I got my test scores back for the Praxis II and I passed!
(Remember when i thought i bombed it? I got a much better score than I thought I'd get)
Doing the Happy Dance because I don't have to retake it after-all!
Woot woot
May 302008
Apr 292008
I recently came across a teacher blog that often has cool links, etc. A few days ago, the blogger behind the CoolCatTeacherBlog celebrated a birthday and put together this great list of cool internet services to check out. It looks like there are some great links, so I wanted to share.
- Songbird – This is THE cool opensource alternative to iTunes and it is connected with Skreemr, the music search engine.
- Timebridge – This scheduling system plugs into google calendar
or outlook and lets you invite people to a meeting, select four time
alternatives, and then it books the meeting time that everyone can
attend and puts it on your calendar. It reminds them and it rocks!! - Get Atomic Learning Free for 3 months —
- Diigo – This cool tool has transformed my bookmarking, blogging, sharing, and twittering. Install it, set it up to send to your delicious account.
To get the most out of it, you definitely should use firefox and install the cute little bookmarklets. This is a definite tool for those writing papers!
- Zoho Notebook
– This notebooking service completely and utterly rocks! Zohonotebook
gives you the ability to EMBED video and web pages as well as snag
notes from many places. It is an amazing tool! (Check out some of the pages I demoed in a workshop a while back.) - Google Forms – Google spreadsheets has a cute little tool hidden in the Share tab, the ability to create a form. We’re using this for the Horizon Project
managers to submit their weekly reports. It is so fast and easy and a
great way to pull information into a spreadsheet. I even have my
national honor society students entering their service time for me into
the spreadsheet. - Firefox
- If you’re still stuck in Internet Explorer, you simply must try
firefox. Give yourself a present! The plug ins are incredible. My
favorites are: the diigo plug in, technorati tag plug in, - Twitter – Again, try this one. Some say they don’t "have time for twitter" or don’t "get it." Just sign up, add me
as a friend, and then go in and see whose talking to me, add some who
sound interesting and then reply to their messages by saying @theirID
– so to reply to me, you’d say @coolcatteacher — You may just find
yourself conversing daily with some of your heroes. - Hulu.com – I’ve been beta testing this beauty which lets you watch all kinds of TV shows. Now, you can watch too!
- Mogulus
- Do you want your own 24/7 TV station? You can do it here. Schedule
things to play. Merge videos from other places on the Net. Very cool. - AFI Screen Nation
- The Amazing American Film Institute has a new site where your
students may upload video and be evaluated by REAL producers, actors,
and directors in Hollywood. Their curriculum is totally amazing and I
use the videos that come with my united streaming account to teach digital film & movie making. I love the AFI digital storytelling curriculum and highly recommend it. - Toondoo – Make cartoons. This continues to be one of my perennial favorites for cartoons.
- Ning
(for VIDEO sharing) – I LOVE Ning in the classroom and just found a
super cool new feature. If you upload video to ning, it automatically
converts it to the most compressed, appropriate version for the web.
You may then embed the video anywhere else. This is solving a lot of
our access problems for the horizon project b/c schools just unblock the Ning and have access to all of the movies! - Intel Mashmaker
- This lets you mash together all different types of websites and I am
enjoying working with it. There will be some things I share soon. This
is supposed to be a lot like Microsoft PopFly, which I’ve not tested yet. - Skype – This is another MUST have APP. If you haven’t tried it yet, get over there and take a look.
- Classtools.net - Embeddable graphic organizers of every kind for your wiki or blog. I Adore this site and use it all the time in my classroom.
- Wikispaces — This is my stable, well supported, wiki darling. One look at the horizon project wiki will tell you why.
- Gmail
- With the most robust spam filter anywhere, the ability to filter like
a fiend, make folders, and import all accounts into one place, this
account is a dream come true. Even if you use another service, you can
enable pop on that account, set up a gmail and pull all of your
accounts into one. And if you use firefox, they have a better gmail firefox extension from lifehacker that is a must install!. - Gcast – I’m really enjoying podcasting from my cell phone — just a lot of fun!
