School Days

I can't believe my third week of third grade is almost over! The time has flown by! I am absolutely loving third grade. It's still so amazing to me to see all that they are capable of doing independently...I'm so used to the abilities of kindergarten and first grade students! I officially have 26 students in my class. I lost one somewhere before school started and I had another student move to Denver with his family after only 8 days of school, so he left as well.

My students absolutely love writing, which I am so excited about! I'm looking forward to all of the different writing projects we can do this year and all of the books I can have them "publish." I have been reading The BFG by Roald Dahl to them and they absolutely love it. Seeing their drawings of what they visualized the BFG to look like was hysterical.

I am so thankful for the school that God brought me to. It is such a positive work environment and the other third grade teachers have been so helpful in answering all of my questions! The students are great and their parents want to be involved (every teacher's dream come true!). So in other words, I am absolutely loving it!

Here's a little tour of my classroom:

Ready for the first day of school!

This is our classroom library, along with a display of
the students' work.

All of the storage space available in my classroom (yikes!)
and the kids' book bins. 

Guided Reading and Math small group table. The
purple bulletin board is a work in progress. :)

Writing Center with a bulletin board
of all of the writing options.

Daily 5 (literacy centers) rotation chart

A closer look at the Writing Center bulletin board.

Computer work station.

Word Work Center

So excited about my Boggle board!

Listening Center (still waiting on getting a
CD player so they can actually listen to stories!)

My desk

The front of the classroom. The students' "buckets" are
under the white board, math manipulatives are in the
colored buckets, and books and pillows are under the
white board, as well.

A close-up of their buckets. We read the story
Have You Filled a Bucket Today? and learned that
we can either be bucket fillers or bucket dippers.
The students write kind and encouraging notes
to one another to fill each others' buckets.

A view of the students' desks. We meet on the carpet in the
middle of them. It's hard to fit 26 desks in a classroom!

Each student has their own pencil cup so
that they don't have to dig in their desks for
crayons and pencils all the time. On the first
day, they had Lucky Charms and a note that
said "I'm so lucky to have you in my class"
waiting for them.

How's Your Aspen?

Last weekend we celebrated our first anniversary...it's hard to believe that it's already been a year! To celebrate we went to Aspen for the weekend. (Sorry for the title of this post, but we had to! We say that saying everywhere while we were there.) When we arrived on Friday we explored Aspen and checked out all of the shops. We also went to the John Denver tribute. I'll be honest and say that I have never listened to him, but Brandon was excited about it. And, of course, we watched the Olympic Opening Ceremony.

Brandon has been singing this song
since we got here.

On Saturday we went for a hike on Conundrum Trail. Brandon researched it and found out that there is a natural hot spring up in the mountains. What I didn't realize until we started the hike was that it was a 17 mile hike round-trip. It was definitely worth it, but I thought I was going to die during it. We have pictures to prove it. The view from the hot spring was beautiful. The company was also very entertaining. The biggest surprise came when a guy stood up to leave and we discovered that he was completely naked. I guess that's just something we need to get used to now that we're living in Colorado.

Just beginning our hike.

Like I said, just beginning our hike...

How I felt about 4 hours later...

One of the rivers we had to cross on our way to the hot spring.

We made it!

We brought a picture from our wedding with us.
Each year on our anniversary we'll hold a
picture of us from the year before so that we
remember what we do each year!

 On our way back from the hot spring we renewed our vows to each other, which was very special. It also rained for the last two hours of our hike. Luckily, we had purchased ponchos the night before. Although it was obvious that we're new to the whole hiking/Colorado lifestyle, we stayed dry!

Thank goodness for ponchos!

Hiking back in the rain...

It got really muddy!

We saw a double rainbow on our drive home!

School starts for me in about a week, so check back around then for pictures of my classroom. It's all coming together! I can't believe that I'm meeting my students one week from today! So far I have 28 students in my class, so this should be interesting!

Ilissa

Getting Settled

Hi everyone! We are excited to share our new life in Denver with you! We arrived last Sunday after an 18 hour drive from Milwaukee with a moving truck, a pickup truck, and two life-saving walkie talkies!

We couldn't believe we fit everything into our
moving truck!

We made it!

We arrived at our apartment, which was not exactly what we were expecting. After trying hard not to enter into panic mode (easy for Brandon, not so easy for Ilissa), several phone calls, and a night on our friends’ air mattress, it was all sorted out and we were given a new apartment, complete with a great view of the mountains! We were very thankful to have our friend Neil, who also attends Denver Seminary, and Brandon’s parents and brother there to help us.

We also got to drop Ilissa’s boxes off at her new school, which is HUGE and beautiful! She is definitely looking forward to teaching there!

We got to do some exploring in Colorado with Brandon’s family. We headed west to the mountains and rode the chair lift to the top of a mountain in Keystone. We then headed to the Continental Divide where we did a little sightseeing. Up next was Country Boy Gold Mine in Breckenridge. We went on a tour of the mine and learned what it would have been like to be a miner in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Definitely thankful we do not have to work in those conditions! We also went on a tour of the Bronco’s football stadium. Their love for John Elway was very obvious!

On the chairlift at Keystone.

At the top of the mountain in Keystone.

We made it to the Continental Divide!

Hiking the Continental Divide.

If only this was really how we hiked!

Brandon and Tyler threw rocks off the top of
the Continental Divide. Of course.

Panning for gold at the Country
Boy Mine in Breckenridge.

The rest of the week brought more unpacking and we are just about completely settled in now! We went for a bike ride Saturday morning, headed to Chatfield Lake to cool off in the afternoon, and have been going for walks and a few runs (if you can call them that…) on the trail behind our apartments. We’re definitely still getting used to the altitude here!

We’ll get some pictures of our apartment up soon so you can see where we’re living.

We miss all of you!

Brandon and Ilissa