Celebrate!

Ruth Ayres has a link-up on weekends where people link to posts that are celebrations about their week. I love this reminder to celebrate every week.

This weekend I am writing my post early because I will be out celebrating too much to post. Last week a new person joined our family. My brother and his wife had a new baby girl. This will be my fourth niece and I get to meet her this weekend. I'm looking forward to meeting her and being with my mother, brother and other family members.

I am celebrating spring today too. We've had a little snow again this week, but today the sun is shining and the temps are back above 50. Today at our school we had a school wide celebration outside with music and dancing on the playground. It was a wonderful day for it.

Tennis is underway and I'm about to run out to watch another match. Our exchange student has been enjoying his time on the team. We only have about six more weeks with him before he heads back to South Korea. I enjoy having students come stay because we get to see our own lives through another perspective. I think we learn and grow every time someone comes to stay.

I was able to go to craft night yesterday. I wasn't able to work on the bracelet I had been making because the supplies weren't there, so I started a medallion (sort of like this). It's more complicated than the bracelet for sure and is one of the reasons I have an optometrist appointment next week. Those tiny beads and stitching are tricky when I'm looking over the top of my glasses and then back through them again. Bifocals may be in my near future.

Once again, I'm thankful that I work with fun people. Several of us spent time laughing together at lunch today.

I'm off to watch some tennis. I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Celebrate

Ruth Ayres has a link-up on Saturdays where people link to posts that are celebrations about their week. I love this reminder to celebrate every week.

This week has had plenty of ups and downs. The construction work at school this week was noisier than it had been for a while. This led to headaches and a general desire to get out of the building as soon as possible at the end of the day. To combat this stress, several of us took walks together during our lunch breaks. Fortunately, the weather was gorgeous this week. We finally really have spring. Many staff members also met after school on Friday in a teacher's backyard for conversation and snacks. It was a fantastic way to relax.

Another bright spot was that my third and fourth grade students are creating papel picado for Día de los niños using the designs in the resource guide. The fifth grade students will be trying some of the designs from Carmen Lomas Garzas book Making Magic Windows. We'll use one of the flower patterns and one with lizards.

Today I was able to go to Zumba class again. It was not fabulous for my back, but it was still a lot of fun. My husband and I were also able to go on a great hike to look out over Lake Winona and the Mississippi in the distance. It was a beautiful day and I always enjoy getting up to the top of the bluffs to see the water.

Last Saturday my exchange student and I made it to the powwow in Madison. It was cool to see the variety of dancing. We also had a wonderful walk by the lake and some yummy root beer floats. Strangely enough we got to see the engineering students creating the world's largest Rice Krispies Treat too. We stopped and visited with my son and he directed us to the world record breakers.

Though I was feeling behind on blogging Thursday, I did catch my breath and have made lists and plans. Things seem more achievable now.

There was much to celebrate and the celebrations outweigh the difficulties by a ton. Have a wonderful week!

{#sol15} Celebrate! 28/31

The March Slice of Life Story Challenge 

hosted by Two Writing Teachers

Ruth Ayres has a link-up on Saturdays where people link to posts that are celebrations about their week. I love this reminder to celebrate every week.

Many of my celebrations this week made it into my Slice of Life posts. Slice of Life is one of my celebrations. It hasn't been nearly as difficult as I thought to post each day this month and truly, the best part may be reading and commenting on other people's posts. The posts have been thought-provoking, beautiful, emotional, and sometimes hilarious. It's a treat to visit the many blogs and enjoy the writing and life journeys of others.

Another treat was seeing the trailer of Meg Medina's new picture book, Mango, Abuela and Me, coming at the end of the summer. It looks so fun.

Tuesday was a day of thinking. It was the conclusion of some professional development that a team of teachers from my building attended throughout this year. We learned about Culturally Responsive Classroom Practices. We're hoping to implement some of the classroom practices that we learned in the coming year and are already trying to use some of them in our own spaces. It will be interesting to see how this plays out as we get the information to other staff members. I'm excited to see what we can do.

