July Currently and Monday Made-It

Sitting here in an almost empty (furniture moved out because they are starting on our hardwood floors today), quiet house while my kiddos are asleep (l-o-n-g night) and taking advantage of the opportunity to do a little bloggin'.  I'm linking up with Farley for my first currently:

*I feel like rainy days almost give permission to be lazy, but just as I am typing this the sun has popped out and the rain has stopped.  I don't really *want* to be productive today.  This weekend was nuts trying to empty our house and pack for two weeks of vacation and house hoppin'.

*We always planned to replace our yucky carpet with hardwood floors but thought we'd wait until the kids were a little bigger (3 and 5 now) before we did it.  But, after some water damage to the playroom floor because of a roof leak, we decided to move the project up a few years.  We also decided to do some painting while the yucky carpet was still on the floor, so it's going to look like a brand new house!

*I am so jealous of all the cute graphic organizers and activity pages that everyone is making these days.  I'd really love to learn how to do it so my "stuff" can look fun!

*Last year was my first year teaching a 3/4 classroom and as much as I tried to map things out ahead of time, a lot of it was trial and error.  Plus, it was my first year utilizing the great resources from Teachers Pay Teachers and Pinterest, so at times I was searching for innovative ideas the night before!  This year I want to go in with a better plan to make my life easier and my teaching more effective.

*My advice is to Embrace Change!  In education, the next "big thing" is always around the next corner.  This means, just as I am getting comfortable with one initiative my district springs a new one on me.  :-)  It also means that every new group of students is different and I have to be prepared to make adjustments to meet their needs.  Sometimes change is scary, but I have found that if I embrace it the transition is much easier.

While scrolling through Pinterest (Man, I love that site!) I found a long-range science planner that I loved.  Unfortunately, I can't find the pin and I don't know who to give credit to, but here is the original.

I thought, how simple but effective!  This planning calendar spoke to me because I could see a snapshot of the year at a glance and see exactly how many weeks I would spend on each unit.  So I borrowed this teacher's idea and created my own template for long range planning.  I met with my team last week and we mapped out our Science.  Next time we meet we will look at Math for the year.  I think doing this as a team is also really helpful so we are all on the same page and ending/starting units about the same time.  I don't have a pic to share of our science map.  It's packed away in a box for the next two weeks while we are out of our house.

I am going to use this template to map out my big ideas/units for Reading skills, Chapter book clubs, writing pieces, math units, science, and so much more!  Then I can put them in my binder to pull for my weekly/monthly planning.  I like that it shows the short weeks, too, so I can pre-plan accordingly.

Ok, sun it definitely out and the kiddos are up and ready to have some fun.