Whole 30 - The Fun Part is Over.

Fair warning, this is one of those posts that I care about writing, but probably no one else will care about reading. If you are interested in how Whole 30 has been going for me, read on.

Let's talk about how hilarious the universe is, and how right at the end of my Whole 30 stint, one week before going to Hawaii, I encountered my greatest challenge yet: Teacher Appreciation Week.

Tips for Surviving Whole 30

1. Plan it leading up to a vacation. This is great motivation! The first two weeks are okay - it's all new recipes and exciting spices and fast results and enthusiasm. But then come the two weeks where you are starting to hate eggs, and even nuts are getting a little lackluster, and you're not quite tired of sweet potatoes, but you are definitely tired of trying to buy them and for some reason finding them out of stock yet again at Walmart. But if you make it through the first two weeks, you only have two weeks until your vacation, and you kind of have to see it through to the end at that point. Plus, then you get a vacation to congratulate yourself for your amazingness! Which you will totally deserve.

2. Just make it easy on yourself and eat peanut butter. And store-bought mayonnaise.

3. Don't plan your Whole 30 month to coincide with Teacher Appreciation Week. You may recall that this is my absolute favorite week of the entire school year. This week of love and gifts and notes and cute printables attached to free food....it just doesn't get much better than that!

This year was a little different. I still loved it! Just maybe not as much. The theme was "How Sweet it is to be Taught by You," and right away, when I saw that, I knew that I was in trouble. Not only was my door decorated with donuts and a sign proclaiming that "We Donut know what we would do without you!," but also, my desk was decorated the entire week with more things I couldn't eat. Cupcakes, cookies, Oreos, candy bars, chocolate, and cinnamon rolls.....I was dying. All of these things that I would have loved any other month were suddenly so sad to look at!

4. If Teacher Appreciation Week does happen to coincide with your Whole 30, it's still okay. Lots of the things you get will be wrapped and non-perishable, meaning you can save them and eat them later.

5. Other gifts you get are not non-perishable. Things that fall in this category would be, like, the fancy cupcakes, homemade cinnamon rolls, chocolate-drizzled popcorn, these perfect-looking cookies all bagged up with a bow and a printable note about how "We are smart cookies because of you!".....yep all those things. You can't eat them. You have to give them away. Don't unwrap them and smell them, just to see what you're missing. Don't stare at them all day long. Don't ask other teachers how it all tasted. Just grit your teeth and give it to another teacher and then go think about your vacation.

In the end, I ate one bite of a {holycowdelicious} cookies'n'cream kinda Oreo cupcake, and I did eat the apples in the Ruby River apple cobbler they fed us for dessert on Thursday. I'm sure they were loaded with sugar but I didn't eat the whipped cream with it or the crumblyness on the top. I feel like this is okay.

Do we all agree now that that vacation is absolutely necessary after all this??

6. If you do need a dessert (you do), I discovered a good one. It's super-easy!

-Put a bunch of pecans and walnuts in the oven at 350* for 5 minutes, or until toasted.
-Take them out and drop them in your blender.
-Add a bunch of honey and some cinnamon and salt.
-Blend it all up.
-Eat it on apple slices.




The good news is, it's almost over! And despite my one bite of Oreo cupcake, I am really proud of Stephen and I for actually sticking it out this long. In some ways it was harder than I thought it would be, but for the most part, it was easier than I'd expected. tT

And I loooove how it looks on Husband......holy hotness. Just wait for our Hawaii pictures ;)

April Fools - Kids vs. Teachers

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I love holidays. All of them. Well.....99% of them.

April Fools Day is the one holiday I actually don't like. Mostly it's just because I can never think of good pranks to pull on other people, so I just choose to be a bad sport about it and call the whole holiday stupid rather than participate.

But this year, I kind of did start to like it! All thanks to the fact that I have the cutest class ever. And I'm not even April Foolsing you.

My favorite moments, in no particular order:

1. When C bounced into class, eyes huge, and walked straight up to me.

"Mrs. Shimp," she said, "Today is April Fools Day. Did you know?"

"Yes!" I told her. In fact, I had remembered five minutes before school started, which just barely gave me time to take Lunch / Recess out of our daily schedule.

"I have an April Fools for you," she announced. "Knock knock."

"Who's there?"