- FriendFeed – A cool little service that I’m really beginning to enjoy to help me follow just a few people.
- Technorati Watchlist – A must use for bloggers watching those responding to their work and just to follow the things you want to know more about. The RSS from the search for your blog belongs in your RSS reader.
- PhotoBucket – THE place I put my private photos. I like Flickr,
but somtimes I just want to make a really cool flash page for my
website or do something neat with photos, and photobucket has more
robust tools for my photos than I’ve found other places. - Big Huge Labs
for Flickr — This has some amazingly hilarious Motivational Poster
makers and just about everything you can imagine for your photos. Make
monster posters, make labels, make anything. If you have photos, this
is THE place to PLAY! - Feedburner is a must use for any serious blogger or school Webmaster.
You can burn the feed to feedburner, which will let you move your feed
from place to place without losing readers! You may also use Feedblitz to e-mail your blog posts to anyone who is "afraid" of RSS. Feedburner has so many other features that serious bloggers will appreciate. - Statcounter – This is my favorite place to track links, traffic, and more. Just a very reliable, accurate site.
- Google Reader
– My RSS reader of choice for linear, sequential RSS reading (down the
page aggregation), Google Reader now lets you download google Gears and
read your RSS offline!!!! - Netvibes – For single page aggregation, I use netvibes as my RSS reader although my home page starts up with iGoogle,
I go to netvibes. Their new Ginger version allows you to publish your
pages and share with others. I teach my students this handy RSS reader
for their Personal Learning Networks. - EdTechTalk – Although I co-host a show here, I always get pumped when I listen to these shows. Do yourself a favor and take a listen.
- Creative Commons Searching - This is THE place to look for images, graphics, and audio. It is a must use for students!
- 4Info.net -
I get the weather texted to my phone each morning. Every time a Georgia
Tech football or basketball game ends, I’m texted the score. You can
have stock tickers, rss reminders and more texted to your phone. It is
amazingly cool. - Newsmap
- When I want to take time to read the news, this is what I use. I
adore NewsMap. I teach my students to use it to get abreast of what is
happening in the world. If you have 1 minute to read the news, go here. - Classroom 2.0 Live Conversations
- Steve Hargadon is hosting these amazing sessions. Simply excellent.
Another place to "get pumped" and have some great ideas. - Cool Cat Teacher Wiki
- All my presentations, handouts, archives, and STUFF are there. I love
to get out sometimes and when I do, I want to capture it. - Slideshare – I LOVE this slidesharing site. It is very useful.
- VoiceThread – If I could pick ONE tool for elementary ed, this is it, hands down.
Apr 262008
I bombed the Praxis this morning.
Woke up after a terrible night sleep, drove to the testing site and arrived 5 minutes before I was supposed to be there to find out they changed the location to a different high school. I hightailed it through the east side to get there in time, to discover that there were a million testers and only one woman checking id’s.
The test did not go so well.
I was overconfident going into it after taking a practice test online…..I aced that so I mistakenly thought I had nothing to worry about. It was HARD. Much harder than I was expecting. The only section I feel good about is math. The social studies focused mostly on government crap….and not just US gov’t…..other countries around the world! And for the life of me I could not remember all the parts of a cell and what their functions are. Damn, I feel like such an idiot. It was so long ago that I learned all that stuff in college. I was really hard on myself and had a breakdown in the car on my drive home.
It has been cold and windy and wet and I want nothing more than to just curl up on the couch with my babe and watch a movie. Instead I obligated myself many weeks ago to go to a bachelorette party tonight for a good acquaintance. I feel bad, but I just don’t feel like going tonight (but I am going to). I am in such a poor mood that I know I won’t be my usual fun self. I will not be drinking because I have to drive all the way home and get a decent night sleep for a change so that I can spend most of my day tomorrow studying for my stupid american literature mid-term that I will be taking on Monday morning. I’m not in the mood to bomb another test this weekend, know what I mean?
