First Week Exhaustion

Oh me, oh my.  Yes, I'm alive.  For the past two weeks, I've been dying to blog... this is my release, I find it relaxing and thoroughly enjoy sharing with others!  However, I am going to be 100% honest when I say that as much as I have wanted to blog, I have not been able to muster up the energy to!  .... and if I'm still being completely honest.... I have been so exhausted that I have hardly even kept up with instagram, facebook, reading some of my favorite bloggers, watching Big Brother & Bold & the Beautiful!  I kid you not, that exhausted!  My poor kid, we get home I cook dinner, maybe do a little painting, and then it's all snuggles together on the couch.  (No, I'm really not complaining about that part, I will take all the snuggles she is willing to give!) I don't know what is so different about the beginning of this year as opposed to others... oh wait.. I don't think there is... I think that I just choose to drown out the memory of the BTS exhaustion each year!  So enough of all that... I'm gonna do a quick re-wind of the past two weeks.

I don't even think I've blogged since the N.Tx Bloggers Meet up!  Check out this great group of ladies.  Thank you again,  Mrs. Patton from Mrs. Patton's Patch and Mrs. Thompson from Adventures in Teaching for hosting this great meet up for us! :)  Oh & thank you to Amy Lemons for sharing this great photo with us!  She saved the day with her fancy schmancy camera! ;)

You should check out the blogs of these sweet ladies:

{Mrs. Richardson's Class, Chalk Talk, The Clements Crew, Step Into 2nd with Mrs.Lemons  

Flying High in First Grade, Adventures in Teaching, Mrs. Patton's Patch

Kreative in Kinder, My Silly Firsties, In That Room... Adventures in Second

Hey, it's Jade!, Just Tinkerin' Around,  Saddle Up for Second Grade

First Grade Glitter and Giggles, Smitten With First, 3rd Grade's a Hoot

The Teacher Garden iHeart Second Grade, Maneuvering the Middle

Sweet-n-Sassy in 2nd, Winging it in Fourth}

We started back two weeks ago today!  This year my team is the SMALLEST I think it has been in the past 4 years, only six of us.   However, I have to say that these girls make my day, everyday!! :)

Left to Right: Marilyn, Diana, Sam, Becca, Me, & Kristin

Please excuse the fuzziness of the photo... Apparently my phone didn't deem it necessary to focus! I meant to snag a couple other pictures that we took throughout the week, but ehhhh 2 weeks passed and I still didn't get to snag a copy! Womp, womp.

The week went by SUPER quick, we learned lots of new things, some that are on my to-do list to share with YOU, in a later post of course! :)  Meet the teacher went great!! I had all but 3 of my 24 show up... Yes, you read that right TWENTY-FOUR! Here is the set-up before students arrived!

The first several days came and went, there was a lot of repetition, repeating, organizing, and practicing!  I managed to squeeze in a few of my favorite books, a few new books, and some great reviewing of previous learning!  My kids are totally rocking some of the concepts we are reviewing & while it is a HUGE class, I know it's going to be a great year... or well I'm crossing my fingers! ;)  Here are a few snapshots from our week!

 We are trying to make our science journal a little more interactive this year, so when a Becca, one of my teammates found the interactive science notebook from the Science Penguin, she snatched it up with some additional licenses during the big TPT sale!  I'm loving it already!

 My kids LOVED sharing their All About Me books they did for their first week of "homework."

After spending some time talking about vowels and consonants, we began to talk about CVC words! 

If you remember from my earlier posts in August, my school's theme this year is camping!  On Tuesday, we had a  "campfire" in my classroom.  I turned off all the lights and the students sat around in a circle.  Each student went around, shared their name, something they are good at, and then cracked their glow stick.  By the end it "campfire" area looked really cool & the kids LOVED it! :)

I'm thinking we will have campfires throughout the year, but probably just end up passing around a couple of glowsticks rather than each student having their own!

In writing, we started our list of stories by doing "Apples, peaches, pumpkin pie, you've got a story, so do I!"  I learned this great chant & lesson from Melissa Leach from Leach Teach!  Let me tell you, this is my second year doing this... & the kids L-O-V-E it! :)  If we didn't do the chant before I asked them to get started, they most definitely reminded me!!! I love that they are in 2nd grade and still love this cute & silly stuff! Makes my heart happy!

I felt as though we had to jump right on into the learning/reviewing & didn't have too much time for "fun" stuff.  So on Friday, I decided to bust out the watercolors & let the kids make some artwork using their name for the hallway!! Most all of the pictures turned out cute & it added a lot of color to our bulletin board in the hallway! :)

As I mentioned already, this last week was exhausting. 

It was the sweet & salty that got me through this week!!  Some of my former parents dropped off some sweet flowers for me on the first day back!  This family seriously makes my heart melt!  Last year when my attic fell through the garage... they brought me flowers and they are always giving my sweet treats, just because! :) The E-Card... Well when I saw it... It was a perfect depiction of EVERY.SINGLE. DAY last week!  The picture of B was a good interpretation of her nightly exhaustion, "ay momma, ay!" It is her sweet snuggles that get me through the night!  && When I realized Starbucks brought back my most favorite of favorite drinks, I knew Friday was gonna be a good day!  I am in LOVE with the salted caramel mocha frap!  If you haven't tried it, you're missing out!

And ... Because I can't help but to share a few more of the never ending photos!  The top left picture is probably one of the funniest to me... mostly because there were multiple nights last week that we got home and I see her laying on the dining room like this as I am cooking dinner.  She wasn't shy about doing it at a friends house either, which is where the above picture was taken!  Ice cream was also a must to get us through the week.  Oh & some retail therapy to help drown the exhaustion of the week out this weekend! :)  As you can tell, I'm really going to be in trouble when she is older.  She is a pro at shopping already!

I hope you all had a 3 day weekend & that you enjoyed it as much as I did!! I'm looking forward to the fact that it is only a 4 day work week!! I can do it, I can do it.  ;)