"Interrupting cow."

Oooh! My favorite knock knock joke! I paused. Then - "Interruptingcowwho?"

She stared at me. "Wait. Wait, do it again."

"Interruptingcowwho?"

".....Moo! Wait. Do it again."

"Interruptingcowwho?"

"Moo! Ugh. Mrs. Shimp. Again."

"Interruptingcow-"

"Moo!"

2. When C came over to me again, and ruined my April Fools spirit with this sentence: "Mrs. Shimp? Lunch isn't on the daily schedule....are you trying to April Fools us?"

Whelp. There goes that. "No," I said. "I just forgot to put it up." And I put it up and silently vowed to never try to April Fools anyone ever again.

3. When M, my super-shy, super-quiet kid, walked up to me with the "I" card. "Mrs. Shimp, how do you spell is?" he asked. Then, immediately after, "April Fools." A sly, sneaky smile crept up on his face and I burst out laughing. So then, for the rest of the day, other kids were coming up to me with their own versions of the joke: "How do you spell a? April Fools!" "How do you spell he? April Fools!!"

4. When A suggested that I go get the most yappy, annoying puppy I could find, and tell Stephen that I bought a dog. This is actually such a good idea and I wish I had thought of it earlier because I totally would have done it!

5. When M, whose mom is quite pregnant, had this suggestion:

M: Does Stephen know my mom is pregnant?
Me: Mmmm, maybe? I think so. I've probably mentioned it.
M: Well, maybe you can April Fools him, and tell him that my mom had her baby. And then he'll be all excited and be like oh my gosh and then you just be like April Fools!

6. When, with 15 minutes until lunch, I suddenly got back in the April Fools mood. And when J came over to ask if I was going to read with her guided reading group, I said: "I think I'm actually going to get to all the groups, because we aren't going to lunch today."

Confusion. "Huh? We're not going to lunch?"

It was already hard to keep a straight face. I nodded sadly. "Yeah, the cafeteria ran out of food, so we won't be able to go to lunch. So we're just going to keep doing guided reading."

Now she was starting to look a little panicky, and B had heard and was staring at me with his mouth open. "What!?" he cried. "But I'm so hungry!"

"Me too!" J murmured. "So we really don't get lunch? They don't have anything left?"

"Yeah, I'm sorry," I said. "I better tell the whole class."

I thought for sure someone would remember that it was April Fools....but miraculously, no one did! Every single jaw dropped when I made my announcement.

"But I brought my lunch," H said. "Can I eat it in here?"

I shook my head. "That wouldn't be fair to the kids who were going to buy lunch."

"So no recess either??" asked IC.

"No, we'll have Recess still, just a little bit later," I assured them. "But it's okay you guys! I'm hungry, too. But just one day we'll be okay going without lunch."

M asked if she could call her mom to bring her food, and even offered to have her mom bring enough for everyone to have lunch. I told her that would be really nice and that she could call her at Recess. It made me smile to hear some of my kids who had brought a lunch offer to share with their friends who hadn't. They were all teaming up together so no one would starve and it was the cutest thing!

When I finally told them 15 minutes later, "Everyone line up.....we are going to lunch, April Fools!!!" they all ran up to me and wanted to give me high fives.

"Mrs. Shimp, you got us so good!" they screamed, happy as can be.

K shouted that that was the best thing I'd ever done, and L wanted to hug me, she was so proud of me.

If I had only known earlier that the best way to get popular with your students was to tell them lunch was cancelled....I would have done this a long time ago :)

A Heart, a Circus, and Free Food

At the risk of sounding like a spaz at the start of a blog post.....THIS WEEK has just been so great!! Here were my favorite parts:

Friday - when Alex got a new heart! I walked into school on Friday morning, and Margot walked out of her room and said "Heather? Did you hear about Alex?" I said no, and she said, "He got a heart!" My brain couldn't even figure out what she was saying at first because it was such a big deal and such a surprise! If you don't know who he is, Alex is a boy in my class who was born with half a heart. Last year, he got put on the waiting list for a heart transplant. This whole year he hasn't been able to come to school except for one hour on the first day, and another hour to do his Spotlight, and on Halloween to participate in the parade. He is just about the best little boy I've ever met, and his whole family is like angel people who barely even belong in this world because they are just way too good. They're the kind of people who are so happy and positive and humble and giving and sweet all the time, and you just know that that they are like that with everyone they meet. Anyway, it has been a long time waiting for a heart, and it was a huge celebration in the class on Friday morning!

