Friday, June 28, 2013

Scamp and Travel Updates!

So here it is already June and I haven't blogged once.  I could say I was busy and I guess I was but still...no excuse!  I have been busy teaching and helping my hubby work on the Scamp.  Yep...we thought we had bought one that would require no work but buying things that we don't have to work on is not in the cards for us I guess.  It began by being given a lot of beautiful pieces of cork flooring by our son, Bryan.  When we took up the carpet, there was a soft spot in the floor.  Good time to replace the floor we thought.  Then we said the famous phrase, "As long as we are going to do..." Well, one thing turns into more and more things to do. SO we bought some new appliances because they were over 30 years old after all.  Pretty soon she looked like this...



And so...this is what we have been doing the last few moths besides working.  And visiting our sweet lil' grandson. And spending time with family and friends.  Yep.

Soon, Hubby became a master of many things like fiberglassing, wordworking, trailer electrical and plumbing, not to mention propane gas line installation.  Here is a picture of us camping at the Columbia Gorge that I have to keep in my thoughts when I begin to doubt why we are doing all of this.  In fact, it was this trip where we found we had something wrong with the tires.  Or brakes.  Or axle.  Hmmm....we replaced them all soon after this trip because, well, we had the floor out anyways and we didn't want our new floor to burn if they needed to weld a new axle in at a later date.  It was over 30 years old after all and you know how those things go.  At least for us!

Here he is, with our new fantastic fan and water tank in.  He is wiring in the new converter which was needed because we did not have one and the DC lights in the trailer would not work on the last trip, they just got dimmer and dimmer and finally went out.  Good thing we had electricity at the campground there was a nearby Walmart to get a little electric lamp!
So here is is, the end of June with school out and we are FINALLY getting things put back in.  We now have the appliances almost in and are getting ready to take it down a window company to see about getting new windows in the front and back.  

So the thought of being able to go Scamping again is super exciting and another exciting event will be my DIG field school trip with my sweet teacher friend, Jody, to Montana where we will learn to dig for fossils from experts from the University of Washington.  The place we are going to is Hell Creek  and there have been fossils of a tyrannosaurus rex and a triceratops found as well as fossils of other animals.  It is going to be another learning journey for me!  

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Time to blog!

Oh my...so long since I have written here!  It seems once school begins, there isn't time to focus on anything else...except Scamping that is!  Back to September...I got my classroom ready for my lovely
 students (they love it when I call them that :-)




Here is a picture of our math workplaces!

Fast forward to December...here is a photo of the amazing artwork that my kids created after learning about the single line drawings of Picasso. We raffled it off at our school Winterfest celebration and it was a big hit!



In between planning and teaching, I had time for some fun with our little Scamp. We went to the coast for our second trip and had a great time with no mishaps!

We also took it out in January for a very chilly but fun beach trip.  This trip proved to be a bit more challenging though.  On our way over, we stopped a coffee stand and as we were leaving, we went over a speed bump and the trailer popped off the hitch!  Yes...it was locked but apparently the lock was not working.  As my hubby stood on the back bumper, I tried (in vain) to get it back on the ball but to no avail.  Luckily, a very nice man stopped on his way to work to help us and we got it back on.  On we went for a fun time at the ocean.  Needless to say, we now have a new hitch welded on that won't pop off.
I still love our little Scamp!




Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Scamp and another new book!

Well, I haven't been doing too much getting ready for school (eek, now I am having I'm not ready dreams!) because I took another journey.  This time my husband and I headed down to Santa Cruz for a family reunion.  I loved seeing family that I had not seen for years and meeting some that I had never met. 

We also got something that I have been working on fixing up and getting things to make it cuter.  Guess what it is?  It is a Scamp fiberglass trailer, otherwise known as an egg camper.  Hmmm...that gives me an idea, I can show my students  a picture of it and ask them to infer what they think it might be nicknamed!  You can see why when you see its picture. I can give clues if they don't get it at first :-)


Cute, huh?  I am going with the red/turquoise theme since it is vintage.  Yeah, now 1982 is vintage.  Hmmmm, what does that make me?!?!  I won't go there. But it is cute and now I can go on a learning journey without sleeping on the ground!  


I HAVE been thinking about my students' learning though and when I bought my retro turquoise clock to go with my color theme in my trailer, I also bought my new favorite book for school, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.  

This is an amazing book and it gives me new teaching ideas each time I read it.  It is a wonderful children's book about a man who is writing his life story.  As he is writing, a tornado takes the words away from his book.  He is gifted with a book from a woman and his life changes direction.  I plan to use it to introduce caring for and the importance of books, to introduce writing, and also how to infer.  The original film short has no words so it will be perfect to have them infer what is happening from the pictures in combination with their own background knowledge , as well as compare and contrast the book and the film.  It has great vocabulary too!  There is also an app which I didn't purchase...yet.  Check out the author's website for more info!  The first thing I am going to do when I get back to my classroom (right after taking our maiden voyage in our Scamp this weekend) is to create a bulletin board featuring books that take us flying.  It will be finished with the addition of pictures/descriptions of the favorite books of my new class and their pictures.  Fun!

Now I am off to go Scamping!

