Archive for the ‘Me and My Camera’ Category

This is being linked several places this week…and as I link, I’ll update this so I can remember everyone I visited. We’ll start with here and here…my regular Wednesday postings. And here…here…

I hope you’ll join in this week.

These little guys won’t be around here much longer.

This is being linked several places this week…and as I link, I’ll update this so I can remember everyone I visited. We’ll start with here and here…my regular Wednesday postings. And here…here…

Thank you to everyone linking up, I appreciate your joining in.

A not so Wordless Wednesday…

Please come with me on a little tour of my classroom.  I’d like to say this is your typical grade 6/7 classroom, but some people are rather freaked out by my room.

When you walk in the door of my classroom, the first thing you see is my guided reading table.  I meet with small groups of students daily from October to usually sometime around March Break.  At least that’s when I cut off my guided reading last year.

I’m a bit of a techie, which shouldn’t be a surprise since I have this here little place.  I have a classroom website, last year I tried tweeting from the classroom (but it was too hard because the site was blocked and doing it from my phone got too tedious), and I have a SmartBoard!  I’m lucky that way, but will be the first to admit I don’t use it near as well as I could or should.  Needless to say, my classroom is pretty interactive!

Notice the blank bulletin boards. My theory is, if the walls are full on the first day of school what is up there is simply being used as wall paper! I build my walls with my students as the year progresses.  There are areas for them to showcase their work, an area for what we are currently doing in language, what we have done (yes, I move it around throughout the year), an area for important math terms (by important, I mean the terms they seem to need more reminding of) and finally an area for other subjects.  Above the window…that’s student work too, that we do during the first week of school.

I rarely use my desk for any more than a place to hang my coat and dump whatever I have in my hands when I walk in in the morning.  I most certainly don’t sit at it very often during the school day, partly because I don’t have time and partly because I can rarely find a spot to work (look at it…and school hasn’t even started!).

I’m not kidding.  If you look around my room close enough you’ll see I actually have four tables and desks that are completely open.  They do not (as best as I can monitor) store anything in their desks.  No textbooks, no notebooks.  The only exception…writing utensils and they are allowed to keep pencil cases on top over night.  There are two reasons for this: first, there is no need to waste time cleaning out desks, which is a great time waster.  And, by having students moving around to get their supplies I help the kinesthetic learners, who need the movement.  I love it.  If I see a box that is too messy for my liking, the student has until break to get it neatened up and cannot do it on my time.  Rarely do these boxes get too messy.

I started this last year and it worked pretty well. Students can get the supplies they need, as they need them. This means that if I am working with a small group, students don’t need to interrupt me to get a new pencil, they get go get one.

What class wouldn’t be complete without Albert!

And that ladies and gentleman is a small glimpse inside my classroom.

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If you are one of the people who has been asking me how on earth they can follow me…take a look at the bottom.  I finally added a Google Friend widget, but it has to go all the way down there…won’t fit my sidebar.

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This is being linked several places this week…and as I link, I’ll update this so I can remember everyone I visited. We’ll start with here and here…my regular Wednesday postings. And here…here…

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Your turn! Thanks to all who have been linking up every week.

Thank you to all who linked up last week…I didn’t get to many of you, as I was away with limited wifi at best. This week…I should do much better at visiting.

If you don’t watch out sometimes she hides under the blanket, on the couch.

Also being linked up here and here, among other places that I really need to remember to copy over to here.

It’s your turn…come share your WW with me.

To add to the banners this year, there are also guitars. They are part of a 50th anniversary celebration for the Mariposa Folk Festival a few weeks back. Needless to say our downtown looks pretty funky and colourful this summer!

Please join in on the fun again this week.

The Festival of Banners has been a yearly event for a few years now. They are painted by local artists and students, then auctioned off in the fall for charity. It certainly brightens up the downtown.

I hope you’ll join in on the fun this week.

Okay, so this won’t be entirely wordless, I have to add a few words to this post.
First of all, the concert was AWESOME! It really was quite the show.

Why, yes I do think Brad Paisley has this right.  As we were heading in, a rather drunk guy was being escorted out.

For those of you who don’t now Brad Paisley, he sings this really great song, “Whiskey Lullaby” with Alison Kraus.  Well he performed the song at the concert and when Alison is supposed to start singing in the song she “appeared” on stage.  The effects were so good, up to the very last note of the song Hubby and I were trying to figure out if she was in fact there or not.  The image was so clear and perfect, the spotlight was “on” her and there were shadows.  It was incredibly well done.  And when she got up to leave at the end of the song…there was no one there!

We were only able to make it to Brad Paisley, but when do you get to see 5 opening acts.  If the H2O tour comes to your area I highly recommend going, even if you aren’t as lucky as we were with our ticket price.  $10!  That’s what we got them for back when we went to the Sugarland concert.  It was definitely worth it, and I can now say I would have easily paid the full price and then some.  Paisley himself played for just short of 2 hours.  Worth every penny!!

Also being linked up here and here, among other places that I really need to remember to copy over to here.

It’s your turn…come share your WW with me. I’ve enjoyed having everyone join up, it’s been fun watching more and more of you stop by to join in on the fun.

I need to play a little more with night photography…or at least remember to bring my tripod.

Also being linked up here and here, among other places that I really need to remember to copy over to here.

I hope you’ll join in on the fun. I got to visit about half of the people who linked up last week…thanks for linking!

I have been collecting material for a few months now knowing that I would eventually have time to do something with it.  Well, that time has finally arrived.  I laundered it (well, half of it!, okay, probably less than half of it!!) this morning and now it’s out drying.

About half of that is for projects I’m making for myself and the other half is for Christmas presents.  I’m looking forward to this.

Yesterday I had the line full of John Deere material for a gift I’m making for FIL.  (He doesn’t read this so I’m not giving away much).

I already made one of the gifts for a sister-in-law (no, not the SIL that occasionally stops by here ).

I’ve been collecting and planning for months now.  I blame the internet, stop by a few cool blogs and look what happens.

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In other news, can someone explain this to me?  My brother is in Vegas right now and I thought I’d check the temps to compare them to here.  It’s a little warm here today!!

I get the temp being less in the winter when there’s a wind chill, but in the summer…in Vegas?!  Maybe it’s the dry desert heat, it plays with the “feels like’ temps.  Unlike here where the “feels like” is already 10C hotter than the actual.   Ick!!

I LOVE the Snowbirds.  This is no surprise if you’ve been hanging around here, I’ve mentioned it a few times in the past two weeks.  Here are some of the pics I captured the other weekend.

I played with the antique effect in iPhoto for the last one.

Also being linked up here and here and here and here and finally here.