Wisdom for Wednesday - What do I Savor?

Happy Wednesday! I hope you are off to a wonderful week. 

I was sad to see our volleyball season end on Saturday, but I must admit I am looking forward to some time at home after school the next few weeks before basketball begins! I'm not sure I will know what to do with all my free time...although so far I've grocery shopped on Monday and did some cooking and cleaning on Tuesday. Something tells me that free time will be gone before I know it!

Let's jump right into our Wisdom for Wednesday. I don't know if I should call this a quote or a question. It is a question, but it is also a quote. ;-)

Taken from the Bible study I wrote, There's a Fly in my Tea (aff. link).

When I think of savoring something, my mind immediately goes to chocolate. I love chocolate, especially rich, dark chocolate. In order to control my chocoholic tendencies, I will take one of my favorite dark chocolate truffles from the bag, carefully unwrap it, and take a tiny bite. I let that morsel of chocolate sit on my tongue until it is completely melted, take a drink of water, and repeat until the truffle is gone. As you can imagine, one truffle lasts a long time when eaten this way and by the time I'm finished, I am satisfied and have no need for a second truffle (this paragraph also taken from the study).

So what does savor have to do with anything?

In Matthew 16:21-33, we find Jesus had told the disciples of His coming death, burial, and resurrection. Peter rebuked Him. I just love Peter! His battle with his tongue is so much like my own. Anyway, Peter's rebuke definitely came from a lack of understanding, but there was something else to it. Jesus responds, "Get thee behind me, Satan..." (the very familiar part of the verse) but he goes on to say, "...thou art an offence unto me: for thou savorest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men."

It made me wonder...what do I savor (besides chocolate)? Do I savor the things of men? Or the things of God?

If I'm honest, I know that I spend more time savoring the things of this world than I do savoring the things of God. I also know that I can't be perfect in this area, but I can be diligent to keep a right relationship with the Lord. 

What about you? What do you savor?

P.S. If you're interested in seeing how Peter eventually "got it," check out II Peter 1:3-14. ;-)

P.S.S. Feel free to check out my author page or FB page. 

Daily 5 and Extra Fun Thing

We finally launched our Daily 5 this last week and it was a success!!!  The kids did an amazing job and they loved it!  All of the kids worked hard while I was with a group and there was not one interruption with my groups and all of my groups worked hard!  

Here are some pictures of our Daily 5 time:

We use the Pathways to Reading program at our school (which I absolutely love).  Here are some of my groups working on a segment and write lesson with me.

I'm a little sad because this week, we won't be doing the Daily 5 because we have a short week with parent-teacher conferences.  I'll be excited to get back to it after this week!  

For our extra fun thing this week, we have a wonderful para that has her granddaughter in 1st grade this year and she bought all the kids a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch.  The kids were so excited  and were able to decorate their pumpkins and take them home with them.  

Have a great week!

Wisdom for Wednesday-God's Will

Welcome to this week's:

As a little girl, I started planning and dreaming of what my life was going to be like.  It was going to have that fairy tale ending and everything was going to be perfect.  Well, you probably guessed it, it didn't work out that way.  Now that I am older, the way that things have turned out are not what I had planned for my life.  I can plan all I want and it is good to have dreams and plans, but the best plans are going to be the one's that God has for me.  

Have a great day!

Extra Fun Thing!

My co-teacher and I have an extra fun thing that we do with the kids on the last day of the week.  The kids that finish all of their work for the week and haven't moved their clip down too many times, are the ones that get to participate.  I wanted to share the last 2 extra fun things that we had.  The kids loved them and I have kids telling me that they will work really hard to make sure they get to do the extra fun thing!!  YAY!!

1.  Water beads-who knew how much fun these little things would be for first graders.  I showed the kids in the morning what we would be doing for our extra fun thing.  I had them in a container and if you haven't seen them before, they are really tiny.  I put water in the container and we watched them grow all day and when extra fun thing was here, we put them in containers and they got to play with them.  They even got to take some home with them.  I think these kids could have played with them for hours and not got bored.  

2.  Painting with apples-we had tons of apples come in that the parents donated to us to do this extra fun thing.  We put paint (good thing it was washable paint, it was a little messier than what we had expected it to be) in a zip lock bag with an apple.  Then placed a piece of paper on a tray and the kids put the painted apple on the paper and picked up the tray with their partner and moved it around.  When they were finished, they got to take their painted picture home with them.

I wanted to share this last picture of a t-shirt that a kindergarten student was wearing the other day.

I had to take a second look at it because I couldn't believe that our kindergartners now will be graduating in the year 2030!!!  Seems like so long from now, but I'm sure it will be here before we know it!

Have a great week!

Wisdom for Wednesday - Be Kind and Respectful

Hey there! It's Wisdom for Wednesday! 

Can you sense my excitement? It is because tomorrow is our "Friday" because we have had parent teacher conferences the last two nights. So exhausting!

I keep thinking of Friday morning. No alarm. And this will be my first Saturday without a volleyball tournament in six weeks. That means Saturday is also a no alarm day. Woohoo!

I'm sending you over to my author page for this bit of wisdom--if you want the whole story. I posted it there first and wanted to share with you all as well. :-)

Here's hoping you have a great rest of the week!

Sight Words and Homework Club

We are getting close to the end of our first 9 weeks, so this last week we spent the week assessing skills that we have been working on.  Sight words are one of those skills that we grade so we did some extra practice with them.  

1.  Sight Word Bingo-I made some bingo cards up that had all of the sight words on them that we have been working on this 9 weeks.  This was a fun way for them to practice some more on the sight words.

2.  Sight Word Swat-I put some of our sight words on the board and gave 2 students a fly swatter.  When I called out a word, they had to turn around, find it and swat it.  The first one to swat it would stay in the game. 

3.  Sight Word Connect Four-I used the connect four games on TPT to practice our sight words.  

4.  Some of the students didn't remember all of the sight words when I first tested them on Monday.  I sent home flashcards with each one of them and they worked extra at home on them.  Those that could read all of their sight words by Friday received a free ice cream cone certificate from Braum's.  They were so proud to earn this certificate.

We finished our first month of homework.  If the students had completed 4 assignments each week for the month then they made the homework club for the month.  We got together with the other first grade class and ate lunch with them and enjoyed a special brownie treat!

I hope you had a great week!

Wisdom for Wednesday-Do not be afraid

Welcome to this week's:

I saw this and I never realized how much this quote is in the Bible.  The amazing thing is that I know that personally I spend a lot of time worrying and being afraid.  Maybe this is why God put it in the Bible so many times because as humans, I believe that we often worry and are fearful.  This is a great quote for me to remind myself of often!

Have a great day!