Back from a LONG Hiatus!

Happy Saturday Everyone!

I'm back from an extremely long hiatus!  I apologize to all of you wonderful followers on my blog slacking.  Life has been BONKERS!  My husband's travel schedule was insane to say the least and life as a single working mom when he travels is exhausting!!!  We are almost done with this school year (only 1 1/2 days to go with the children) and I'm extremely bummed out!  I have LOVED my class this year!  They will always have a piece of my heart!  I haven't counted down the days until summer because I'm not ready to let them go to middle school! :(  Don't get me wrong...I'm super pumped about summer time with my own little nugget, but I wish I could keep the same class next year!  They are incredible!  Since I last blogged, I've set up an Instagram account and would love any followers (click on the button at the top right of the page to follow me).  I'm thinking it will be easier to show what's going on more quickly than the blog on occasion as well as provide a window into what I do when I'm not in the classroom. ;)

I leave you today with a picture of our family from April and an easy/quick classroom behavior management idea inspired from a Pinterest post.  More frequent posts to come!  Enjoy the weekend! :))

Our first family photo session since the newborn/family session 2 1/2 years ago!  The loves of my life! :))

Paint bucket from Michaels stocked with fun writing tools for students to use when they are working quietly and are on task.  The bucket has gel pens, erasable colored pencils, sparkly crayons,  and sharpies.  I go to students demonstrating desired behaviors and ask if they want to "trade" their pencil for one of my writing tools.  Of course they ALWAYS say yes and they get to use the chosen tool for the rest of the day.  If they get off task, then I trade them back and the tool is lost for the day.  At the end of the day all children return my supplies back to the bucket and we start over the next day!  It's AMAZING what they will do to use "teacher writing tools".