this point!

Now that we've kind of reached a waiting point in the process, we decided to go ahead and put some effort into some of the things we can control...like nursery furniture! We emptied out the room we'll be using as our nursery, and plan to paint it soon. We've purchased a crib, dresser, and changing table too. We were wary about "jinxing" ourselves at first, but decided that was silly. And with the sometimes alarmingly close due dates that some of the birthmothers have, we figured we should be prepared at least at a basic level for the potential of a sudden arrival!

I can't promise that our nursery will end up anywhere near as cute as this one, that my friend Amelia set up. But I'm hopeful that our gender-neutral forest theme will be somewhat cute. My wife is not the decorator of the house, which leaves the task to me...so we'll see!

And thank you to all of my readers and to anyone who has ever purchased anything from my store. Every cent of my earnings have gone towards this adoption, and as of right now my earnings have managed to cover about 70% of the total estimated cost! My wife and I literally wouldn't even have had the opportunity to adopt with TpT.

New Year's Resolution Progress?

This year I decided to keep it simple with my New Year's Resolutions. I wanted them to be attainable, and something I could stick to pretty easily. 

The first was to blog at least twice a month. I've found that the craziness of the school year really puts a crimp in my blogging style! Haha. I find myself wanting to blog about more things than I end up making time for. Blogging is important to me, and I want to make sure that it remains a priority. I think I can do it!

The second was more personal. I've found myself snoring a bit more, and that basically translates to me putting the pounds back on that I successfully lost over the summer! Once again, a priority has gone to the wayside to make more time for teaching. This one is a little trickier...but I decided the most realistic thing I could do right now is to walk more!

The good news? I found a way to gamify it! It's an app called "The Walk," I love stories and games, so finding this app has been a really cool way to motivate me to keep walking. Basically, the more you walk, the more of the story you unlock! I was skeptical at first as to how good the story would be, but it is actually really entertaining!

Without ruining the story, you are basically tasked with delivering a world-saving device to the other end of England. An EMP has gone off, and you are forced to walk to make the delivery. By the end of the app you will have walked the entire length of England. Every few minutes of walking, you unlock another one to two minutes of audio story. Pretty cool, huh? 

So far it has been working well for me. I look forward to getting a chance to walk so that I can find out what happens next!

Now that we are a couple weeks into the new year, how are your resolutions coming?

A Personal Narrative - My Middle School Candy Empire

I recently attended a workshop on teaching writing. As part of the workshop we were tasked with writing a personal narrative. We brainstormed the ideas for our narratives by drawing a map of our neighborhood and then noting on the map where some of the interesting memories that popped up in our minds occurred. 

Since I took the time to write it, I thought I'd post my narrative here for anyone with a burning desire to get to know me a little better! Please forgive the fact that I have only mildly edited the piece for any typos/errors. I was afraid that if I edited too much that I might be tempted to change the story! Sadly, this entire story is true. Haha.

When I was in 4th grade I managed to hobble together ten dollars and seventy cents that I had earned from odd jobs. I had been saving it up for quite a while for a specific purpose. I had a plan. Months before I had noticed that the Wal-Mart down the street from my house had 10 lb bags of jolly ranchers for sale for $10. At one buck a pound I knew that was a great deal, and I saw great potential in that colorful bag of sugar.

I walked up to the check out counter with my money and the giant bag of jolly ranchers, and the tired looking checkout lady said, "How you gonna eat all this candy, boy?" I nervously chirped, "Oh, it's not for me," slapped my money down on the counter and rushed away before the receipt was even finished printing. I lugged the bag all the way home in my bookbag and hid it in the closet in my room. The next morning I took out a handful of jolly ranchers and headed to school. 

In my first class I showed the handful to a few kids around me and whispered, "10 cents." Before I knew it I had sold out of the jolly ranchers, making the fastest dollar I've ever made. That dollar could buy me another pound of jolly ranchers, and it had only taken a fraction of that to make. But even better, I had a feeling of exhilaration that I normally didn't have in school. That first taste of doing something sneaky while making money, yet not hurting anyone, was just the beginning of a quickly growing addiction. 

Over the course of the next couple weeks I quickly sold out of the entire ten pound bag of jolly ranchers. I never ate a single one. I saw that candy as a stack of money, and the idea of eating away my money was abhorrent. By this point I had accumulated a huge stack of comic books, and a couple of new games for my Nintendo. I'd also found a new problem...where to put all the coins? And I couldn't keep paying for my comics in coins; The old man at the comic shop was starting to get suspicious. I finally figured out that if I rolled them up I could exchange them for bills at the Wal-Mart, though the thought of having to buy the little paper rolls bothered me. By this point I had started to get requests for other types of candy, so I took some of my profits up to the store and bought more jolly ranchers, now-and-laters, sour gum, and atomic warheads. The checkout ladies always gave me the strangest looks, but I didn't care. 