Okay, I need to go get ready for my party and shake off this crabiness.
Apr 232008
Hola amigos!!
I wanted to let you guys know about another side-project blog that I have taken up……
http://urbanteachertales.blogspot.com/
I have always been reluctant to write about my job on my personal blog for many reasons, but I feel that I have a lot of things to say or share. I am thinking about writing a book someday about my experiences and this new blog is a way for me to start writing it all out! I am keeping my exact details anonymous (location, district, etc) on that blog so that my identity isn’t public, but I would love to have all of my friends read it …..please go check it out! And don’t forget to add to your Feed Readers!
Apr 222008
Today I received my grade for the poetry explication that I was complaining about a few weeks ago. It turned out much better than I had originally expected. Here are the instructor’s comments:
This is a fine explication of a difficult poem. Your essay is well organized and presents a careful “reading.” Good attention to both denotation and connotation. Nice job!
Grade: A 4/22/08 J. Rohloff
The poem that I analyzed was Mulatto by Langston Hughes.
It wasn’t as bad as I thought, but I must admit this was the only poem I really "got" out of the ten we had to read.
I’ll take it!
I have to take my mid-term exam by proctor in the next week, but I have to take a day off of work to do it. I cannot believe this class is only half-way through…it seems like it has been forever! Once I take the mid-term I am going to cruise through the last few essays.
My final fine arts art/social studies project is also coming along :) I am writing a unit on Japanese culture to use with 4-8th graders. One specific criteria of the unit is to include a lesson plan where you teach social studies by using the fine arts. Specifically, to find a piece of art that is in a Fine Arts museum and have students create a replica and connect it to the larger unit. Since my unit is on Japanese culture, I am going to have students create a mini- Japanese 6-paneled screen. I have to bring in three "stages" of the artwork and present it to class next week for my final. So far I have stages 1 & 2 done, just need to do my 3rd one in its entirety. I will post pictures of it when the whole thing is done.
My Praxis 2 exam is this Saturday morning at the crack of dawn. Shouldn’t be a problem from the practice tests I have seen! Flying colors, baby.
Feb 222008
Do you know this book? Its my current favorite children’s book…so much fun to read aloud! (I NEED to get the other books about Skippyjon, he’s too cute!)
This video isn’t the best because I was using my little point and shoot to film while I was reading it…not so easy to do!
Check out my read aloud below, the story is about 7-8 minutes long. Your kids will enjoy this one!
Feb 172008
Its time for me to brag and tell you how awesome the students at one of my schools are…..
For the past five weeks I have coordinated a campaign at my school to collect "Pennies for Patients". Pennies for Patients is a fundraising effort that many schools participate in for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. The goal is to have students bring in coins and then we donate it to help kids with cancer.
Our goal for the campaign this year was to raise $600.
Guess what?
We surpassed our goal and raised over $700!!!
As I was collecting the final week’s worth of donations, I noticed that one 5th grade classroom had collected over $60 in ONE WEEK. There was a $20 and a $10 bill included in this $$, so I made a comment to the teacher about it. She told me that one boy spent the entire weekend working for his grandma, doing odds and ends around the house and was rewarded with a nice amount of $$. He took his entire earnings and donated it. I almost cried from the generosity of his gift!! These are incredibly poor kids, yet they are happy to give what little they have to help save the lives of kids with cancer.
Just thought I’d share :)
Feb 152008
Its been a BUSY week.
And I am not just talking about all of my bday celebrations ;)
February is always my busiest time of the year at work, I have so much to do (administrative and paper-work wise).
I feel like I’ve gotten a LOT accomplished though, so I am feeling pretty good about it.
Wish I was able to spend more contact time with my students, but my schedule is going to free up in two more weeks, can’t wait!