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

It's a clean slate for now...

Here is what my classroom looked like (sorry for the blurry pic) after it was cleaned.  I was SO happy that everything was put back in place!  I need to get some good gifts for our two amazing maintenance guys.  Now I just need to organize and redo the bulletin boards which are not really boards at all but paper stapled to the walls.  That makes it hard to change things.  Ideas?  I will post new pictures when I am finished.   It might be awhile since school does not start until after Labor Day.  I am soooo glad we have August off since I know many folks are already starting school soon!
What should I do today?  Go get a copy of Blogging for Dummies  at the Goodwill so I can figure out how make my blog look better!
What I am REALLY going to do is go kayaking in Boston Harbor with my book group buddies.
Wow...that trip took the bloggin' right out of me! Since I have been stalking other teacher's blogs this summer, I figured I should get back to bloggin' here again, even if no one ever reads it :-)
My trip was amazing and I had so much fun, I took a trip to Holland for spring break where my daughter was playing softball for the Centrals in the town of Bilt.  I loved bringing home treats for my kiddos in class and they loved it too!  They were so interested in pictures, especially the windmills.  I loved Amsterdam too, it is nothing like the media portrays it.  It is safe and beautiful.  

This summer we travelled to Banff Canada and drove up to the ice fields just below Jasper.  Wow.  It was on my list of places I wanted to see and it was so much more beautiful than I ever could imagine.  We saw so many animals (bears, longhorn sheep, mountain goats and more!)just eating beside the road.  I was really interested in seeing the hoodoos (never have seen one in all my years!) so we drove around till we found them.  What is a hoodoo you ask?  Check out the sign that describes them.  We learned about them in our second grade science unit, Pebbles, Sand and SIlt.  Now I have real pictures!


Anyways, now I am thinking about how to improve my practice and classroom and have been checking out other blogs (and Pinterest of course!) and feel like I need to really step it up and get busy.  Was that a run-on sentence or what?!?!
Soooo...I participated in Made It Monday which but I didn't link up because I haven't figured out how yet.  Hah!  I am posting a picture of my little craft anyways even though it is not totally finished AND I haven't linked up. I plan to write sharp and dull on the cans with chalk and use them for pencils in the classroom. I found the buckets at the Target Dollar Spot, tied ribbon on the handle, and added the little flower bows that I found at JoAnne's Fabrics. The total cost was about $3.00 for the pair.  Ya gotta love that! 
I also finished painting a bench that I found off Craigslist I will use in my classroom using Annie Sloan chalk paint.  I like the storage under seat and in the sides.  I am hoping it will be another cozy place to read but haven't had anyone try it out yet.  Gotta work on that...
Well, back to blogstalking for more great idea from other folks...

Thursday, August 4, 2011

European Journey

For the next three weeks, I will be taking a journey to Europe.  It will be wonderful to experience other customs and cultures and I hope to bring home lots of new ideas and information.  As with any journey, there has been a lot of preparation, as well as things that didn't go quite as planned.  I am heading over by myself and was supposed to be accompanied by my husband.  Because of health issues, he needed to stay at home to get well and will hopefully come later.  As I get ready to go, I am thinking about how this journey is like the journey that children take when they get ready to start a new school year.  They are excited, nervous, anxious, and look forward to learning new things and seeing old friends again.  I feel all of those things and also look forward to meeting new friends on this trip.  So it is off to Europe I go, taking a last journey before the new school year begins. Tschüs!

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Books!

The other day I went to the Goodwill (not only do I give them things but I buy things there too!) and of course, I stopped to look at the book section.  I am a sucker for books as anyone who knows me realizes, and I found a few books that I didn't have. Hard to imagine, I know. I flipped through the pages of the books just to make sure they were clean and not torn but didn't read them until I got home.  One of the books that I got was just hilarious and will become a perfect book to teach reading strategies and friendly letter writing at school.  Even if you are not using the book as a teaching tool, it is a perfect read-aloud at home that would get children engaged in the story.  The book is called Dear Mrs. LaRue: Letters from Obedience School by Mark Teague.  The main character is Ike, an overly dramatic dog who gets sent away from home to a dog obedience school for stealing food right off the counter, chasing the neighbors cats, howling whenever his owner is away, and tearing her camel hair coat while she was crossing the street.  Throughout the story, Ike complains about being mistreated by the school and begs to be taken back home.  Immediately.  He conveys his feelings in the form of letters to his owner at home, Mrs. LaRue.  The illustrations are one of the best parts of the book and cleverly depict Ike's perception of the events at school in black and white (oh the horror of it all!) with the reality of the events depicted in color.  What a perfect way to introduce comparing and contrasting as well as point of view!  I also found a fun friendly letter writing assignment online at writingfix.com that uses the book to teach how to write a persuasive friendly letter.  I won't tell you the end of the story, but will say there are sequels to Ike's tales that I am excited to read.  Here are the titles:
Detective LaRue: Letters from the Investigation
LaRue Across America: Postcards from the Vacation 
LaRue for Mayor: Letters from the Campaign Trail
I think the last book might be a great way to introduce local government concepts.
Enjoy reading Ike's letters, but don't believe a word he says ;-)