Top: what was written on his DIBELS test that he obviously wasn't here to take on Monday.
Middle: When I visited him at the hospital.
Bottom: What we wrote in our Shimp Shoutout on Friday!

Saturday - when we went rock-climbing for like 4 hours and I climbed my first 5.11! I am so proud every time I reach a new milestone in climbing.

Monday - when I won a radio contest! Thanks 93.3! In case you were wondering, carrots are the #1 healthy snack food that is consumed more on Super Bowl Sunday than on any other Sunday of the year.

Tuesday - when Julie and Kelly and I went to Zupa's for dinner. Yum and fun!

Wednesday - when we cashed in on my radio contest winnings and went to see THE CIRCUS YOU GUYS! The Jordan World Circus came to Utah, and Stephen, Julie, Michael, Logan and I were all in attendance.

He is so happy to have a wife who wins stuff.

Side note: I feel like I should add that I do not support animal abuse! I was a little sad for these elephants. But the good news is, they mostly just had people acts. 

Also, it is surprisingly difficult to get a picture pretending like you have elephant trunks. I don't know why?? But Stephen kept putting his trunk in front of my face and blocking me!

Like so. 

And then when we finally got ourselves, our trunks blocked the elephant. And I....got pregnant? Whate'er.

Cuties :)

Thursday - when the Consule Generale came to our school! This person is a big deal. I didn't know who she was, but I have been thoroughly educated and now I understand that she is a big deal. If 20 people tell you someone is a big deal I think it's pretty safe to trust that assessment. Margot said she is kind of like the president, or kind of like a diplomat, who lives in San Francisco. There are only 2 French General Consulates living in the USA, and they help out all their French peeps who come over here.

She came to our school to see how the kids are learning French! Everyone was in a tizzy. The lunch ladies came and hugged Margot and wished her good luck, and the librarians almost fell over when I walked in the library later on. "Is she here?" they gabbled. "How did it go?" The secretaries set out water bottles with little paper jackets that said "Fox Hollow Elementary School." My principal wore a suit and probably combed his beard.

We threatened prepped all our kids and practiced our assembly for this important person like 3 times, and in the end, it turned out just fine.

She is such a big deal that I texted this picture to Margot on Wednesday night asking what I should wear.  

I would have been so remiss to not get a picture of the famous person, so here's my first attempt. {I was trying to hide my phone and be discreet.}

It did not go great.

So I gave up and just be'd obvious about it. *Side note - at this point in the program I thought the blonde lady in black was the Consule Generale. Turns out she was not. Oh and when I found out the blonde lady was not her, I next thought it was the lady with the patchwork kinda skirt. She is also not the Consule Generale. The guy with a scarf is the consulate's personal assistant, and my principal is on the far right.

All the kids sang a song for her.

And then finally, I figured out who she is, when they presented her with a gift basket. She is the brunette with the khaki jacket.

Now all the famous people want to come to our school because it went so well! So you know I am happy about that. One of these times it's bound to be a famous person I've heard of.

Friday - when we had PLC after school, per usual on a Friday, and our principal gave us Chili's chips and salsa and French cookies and chocolate.

Moral of the story: Be nice to animals and famous people. And also not-so-famous people. They are important, too.

The Classroom Clean-up: 5 Methods

Let's start with a kind of hard truth that may discourage you from reading this post: I am not naturally a very neat and tidy person. I have a hard time keeping things clean, and an even harder time getting up the gumption to clean up after I have let my things fall into extreme disorder and chaos. And I think that's why, in the three years I've been teaching, I've never been super-proud to show off how neat my desk is.

{Because it's not. Ever.}

And that's probably why my classroom looks like a tornado hit 4 days out of 5. And why every time I have a party / a sub / conferences / an observation, the majority of my preparation involves a frenzied cleaning. I think that through my example, I subconsciously tell my kids that neatness isn't that big of a deal to me. So eventually their desks look like mine and my floor looks like we just do arts and crafts 24/7 and the guided reading table has stacks up to the ceiling.....and let's not even talk about the back table.