On Wednesday evening, creativity was the theme. I was able to go to a craft night and have a beading lesson. Ever since attending the American Indian Summer Institute in 2013, beading has been something on my bucket list. A young Mohican woman there was working on beadwork for a Powwow and it was beautiful. The artistry was stunning. Being able to learn how to string beads together was nice, but spending time with women and girls while we worked on different projects and talked was also very relaxing. I hope to be able to participate often.

Thursday was a busy day as I taught and then went to a presentation about Ethiopia. Having read Black Dove, White Raven within the past month had me wanting to learn more about this fascinating country. We learned a lot about the country and its people. Following the presentation, I made my way to our elementary school dance. Joining in the fun was a spirit lifter. Several teachers were out on the dance floor and we had a blast acting silly and dancing around with our students. This all made for a long day, but one filled with goodness.

Related to culturally responsive practices, a new resource appeared on my radar that will help me gather resources related to Native Nations of Wisconsin. It also helps others. Someone was just asking me yesterday how to get information to local elementary librarians about what resources to purchase and I was able to direct them to this resource. Win!

The week was filled with excitement and fun as our school celebrated our Spirit Week and that is a celebration in itself. Seeing everyone dressed in crazy ways and being silly together made for a lot of laughter and many smiles. Coming up, we have a short week and then my son comes home for a few days. Life is good.

Celebrate!

Ruth Ayres has a link-up on Saturdays where people link to posts that are celebrations about their week. I love this reminder to celebrate every week.

This past week was full of laughter, smiles, and so many books. I was able to attend the ALA Mid-Winter meeting for the first time. There were friends to see and authors to meet. There were ARCs to pick up and so much more. I will likely write about all of the fun sometime in the coming week. 

I am also celebrating that I made it home on Sunday despite the winter storm. The roads were not so fabulous and the wind and snow made it tricky to see sometimes, but I had my audio books and took my time. Even with all of the dicey driving, I was still able to stop in Madison for a little while to see my son. I love any chance to do that.

Another celebration was the Youth Media Awards. I love seeing the outpourings of book love. I watched it at school just before classes started.

Our school renovation is in full swing with tight quarters all around, construction noise, and various things that require lots of flexibility on the part of staff and students. Our team leaders thought of a way to help with the stress. We're having "Fabulous Fridays." For our first fab Friday, staff was treated to all kinds of wonderful drinks: tea, coffee, lemonade (since we're taking our lemons and making a lot that these days), hot cocoa and more. There were even a few snacks to go with the drinks. It certainly made the morning brighter.

I hope your week was filled with many things to celebrate.

Celebrate!

Ruth Ayres has a link-up on Saturdays where people link to posts that are celebrations about their week. I love this reminder to celebrate every week.

Here are things that I celebrated over winter break:

San Francisco

We were able to spend time with family in California. We had a fantastic time together on Christmas Eve and enjoyed a party with friends on Christmas Day. We also had perfect weather for our trip to San Francisco and then again when we went to Monterey and Carmel. Some of my happiest childhood memories are of my family climbing around tide pools in southern California and I couldn't help but remember those special moments with my family as we all made new memories at the ocean last week. 

Some of the critters we were able to find in the tide pools and on the beach

Part of a group of crabs we saw scuttling around

Sand piper

Sea anemone

Purple sea urchins

I saw the whale with my eyes, but had trouble catching it with the camera.

I loved the fun trees.

** I had plenty of reading time during my flights and the long drives we had for our day trips. Initially, I was using a small suitcase, but realized that I couldn't fit the 9 books I was planning to take so I packed a larger duffle instead. That was good since I purchased 12 more on the trip (at a friends of the library sale), got two as presents, and my mother-in-law had finished the book she borrowed from me in September so I had 24 books to pack for the trip back home. ;)  If you wondered, I read 8 of the books I packed for the trip in addition to two more novels and 13 picture books along the way.

