Budding Blog and Five for Friday

Happy Friday...5 and a half more weeks of school for me! It seems like it is never going to end this year. Our MCAS (state testing) is finally finished but we still have DIBELS, Writing Benchmarks and Discovery testing. YIKES! Our poor kiddos are already so DONE and we just keep on testing.

Jess at I {heart} Recess is hosting the Budding Blog linky for all bloggers who have under 200 followers. Such a great idea!

The questions are as follows:

1. Why did you start blogging?

2. What is your favorite subject to teach and why?
3. Describe your teaching style.
4. Give three interesting facts about you.
5. Do you have a TpT store?

1. I started blogging because I loved reading blogs and getting ideas from all the amazing bloggers that I was following. I decided that it was time that I tried to give back by sharing some of my own ideas. I notice that I am usually all over the place with my posts and I really need to try be better at posting ideas for the classroom rather than my randomness, but I'll get there!

2. Favorite subject is a toughie! I have my master's as a reading specialist. I LOVE to read and I enjoy teaching reading...but I am not allowed to teach reading in the way that I would really like to. I suppose I would have to say that Math is my favorite to teach right now, because I have more freedom to create my own lessons and teach the way my kiddos really need to learn. We usually have lots of fun in math using all kinds of goodies (food is the best way to keep the kiddos' attention in math!)

3. My classroom is very structured, organized, and consistant, but I like to have FUN with my kiddos! This year has been a little different, my crew has a hard time knowing when it is ok to be a little silly and have fun and when it is time to get serious and get to work, so I have had to be more serious and stern with them. I believe that kids should still believe that coming to school is fun, even with all of the testing that we have to do. So I set my expectations high, but try to make time to keep it fun, too!

4. a. I absolutely love going to country concerts!

    b. I wish I lived at the beach. 

    c. I would eventually like to get my doctorate in education. 

5. I have a TpT store but it is very tiny. It does have a couple of freebies. One of my summer goals is to get working on some more products. http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Teaching-With-Twitte

** I am so sorry that this is turning into such a long post!

Now for the Five for Friday linky with Doodle Bugs Teaching. I'll try to be quick, I promise. With testing this week, I don't have too many academic thoughts to share this week, but it was a busy week.

1. As I said, my kiddos tested this week, so they finally got the Brain Bugs that I made over April vacation. These guys were a big hit! 

2. After testing, we did a fun area/perimeter lesson that I found on Pinterest. The kiddos made these cute little guys. 

3. Yesterday we had an Art Show after school. I didn't take any pictures because I was busy face painting (you would think this was pretty funny if you knew anything about my lack of artistic ability). 

4. The highlight of my week was going out for frozen yogurt for dinner before the Art Show yesterday with two of my very best teacher friends! We had time to watch Nashville on the Smart Board before the Art Show too! :o)

5. Finally, one of my teaching buddies who is ready to have her baby any-minute now was having contractions today!! She is at a scheduled doctor's appointment right now so I am dying for an update! I cannot wait to meet this little baby boy! 

I am so sorry for this marathon post...if you read to the end you deserve a DOJO point for your persistance! Thanks!