New Year's eve by the fire

https://youtu.be/D0WjgC8pUn8

Are you kidding me?

Sasha says: Seriously? You're binge watching Alias, AGAIN?

Use what you have

So this is what I was doing this morning.

This crazy oven needs a chair to hold the door shut.

The cookies look pretty.

I had a million things to wash,

and every inch of counter top and tabletop is now covered in drying dishes.

But, it was worth it.

Put a bird on it

Seen at Liza's birthday party.

Plans

Wonderland

Sasha is trying to wink at me

We're making a blizzard in Room 35A

I came to a fork in the road.

This morning as I parked my car outside of school, I opened the door and saw this:

The boys can listen!

This was an exercise in following instructions. We drew a teddy bear who lives in our classroom. I'd say they were a great success! Plus, now we get to paint!

From a 1st grade learner

She's a firstie from Africa, and she was writing on the board (which can be challenging). She self-corrected, and erased her E so fast I couldn't get a picture of it. 

Moving weekend!

This is the truck that took all the stuff, that moved me to a nicer apartment!

It's a calm picture, hiding the chaos of those 48 hours.

I have great friends, though, and this was the first time in my life (and 26 moves) that the process was fun! 

More fun with glitter glue in room 35 A

We're making pages with art and writing. The students dictate what they want to say about the activity, I type and print it, and they glue their writing onto the page. On these pages, I taught them how to make a paper star with one cut. They decorated the stars with gel pens and glitter glue. Whenever the glitter glue comes out, the student engagement is 100%!

I went to Wisconsin

Beautiful ROC

Seen in Elm Grove, WI.

Painting in the ESOL classroom

Sasha Lumpy Lumpkin thinks he's hiding under there...

This doesn't happen when you teach college...

Let It Be True

Adjectives and Glitter!

First we made our names out of salt dough.

Next, we painted and glittered the letters.

Then we glued our names to a painted and decorated background.

It's really too bad that glitter doesn't show up in photos.

We ended the project listing adjectives to describe each other.

Good Job, Sky

It's a Bad Day But...

I Exercised My Right

Miss Clayton's Artists

November

Pumpkin painting for seventh and eighth grade

Seen in a pantry

The Russian Baker making the bread for the day.

Spending the weekend babysitting three birds and a bunny

Killing time by the Genesee River

We have open house at school tonight. I had 2 hours to kill, so, I thought I would spend some time by the river looking at my favorite bridge in Rochester.

Dry ice experiments in room 35A

Optimist

ESOL in Room35A

The students made Instagram selfies! Then we painted paper backgrounds and paper hands to decorate the covers of our composition notebooks. We match the paint color to the color of our skin. We are cinnamon color, we are the color of chocolate ice cream, we are caramel cinnamon, and caramel peach. We think our skin is beautiful.

A Science Experiment

You need 3 quarts of water in a gallon container, 4 oz. of root beer syrup and some dry ice. (And some rags and towels to clean up the mess when the lab assistant puts in too much dry ice.)

Click here to watch on youtube.

Click here to watch on youtube.

Road trip

At home