** The #WriteDaily30 challenge concluded. This was hosted by Linda Urban. While I missed a few days along the way, it was great to have incentive to write each day in December. I am happy to have been a part of the group.

** Today I was finally able to go back to Zumba after two months of physical therapy. Moving to the music with a fun group was a wonderful way to celebrate the morning.

** I looked back at the goals that I posted on January 1, 2014. I met all of them! I started a coding club at school last year. I also expanded our Hour of Code activities this year. I worked on helping my students become more independent about selecting books. We had a great time with World Read Aloud Day. I also had a summer checkout this year for the first time. I was able to have the library open for two hours on Mondays five times during the summer for students. I exercised frequently this year and kept a log. I ran about 450 miles though my injury in October kept me from hitting the 500 that I planned. I ran a half marathon and complete a RAGNAR relay race to the Twin Cities. I got to Zumba a ton too. Mission accomplished. Now to get busy on my goals for this year.

I hope you had many things to celebrate in the past week or two. My timer just went off and I can smell the loaf of bread I just baked. I think I forgot to mention all of the amazing food that we have eaten over the holidays. Yum. Lebkuchen is the food of the gods - especially Aachener printen. We also had my mother-in-laws most excellent Christmas cookies and lots of other treats for our tastebuds. I'm off to have a piece or two of fresh bread. Luckily I exercised this morning. 

Celebrate!

Ruth Ayres has a link-up on Saturdays where people link to posts that are celebrations about their week. I love this reminder to celebrate every week.

* I'm participating in Write Daily. This is a writing challenge that is hosted by Linda Urban. I'm celebrating that I have been writing more this week and posting to my blog more often. I wrote for four days straight. Yesterday though, I didn't make my goal. I planned to, but this week I have stayed almost 2 hours after work every day. We're going through a renovation and we (me and two aides) had to move almost half of the library to a new location and we're boxing up the rest. This is an exhausting job. When I came home yesterday I sat on the floor until my husband brought home dinner. We watched the hobbit together and I went to bed. No writing was accomplished, but my brain and body relaxed and I spent time with family. I was disappointed this morning when I realized I hadn't written, but today is a new day.

It's fun for the students to hide in and around the boxes during the shift.

* The library move is a struggle. Doing all of my regular tasks with moving on top of it is wearing me down. Almost every free moment is spent shifting books, packing them, or making decisions about the new or old library space. I would love to say that it's exciting and I am looking forward to the new space, but right now I have my head down and am just trying to get through. There is a small light shining at the end of the tunnel though. All of the books that are staying in our new mini-library are moved and there is only one more bookcase of nonfiction to be packed on Monday. We still have the chapter and picture books to pack, but there are fewer of those. It's beginning to feel manageable.

* One of our pre-k teachers left that fun note seen in the center above. Chocolate always helps when I am stressed and it is wonderful to know that others are behind us and understand the stress of the move.

* Because of my schedule, I won't see all of the classes during the Hour of Code week, so I started some of those lessons already. It was fun to see the students enjoying the Hour of Code program online and some of my earlier grades were interacting with the apps Kodable and Light Bot. One child was not as thrilled though. He is a true Nerdybookclub guy. When he realized what we were doing he said, "I don't want to play a game on an iPad, I just want to read a book." He did manage to learn a little about coding and enjoy himself, but he was happy when we got to checkout time and he could finally get to the books.

* My daughter is performing in many musical events this season. We get to go see her at one of the local universities this weekend. It's an honor choir with nominated high school students along with the university choir. They're singing portions of the Messiah and she has been looking forward to this for quite some time.

* Finally, I got our Christmas cards ordered and they came in the mail. I haven't sent any in about six years so this is a step in the right direction. I've written a few of them already and am hoping to get the majority mailed this weekend. I'm enjoying the Advent Season and while cards add more work, it's also nice to send out greetings to people we don't see often and think of them.