At one point in my journey from small-time candy pusher to candy kingpin, my mom discovered my wad of cash and asked me where I had gotten it. She feared the worst, that I'd been stealing it or doing something else unsavory to earn it. I had no choice but to come clean about my growing candy empire. Surprisingly, she wasn't upset, instead I think she was impressed by my entrepreneurial spirit. 

In the coming months, I noticed a few copycat businesses appearing. One kid sold commissioned drawings for a dollar each. Another sold his cootie catchers and other origami creations. I saw other business go from birth to death in a matter of a week or two. No one could compete with candy. And for some reason, no one chose to try and compete with me in my business. I had a monopoly. November was my enemy. The first few weeks following Halloween were the worst. Demand had slumped so low that I couldn't give my candy away. By the end of Thanksgiving break I was back in business though!

I continued to grow my candy empire, under the radar, over the course of the next 3 years. Somehow I never got caught by the school administration or teachers, and they never figured out where all the candy was coming from. (Or if they did, they decided not to intervene.) As the business grew beyond my ability to manage, I enlisted the help of my best friend. I realized that by expanding my territory into other classrooms, I was increasing my profits exponentially. By the end of 8th grade I had two employees in each of the grades below me selling candy and keeping five cents for every quarter they made. I passed out the candy to my minions before school each day, and collected my cut at lunch and after school. Profits were handed over due to a mixture of the honor system and a bit of intimidation. If I felt I was being cheated, a kid would be cut off from the "family" and couldn't sell OR buy candy. Only one kid ever crossed me, and he quickly learned the error of his ways the next day at lunch when the rest of us were all counting our coins and he realized he'd lost out on future profits by stubbornly keeping one day's worth. 

Thanks to my complete lack of respect for the "No candy in school" rule, for most of my middle school career I was rich (by kid standards) in my neighborhood! I spent most of the money on school lunch, video games, and comic books. To this day, it's still the easiest money I've ever made! I'll always remember the last day of 8th grade, when I handed the business over to my most trusted 7th grade employee. He shook my hand with both of his, with tears in his eyes, and so ended my career as Don of the Rothschild Candy Empire.

A couple ways I've motivated my kids this week.

As usual, it's been a busy week! I'm sharing a couple of the things I've done this week to help Spark Student Motivation. Check in with Joanne over at Head Over Heels for Teaching to see more! 

Reading

Recently, I ended up with one of those weird 20 minute blocks to fill due to special events being planned in the middle of my reading block. I've been noticing that some of my kids' book bins have been a little light on back-up books, and that there have been a lot of kids trying to book shop during Read-to-Self. 

I don't allow them to book shop when they're supposed to be reading, so this is a problem. I decided to take advantage of the time by having an old-fashioned Book Look a la Donalyn Miller (The Book Whisperer). If you're not familiar with the concept, it's simple! You select a set of books that you think your kids should read for one reason or another, and your kids sit in a circle passing the books to the left after looking at them for about 45 seconds. By the end of the 20 minutes every kiddo has been exposed to 20+ new book options. At the end of the Book Look I give the kids the opportunity to add the books to their bins if they found one or two that interested them. If two people want a book, we Rock, Paper, Scissors for first dibs. At the end of this Book Look 18 books (all classics that are worth reading no matter who you are!) found their way into a book bin...some with waiting lists attached! 

Math

I've talked recently about one of the cool things going on in my math class, but I haven't talked as much about how much it really motivates my kids. 

In the past I've done Monster Math Battles to cover a lot of different math skills in class. This year I looped up with my kiddos, and even though they begged me to do another Monster Math Tournament, I wanted to do something different. Two of the biggest skills we've covered so far are multi-digit multiplication and long division. This is something the kids just need lots of practice with. 

I've never seen my kids more motivated
to practice math skills!

I knew I wanted to make it more than just boring practice, so that's why I took my Monster Math Battle approach to it, with a twist! I made it a battle between Ninjas and Samurais! My kids love it! They literally beg to see who will be "fighting" the next day. They can't WAIT to do the math problems to find out who wins each battle. They're totally clueless that I'm tricking them into doing the math. There are 5 battles in each pack, and both packs are available as a bundle for $4. If you like the idea, check out my Monster Math Battles, which come with a full 31 battle tournament in a bunch of different skills. 