Which is why my Teachery New Years' Resolution is to stop being such a slob, and teach my kids some better habits, so that together, we will pull out of our sloppiness and have a beautiful room once again.

Do these problems sound familiar to any teachers out there?? No? Just me? Well anyway. Just so you don't think I am a complete lost cause, I do have some tricks. Here are some of my favorite classroom clean-up ideas that I have seen that work:

1. Weekly Desk Inspection. Everyone puts their tote tray on their desk, and the inspector comes around and chooses the neatest desk. Once they have the winner in mind, everyone puts their tote trays away, they have a drum roll, and the winner is announced. That person gets a magnet to stick on their desk for the whole week. When it's time for the next week's inspection, the winner from the previous week becomes the inspector. They pass the magnet on to the new winner.

2. Magic scrap. Another teacher on my team does this with her kids and they absolutely love it! She chooses one piece of trash on the floor that she sneakily watches, and whoever picks up that scrap gets a piece of candy. (I've done this in the past and called it "Find it and Fix it," if you like that name better.) When I did it, I liked to reward the student who found the trash I was watching, and also give a piece of candy to someone who cleaned up a lot or was working really hard the whole time.

3. Chairs up. Sometimes the simple act of having kids put their chair on their desk at the end of the day is all the reminder they need to clean up under their desk. It makes it more obvious when they can clearly see the trash.

4. Become a drill sergeant. Another method I love is "Drop and give me 5!" (Or 10, or 8, or 20.) I don't know about your kids, but mine love doing little exercises throughout the day. When we do jumping jacks, it is like a reward for some of them. They love any opportunity to move around! So sometimes when the room is looking messy, I like to say something like: "Uh-oh. This room is turning into a mess! Drop and give me 5." They need to drop what they're working on and get down on the ground to give me 5 push-ups or 5 pieces of trash. They can only give me 5 push-ups if they have no trash under their desk. If they have 2 pieces of trash under their desk, they can give me 3 push-ups. It sounds kind of complicated, but my 2nd graders caught on pretty quickly. At first a lot of them wanted to cheat, but I have them shout-count to me, and their neighbors are happy to correct them if they try to nudge their trash into someone else's area or pick up trash and do push-ups. It's like a badge of honor for them if they get to do all 5, and it's a quick and easy reward for me :)

5. Get mean. Remember those passive-aggressive notes your roommates would write in college? (Or maybe it was you....) "Everyone remember to do your dishes!" "Stop turning this thermostat to 66, I am freezing!" "Just wondering who drank all my milk and if you're planning on replacing it??" Those were some fun times. Normally, I am not in favor of passive-aggressive notes. But some kids have an easier time following directions that are clearly written out. So here's the welcome board they are going to walk in to see tomorrow morning:

#meanteacher 

As you can see, it was kind of a giant problem today. I have 23 kids in my class, and one of them was absent today. So, yeah. 

What methods have you tried that worked for you?? What have you tried that hasn't worked? 

BRB, Going to Hogwarts

As a child of the 90's, I was one of millions of people who were proudly swept up in the Harry Potter craze. I read every book, twice, watched all the movies (in the real people theater even, I didn't even wait for the Dollar Theater), dressed up for midnight premieres, and wrote fan mail to JK Rowling.

This was in the olden days, before Instagram stalkers ruled the fandom.

Anyway. I still haven't been to England to try my luck at pushing through the wall on Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross Station, but this month, I discovered something almost as wonderful as the Hogwarts Express.....the FrontRunner.

This magical train goes from Provo to Ogden, and it is so fast, and so awesome, that I just want to tell everyone about it! Now that Sabie has joined us out here, via a surprise road trip a la Madre and the Jew, we are able to keep one car at the station closest to my school and the other car at home, for Stephen to use. He has never been so spoiled the whole time we've been married.

I wake up. Stephen drives me to the Provo station. I board. I sit there blearily through a half-hour of someone else driving, and when I get off, Carbaby is waiting for me to drive the rest of the way to my school. At the end of the school day, I drive back to the station and Frontrunner home, where Stephen picks me up once again. It is so happy for so many reasons.