Class on Wed. was good…I think I have redeemed myself for missing the first night. Whew! Got a lot done on a group project that I am presenting next week. The rest of the smester should be pretty easy sailing. My Literature course, on the other hand, is kicking my butt. Or it would be, if I actually got my rear-in-gear and started working on it. I’ve decided that I am not going to kill myself to get an A in an undergrad course, because the end result isn’t going to mean anything to anyone but me. Very rarely in my life have I settled for a B, but having to analyze good books and then write essays on it…boring. I love the reading part, I just hate having to analyze it, ya know??
My Valentine and I had a yummy steak dinner last night and watched The Brave One with Jodie Foster on our new Playstation 3. Blu-Ray rocks!!!! Hoping to buy a new TV soon :)
Hoping to relax, get some homework done, and scrap this weekend. No school on Monday…woo hoo!!
Have a good one, everyone!!!
Feb 072008
So last night was actually NOT the first night of class…..LAST week was!! Apparently I was not alone in thinking this….four others showed up for the first time last night too.
Made me feel like a total dumb-ass!! This class is with an unfamiliar professor as well, so accidentally missing the first class made me feel even worse because the last thing I would ever want to do is give a professor a bad impression of me!
Oh well, nothing I can do about it now. She is giving us newbies until next week to turn in the assignments she had already assigned for last night.
The class is an integration of teaching social studies through the fine arts. We have many art projects to do, but most of them we will be doing in class. Compared to last semester, this class should be pretty easy.
Its my distance-learning American Literature class through LSU that is going to be the butt-kicker! We are reading a ton of great material in that class, but I have to analyze and write a million essays. I swear I haven’t written an essay since I was in college…..and that was many, many moons ago!
Dec 092007
I’m on page 20, trying to wrap things up on my good ol’ math project. This was the beast that I have been dreading all semester.
I am so tired of sitting here at my computer.
I cannot wait to be done. I am so tired. I estimate that I have written approximately 150-180 typed pages this semester between the three classes.
Is that crazy or what?
Dec 092007
I am not usually a "crabby" person, although if the cards are stacked against me, it doesn’t take much.
And usually unfortunate things tend to happen to me in numbers.
We got several inches of snow yesterday afternoon. This always slows the evening commute down some, but last night was REDONKULOUS. I left work at approximately 3:22 to head downtown Mpls for a very important meeting I had on campus starting at 4pm, with a private meeting arranged after the big meeting. I won’t even begin to tell you how bad traffic was for me to travel the 15-20 miles or so to get there from work, but I did take a picture of my clock and elapsed time (E/T) when I finally pulled into the parking garage at St Thomas. Thank God the person I had the meeting with was waiting around for most of the night because of the horrible traffic….I was not the only one it took over 3 hours for.
I am so thankful it only took me 1 1/2 hours to get home after the meeting, only double what it normally takes. I wouldn’t have been able to handle another 3 hours in the car.
I woke up extra early this morning, in a decent mood. The sun is out, the snow had stopped, and I had an 8am appt. to get new tires on my car I was promised I would be out of there in less than an hour, but unfortunately the previous owners of my vehicle never mentioned that there are locks on the wheels that need a key to be removed. And with my luck, wouldn’t you just know that the key was no where to be found anywhere in the car? Previous owners did not know where to find said key. To make a LONG story short, the wheel shop did everything they could with the resources they had to remove the locks, but no such luck. They had to run to Lexus to get the right tool, which fortunately Lexus had in stock. Great, I’ll be on my way soon, right? But of course with me, when it rains, it pours. The damn tire machine BROKE with my wheel stuck to it. Took about an extra hour for someone to come out and fix the machine. 3 hours and a half-sick-day later, I was able to leave with my new tires. Too bad it cost me an extra $100 because of the wheel-lock problem. Grrrrrr.
I hope the rest of my day & night go better….I will be presenting my final lesson tonight in my health/science class. Only two more weeks of class after tonight. Can’t wait! Now I just need to get crack-a-lackin on my HUGE math project.
Wish me luck and a better night!
PS Happy birthday to Maria today!