In other exciting news, my wife and I finally got our printed hard copies of our Adoption profile. We used a website called Mixbook.com. I am super pleased with the results. The pages are thick, glossy, and very well bound. Honestly, they are of a better quality than the school yearbook! Considering this is probably one of the most important documents I've ever designed in my life...I was really nervous. We actually went with a local printer at first, but were very disappointed. Luckily, the local printer told us we didn't have to pay for the ones they made because that prompted me to try out Mixbook. Now...we just wait for the right birthmother to look through one of these! 

In the meantime...grab this up while you can! It'll only be available for a few more weeks! Many of the products are fall themed, so would be great to use in the coming weeks. 

Five for Friday - 10/10

I'm FINALLY chiming in with a Five for Friday!

1.

I know this excuse is probably getting a little tired, but I've been super busy getting everything ready for our adoption home study. There was a bunch of paperwork to prepare, and of course we had to get our house in order. I have to say, one benefit of this whole process is that my house is now cleaner than it was when we moved into it! The good news is that the home visit for the home study is complete! Our caseworker stopped by last Friday and interviewed us, collected our paperwork, and toured our home. She said that we were more prepared than anyone she's worked with! Hurray! The home study has to be written up by her and submitted, but it is safe to say that we passed! We've already started to get information about some birthmothers, though I must admit the situations we've seen so far have not been a good match for us. 

Done!

But, the positive thing is that my home is finally back in order, the construction on the basement and bathroom are totally done, the paperwork is collected, and now we just have to sit and wait for the right birthmother to come along. We'll definitely be learning patience in the coming months! I think the waiting with nothing to make progress on is actually harder  than working on a to-do list of things!

2.

On the school front, we've got a lot going on too! We're studying healthy habits in science right now. I wanted to share this cool game all about the new MyPlate stuff that the government has made to replace the Food Pyramid. It's called Blast Off and it is a great way for kids to practice making healthy food choices.

3.

One of my favorite questions to answer is "What are we reading?" I thought I'd share my plan for our class read alouds. I use my read-alouds as part of my mini-lesson and as models for teaching the CAFE strategies.

We just finished The Year of Billy Miller, and the kids loved it! We'll be finishing up Dear Mr. Henshaw next week, and the kids can't wait to find out what happens. I'll be going a different route with Lulu and the Brontosaurus next. It's a fun book with a unique structure that I hope will serve as a little break after a more serious book. Finally, I'm really anxious to begin our novel study of The Invention of Hugo Cabret! 

I've also been working on several new things for my Math Workshop that I thought I'd share. The first is our current project based learning project. It's all about making a lemonade stand. The kids have been really enjoying it. The kids have taken the profits from their original stands and built new stands to make Lemonade Empires! We're finishing up the project this week. 

I also made this fun version of the popular game Battleship. The kids play the game just like normal, only the grid where they place their boats is a multiplication table! It has been a great way for them to practice their multiplication facts...something they always seem to need a lot of work on! This game is available in my store for just a buck! Go grab it up!

4.

My PTO has started a new tradition that I'm in love with! Free Coffee Friday! Every Friday morning the PTO sets up a big carafe of coffee with a selection of flavored creamers. It saves me the time of making my own coffee that morning, and the different flavors of creamer are great too. This led to the discovery that most of the people in line before me were mixing their creamer in inefficiently. When I showed them my simple method, they loved it...so I figured I'd share it with you as my latest Lifehack for Teachers!

5.

This year I've been honored with (and I'm not being sarcastic, I really DO see it as an honor) the task of mentoring two first year teachers in my building. It has been great working with them and my yearlong intern from Penn State. I feel like mentoring is a great way to push yourself to stay on top of your game and to push yourself further. I mostly just get to answer a lot of their questions, help them set up their workshops, and I share my lesson plans with them to serve as a guide/starting point. I'll also be doing some Peer Coaching and observing in their classrooms, which I'm really looking forward to. We talked a lot lately about whether our "espoused teaching platform" matches our actual "platform in action." For those that are unfamiliar with that lingo, you probably know it as your "philosophy of education." 