1. I get so much done! I do all my grading during my afternoon commute.
2. I met a famous author the other day. Well, maybe. I don't actually know his name or if he is famous.
3. I am always on time. As long as I can get to the Provo Station when I am supposed to, I can be on time to school. The FrontRunner is never late and never early.
4. Traffic shmaffic. I don't curr.
5. I see so many glorious sunrises.
6. I can take a little nappy-poo if I so desire.
7. I can even do my hairs.
8. On the 22nd, the cheerful attendant gave errbody a candy cane. Holy festive!
9. We save SO MUCH money on gas. That plus the $2, $2.50 price gas has been hovering around, and it's basically been Christmas in my gas task.
10. The WiFi is pretty shotty on the FrontRunner, but I actually kind of like that. I'm super-focused when I know I can't waste time on the Facebook.

I want to read more on my morning commute, and I want to start working out! Does anyone have any brilliant ideas for a non-embarrassing morning workout you can do on a barely crowded train?

Which Witch?

I may be the only teacher in the whole world who genuinely loves Halloween.

I'm at least in the minority, grouped together with a bunch of other first and second-year teachers who haven't been teaching long enough to hate this day of glorified sugar rushes and approximately zero education, but I really love it! I love the costumes, and I love dancing the Monster Mash, and I love making witch's brew.

Before we started putting the food together, I like to sing "Witch's Brew" by Hap Palmer with my class. They love it and so do I! What do you think the cap is on who would enjoy this song? 4th grade? Maybe 5th? I mean I still like it, but I am kind of a 2nd grader at heart :)

I thought it would be fun to wear a witch hat while making the witch's brew, but since I didn't have one, I just made one out of construction paper when I got to school. And then, since that turned out to be so easy, I cut some paper for my kids to make their own!

The hats are made with one piece of construction paper, cut in half. I put out 4 colors so they could mix and match and choose a half-sheet of orange and a half-sheet of green, or whatever they wanted. 

I gave two stencils to each table. They needed to cut a circular hole in the center of one of the half-sheets of construction paper, and a bit of a slope on the other half-sheet. 

The hardest part was folding the slope-cut half-sheet into a party hat shape, and honestly, I ended up doing almost all of them. I stapled them twice, and it actually didn't take too long.  

How cute are my kids! Ah.

I gave everyone a few minutes to decorate their hats, by coloring them or cutting a special design into the brim.  

They were definitely not the sturdiest of hats, but they were cute, and it was a fun addition to our witches brew activity!

There are a ton of recipes smattered all over the internet, but the one I used this year is one I got from a teacher on my team. It called for

-cinnamon red hots
-Cheerios
-gummy worms
-Chex cereal (plain)
-candy corn
-sunflower seeds
-M&M's
-Skittles
-raisins
-marshmallows
-pretzels
-Fritos
-Bugles

So, kind of a lot of ingredients. What I liked about it, though, is that everything coordinated really cutely to something else! The cinnamon red hots were drops of blood, the Cheerios were cat eyes, the gummy worms were earth worms....etc. Not only that, but I have a few allergies in my class and nothing on this list was a problem for any of my allergy kids.

This year, I asked parents to send everything in on the day we made witch's brew in class. Next year, I think I will ask for everything to be sent in a day or two before we make witch's brew. I want to take it out of the original packaging and put them in bags, bottles, or boxes with labels. I found so many cute ones on this Pinterest board, but it was after I had already done it with my class. Some of them are printables, some cost money, and some are editable. I'm sure there's something on there that will meet your needs!

I was the only one who mixed the witch's brew, and I separated them into individual baggies for my kiddos to snack on during seat-work. 

We do this worksheet along with our activity, which I got for free on TPT from the lovely Shelley Gray. This worksheet is perfect for reviewing sequencing, and the pictures on it are so cute! It doesn't exactly match up to the recipe I used, so I just let my kids put the ingredients in whatever order they wanted.

We ended up having several extra baggies, so we were able to share our witch's brew with some of the other teachers and our cute office ladies. Do you make witch's brew in your classroom? What do you do to make it fun?

Happy Halloween everyone!

Spider Week - EEK!

I do not like anything buggy / insecty / creepy-crawly.

Once when I was handing out lunch tickets at the cafeteria doors, one of my students came up in line, holding something in his hand.

"Rolly polly!" he cooed, holding it up for me to see.

"OH, WOW," I said, a little too loud.

He gently set it on the ground. "Make sure he doesn't get stepped on!" he said, and then bopped off to lunch.

