Happy Presidents Day! {Freebie!}

HELP!! Is it President's Day, Presidents Day or Presidents' Day? Yikes! I'm just not sure. This I am sure of...I have the day off, I enjoyed cinnamon roll waffles for breakfast, and it is snowing again!

Best

waffles

EVER!

Here is a FREEBIE for you. If you don't have an account with TPT leave your e-mail and I will send it to you. My Owlets will be making and reading this book tomorrow, unless it is another snow day or is it Snow Day or is it Snowday? Anyway click the picture for the FREEBIE! Happy President's/Presidents'/Presidents Day!!

So This is Love!

I do love this song...

And I do love that the lyrics are right there when I show this to my class! It is so important when building fluency to add song and poetry. Sometimes we even sing our fluency passages!

I do love this valentine that I got from a student...

this is a grat hornd owl. you are a grat teachr

This kid knows what I love! He only thought of himself a little itty bit when he added "go Green" for his favorite team in the corner! He and 11 others show me love every single day! I try to show love to them, too. What they don't know is that I feel pretty inadequate some days to  respond to the love they pour out on me. Their love is so unconditional and sweet. The hugs, pictures, and smiles warm my heart and keep it warm through each weekend and vacation. It is pretty hard to call what we do as teachers that four letter word..."work"!

I have tried to figure out the love language of each of my children. Most of them are pretty easy to decipher. The kid who is always plastered to my side...Physical Touch is his language. The kid who always wonders if he can keep a fun new manipulative...Receiving Gifts. The kid who wants to eat lunch with me every day...Quality Time. The little girl who wants to clean my desk...Acts of Service. "Do you like my picture?"...Words of Affirmation. I've got all five languages going on in my room! If you have never heard of these languages and want to know more start HERE! I'm just waiting for them to come out with Five Love Languages for the Classroom! Until they do I reference this book for classroom and home...

I know your celebration of Valentine's Day is over for 2014. I'm just putting this out there for people who believe in celebrating love everyday or for your future celebrations of love!

Click on picture to go to freebie!

So what is love? "10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

1 John 4:10-16

Would you like to get an awesome song stuck in your head? This one has been dancing through my mind and coming out of my mouth for almost a week now. I've caught my students singing to it too...

Currently Wow!

Wow...It is Wednesday and February is going to be full of WOW!


Do you love February as much as I do?
It holds so many edventures for me and for you!
There's a groundhog named Phil who predicts the weather
On the fourteenth we'll share hearts and love together.
Washington and Lincoln we'll celebrate them too
Do you love February as much as I do?

It is such a short month but there are so many great things we get to bring into our daily routine. The poem doesn't even mention that it's Dental Health Month, Black History Month and National Wild Bird Feeding Month! February is good.
I love linking up with Farley and her monthly Currently. I love linking up with Curious Firsties and the weekly WOW report.  So I'm trying to do a mash-up and use this post to link up with both!

Most of my currentlies (only one lie!) don't need much explanation. I'm going to give you some clues to the truths and fib. You decide which is my fib! The pictures below are this weeks WOW!

My students and I love acting. We love reading plays and putting on performances. This is one of our favorites!

If you've been with me very long you'll know the fib really quickly!

Drum-roll please....

I really am building an igloo!

I'll keep you updated on the highs and lows of igloo building!

Wednesday Wow!

Wow! I. Love. This. Book. Well, I love the book below called Once Upon a Memory! One of the things I like about Amazon, but is very dangerous to my budget, is this section ...

I usually want to get every one of the books frequently bought together AND the books that also bought. I can't do that! I DID buy this book and WOW!

Click on the picture if you want to
check it out on Amazon!

This book is fill with beautiful touchable pictures and wonders. Renata Liwska's illustrations are whimsical, soft and have a beautiful dreamlike quality. My students were mesmerized by the simple text that had them to wondering about the memories of other common things such as...

So we made our own book inspired by Nina Laden's text. Here are a few pages...

Doesn't this crack you up? "Does Pluto remember it once was a planet?"

Our class book is gorgeous and usually at someone's desk. Once Upon a Memory is usually on someone's desk too! Did I mention there are six beautiful owls hidden among the pages? There are lots of other surprises that will make  you either say "awe," or "wow"...Really!

Want some more WOWs? Head over to Curious Firsties and see who else has linked up. Even better link up yourself and share your wow from the week!

