let the adventure begin...

It still hasn't really hit me that I'm a real teacher. It's been an absolute blast so far. A LOT of work, but so fun. They are energetic, funny little 7 year olds, but I love them. We are learning and growing and it's great. I decided to do an adventure/travel theme. It took literally forever and a day to set up my classroom, but I had a lot of help. I started with 20 students but I had one move so now I have 19. 10 girls and 9 boys. 

I'm so excited about this! There are so many options when it comes to writing! The mailbox is for little notes to be delivered to our class. The composition notebooks are for class journals. The pads of paper are for lists. The buses and globes have prompts on them. There are letter papers,opinion papers, and just plain lined paper. How fun!

 I'm so excited about this bulletin board. Each month I am having a visitor come teach the class about a country that they've visited or served in. My kids will have little passports that they get a stamp in and do a little writing about the country. 

This clip chart is for classroom management. A little bit better than the traditional card flipping method because in this one you can move up!

This is for student spotlight! They will have "patches" to put on the suitcase to help us get to know them. 

Class Rules

This is one of my favorite projects. I took a map of Utah and mod podged it to some cardboard letters. It was so fun!

There's so many little things that go in to making a classroom! And for someone who HATES making decisions, sometimes it was quite a challenge, but it's finally done and all ready for these little students. I'm really looking forward to the year!

the GRAND weekend

When you all have jobs, but it's BYU's first football game and Memorial Day weekend all in one, you go on a roadtrip.

It was an absolute blast! Good people, good weather, good food, good fun.

I love Arizona! It was only my second time there but it hasn't disappointed so far. We got to stay with Shea's family in Cottonwood which is closer to Flagstaff than it is to Phoenix and it was seriously the perfect temperature. Her family is so much fun and they were so nice for letting 13 random college students come stay at their house! They treated us so well.

We swam, played basketball, watched a movie, played games, and ate a lot. We went down to Phoenix early on Saturday to eat dinner before the game and then headed to the stadium. They played at the Cardinals Stadium in Glendale.

Mitch's parents were at the game too so it was fun to see them! Oh, and it was his mom's birthday! And since it's only about 5 hours from California, we saw A LOT of people that Mitch knew. We couldn't get two feet before we ran into someone else unexpectedly.

We also got to meet JEREMIAH!! I mean, I feel like I've known him for a long time, but we had never met in real life before haha!

It was so exciting to be watching football again! Last season, I was in Jerusalem so we rarely got to watch any games and obviously not any live. There's just such a big energy and excitement that comes from being in a football stadium. It was nice to get reacquainted with the players and all that jazz. I was with some avid football watchers so I get ALLLL the lowdown at each sporting event. Things I never would've thought about and words I've never heard.

The game got over pretty late and we had a long drive back. Sean slept in the trunk ha!

We woke up bright and early the next morning for church and then the whole crew walked in to the second row during the opening song. It was quite the sight to see.

We lounged around after church, then decided to go on a 3 hour car ride which really should have only been 1 hour cause traffic. 

On Monday, we got ready to go and then made our way to the Grand Canyon. Bucket list...check!

It was indeed very grand and I loved being there with our friends. They are fabulous and so much fun!

We stopped at a few different points and took pictures galore! The boys are good sports to put up with us :)

Well. Fall is just around the corner, school is under way, and it was so so so worth it to have a little getaway to finish the summer off!