Yup I'm a Geek!

Grading papers and watching this one! Yay! 

Reading Challenge

       Is it cheating on my Goodreads reading challenge that the 4 books I've read this year are books I've read aloud to my students? I'm saying no. They are all books I have never read. So I'm counting them. It's my challenge I can read what I want to. (I'm totally singing that in my head now!)

       I've really been wanting to read a lot lately. I watch way too much tv and read way too little. So I've started reading when I go to bed at night instead of watching a show on my computer. I have to say, I've been sleeping a lot better because of it. And my desire to read has been growing.

       One thing that has made me really excited about reading is my local library. We have a cute little library in town. The first time I walked in, all of the ladies working there knew who I was. That was the moment when I realized I liked living in a small town. Anyway, not only have I liked checking out books for school, I've discovered that my library is connected with overdrive.com. I log on with my library card and can check out ebooks that will link to my kindle app on my ipad. It is wonderful!! Some of them I have to wait a while to get because they only have so many copies. But I'm loving it! I've created a long list of books on there that I plan on checking out. The only hard thing is that you only get the book for 7 days and you can renew it only once. I even use it for read aloud books at school. The kids think it's fun that I'm reading off of my ipad and I can still show them pictures when there are some.

Back to the reading challenge.
       The last few years I've majorly failed at my reading goal so this year I only put 15 books as my goal for 2015. I've already read 4. I think I've made a good start. And I'm almost done with the only I've been reading at home.

Here are the books I've read so far:

A Bear Called Paddington - I read this book to my class because the movie was coming out and I thought it would be fun in case they went to see it. I'm sure the movie is very different, but the kids really liked the book. There was a lot of giggling while I read this one.

 Attack at the Arena - The is an Adventures in Oddessy book. I checked it out from my library on my ipad. Woohoo! My class was really disappointed when this book was over. They wanted it to continue. It was a fun one.

 Who was Dr. Seuss? - Dr. Seuss' birthday is coming up so I figured it was a good idea to learn a little about it. This was a very interesting book. As I read it I also read Dr. Seuss books that were specifically talked about in the book. It was really fun. There was one part in the book though that was a little inappropriate for my class and I was really disappointed that the author felt it necessary to put it in a book written for kids.




 Who was George Washington? - Read this one to them right after President's day. It was a good one. It brought up good conversations about our country's history. Things that did not go into our history curriculum. Any time I picked up the book the boys in my class were really excited. It was great! I love that it gave my kids an excitement for history.

Blech

       I'll be honest. Today was a rough day. I'm still getting over a cold so I'm tired, which doesn't help. But I've been struggling with one of my coworkers yesterday and today complaining about a lot of things. I try to be encouraging to her, but today it was just so discouraging. Nothing seems to meet her standards and she even tells people how they should change things so they will be better for her.

       I tried really hard to brush it off today, but couldn't. It put me in a funk and I really struggled getting out of it this afternoon. I made myself go to the school basketball games tonight, which turned out to be a good thing. It was the perfect distraction to get me out of the mood I was in. That along with some funny pins on pinterest from a good friend.

       I'm hoping that a good nights sleep will help make tomorrow go better.

Time Flies!

Wow, it has been over a month since my last post!

This last month feels like a whirlwind. What is really blowing my mind right now is that we are sending out progress reports this week. That means that the 3rd quarter of school is half over! Good Grief! How is it that times seems to go faster as you get older? Have you ever noticed that? As a kid school lasted for-ev-er. Now as an adult it flies by! I don't get it. Not sure that I ever will.

I've already been offered a contract for the next school year. It's hard to believe that I'm thinking about the next school year. This year has gone nothing like I thought it would. If you would have told me a year ago that I would be living in my grandparent's house by myself I would have thought you were crazy. Honestly, it is going ok, but it is very strange to live here alone. I'm living here as if it's my home, but it looks nothing like me. There are so many changes I would make to this house. I have moved a few things though. I probably could get away with moving furniture, since I'm not sure when my grandma will be coming back, as long as I move it back before she comes. ha! But I think if I remodeled the bathroom she would notice. (not that I have the money to do that--don't worry mom)

On an extremely random note: whenever I hear Ellen Degeneres' voice I want to watch Finding Nemo.  It doesn't matter what she says I just think of Dory. K I'm done now. :D