Publishing Party and Medals

Thank goodness it's the weekend and yay for a productive Saturday. It sure has been awhile since I've had one of those. Today I've been busy at work prepping some stuff for something exciting happening in school next week. Some of you may remember, awhile back I was talking about how my students were busy at work writing stories that had a twist to classic Fairy Tales. Well..those stories have finally been completed, shipped out for publishing, and shipped back to our school. 

Excuse this photo. I had to pull this of of my instagram since my copy of our book is at school :/ 

My students are officially published authors...and to celebrate such a wonderful accomplishment..we are having a Publishing Party this Wednesday in our school cafeteria. This is an event that was open to all third grade parents. Students will be displaying their books and they will be given the opportunity to answer any questions about the process or their inspiration. They will also be given the chance to share their books aloud to others in the author chair.  They are SO EXCITED and I am so proud of them because they each did such a wonderful job and worked so very hard. 

SO...I decided to award each of them with a IM A PUBLISHED AUTHOR medal...

Not sure if anyone else has a use for these but if you're interested let me know in the comment section below and I could send you an editable version on ppt. 

AND...I just have to mention that the cover to our book was drawn by my very talented friend. Some of you may remember her as the person who re-created my Angry Birds Cause and Effect Anchor Chart. 

Isn't she so talented?? When my mom saw our class book, she thought I had used clipart to create it. 

I've been trying to convince her to create clipart because she's talented and I think she would do great. For those of you out there who do create clipart...is it difficult? Perhaps she could start this up for a summer project?! haha. 

In celebration of all the wonderful mom's out there...here is what we created for our Mother's Day Gifts. It's just a cute little bear holding a bundle of flowers. On the stem of each flower is a coupon that moms can redeem from their child. My kids also created their own coupon. Many of the wrote things like "I will complete my homework without being told" or "I will complete my homework with no complaints". lol. I had to laugh at that one. 

How precious is this little bear?? 

Happy Mother's Day to all of you moms. I really give you all credit. I don't know how you all continue to be such wonderful teachers, diligent bloggers, and excellent mothers. I hope to one day be like you :)

Instagram Mania

I'm a huge instagram lover. I originally started instagram to follow fashion gurus, now it's even better because teachers have been hoppin on that instagram bandwagon like crazy! 

I've been MIA from the blogging world for awhile now, but since  I've been busy catching up with all that I missed...I noticed that many of you have your very own instagram accounts. 

I've also been finding a ton of new blogs through the #teachertalktuesday hashtags.

 SO I'm officially linkin up with What the Teacher Wants and Apples and ABC's for their teacher talk tuesday's. I love that you can type in a simple hashtag and look at so many awesome pictures out there. I LOVE IT. I spent my whole morning today on instagram (instead of cleaning/prepping end of year stuff) looking for some of you and admiring some classrooms and anchor charts!! I've found and began following quite a bit of the blogs I follow on a regular basis...but want MORe. After this post, I'll be searching for moree of you to follow :)

 I was so excited to have officially made a page for my blog! 

Visit me here at http://instagram.com/teachinginparadise

I posted a few pictures this morning..but I have a ton more to come :D 

Teacher Appreciation Freebie

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week to all of you wonderful teachers out there!!

Today, I whipped up a quick activity for my students to show appreciation to a former teacher. I had each child pick a former teacher who they remember as being special and they used a circle map to brainstorm what they appreciated/are thankful for about what that teacher did for them.

They then went ahead and wrote a thank you letter to them and drew a picture.

I felt that it's important, also extremely nice for the students to show thanks to their former teacher. I know that the teachers will be extremely touched and grateful for this. We are also sending out letters for those students who are writing to a teacher not from our school or out of state. 

Hope you can enjoy this free file up in my TPT store. Please leave some feedback if you decide to use this product :) Thanks!!

Oops, also forgot to mention that my TPT store will be on sale until Thursday..Use this special code: TAD13 to get an additional discount today!!

Enjoy the rest of your day and happy shopping!!

Five for Friday (a day late)...

Alright guys, I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for my very first Five for Friday link up.

For anyone who's been previously following my blog...Friday's were previously designated for my Fab.Five finds from Pinterest for the week..but I figure I'd switch it up since I haven't shared much going on in my classroom recently.

We had our talent show this week. I was completely amazed at all the talented students we had at our school. This is one of my students, she teamed up with two little girls in second grade and they sang a few songs from My Little Pony. They were soo adorable, and sounded REALLY good!

 We also hosted a Mystery Reader this week. This sweet girl's mother works at  my school as a fifth grade teacher. She read the cutest book, What Do Teachers Do After You Leave School....if you've never read it aloud to your class...it's a must!

She's wearing a beautiful lei because May 1st in Hawaii is also known as Lei Day :) 

My sister in law's sister is a pharmacist. She came to speak to my students about her job for career day. 

