Teacher Tuesday: New Year's Resolutions

Yesterday I shared my 5 tips for creating meaningful goals. Today I'm linking up with Aileen Miracle to share my new year's resolutions for 2015! Click on the picture below to go to the linky party and see everyone else's posts. Personal: Spend at least 2 hours a week with friends As the girls get older and I adjust to my new town, new home, and...

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Mommy Monday: 5 Tips for Setting Meaningful Goals

Well, Christmas is officially past and New Year's is almost here. Did that go by extra-fast for anyone else?!? Goodness gracious. This week is winter break for me so I am trying to get my life in order (emphasis on TRYING) before school starts again. One of the first things I did was sit down and think about how I have been using my time this past...

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Teacher Tuesday: Movement Ideas for Winter

Last week I shared 5 tips for incorporating more movement into elementary general music lessons. Today I am sharing a few of the specific movement activities I have done this winter that have worked really well. Even if you have already finished your Nutcracker and Sleigh Ride lessons for the year, I hope these ideas will spark new ones for you as...

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Mommy Monday: Toddler Craft- suncatcher window ornament

As I was coming up with ideas for the girls' Advent calendar activities, I tried to find some easy and fun crafts that we could do together. One of the ideas I came across that I wanted to try was a suncatcher ornament. I saw pictures of lots of different finished products made different ways but couldn't find a good explanation of how to make them,...

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Teacher Tuesday: 5 ways to add more movement to your classroom

With testing and common core-ing, literacy and math blocks, and everything else that (although valuable) take up so much of our students' time and energy, I'm noticing a lot more pent-up energy. Kids are walking into my classroom more and more often completely exhausted and numb, or quite literally bouncing off the walls. When I walk through the halls...

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Mommy Monday: DIY, cheap wrapping paper

Welcome back to Mommy Monday! I hope you all are managing the chaos and enjoying the holiday season. I wanted to come back to one of the activities I am doing with my girls from their advent calendar, which I shared in this post last week- making (sort of) your own wrapping paper. I was just at the store this past weekend to stock up on some more...

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Teacher Tuesday: on my desk

For today's Teacher Tuesday I'm linking up with Rachel Tanenblatt at Music With Mrs. Tanenblatt to show you what's on my teacher desk right now. What a great idea for a linky party! It's easy to look at people's blog posts and think, "I'm not like that at all- I could never be that organized, or trendy, or _________". But most blog posts are just...

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Mommy Monday: 24 Christmas activities for 2-3 year old's

Last week I showed off my DIY advent calendar, which has a different activity for my not-quite-3-year-old twins and I to do together each day. Today I want to share those activities with you! Many of the crafts are ideas I got from other places- click on the item in the list below the graphic to go to those links and get a full description. Because...

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Teacher Tuesday: removable score notes

Welcome back to Teacher Tuesday! Today I have a quick tip using one of my favorite tools again: washi tape! I have recently started using it to make notes in my original scores for my choir classes. I used to make a photocopy of the original score for every song I did with my choirs so that I could write my own notes about things I want to remember...

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Mommy Monday: muffin tin advent calendar

I'm so excited to share today's Mommy idea with you- an easy DIY advent calendar that is so flexible and cheap! I wish I could take credit for the idea, but I found it on Pinterest. There are lots of people who have done different versions of it but I was first inspired by this picture. The basic idea is to use a mini-muffin tin (which happens to...

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