Nov 032007
I don’t talk too much about what I do at my job on this blog, but maybe I should share some of the reasons why I love my job as a gifted services specialist so much. For the past several years now I offer monthly "special topic classes" every Friday throughout the year. The classes are open to students who are not necessarily identified GT but have an interest in the class offered. Every month I offer a new class and have new students.
Did I mention that this month the special topic class that I am teaching to 3-6th graders is on Ojibwe culture?
The Ojibwe (aka Chippewa) are the group of Native Americans who lived in the Great Lakes region (Northern MN, WI, MI, and Ontario, CA) prior to European settlement (I am saying this as diplomatically as I can because I have very strong feeling for what actually happened to all of our indigenous tribes). Anyway, students have been learning a variety of things about Ojibwe culture and this Friday’s class was all about how the Ojibwe moved to different camps each season, as they harvested maple sugar in the spring, fishing and hunting in the summer, wild ricing in the fall, hunting and trapping in the winter. I have a wonderful book that I use to illustrate what a typical year looked like for the Ojibwe prior to the mid 1800′s. We discussed which foods that the Ojibwe found growing naturally in the region and then I had students try a variety of foods the Ojibwe would have eaten. For this class I specifically brought foods for the kids to try: apples, pure maple syrup (which is nothing like Aunt Jemima!), cooked wild rice and smoked white fish.
I wasn’t sure which students would try the fish, but to my absolute pleasure, every single student in both classes tried the fish and enjoyed it! Even students who had never had fish before in their lives tried it and liked it. This fish was about 15 inches long and these kids ate every single piece of meat on this bad boy until there was nothing left but the bones! If you look at the picture closely, you will see that we are holding up the bare fish carcass. These kids are great, they made me so proud!
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Now as far as the "more fish" part of this post’s title, I had a field trip today for my graduate course in teaching science. We got a behind-the-scenes tour of Underwater Adventures at the Mall of America and did a workshop on Project Wild throught the DNR. I took some video footage of some of the animals at the aquarium and I will post a video as soon as I can make it in iMovie.
Speaking of iMovie, I visited the Apple store at the MOA today after my workshop was complete and I am definitely going to buy the Macbrook Pro this upcoming week. I cannot wait! I have so much to learn about Macs but I know that once I get the hang of it, I am going to be so happy!
Oct 162007
So by now it is no secret that I work at neighborhood schools in really tough, poor neighborhoods in the inner city. I absolutely LOVE what I do, and wouldn’t ever dream of trading my poor, needy, diverse students for the more well-off white kids in the suburbs. This is my niche.
So that being said, I do have to tell you that I have come across some very interesting names throughout my career and have started to make a list of the ones I remember. I wanted to share with you some of the unusual "names" of students I have personally known. (I am not even going to go there with some of the ethnic names I’ve come across!) The following names span all races….
Golden Daisy
Foxy Charisma
Dream Hope
Precious (I’ve known at least four girls with this name)
Faith Destiny
Diamond (again, 5-6 girls with this name)
Sparkle
Heaven Unique
Star or Estrella
Lyric Darling
Honey Modesty
Sunshine Jersey
China Dakota
Carolina Georgia
Green (whose last name also happened to be a shade of green)
Sterling Seven
Prince Justice
Reality Irony
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Anyone care to share unusual names of people they have known?
Sep 252007
Free Online Dating from JustSayHi
Good thing I can ;) I am learning in my science methods class that although content is important, the process to acquire knowledge is even more important.
**PS I neglected to mention I got a C- the first time I took this. It was NOT EASY. I knew which ones I guessed on and got an A the 2nd time around!
In my case it is 9 days that royally bit me in the patooty.
Let me explain.
There is a Federal Teacher Loan Forgiveness program out there, where if you teach at an inner city school for five years or more, the government will pay off $5,000 of your federal student loans. They will pay up to $17,500 for special education teachers or math and sciece teachers at the secondary level.
I applied for this loan forgiveness about a month ago and was so sure that they would forgive at least $10,000 of my loans since I had taught special ed for two years plus all the years I taught special ed summer school.
