Summer Bummer

I love summer, but for some reason I always get into a summertime funk. Does anyone else experience this syndrome? You know, where you seemingly have tons of days with no school-related responsibilities and you think that you're going to be oh so productive around the house...


In reality I have been very lazy.  Here's what I've actually accomplished so far this summer:
     1. reading
     2. playing on the computer
     3. lounging around
     4. more reading
     5. more playing on the computer
     6. more lounging around


I shudder to think of the laundry and cleaning that should be done, and feeding my family of 5 is a daily struggle!

I have this hanging on my refrigerator!

So in an effort to get out of this summertime funk and be more productive, I'm starting to think about (gasp) school. Every year some of my librarian friends and I get together to plan our beginning-of-the-year orientation. We always do themes (this last year was a cooking theme with Chef Reid Moore), but nothing has been finalized for next year yet. Here are some pictures from past orientations:

2008-2009

2009-2010

2010-2011

Super Librarian is my all-time favorite orientation theme. The students loved joining forces with Super Librarian to defeat Captain Chaos, archenemy to book-lovers everywhere. As luck would have it, Captain Chaos had a change of heart by the end of that school year and even became a defender of books and reading! Plus, with this theme the teachers and I got to "fly" around the world (with a little help from a green screen and iMovie). To this day, students still ask me about Captain Chaos and Super Librarian!

So, what's next? I have a couple of ideas for a new theme, but nothing finalized yet. Hmmm, all this thinking has worn me out, and besides, there's PLENTY of summer left to worry about orientation, right?! Well, gotta go now; time to do #6 on my summer list...
~Swersty 

Prayers, please

It is with a heavy heart that I write this post. While my husband, kids and I were on vacation in Mexico, my mother-in-law unexpectedly passed away back at home in Texas. This has been a very trying week for my family, especially my husband. Please hug your loved ones a little tighter and cherish your time with them. Rest in peace, Barbara.

~Swersty

Surfer Chick

I recently discovered a great new picture book about a surfing little chick and her dad. This is what the cover looks like:

Everyone should go buy this totally awesome book by Kristy Dempsey! I love it so much that I just made a book study unit for it called "Surfer Chick and Her Rad Dad" and posted it on my TpT store for only $4.00! Here's a preview:

I want to read Surfer Chick to my kids when school starts back up in August because it'll still feel like summer here in Texas (triple-digit temperatures will do that). I had so much fun planning activities to do with this book  that it almost made me wish I was teaching summer school. Almost...


It's actually a good thing I'm not teaching summer school because if I was I wouldn't be able to go on our upcoming family vacation to Mexico! We are going to Playa del Carmen and although I won't be a surfer chick, I do plan on being a SNORKELING CHICK. And a BEACH CHICK. And also a POOL CHICK. Probably a FRILLY DRINK CHICK, too!


Sadly, summer hasn't started for me yet. I have a librarian inservice tomorrow and then 2 more work days before I can officially say this school year is over. However, I am looking forward to kicking off my summer with the Central Texas Blogger Meet-Up this Saturday! 

Come and join us if you can! I don't know if there will be any surfer chicks among us, but I'll bet some FUN-LOVING BLOGGER CHICKS show up!

~Swersty

Texas Cliche

Ever been to Texas? What's the first animal you associate with my home state? Umm, besides the longhorn--something much smaller. 








Mountain lion? 
Rattlesnake? 
Scorpion? 
Although all 3 of these lovely animals can be found where I live in Central Texas, the critter I'm thinking of is pretty much harmless.

Anybody guess this little guy?

Even though I've lived in Texas my entire life, the only armadillos I ever saw growing up were on the side of the road.  

UPSIDE.   DOWN.            NOT.   MOVING.  

You know, like this:

The picture of the dead armadillo I almost used was just too much;

I decided to rotate the pic and let you use your imagination!