These discussions have made me think a lot about what my espoused platform is (what I SAY I believe about teaching) and what my platform in action is (what I am actually DOING in the classroom). The goal of course is for those two things to match. I think I'm doing a pretty good job with that, but I have definitely had some things to reflect on. Most of my reflections have all gone back to something to do with time. Mainly, could I use my time in better ways? I spend a lot of time making fun math games, making projects for my kids, spicing up our bland science and social studies units, devising interesting writing lessons, and making individualized strategy group plans for reading groups. I believe all of those things are important, but I've started to realize more and more that the work hours I've been imposing on myself for the first 14 years of my career are not reasonable, and will not be realistic once I have a child. 

A professor I know made the point that no other professional
sees more than one client at a time. Doctors see one patient,
and Lawyers see one client, an hour or so at a time. Teachers
see 20-30 at once, all day...and are meeting all of their needs.

So, what's going to give? Will I allow myself to let something give? I've reached that point in my career where I feel relatively confident in my ability to teach well...but I am always trying to be better. It goes against my instinct, but I guess I need to give myself permission sometimes to let something be "good enough" so that I can be sure to take care of the rest of the things in my life! I'm sure this is something all teachers have dealt with. What are your experiences with this? How do you decide when something has to give, or is "good enough?"

Be sure to stop by Doodlebug Teaching to check out the other Five for Fridays!

Big Announcement for Us!

So, this post is purely personal, no great teaching tips, products to share, or book reviews here...but I did want to let all of you know some big news for my little two-person family.

We are finally taking the plunge and have begun the journey to adopt our first (and very possibly only!) child. For the last seven years it's just been the two of us kickin' around in this house and we're hoping to grow our family by one as soon as possible. 

The process is a long, nerve-wracking, and expensive one. A domestic infant adoption can cost between 30-50,000 smackeroos. But every journey starts with a few small steps! And that's where many of you guys came in...

Whether you knew it or not, you guys have been helping us take steps for the last year and a half! Any time you have purchased one of my products, or even given me a good rating on a freebie, you've been helping our journey get started. Every cent of my Teacher pay Teachers earnings have been going into our adoption fund. In fact, that has been my motivation for all the work I've put in since day one! And now I'm proud to share that I recently hit the first TpT milestone! That's an amazing start (we're halfway there!) to the unfortunate high expense involved with this journey. 
So, THANK YOU!

We realized that we didn't have a single
working smoke detector! YIKES!
I'll be installing these new smoke and
CO detectors all over the house soon!

All of the flooding and set backs we've had with our house has been really discouraging. One of the adoption requirements is a home study, and with the state of our flooded house, we had to get that fixed. But last week, as many of you know, my dad and I put in 7 fourteen hour work days to put things back in order! We got most of it corrected, and luckily I only spent about a third of what it would have cost me to hire someone to help. 

It was still a financial setback...but we have decided that if we keep waiting for the "financially right time"...we could be waiting forever. So, we're trusting that God will provide, going into debt a bit, and we've taken the plunge and started the official process this past Saturday! 

We've started working with an agency, and have learned about all the things that we need to get in order to be matched with a birth mother. A lot of it is pretty standard stuff, like getting clearances, but there's also a doctor's appointment to prove we have normal life expectancies, a TON of paperwork to collect, the home visits (which means lots of cleaning and finishing the construction), the interviews by the caseworker, we have to write autobiographies, get letters of recommendation, make our profile(kind of like online-dating), and yada yada yada. It's a bit overwhelming...

This is the first piece of homework,
reading through this massive
information packet, and getting
all of our preliminary paperwork
together.

It's also a bit scary because the timeline is so unsure! We could get everything together, complete our home study, and find a match super quick...or it could take months to a year to find a match. I'm a little jealous of most people's pre-determined 9-month timelines.

But like I said...small steps!

I was wary about sharing my reasons for TpT'ing...but some of my BBBs out there convinced me to share the good news...and I really did want to thank all of you, whether you've bought something from me, or whether you've given a rating, pinned something from my blog, or even if you've just helped motivate me to keep writing this blog by commenting or reading my posts. It still amazes me how blessed we are that TpT is making something like this possible. With our salaries, it frankly wouldn't be possible otherwise. 

I'll be sure to include updates about our journey as we move along it! Thanks for reading!

Five for Friday - Sore muscles, a big sale, and a giveaway!

After a LONG week of basement and bathroom remodeling, I'm exhausted! But I'm still taking a moment before I collapse from exhaustion to chime in for Five for Friday by Doodle Bugs Teaching!

1.

It's hard to believe that it's already Back to School time! I'm excited to be seeing some of my old 3rd grade kiddos as my new 4th graders! It should really help with all of that beginning of the year rules and expectation setting stuff. Only half the kids need to be caught up to speed! I am lucky that I still have a couple weeks until the kids come back. I have a LOT to do! I've got to finish this remodel AND get ready for the new year! 