Well apparently one of the other criteria is that you could not have had a balance on loans prior to October 1st, 1998.
Guess what date I borrowed my first student loan?
September 22, 1998.
They denied me because I received my loan NINE EFFIN DAYS before their stupid %*&^&(%&(^% cut off date.
That majorly blows! I was hoping to have that money forgiven because I am taking another $934739483984 in loans this year to go to my prestigous university.
Talk about being ticked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why do they have to have a cutoff day at all????? Any teacher who teaches in the inner city should have the whole kit and kaboodle paid for, IMO.
So that’s that.
This time I am the STUDENT!
That’s right! After facing budget cuts for four years straight, I decided last spring that I needed to go back to school to get my K-8 classroom endorsement added to my current teaching license. You see, back when I was an undergrad at St Cloud State University (95-99), dual majors in special ed and regular ed were not offered…..I opted for a degree in special ed because that is what I thought I really wanted to teach at the time. After teaching bad-ass kids with learning disabilities for just two years, I went back and earned my Masters degree in Gifted and Talented Education at the University of St Thomas (00-02). I am considered an expert at both ends of the educational spectrum. This will now be my 7th year of teaching GT kids and as much as I love it, I felt that I would greatly benefit from getting my classroom license as well. Not to mention this will be my back-up plan just in case I am unable to find GT jobs in the future (we are always hit hard by budget cuts). Since I already had all of my graduate work done at St Thomas, that is where I decided to go again. There are five methods classes in the core content areas, and then since I will be specialized in communication arts/literature for grades 5-8, I need one additional literature class and one class specifically for this licensure.
I am taking three classes this semester. Yes, I am totally effin crazy!!!! Two of the classes are on Wednesday nights, back to back. They are "Teaching Math & Technology" and "Teaching Science and Health" . Last night was the first night of what is bound to be a LONG semester! I almost crapped my pants when these four books came to $350!!!!
The third class that I am taking meets all day on Saturdays this month and is focused on my 5-8 content area. Tuition has gone up 75% since I graduated five years ago too. This is not going to be cheap, by any means. It was interesting to see how the Minneapolis campus of St Thomas has changed in the five years since I last attended. They have added an entire Law school with a state -of the-art building and also remodeled and expanded the cafeteria.
The classes are going to be great, but there is a TON of work. Hopefully this will not be the end of my social life!!!! I am expecting to have everything I need completed by the end of next summer, so it is going to be a very, very busy year.
Wish me luck!!!
Sep 052006
Days of school in this upcoming school year, that is! I successfully made it through the First Day of School at both schools. Yay! I know it is going to be a very busy and challenging year, but I am looking forward to it. It was great to return to my morning school. The kids and I were happy to see each other…. especially after not knowing last spring whether I would be returning this Fall. I am still working on locating the students who need gifted/talented services…once that happens, I can begin my creative scheduling. I am also trying to put my classrooms together since I never really had the chance last week. Enough about work now!
Notice the new banner and color scheme? I love this one! I stepped away from my usual floral-motif and made a collage to commemorate some fun moments I had this summer….and yes, there were quite a few despite working summer school and having my knee surgery.
Speaking of the knee…. I am still recovering, but making progress. I never did post the pics of my knee, but Greta desperately wants to see them, so I might as well post it. Click on it to make it bigger. Sorry if this grosses you out, but there isn’t much blood or anything…just shows the effed -upness inside my knee. Pics 1, 2, 5 & 16 show scar tissue that needed to be removed. 3 & 4 show the severe arthritis, and #11 shows how out of alignment my kneecap was. 17 shows my knee cap after the lateral release procedure. No wonder I was in so much pain before!
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Dana, Kevin and Jasmine left this morning, Uncle Mike and Marisa left on Sunday morning after we all met for an early breakfast. We had a nice time with them while they were here (as always :) We went out to the Mall of America for a few hours on Sunday afternoon (with Rusty and Alex too) and then to Khan’s Mongolian Barbeque for dinner. On Monday us girls went swimming while the boys all went fishing. Jasmine and I scrapped a little bit this weekend too! She made some pretty great tags for a 7-year-old!
