Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween!

I'll be sitting here patiently awaiting trick or treaters :)

Do you think we have enough candy?!? hehe

Pumpkin Day!

Today was absolutely INSANE! Not only was it the last school day before Halloween, but it was pumpkin day in first grade AND the day of our book character parade.

The day started with kids dressed in costumes. First grade did fairy tales so we had dragon slayers, fairy godmothers, and princesses.

We sat in the hallway and watched grades 3-5 parade by us, then we stood up and got to parade by them. The kids LOVED it! There was music playing and they were dancing up a storm haha.

After the parade we went back to the classroom to begin pumpkin day. Pumpkin day included a variety of pumpkin activities. We started by making headbands, then made some guesses about our class pumpkin including how many seeds it had, how many lines, and how much it weighed. We cut strings to guess how big around we thought it would be then checked to see who was the closest (6 kids were dead on, impressive!!). We graphed our choices for what sort of face we wanted carved, then we opened up the pumpkin and carved it. The kids put the seeds in groups of ten for us to count, we listened to a story while sitting in the dark admiring our lit up pumpkin, we played Halloween bingo with candy corn, and we worked with partners to compare the small pumpkins we brought in from home.

All in all the day was a success. The kids were CRAZY excited ALL day! I had more than one tell me this was "the best day of my life" which I guess made the insanity all worthwhile.

I must admit, it was a fun day :)

Wings Over Houston

This past weekend Tony took me to the Houston air show ... by took me, I mean I begged him to take me until he agreed haha. He had free tickets from work and I really wanted to go so I basically just talked about it until he said okay :-P

It was hot as can be (it's October for goodness sake, when is it going to feel like fall?!?) but it was such a fun day! There was so much to photograph I was in Heaven! We wandered around for a bit checking out all the military planes and Tony taught me pretty much everything about them. They had a whole area set up like an army camp with actors playing the roles of soldiers. It was pretty neat

After awhile we settled into our seats to watch all the planes flying. There were so many that were sooo cool! Plus, it was fun to go with someone that actually knew about them because I learned a lot.

After a few hours it was hot and we had seen so much I would have been ready to go but Tony said we had to stay because the Thunderbirds were last and he claimed they were awesome. He was right, it was totally worth the wait. I was amazed by how fast they were going and how synchronized their movements were. Honestly, you just had to see it to know how cool it was!

I literally took hundreds of pictures all day ... so many that it is hard to choose just a few to post here haha. I do really love this next one though so I wanted to include it. It's a 48 star flag from WWII and after tinkering with the color I fell in love:

Intentions

This was posted on thenotebookdoodles.com today (love some of the things posted on that blog!) and I thought it was just perfect for me given how this year has gone.

It might be a ridiculous story, but I can laugh about it, and I'm so happy now so it doesn't even matter. :)

cute kids

First graders totally crack me up!

Today little girl A comes in and says to me "Ms. McCormack, I'm going home with M today because my mom has a doctor appointment. She's having an oh so sound ... you know, when they look at the baby in her tummy!" hehehe "oh so sound" too darn cute!

Later we were reading the book "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly". We had read through about half of it and then when I read "I know an old lady who swallowed a cow" little boy C pipes up loudly, "OMG that's disgusting!" he actually said the letters O.M.G. I laughed so hard I had to put the book down which of course made everyone else start to giggle too. Maybe you had to be there, but goodness was it funny! :)

Fishing!

In the past month I have become quite the fisherman (or woman rather)! Over the summer I went out on the boat with Tony a few times but while everyone else fished I just got tan. A week after I got back in town we went out again, and that day everyone was catching these HUGE fish! It was so exciting I decided I wanted to give it a try.

So, that week Tony took me to academy and helped me pick out a fishing pole (it's black and pink and super cute btw). We've pretty much gone fishing every weekend since, either out on the boat, or to the pier.

The first time we went to the pier I caught this MASSIVE fish! It was WAY too bit for my little rod and had it fought at all it would have totally snapped my line right away. As it stood I got it reeled all the way in and there was this huge crowd of people watching. All these men were trying to help get nets down there to bring it up (it was too big to get up otherwise) but unfortunately at the last second it broke the line and got away. I'm so sad we didn't even take a picture of it in the water :( Let me see if I can explain how big it was ... put your arms out strait in front of you then link your hands so it makes a circle. It was about that big!!

Catching a fish just never gets old for me. It doesn't matter what it is or what size I get excited every time as you can see from my pictures haha

This past weekend we went on the boat on Saturday and then to the pier on Sunday. On the pier there was a 4 year old boy fishing next to us who was just too darn cute. He wanted to help us throw all our fish back and got so excited when he saw us catch something. At one point he was helping me hold the fish while I got the hook out and in all seriousness he said to me "I'm going to sing twinkle twinkle to it and it will calm down" and then this sweet little boy sang to my fish. How precious! He totally loved Tony too! After Tony caught a good sized sand trout our fishing buddy Nick requested to be in the pictures too. He was too darn cute giggling up a storm as the fish flopped around and Tony helped him hold it.

I love my new hobby!! :) Can't wait to go again this weekend!

First Grade

I feel so lucky to have a job! I just cannot get over that! :)

So far everything is going really well. I really love how the school is brand new (only opened last year) so everything is SO nice! Nice furniture, technology, etc. I have a projector in my room that is hooked up to the computer which we can use to watch United Streaming, and I have an elmo instead of an overhead. I LOVE it! Oh, and the whiteboards ... SO much better than chalk. I hate the feeling of chalk on my hands haha. It's the little things. Plus, my classroom is HUGE. I mean it is at least twice the size of my rooms the past 3 years. AND one wall is painted green. It's so pretty (I have a thing for accent walls)!

My team is awesome! My team leader is so on top of things and such a good teacher, and there are two girls just about my age on the team which is so nice as well. I enjoy being around all of them and they seem to have similar teaching styles to me. We plan everything together every week (no more winging it because I don't have a clue what I'm doing) and as an added plus I have found they do a lot of the same things I did at Highlands in first grade, so I'm really comfortable with it.

I have 22 kids in my class, 13 girls and 9 boys. I have some REALLY sweet ones! I do love first graders! I had forgotten how little they know though, so the first few days were really a shock. I'm getting back into the swing of things though and the days are going much smoother.

I couldn't be happier with how things have turned out :)