iHeart my iPad

A month or so ago, a co-worker and I were told that we would both be provided with iPads for classroom use and for home use. Mine was delivered on Friday afternoon right before I left for spring break. The instructions were...USE IT. Use it at school, use it at home, use it however you can as long as the activities fall within the school's internet usage policy. How is Jeri Lynne feeling about this, you ask? Can you say excited?!?! I had never even laid hands on an iPad before, much less used one. Needless to say, I have spent a bit of time over the past week at home figuring out some apps that I think the kinders will enjoy, and also experimenting with some apps for me as well. How fun is this? 'Cuz I so needed a new gadget to play with *insert heavy sarcasm here*!

This little guy helped us try out some preK - K apps. He was pretty excited to try it out!

Chester Drawers

Yep. That's his name. He is a retired performer out of Branson, MO. In his 'retirement,' he has been writing children's book and touring elementary schools as a children's comedian to promote his books, as well as encouraging a healthy lifestyle and making good choices. Mr. Drawers visited our school on Wednesday morning. Now I will be honest. Always Normally at these little assemblies, I am bored to tears. With this guy, I was actually LOL'ing. Really. When his presentation was over, he signed autographs and let us take pictures of some of our kinders with him. What a fun guy. I just can't figure why his parents would've named his Chester Drawers. *wink*

The kinderbabies (along with the pre-k and firsties) had a ball watching, listening, and singing along.

Autograph and photo-op time!

Look at her sweet little hands, with the pink fingernails :-)

Having so very much fun!

I wish they paid this close attention in class!!!
He had all eyes on him 90% of the time...it was the most attentive I have ever seen at an elementary assembly.
Impressive.

Expect the Unexpected

Snow...er ice...no, uh rain...errrrr some kind of day that we get to be home from school due to nasty weather. The area weather guys have been saying for several days that we would be having some form of winter weather this week. The local weathermen are never rarely right when predicting snow and/or ice for our area. Well, this time they sort of did. On Wednesday morning around 9:15, I thought I saw flurries outside of my classroom window. Hmm. Well okay. An hour later, it began to rain. Gross. At 11ish, it started to snow. Now, snow around here usually just swirls around and never touches the ground, but lo and behold, we get an announcement that our district will be dismissing at noon. Guess I'll take that without too much complaint. It meant that I would be able to be the one present for a major milestone for Lefty, when I really wasn't expecting to be. I have to wait until tomorrow to post about that though. Lefty says so.

That's some giant snowflakes right there!

While I was waiting for Lefty, it began to snow really hard. I just felt like I needed to go pick Boo up from school, which had not been dismissed early (I teach in a different district than the one they attend in). I went ahead and left to get her, and when we all got home, those dang snowflakes looked like snowballs falling from the sky! Boo thought she needed to attack them, but one pegged her in the eye. Dork.

No, she doesn't have a coat on. She had spent the night at her dad's and apparently he didn't think she needed to know it was supposed to snow. Genius.

Now, what you have to understand is that my school district doesn't just dismiss randomly for the possibility that the pretty white stuff swirling around might stick. Last month, it got bad enough that I couldn't drive my 2wd SUV home and had to have Chris drive the 30 minutes to pick me up with the 4wd. School never did dismiss; I had to use a half of a personal day. There were lots of accidents that day, so maybe that is why the decision was made early. Anyway, thank God that we were let out. It was only by His grace that I was able to follow my intuition and pick Boo up early. This is what happened to her school bus about 15 minutes away from our house.

Some of the girlies friends were on it when it happened. Seven children, aged 10 - 15, and the bus driver were involved. Three of those kids and the driver were transported to the ER for treatment of minor injuries. Lefty's best friend and best friend's brother were both transported, one with a deeply bruised shoulder and the other with a sprained/possibly fractured ankle. The other child treated had facial lacerations and the bus driver was complaining of back pain. Boo's very close friend blacked out at some point in the accident and has no recollection of the accident itself, but her parents declined treatment for her. All were released from the ER within  4 hours of transport, so the injuries were truly minor...at least the physical ones were. Why don't school buses have seatbelts for students? Why don't schools dismiss before the weather gets this treacherous? It was obviously getting nasty out there 2 hours before the accident occurred. I don't get it. The school released student drivers 30 minutes early, and all others 15 minutes before the final bell. Making up a partial day or even two or three full days is so trivial compared to what did happen and what could have happened. Needless to say, we are all home today. I guess in order to 'make up' for the lack of proactive choices yesterday, the girls' school district was the first in the state to cancel for today.

Thank God that He had His hand on my family and our friends yesterday. He has a plan for them. And He gave us another day to share together today and to enjoy these gorgeous (cold) sights...

Where Have You Been?

and what have you been doing??? I have been everywhere but on this blog!

I have seen more rainbows in the last month than I have in my entire life!

We have had serious drought conditions since May. September has brought us much more favorable weather...and the promise of better days to come!

One week this month, I saw at least one rainbow every single day. Insane!!! God was making me a promise that week...









I have spent time watching my precious girls do this...one as a Jr. High cheerleader, and the other a Sr. High. Where has the time gone? *tear*

Hubby and I put out the fall decor, which got me wanting homemade bread...so I made some. First. Time. Ever. and it was Y.U.M!!! must.make.more.soon.very.soon.

And finally, we are going to attempt to do a couple of craft shows next month. **serious nail biting here!** Therefore, I have spent pretty much all of my 'spare' time in the craft room, either crafting or cleaning or planning. Some of the results look a little like...

 OH...and I have been spending some time getting to know these sweeties!!!

'Owl' Love You Forever!

This year, I had to re-do the theme for my classroom. It had been fishies for the last five years, and it was time to do some renovating anyway.  I chose to use those cute little owls that you see everywhere these days...except I soon found out that they weren't really everywhere and were slightly hard to find! I took it upon myself to make some of my own. A brief internet search found me the templates to make these adorable guys...

Super cute, and oh-so-easy! The hardest part was cutting out the felt pieces!

Believe

We watched this at our teacher in-service meeting yesterday. Definitely worth seeing multiple times.