Owl Watch

Don't you just love Sunday nights that are followed by Monday vacation days? I have had a whole extra day to job shadow my cat. She and I love doing the same things. Napping, bird watching and eating are three things we have in common. I'll have a lot of work to do tomorrow because I haven't done much but nap, bird watch and eat the last two days. I haven't watched just any birds...I've watched one bird...This one! Mrs. T

This tab is open day and night on my computer. I love listening to this lady call for her mate. Now I have my students watching and listening for her hoots, too. You have to come over and visit Mrs. Tiger with your class. Count the eggs. Predict when the eggs will hatch. Watch young Great Horned Owls grow. Or you could just pretend to be a cat, curl up in a ball and take a nice long nap!

Five for Friday

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to share five random things from my week! 

1) A funny thing happened on the way to Friday. I had two snow days and I still felt wiped out and exhausted by the time Friday showed up. Could it be that I just tried to squeeze too much in or is it that I'm staying up to late squeezing every thing I can into my son's Christmas break? I'm so thankful for the extra days I had at home with him. The snow days couldn't have come at a better time. 

2)When Wednesday rolled around and I got to spend the morning with my students, the first order of business was our class Christmas party! We finally got to exchange gifts, play games and have Christmas cookies!

Wednesday afternoons are filled with specials for my Owlets, so we had a lot to squeeze in. The heat in my room was not working and it was COLD. We have some awesome maintenance guys who showed up and had me back up to temperature pretty quick.

3) Happy New Year! I played with the clocks in our room so we could pretend that it was midnight and blew horns and wore our silly glasses to celebrate. THANK YOU, Granny Goes to School! Cindy made the most delightful photo booth glasses freebie. Click HERE to see them. She is pretty amazing and offers wonderful freebies on her blog regularly. Fly by to see her and let her know an owl sent you!

We used small dowel to hold our glasses in place and then pose! After our photo shoot we glued them down on paper and colored pictures in each lens of things we hope to "see" in 2014. Then we wrote descriptive sentences about each of our pictures. 

4) Each of my students is unique and special. I love each of them and tell them regularly. Sometimes they tell me stories that break my heart. On those days when I feel the most broken hearted for them it seems that I have even more love to share.  The awareness of their vulnerability opens up my heart and moves me to be the best that I can be to meet their individual needs.  I feel so blessed to be able to tell them that their is sNOw- one that loves them like Jesus! 

My Owlets had a blast making simple snowflakes out of coffee filters. They each made two and had races by throwing them both in the air to see which one landed first. 

5) I have seen this project all over Pinterest and I finally found an opportunity to squeeze it in. I love these bird's eye view snowmen. My Spartan fan had to put a Spartan hat on his in honor of the Rose-Bowl winning team!

Now it is off to bed for me. I'm reading Cold Sassy Tree and I've been waiting all day to slip into my footie pjs and spend some time with Will Tweedy and follow his adventures surrounding the drama his grandpa and Miss Simpson create! My daughter has to read it for school and I wanted to see what it is about...I think she is in for a treat!

Currently and a Freebie

I am feeling so thankful to realize that today is NOT Friday. Most of the day I've been walking around under the assumption that it is Friday, but it is only THURSDAY!! It is like getting an extra day of vacation. Which means I have time to link-up with Farley and share what I'm doing CURRENTLY!

If you do not like hearing people talk incessantly about their pets, you may want to quit following me. I used to be so annoyed by people who would talk about their pets as if they were actually members of their family. I now understand. My kitty Chessie is a member of my family. I never thought having a pet would be so much fun. I was getting a cat to appease my daughter. I am totally smitten with my kitten! I love listening to her purr.

Chessie and I spend many hours together on this couch!

I'm loving this vacation. It has been so relaxing. Because of the new family addition, we put out very few decorations. We kept it to the things that matter...Two nativity sets and a tree. I've gotten to spend wonderful times baking, playing games, shopping and just hanging out with my kids.

All this relaxing has gotten me thinking about retiring, but not seriously! I don't think I'd do a very good job as a retiree. I don't get much accomplished when I don't have a set routine or schedule. Several weeks ago, a kindergartner came to me in tears to tell me that her sister had told her that I was retiring next year. It was so hard to keep a straight face. She'll be one of my first graders next year and her sister was trying really hard to get her sister really upset. What a funny idea that me retiring was the worst thing she could tell her sister. I'm happy to say I'll be teaching for many years to come. 

I'm really wanting to visit my daughter in St. Louis. I moved to Michigan from St. Louis 26 years ago and can't wait to visit her there in the spring. 

I have not committed to a resolution yet. I've had lots of ideas swimming through my brain. I need to be more active. I need to eat healthier foods. I need to spend more time in prayer and reading the Bible. I'll wait until Monday and make my resolution with my owlets with this FREEBIE you can grab too!

We had a full house New Year's Eve celebrating the old and new. Games, food and laughter filled our home. We are blessed with many wonderful friends. Who wouldn't want to have bagpipes played at their house at midnight?!