March Break, Baby Showers and Cupcakes.. Oh My!

My apologies for the blog hiatus. Life got a little crazy around here. What with our new roomies and the district review at school, life just sort of got away from me. Oh mon dieu! I have been running around like a chicken with it's head cut off.

It's finally March Break though and I have some time to (breathe) get some blogging done. Hubs and I decided this year that we would not be going away for the break because (to add to the long list of craziness that has happened in the last month) we have BOUGHT A COTTAGE!

That's right mes amis de les blogs- we bought a little slice of heaven on a small island on the St. Lawrence about 40 minutes from our home. It needs a lot of work but the location is amazing and we plan on doing some serious renovations. (Pictures and details to follow)

So instead of a little March Break getaway, I am tackling all of those nagging projects that I haven't gotten around to and have been on my list for ages.

I'll keep you posted on how my projects are going:

Project Number One:

A trial run of the cupcakes I am making for a friend's co-ed baby shower.

My lovely friends are having a baby and decided to have a co-ed baby shower (a fantastic idea!). I offered to make the cupcakes and decided to get a little creative with them. The theme of their nursery is animals and dad-to-be is a huge baseball fan so why not cupcakes for both mom and pop?

I started with this little guy. A baby in  a tiger suit :)

Then I made him some friends :)

Now it's a whole zoo!! I also made a little guy with a baseball hat for the dad to be and a cupcake (not shown) that looks like a baseball.

What do you think guys? Will the mom and dad-to-be like them?

My Teaching Blog!

I was very ambitious (and surprisingly quite productive) this past week and I managed to change my blog design, write a few posts, post some teaching units on Teachers Pay Teachers AND launched my teaching blog: MADAME'S LITTLE MONKEYS!!

I often refer to my students as my little monkeys (because truly they are so adorable and silly) and I thought that my blog name should be billingual (because my life is billingual.. I hardly ever make it through a sentence without mixing in some French or Spanish words). So I came up with Madame's Little Monkeys and it stuck. I'm hoping to use that blog to blog about teaching stuff and keep this one for the rest of my ramblings.

I've noticed that there is a serious lack of blogs for French Immersion teachers and thought that I would try to start to fill that void and start posting materials and resources for French teachers. I would love it if you would check it out!

A Post-Valentine's Day Love Post

I have always had mixed feelings about Valentine's Day. When single, V-Day sucks. When hitched, V-Day can be great. I feel that Valentine's Day has become way too commercialized and over the top but I don't want to be a jaded person who can't celebrate this romantic day. I decided to start to view Valentine's Day as a day that is not just about romantic love but about love in general. I tried to tell as many people as possible that I loved them (my mom, dad, husband, siblings, roommates, students and girlfriends) and we celebrated love at school.

Here are a few things that I loved about LOVE day:

I LOVE that one of my students hand wrote and decorated every single one of his valentines and included personalized messages for his friends (for his little girlfriend, he wrote "You are really pretty and very kind") and for me "Tu es tres gentille et jolie. J'aime toi" (which roughly translates to "You are really nice and pretty. I love you")

I LOVE that my husband left me a little surprise gift beside the bed in the morning to start my day off with a huge smile in my heart.

I LOVE that nearly everyone at school wore pink or red- SO pretty to see!

I LOVE that a little boy in my class brought me a single rose the day AFTER Valentine's Day (likely taken from his mom's V-Day gift haha) and shoved it at me and said "This is for you Madame!" and ran away.



 I LOVE the mushy romantic country songs being played on my fave country station all day.

I LOVE that hubs and I didn't do something crazy and just stayed in with take out and candles and celebrated in a low-key way.

I LOVE that I sold my first teaching unit on Teachers Pay Teachers today!! (If you're a teacher, check out my Valentine's Day and Penguin themed units on TPT! I'm brand new to it but I think I've made some pretty ok units). This seriously made me jump up and down for joy.

I LOVE that my kinders created Project Love kits (a education project where students in Canada raise money and send school supplies to students in developing countries) and were given only the basic supplies to put in their kits but tried to add their own crayons and supplies from our classroom because "the kids don't have much and we have lots". SO stinkin adorable!

I hope you all had LOVE-filled V-Days! xoxo

Tsk tsk Madame!