Oh, also wanted to say Congratulations to Mandie (and Jason) who just had a healthy baby girl, Aubrionna Marie, yesterday morning. I am sure they probably will not be able to make it to Kara and Jesse’s wedding this weekend so soon after having the baby, but I hope to go visit them next week at their new house. You wanna come with, Cass?
Stay tuned for a couple of book reviews later this week……..
Jun 132006
**Went to visit our friends Jeff and Toni after work tonight. Georgia and Cidney are getting so big! Cidney turns one years old in three days:)
** Tomorrow is the last day of the school year. It is bittersweet….I am sad to think that I might not be coming back to my school next year. Might not see my students and their families that I have gotten to know so well for the past two years. I was lucky to have a job I like so much. Whether I am there half-time next year depends on if I can find another half-time position in my district SOON. It isn't looking good, folks. I thought I'd have to go back to teaching special ed, but hundreds of those positions were also cut. If I can't find a job on my own soon, they will assign me somewhere full-time when something in my licensure area opens up. That could literally be the day before school starts or two weeks into the next year. That sucks! The good news is that I am guaranteed my salary either way, so being tenured helps to ease the mind some.
**I will be teaching 4th grade students with learning disabilities this summer. I will have Mon-Thurs off next week and then summer school starts Friday. It runs 5 weeks, but I will only work the first four.
** I am having knee surgery on July 25th. I will have 4 weeks to recover and then back to work..hopefully! The healing time needed for my procedure is up to 8 weeks. I hope I am good enough to do the Tootsie Roll at Kara's wedding on Sept 9…I know she is looking forward to that!
**In the scrappy news, I ordered a ton of overlays and papers from Hambly Screen Prints today. You have to check out Their layout gallery. Wow!! I even saw stuff made by my girls Christina Padilla, Jaime Warren and Kristi Contes. how cool! I am going to make some cool stuff when I get it and try to make that gallery too! I never submit my stuff because I'd rather do it for fun, but that looks fun too!
Then Greta asks me if I have seen the new Cricut by ProvoCraft yet. Well no, I hadn't until she sent me to their site to check it out and now I want one of these bad boys! They are really sweet. I have never had a Quikutz and this thing looks pretty techno-savy and you get like a million fonts and you can change the size on it too. Thanks a lot, Greta…one more thing for me to put on my wish list! I think they are going for around $300? I bet Adrienne has one of these or will be getting one soon! I say that because she loves to shop and always has the coolest tools before anyone else I know. If anyone seriously has this already, let me know what you think!
**I am reading My Friend Leonard by James Frey. Not sure if he "embellished" this story, like he did with A Million Little Pieces, but I am enjoying it. Love both books of his, despite all the controversy. Can't wait to read, read, read all summer long! Love it! Kim…I may take your suggestion and add bookreviews to the book thumbnails on my sidebar. I might have more time to do that this summer.
**Sending positive thoughts to my girlfriend who is going to the Dr. tomorrow to make sure her cervical cancer hasn't come back. She is the third friend of mine (that I know of )who has had cervical cancer. It is scary how many people are affected.
**Sent those bookmarks out yesterday…hope you girls like the ones you get!
Good night!
School is officially out for the summer!!! (Of course I will be teaching summer school so I won't get much of a break, but I made it through another great year!)
We took the 3rd-6th graders at my afternoon school to the roller rink for an afternoon of fun…I brought my rollerblades because I love to skate. The kids think it is the greatest thing when the teachers skate…can you believe only one other teacher beside myself went out on the rink?? The rest watched from the sidelines!! Maybe they were afraid of the kids who would suddenly cut in front of you, skate in the wrong direction or fall right in the middle. I am a very good rollerblader so I was able to do some quick evasive maneuvering to avoid any major falls/crashes. In fact I did not fall once :) Here is a little collage of me with some of my students at the rink…
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