We call them Texas speed bumps. So I find it extremely weird that I've recently had 2 encounters with armadillos in my back yard! 
The first one happened about a month ago when I went outside to bring my dogs in from their pen. Every night I do this without incident, but this time I walked through the gate and almost stepped on a DEAD armadillo! On his back, claws up and everything! To make matters worse, just a couple feet away was another one! I'm not gonna lie, I let out a little scream. And then I looked at my dogs and they just smiled, like this:

Samson

Butterball

Fast forward to incident #2: Yesterday morning I was putting the dogs back outside for the day. We have a routine--on my command they go into the pen and then I follow with their food. They've been trained to wait until I give them the sign to eat. Can you tell that we are big "Dog Whisperer" fans at my house?


Anyway, they go inside the pen and start running around sniffing and acting all crazy until Butterball darts out with an armadillo in her mouth. And then I forget everything I've learned from Cesar Milan about being calm and start running around yelling for them to drop it and come back inside the pen to eat. And then they DO come in the pen and drop the very much alive armadillo right by my feet! Ewww--I continue screaming and running around and believe it or not, this worked because the armadillo shuffled right out of the pen! Hopefully he is smart enough to stay away from the crazy screaming lady and her dogs next time.


All in all, it was a very exciting start to the last day of school for me! The rest of the day was spent scanning books for my yearly library inventory, which is the exact opposite of exciting. One good thing about doing inventory is that I am reminded of all the fabulous books in the library, so I'd like to leave you with a great read-aloud recommendation:

"Armadilly Chili" (by one of my favorite children's authors, Helen Ketteman) is a Texas-style adaptation of "The Little Red Hen".  Go out and get yourself a copy if you don't already have one! And if you ever want to see a real, live armadillo, stop by my back yard. Sam and Butterball would be happy to find one for you!
~Swersty

Some are hairy and fat!

Isn't that a great sentence? Are you wondering what this first-grader is describing? (Think academics, people, not how some of us feel at the start of swimsuit season...)


This little gem came from a student in Reagan's class. Earlier in the week she graciously allowed me to be a guest classroom teacher and try out my newest TpT unit on her students. (I have to say--it was fun to step out of my librarian shoes and go back to where I started my teaching career in a first grade classroom!) 


The first thing we did was to read this great caterpillar book about friendship:

This is not a new book, but back when I was a classroom teacher I always read it to my kids and they loved it!

Next we did an activity that had us thinking about fact and fiction, caterpillar style:

Then the kids got to work writing down caterpillar facts...

lots of facts, which explains the "fat and hairy" sentence, right?!

And finally, the facts were linked together to create adorable Caterpillar Datapillars! 

This Datapillar lesson plus more activities are available here at my TpT store. And although I highly recommend getting the book Charlie the Caterpillar by Dom De Luise, many of the activities in this unit can be adapted to other caterpillar/butterfly picture books.

Well friends, after a long day helping at my school's Field Day, I am signing off. I will leave you with one fact of my own, though:

~Swersty

Cooking Up Some Fun in the Library!

Look who's ba-ack!

Hooray--Chef Reid Moore is visiting our library this whole week! He brought a fun book called Pete's a Pizza (an oldie, but a goodie) by William Steig to share with the younger grades and an exciting pizza-themed game to review library skills for the older students.

After hearing the story Pete's a Pizza, one lucky kid gets turned into a pizza!

Older students play a pizza game that reviews library skills...

Chef Reid Moore is having a blast this week, and has even managed to squeeze in some exercise running around the library. (He doesn't mind--he said he's been meaning to lose some weight anyway!) His last day will be Friday, and although the kids may be sad to see him go, he is leaving some pizza-scented bookmarks to remind them that books are YUMMY!

It's dinner time, so I'll end this post here. Besides, I'm suddenly hungry for pizza!

~Swersty

Lots of Firsts!

This is a post about firsts: my first TpT sale in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, my first Currently, and a favorite first grade teacher. First thing's first (pun intended--hee hee), the big TpT sale:

Since this is my very first time to participate, everything in my store will be on sale! OK, being new to TpT I only have one item in my store other than a freebie, but still, a sale's a sale, right? Puppy Palooza is the item you need to get during this massive sale. Check it out at my store here.

And here's my first Currently, thanks to Farley from Oh Boy Fourth Grade:

And finally, a picture of me with my favorite first grade teacher blogger friend, Reagan from Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits. This was taken last week during her library lesson. As usual, I made her wear a silly hat!

Happy weekend everybody, and remember that the first day of summer is right around the corner!

~Swersty