This is what my students sometimes say to me if they catch me drinking Pepsi or forgetting to sharpen pencils (which is my duty and when not done- I hear about it, believe me!). It is also what I say to myself for not blogging in so long. I promised myself that I would blog at least twice a week so that I get the hang of it and get into a routine.

But man life has been busy. First off, it`s report card time and school is getting crazy. Also, I have decided to sell some of my teaching units on Teachers Pay Teachers and possibly start another blog (ok I can just hear you thinking.. but she doesn't even know how to do one blog, let alone two...).

AND.... we have three new roomies who have just moved in and we are all very excited.

I should explain that my husband and I are new homeowners and decided to take in tenants shortly after we bought our house last year. My cousin Katrina (who just started a brand new blog Kayo Fitness because I peer pressured her into making one) has lived with us for just over a year and has the lower level of our home to herself.

Our new roomies are my friend Iulia and her two fur children Tucker and Teemu.

That's Tucker (although he is WAY bigger now).

And this is Teeeeeeemu. (Don't you just want to smush his little face?)

And this beauty is the lovely Iulia.

Iulia is now living in our basement with her babies and we are still working on organizing her stuff and figuring a schedule for our dogs. (If anyone is keeping track, that's a total of 4 adults, 3dogs and 1 cat in one house. I'm thinking we should get some birds and just start a zoo)

So do you forgive me for the lack of posts? I promise to get better at blogging (and more interesting..I hope) when we're all settled in.

Help Bloggies!

Blog friends- a quick plea. How on earth did I become a member on my own site? And how do I remove myself as a follower? I love having my followers count go up, don't get me wrong, but I feel a touch foolish following my own blog. LOL Help!

Math Problem Solving Journals

So I thought I'd blog today about one of my faves- Math Problem Solving Journals!!! Our school's "School Improvement Goals" for the past few years have been numeracy centered and we have been focusing on problem solving throughout the grades. Last year, when we started talking about what we would do in Kindergarten to help develop and work on the foundations of problem solving skills, I came across some great ideas on Kindergarten Kindergarten.

My teaching partner and I decided that we would start weekly math problem solving journals. We make up a word problem (based on the different math skills we are currently working on) and the students paste it into their journal. We do a shared math lesson and activities before having the students work independently to solve their math problems. Before we started the journals, we talked about important terms and the reference page at the beginning of their journals and the steps involved in problem solving (and hung anchor charts in our classrooms).

  

* The reference page at the beginning of our journals. (Sorry for the sideways picture.. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to turn this thingy around)*

The challenge is making sure that the language we use in the word problems is very basic French and easily understood by our students, otherwise we're just stuck on understanding what the problem is in the first place and we don't get to the solving part. Here are a few of the problems we've done lately.

*We start with something very simple like this- "Write your name. How many letters are there in your name?"

*Then we work our way up to tougher problems like this one. It roughly translates to: " Pogo the penguin has more fish than Piwi and Zulu has less fish than Piwi. Piwi has 6 fish. How many fish do Pogo and Zulu have? " (Check for later posts with downloads of our math problems in English and French)

Freakin' Out (In a good way)

Ok so I'm freaking out... but in a really good way. I've been nominated for a blog award!!!

Um really?!? I actually couldn't even believe it when I saw the comment on my post from the super sweet and now my all-time fave Brittany over at Confessions of a Single Mommy.

 

Brittany and I are new blog friends but I am seriously crushin on this girl. So cute, so nice and a hot mama! Her blog is great and you should check it out!

 

So here are the deets about the Liebster Blog Award:

This award is for bloggers who have less than 200 followers and are newer to the world of blogging and have a FANTABULOUS blog that needs a little noticing!!

Here is how to participate in this nomination/award giving fun!

1. Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog

2. Link back to the blogger who awarded/nominated you

3. Copy and paste the blog award to your blog

4. Reveal your top 5 blog picks!!

5. Drop by your top 5 picks and let them know you chose them by commenting on their blog!


My picks in no specific order are….

-Brittany at Confessions of a Single Mommy

-Britt at The Magnolia Pair

Chelsea at As Chelsea Sees It
- Jenn at Going the Distance

-p!nky at p!nkpers!stence

Check out these blogs people!! They're great reads!