I hope that your week was full of celebrations big and small.

Celebrate!

Ruth Ayres has a link-up on Saturdays where people link to posts that are celebrations about their week. I love this reminder to celebrate every day.

• I got to spend the day with my two favorite children. We had a yummy lunch while watching the Badger game on a humongous screen at the student union. If you can't be at the game (it was away), the next best thing is watching with a bunch of Badger fans. It was funny because whenever the game wasn't on, a person was turning off the tv audio and we had some loud, fun music. I didn't know that football dj was a restaurant job. 
• I love watching my writer's group at school. They enjoy having the time to create individually or together. Some have decided that they want to do the Scholastic Kids are Authors contest and are writing picture books together. Their excitement is amazing. It's great to see what they do when they have the time and space to be creative.
  
  

  

  
  

  

  
  
• My drawing class was very enjoyable this week. I finished a drawing I had started the week before. At the previous lesson, I had an “Ish” moment. I kept trying to draw an acorn and it wouldn't look the way I envisioned it. I will admit that I became very frustrated and had to take a time out in the hall. When I came back in, I stopped trying to make it perfect and went for trying to make something acorn”ish” and that did the trick. This week, I added more acorns and am happy with the drawing. With five minutes left of class, I did a very quick still life drawing that I didn't hate. I think it's good to experience frustration when I am learning to remind me of what some of my students may go through.
• NaNoWriMo has begun. The camarderie is fantastic. So many people are going through the same adventure together. There are word sprints on Twitter and Facebook. There are writing challenges with our region. We had a write-in last Saturday at the library (four of my fourth and fifth grade students attended) and another write-in happened with a smaller group of folks Monday night. Writing with others doesn't necessarily make me write more or more quickly, but it is way more fun. The food is good too.
  
  I hope you have also had a week full of many moments to celebrate!

Celebrate!

Ruth Ayres has a link-up on Saturdays where people link to posts that are celebrations about their week. I love this reminder to celebrate every day.

Wow! I have so many things to celebrate this week.

* Today I attended Widening the Circle - an Indigenous Education Conference, which is why my post is late. I've been to it in past years and it's always a fantastic learning experience. I will be writing more about this for Slice of Life on Tuesday. One of the messages was to advocate for our students - to "speak the truth" which was also a message at another conference I attended earlier in the week: Culturally Responsive Classroom Practices. Both of these events were times of encouragement and learning. They were also opportunities to connect with others who have a passion for the same issues. It's energizing to be with people that are working for the same purpose.

* The We Need Diverse Books campaign had all kinds of things to celebrate this week too. They have many initiatives planned and in progress. They kicked off a fundraiser and have already raised almost $25,000 of their $100,000 goal. It's exciting and shows that diversity in kidlit matters to many people.

* We participated in Read for the Record and also had a Family Reading Night that evening. It was the same day that I was away for a conference, but I still got to read with families in the evening. Our announcements explain what that was like.

* I was able to attend a presentation by KaYing Yang at the local university. She showed this video which shares the story of Hmong Americans in their voices.

She discussed immigration, gender equity and domestic violence. It was an evening full of learning.

* I am still enjoying my drawing class. We got to see a demo of print making. It made me want to buy a gelli. We also discussed pictures based on the material in the book Picture This by Molly Bang.

* My daughter is now a licensed driver!!!!! I did NOT have to get up at 5:30 this morning to take her to the high school to go to Minnesota for a competition. 

* Finally, I have been winning many things. I won books from two different blogs this week. I also won two books as a door prize at a public library event. At the university lecture, I also won the door prize which included candy, a nice candle and a few other misc. items. Clearly I should have bought a lottery ticket this week. ;)

This was an extremely busy week, but I really appreciated the learning opportunities and connections with people.