The basement is almost totally drywalled! I now have more tools than Home Depot. And the bathroom is...unusable so far! I'm hoping to wrap up most of the work by this weekend!

2.

The best part about Back to School time is that this is the perfect time to fill your online shopping cart and save a bundle of money! That's right, the TpT Back to School Sale is happening next Monday, August 4th and Tuesday the 5th. 

Everything in my store will be marked 20% off! Then, use the code BTS14 to get an ADDITIONAL 10% off! 

3.

Need some ideas of what to buy? Here are the two most wishlisted items in my store:

My Wonder Novel Study Unit is 174 pages long! If you haven't read this book yet then you're doing yourself a serious disservice! Be sure to check out my unit for the companion novel/sequel The Julian Chapter too!

One of my favorite products is my second most wishlisted! The Book of Awesome Tasks is a half-page book that you can make for your kids. Test their creativity and make them do a little work without them realizing it! My kids love the book, especially during rainy indoor recess days! 

And I hope you'll peruse the rest of my store too. I have a lot of dollar items that'll be a steal during the sale, over 20 freebies up for download all the time, and a ton of other great things, all in the 3-5 buck range...super cheap during the sale! All of the money I make in my store goes to a really great cause! I'll be sharing more about that later!

4.

Of course, I'm not going to miss my chance to grab up some things. One thing I'm especially looking forward to is the 4th Grade Math Bundle from Jessica Scott's TpT store. You might know Jessica from her blog, I {heart} Recess!

I'll be teaching 4th grade math for the first time this year (I taught 3rd last year) and I need all the help I can get! This set currently includes 5 products, but if you buy it now at the cheaper price you can re-download it later when the 6th product is added!

Check out some other products you might like to buy!

An InLinkz Link-up

5.

Now that you've seen some cool stuff to buy, here's a chance to get a gift card to help you get those things!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Five for Fourth of July!

Happy Fourth of July! 

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday!

1.

This is what our 4th Fest looks like...

How do you all celebrate the 4th? I know a lot of people get really into going to a huge fireworks display, or have a picnic or BBQ...but Killer B and I have always been a bit more laid back. We usually buy a few rockets and roman candles to set off for our dogs to watch, and that's about it! Woohoo!

Seriously though, we're almost always visiting family in Atlanta around this time of year, so it's hard to do too much.

It's kind of a bummer that this holiday is in the summer. It'd be a lot of fun to celebrate it with the kids at school. There are so many cool things you could do with them too! 

2.

Don't forget to stop by and enter this giveaway! Today's the last day to enter! There are lots of great prizes to be won!

3.

I'm sharing my favorite font of all time today! It's one I made a while back for the express purpose of using only a little ink. I make a lot of my bigger TpT files using this font. It's called Nick's Typewriter because it's my handwriting in typewriter style letters. Grab it up for free! 

4.

Not at all related to the Fourth of July, but I'm getting excited about the Institute on Academic Differentiation I'll be attending in a couple of weeks at the University of Virginia! The leader of the institute is Carol Ann Tomlinson. The workshops are all about things like flexible grouping, mindset, close reading, teaching up for complexity, etc. The institute is offered at two levels, and I'm excited to be going to the more advanced version because I hopefully won't have to worry about any of the workshops being too introductory. 

Monticello is right next door! I'm looking forward to
marking this site off of my must-see list!

Spending a week away from my lovely wife, while doing teachery things in the summer is sure to be a challenge...but luckily I'll have some good company! My principal and another teacher from my team are going with me! They're both cool, so I'm sure dinners and after workshop activities will be fun too. This is one of the few times that being a male teacher in elementary pays off by the way...can you say "hotel room to myself?" I can! I can finally snore all I want without Killer B punching me in my sleep!

Hopefully if the jealousy I have of all my BBBs who are going to the TpT Conference in Vegas hasn't worn off by then, this'll help.

5.

Just for fun I thought I'd put some of the patriotic products in my TpT store on sale for Independence Day! Actually they're on sale all weekend. I also put all of my Kaboom math games on sale too, because you know... kaboom... like fireworks!

So grab some stuff at 20% off and let's help stimulate the American economy together! ;)

Here's a few of my favorites that are on sale:

The full list of all 10 on sale items can be seen here:

My BBB Emily over at I Love My Classroom is also having a sale!

Enjoy your weekend!