We have also been busy working on measurement. We borrowed some fifth grade students from our Mystery Readers classroom. Her students came and taught my students how to make a paper airplane. We then spent the day outside, flying our planes and measuring the distance traveled. 

Last but not least..this week we had a GANBATTE Rally to cheer our students on for state testing. 

Ganbatte is a Japanese word that means do your best/try your best. The kids made Ganbatte hats, pom poms and all of the third grade classes lined up in a big circle to cheer each other on. Another third grade teacher had wrote a chant with some former grade 3 teachers that all the kids chanted aloud while she was keeping the beat with a big drum. 

Ganbatte

Written by Dawn Kadota, Linda Kelly

Ganbatte

We'll do our best

We are prepared to pass the test

Ganbatte

Pearl Harbor School

We'll show the state that THIRD GRADERS RULE!

Ganbatte, Ganbatte, Ganbatte

It was so adorable. They were so excited and really did a good job at cheering them on. Some fifth grade and second grade classrooms also came out to support and cheer them on. 

M.I.A from BlogWorld= New Home, New baby, State Testing, and End of Year Duties....

Hello to all of you out there in blog land...and to whoever is still following/reading this little blog of mine. I sure have been MIA for awhile, but I promise it is for good reason (or at least I think it is) haha. 

I've been talking quite awhile about the fiance and I searching for a new home...well we have finally moved into our brand spankin new home!! It is a 3 bed, 2 bath townhouse with a single car garage out in Kapolei, HI. It is quite a drive, but I'm not complaining..I'm living in MY house!! (still sounds weird to say!) It is quite different out here as opposed to living in town...I really am enjoying the quietness out here and the 'small town, slow paced feel'. The lifestyle out here reminds me a little more of where I grew up, back in Maui. 

It has been crazy hectic packing and moving during the school year. I haven't really taken any time off (just one day the weekend we moved) because state testing is coming up...and I really don't want to leave my kids to a sub when there is so much to be done. SO..that means in between I need to find time to unpack and clean and stuff like that. I'd like to share a few pictures with you. Please don't mind the poor quality of photos because I'm using my iphone. Couldn't find my camera if my life depended on it. (Half of my house is still in boxes..please don't judge!) 

This is our kitchen..with all of our 'kitchen stuff'

Living Room/Dining Room

My very own craft room/office. Super excited about this room!

pretty and new washer and dryer

His and her sinks...master bathroom

master bedroom

Walk in Closet

Hubby getting ready to paint our master

Master bath

Furniture being delivered (I snapped a photo as they guys were grabbing our other piece) :D

Hubby installing ceiling fan (It is HOT out here)

New entertainment stand

Living room the day it was delivered...and my future in-laws

In between unpacking I had to set up a temporary office space underneath the kitchen island to prep for Monday.

Bedroom

Wet bar housewarming gift

I'll get more pictures up as soon as I find my camera....

Onto some other exciting news...We adopted a new fur baby!!
The boy and I are both major doggy lovers. We've been looking forward to being able to finally have a dog in our new home..but both agreed that we would get all settled in the house before we looked. WELL..one of my students told me about PETCO near our new house that has dogs from the humane society each week. SO...hubby couldn't help himself and while I was at work one day..he went out to 'just look'. He fell in love with this cutie pie.....

As he was on his way to work (and I on my way home) he calls me and tells me about this dog he fell in love with..and he regrets not adopting her and how he knows its the perfect dog for us. Without seeing her, I trusted his word and went to go and adopt her. Evidently, she had already left PETCO and was on her way back to the Humane Society (which was in the direction I was in, 30 min. ago). He made me turn around...I made it to the Humane Society with literally 1 minute to spare before they closed the doors. I was able to adopt her and take her home.

She is the sweetest cutest little girl and we have both fallen so much in love with her. She loves to be babied, and likes to be carried like a baby..she even sits like one with her bottom on my lap and back against my body. 

This picture if of her after her very first bath. Instead of shaking the water out like most normal dogs..she wanted to be picked up and wrapped in a towel. I put her in my lap and dry her off like a child (this is what I was talking about..how she likes to sit).

AND..this little baby does NOT like it when she is left alone. She always finds a way to escape from the baby gates we bought to keep her in the kitchen area. One day we came home...and she had chewed a hole in the brand new carpet. I was VERY MAD at her...so she got put on time out. 

She was so sad. I shared this story with my students, and they asked me..did she write that?? 

I told them "Yes, she did". They were impressed and said "WoW!!! That's pretty good she can write...you should enter her into America's got Talent!". HAHA. I was cracking up inside. It's so adorable how innocent they are. Kiani (our doggie) also got into my school bag and chewed up some of the kiddos' homework. I told them and they thought it was totally awesome. They again asked..."Did she write another note when she was on time out?!" :)

Alright..that's all for today. I'll be posting more pictures of the new home later if anyone is interested in that.and tomorrow I'm thinking of linking up to share more of what we've been doing in the classroom. 

Till tomorrow...