Wow what a week already!

I am the winner of Literacy and Laughter's awesome giveaway and I'm super excited! 

I get the a personalized copy of Square Cat and a $15 gift certificate to Lettering Delights! 

If you haven't already checked out this blog you should! She has wonderful creative ideas!

On another note I feel like I have graduated to a certain level in my teaching. I only have to be observed formally one time this year! (Yeah!) I will have two informal observations and one formal observation. Before I had two formal observations and several informal observations. Now I don't really mind being observed but it does give me a lot of anxiety before the lesson and waiting after to hear the results. My BF thinks I'm very silly because he says I worry way too much and then get back great results which I then over analyzed and critique. But isn't that just what teachers do? We are always trying to strive to be the best at what we do!

Tomorrow we have our character parade! I'm dressing up as a pirate arggh! I will have to take plenty of pictures of my cuties all dressed up! I wish I could share with you but you'll have to settle for pictures of my team and I. We also are having our fall centers tomorrow. My room mom put together two awesome crafts, a cookie decoration station, and pumpkin observations. We have a lot awesome volunteers helping out so hopefully I'll get to wander around and snap pictures of each group. 

After our fun day on tomorrow I only have to teach on Thursday. I get Friday off because of report cards and report card conferences next week! I couldn't be more excited to have this day off so I can get my house ready for guests this weekend (it's Homecoming weekend and a ton of girlfriends and college friends are coming in town) and for our Halloween party on Monday night! 

Dress Up

Who doesn't love a good dress up party?! Reagan over at Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits wants to find out what you are dressing up as for Halloween at your school. This year I'm not sure what I will be but hopefully I can find some helpful ideas through this linky party.

My first year of teaching I was a cowgirl and my sweet Kinders dressed up and we had a fun parade around the school. We did all sorts of fun Halloween games and had special spooky snacks.

Then I moved to a stricter district where you aren't allowed to dress up for Halloween so they do a character day which is usually the day before actual Halloween. The past few years I haven't had to worry about Halloween at school because it was a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. We always get that Friday on the last week of October off for a teacher workday because of report cards. So if you're done with report cards you are good to leave and enjoy your day. Anyways back to costumes. My second year I dressed up on character day as Junie B. Jones which was a huge hit in first grade. We paraded around the school in our costumes with our books. Then we had a pumpkin day where we had all sorts of educational fun with pumpkins and even carved one!

My third year was much the same except I dressed up as The Little Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. I thought this was great but some people didn't know what I was without looking at my book. I looked like a little old lady, had a cane, floppy hat, glasses, and on my stomach were all the things the little old lady swallowed. I searched and searched but I can't find a picture of it anywhere.

This year we have a character parade on the Wednesday before Halloween and we're doing fun fall centers after the parade. I'm not sure why they didn't just schedule it on Halloween but hey no one asked for my advice. On Halloween we are just supposed to pretend like it's not a big deal and go about our regular business (insert tons of laughing here) because that is just not really possible with elementary school kids. The students are not allowed to wear their costumes this day either. Here's a big kicker too...are principal is doing informal observations this week. Really?! Not a great idea! But again no one asked for my opinion. I'll still be having pumpkin fun and making everything educational.

So now that you've read my ramblings about dressing up for Halloween I think you should join up!