I watched him go and promptly stepped on it.

So this might be surprising, but in October, I like to do a Spider Week with my students. It's also surprising to me how much they love it every year!

There are SO MANY cute ideas for spider stuff on Pinterest and on TPT, but spider week looks a little like this in my classroom:

Monday
We make a KWL chart - first on the rug, with a shared writing activity. We write what we Know or Think about spiders in one column, and then questions we have in the other column. I give my kids a chance to record some of what we talked about on their K and W. I got this cute worksheet for free on TPT and it has worked great for me!

Then I read to them about spiders. I don't really have a favorite book....I always pick a different one from the library. Here is a great list of fiction and nonfiction books about spiders.

While I read, I have them fill out the L part of their chart, as well as a Can / Have / Are chart that I got from this cute mini-unit by Kindergarten Lifestyle - also for free and also from TPT! (She also has another KWL chart in there if you want it to match with your C/H/A chart.

How cute, right?? There is also a spider labeling worksheet in there that I love and plan on using next year.

Last year I wrote a story called "The Princess and the Spider" for Spider Week. The kids loved it....maybe just because I wrote it? But I actually do feel quite proud of it! Anyway, I read half of this on Monday, and we circle back around to it on Thursday. I put it on TPT if you are interested!

Tuesday

So blablabla worksheets and listening. On Tuesday, we played a super-fun game to review verbs and adjectives. Every student got one of these adorable free verb / adjective cards, which I got from The Applicious Teacher on TPT. There weren't enough cards for my class, so I just had the students who didn't get a card hold stuff for me. One student held the Verb sign, another held the Adjectives sign, and two other students each held a line of yarn. 

The kids holding the yarn and signs were my spiders, the yarn was the web, and everyone else was a bug. For Round 1, I called on students one at a time to stand up, say the word on their card, and then buzz / crawl / flap / inch / hum over to the webs. If there was a verb on their card, the spider living in the verb web had to catch them, and if they had an adjective, the adjective spider had to catch them. 

Just to keep things from getting out of control, I had two rules. 

1. If the spider touches you, you are caught.

2. No wrapping people up with yarn or throwing it over them. Just wrap the yarn once (gently) around their hand and be done. 

When a lot of bugs got caught in the webs, I asked them to participate by either saying "Come over here! Come over here! Come over here!" or "Stay away! Stay away! Stay away!" 

Here are our terrified bugs, all caught in the verb web. They just set the cards in a pile on the desk when they got "caught."

And here's the adjective web! (You can see the spider in blue and yellow stripes creeping in, about to eat one of them. 

It worked pretty well to just do one person at a time for Round 1. 

After Round 1, we did a "Blitz Round." Everyone had to write one word on their whiteboard, either a verb or an adjective, and then they all buzzed over to the webs all at once. My rule for this game was that if they wrote a verb, they couldn't hang out by the adjective web trying not to get caught, and vice versa.

I love the adjectives they came up wth! Red, ugly, gentle, poisonous, big....

Wednesday

I love my art project that goes with spider week! We worked on informational writing with this spider craftivity. Each student needs to come up with a main idea, either an opinion on spiders or a broad fact that can be used as their topic, and 8 details.

Then they glue it all together and put it on a half-sheet of black construction paper. You wouldn't believe how many spiders wear makeup these days!

Thursday

This year, I decided to do a pumpkin book report. I'm sure you've seen a million versions of this idea on TPT or any number of teaching blogs, but I first heard about it from my teammate. I think it was Hope King, writer of Shenanigans in Second. Oh my goodness, she is a genius! I didn't use her version of the project - just made my own, but she was definitely my inspiration. 

Anyway, I wanted my kids to get a little practice creating a pumpkin character so they would know what I expected for their book report. On Thursday, I finished reading my "Princess and the Spider" book to the class. We split up into groups of 3-4, and I gave one pumpkin to each student. Since there are only 3 characters in "The Princess and the Spider," I had two groups in each class work on each character. (I just got the plastic trick-or-treat buckets that look like pumpkins, and a bag of 3 table pumpkins instead of getting big orange pumpkins). I pulled out a box of just a few art supplies, including pipe cleaners, googly eyes, construction paper, and cotton balls. Then I sat in my pink chair with my hot glue gun and let them go crazy!

Oh my heck, how cute did this spider turn out? 

I love how they put 8 eyes! Just one fact we learned about spiders this week.

Here's one of the kings. I love the pipe cleaner hair!

Pretty much every 2nd grader loves art, but this year I have a group of kids who are especially engaged whenever we do anything artistic. I loved watching them work together and get their creative on!

Part of our book report is also going to be a short, 3 minute presentation. We did that today just to give them some practice for when they are presenting their projects on their own. 

Do you see that face on construction paper glued on the pumpkin? One of my little guys came up to me very upset as we worked on our pumpkins. "Mrs. Shimp??" he said. "Those kids copied off of my face!" 

I looked where he was pointing. "Oh, did you make a construction paper face too?"

He shook his head. "I'm in the spider group," he said. "But that is my face. They're copying my face!"

I'm sure I looked very confused. 

"It looks exactly like my eyes, and my smile," he continued, very earnestly. 

"Wow! I wish they had copied my face!" I said. That made him feel better and he went back to his spider group. 

His eyebrows!! 

And that's it! Do you do a Spider Week in your class? What is your favorite activity for teaching spiders?

#helloiamoldnow

I have always been one of those people who loves my birthday.

So when I was watching HIMYM, and the episode starts out by saying "Lily has always been one of those people who loves their birthday. Loves it" ....well. That's when I decided that Lily was my favorite character. 

If you haven't seen it, Lily's birthday starts when Lily jumps up in bed at midnight and shouts, "It's my birthday!" Marshall responds by putting a crown on her head, and they go back to sleep. 

UNTIL 7:00 when she wakes up again and he comes in with breakfast in bed for her!!

And then he has the whole day planned out awesomely! Needless to say, I was ecstatic when I saw this episode and showed it to Stephen, who does not did not believe in birthdays. 

Then for good measure, I showed it to his mom, too. And his sisters. 

And I think his brothers watched it, too.

And I am happy to announce that my birthday turned out even better than Lily's! 

I woke up at midnight (4 minutes after we went to bed, but it's okay), shouted "It's my birthday!" and Stephen put a crown on my head. 

I feel that it is important to note, that even after like 5 conversations with Stephen about this whole crown business, with two days until my birthday I hadn't seen anything that looked even a little bit like a crown anywhere in our house. But when I said, "We have to remember to get me a crown tomorrow!" Stephen went to our room and brought out a crown that he had gotten and been hiding in his backpack. So then I died, and I knew my birthday was going to be better this year than last year.

The rest of the day was absolutely perfect and included all of the following:

- breakfast in bed (monkey bread of course)
- wearing my favorite dress to school

- perfect weather (always Heavenly Father's birthday present to me)
- a birthday sign a la Stephen

- phone calls and texts and Facebook posts and all kinds of virtual love
- 2 tissue boxes wrapped up beautifully with a bow, from one of my students
- endless pictures and cards from the rest of my students

(They are all suck-ups and I love them for it.)

- a gift card bouquet with gift cards to Chick-fil-A and Jamba Juice, and Sharpies from another student
- presents and key lime pie and cheesecake from the Shimp family

Not sure why I can't rotate these, but apparently I also couldn't blow out all the candles on my key lime pie. It just gets harder as you get older....

 - an unplanned (unasked-for, unashamed, underweared) dance by my youngest brother-in-laws. My goodness I am excited for them to grow up old enough to be embarrassed by the stories I can tell about them! (Even though this dance was actually pretty funny....)

 - hand-picked presents by Stephen, including a new outfit and this new coat that I am obsessed with!

Oh, more entertainment.

- a free food tour, which included free food from Firehouse Subs and California Pizza Kitchen, and later on in birthday month, free food from Dairy Queen, Coldstone, Brio, Baskin Robbins, Krispy Kreme, and Schlotsky's.

I love birthdays!! And I love this boy for putting up with my birthday craziness, and going along with it, and making my birthday perfect, and promising to take me to Hawaii next year, and putting on that stupid hat at Firehouse Subs just so I could take a picture to commemorate the free food. He is such a good sport and I can't wait to turn every other age with him.

Except I really can wait, because 24 is plenty old enough for me for now. But I'm just saying. He'll be there for the other birthdays, so that's good.