ROLL OUT!!!

Hey Frugal Followers!!! SOOO MUCH has been going on in our lives lately... and we've been trying to keep you up-to-date on new happenings, but the stress has been taking it's toll!!!  Thank God for each other because I don't think we would have made it otherwise.  Words out... the Frugal Girls are moving out!  In short, an opportunity presented itself and we just couldn't pass it up!  We started packing our bags this week and slowly moving in our new home!

                                                                            Exhibit A:

                                                                            Exhibit B:

If there is one thing I hate... IT'S MOVING (and cantaloupe... ewww!!!)  It's sooooo time consuming and tedious and annoy and dirty!!! I could think of a million things I'd rather (and should) be doing, BUT we were forced to grin and deal!!!  And NO, we didn't actually rent a UHAUL, but the thought definitely crossed our minds... more than once!  Thanks to our two fab finances, we were able to get the majority of our stuff moved in one trip.  We could not have done it without them!  And believe it or not, they managed to keep a smile on their faces the whole time, regardless of the fact that it was 95 degrees out.
                                                                   Love these guys!

We also learned a little bit about ourselves in the process... WE ARE HOARDERS!!!  I have no idea how we have accumulated so much stuff over the years... actually... I know exactly how we did it, it's partly to blame on Melissa's shopping addiction along with all of our frugal finds over the past several years haha!   Did I mention, we're moving into classrooms that are MUCH smaller than the ones we have now!?!  Looks like we'll need to downsize after all! 

On a more serious note, we are devastated to leave behind some amazing friends and co-workers that we've met along the way, but we're looking forward to building new friendships at our soon-to-be home.  I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason.  Melissa and I are looking forward to the future and we are ready to face any challenges that may cross our path.  First and foremost, squeezing into a smaller classroom haha! 

With only 5 days left (YES.... 5!!!) Melissa and I still weren't ready to stop teaching.  In the midst of cluttered classrooms, we still managed to successfully teach our dinosaur unit this week.  The kids are L-O-V-I-N-G it!  What common core state standard does this tie to you ask?!?   I am sure if we thought about it hard enough we could make it connect to several... but bottom line is, we are teaching it for FUN!   I am sure we will post details about dinosaur week in a different post, but our kids have been learning new vocabulary words, researching, comparing and contrasting, using science tools, recording data... and SO MUCH MORE!  An yes, we know we still haven't mentioned WHERE it is we're going... hopefully the suspense is killin' ya haha!  More picts and info about the big move will be coming shortly (I promise)!  Stress aside, we are hopefully going to breeze through these next couple of days and coast into a MUCH NEEDED summer vaca!  I can smell the ocean water now!!! So close, but yet so far!  Talk to you soon frugal followers... and when we do, hopefully our toes will be in the sand!       

BIG news!!!

Tonight is going to be a short post because we are both SUPER tired. We had a BIG day! We will give you a little hint...

Okay, so maybe it was a big hint! You guessed it! We are MOVING! Both Brittany and I are moving to a different school next year... together, OF COURSE!! It's truly bittersweet. We are leaving a lot of fabulous coworkers that we plan to still meet for happy hour on a regular basis. We are also leaving our favorite kids in the world... our students! However, we know that this is a great opportunity and we are excited for this new adventure we are taking together! We are also staying in our *MOST FAVORITIST* grade... FIRST!!!

More pics to come tomorrow! We snapped a few pics of our new school and can't wait to share them with all of you!!

Positively Poetry

Snaps to everyone for stopping by! We wanted to start by telling everyone who is already on SUMMER VACATION that we are SUPER JEALOUS of you. We have 8 days left of school, but whose counting? We wanted to finish off our year in full gear. So to end our Poetry unit we've been working on for the last 6 weeks, we decided to host a "SHEL-ebration" inspired by Amanda at One Extra Degree.

Check out Amanda's blog to find her parent letter for the Shel Silverstein "SHEL-EBRATION"

We have been studying many great poets, including Shel Silverstein. Each student selected their favorite poem written by Mr. Silverstein and participated in our sidewalk chalk Shel-ebration. They were able to write their selected poem "where the sidewalk ends." They had a blast and our whole school was able to enjoy reading the poems. It was a really hot day so popsicles were involved.

Poets hard at work!

George getting
started on his
Poet- Tree poem!
Get it? Poet- Tree/Poetry!

Someone give that poet a popsicle!

We also did a poetry reading that was OH-SO-FUN! A huge shout-out to Forever In First for such a wonderful idea. Our kiddos LOVED the cafe and it's something we look forward to doing again. Take a peek... 

Snaps for great poems!

Poetry Cafe

George read his Acrostic Poem at the Poetry Cafe!

All of the students shared a poem that they wrote over the course of the poetry unit. It was adorable. They enjoyed snapping after each "young poet" presented. We even had drums to conclude the poems. It was awesome. We drank juice in styrofoam coffee cups and relaxed while our classmates took turns sharing their very own poetry. 

At the end of this festive day, we payed tribute to one of our favorite poets, Jack Prelutsky and we did some buddy reading from some of his many poetry books. Each student selected their favorite and we just enjoyed a few minutes of silly, age appropriate poetry! The students were able to take home their poetry notebooks to share with their families. We've been working on the m since the very first day of school so I know they were looking forward to taking them home. We never knew teaching poetry could be so much fun!!!

First Grade Luau!

Aloha Friends! This is one of our least favorite weeks of the year. 

END OF THE YEAR BENCHMARK TESTING! 

It is so boring (emphasis on the so and the boring). We are unable to help our kiddos so we basically walk around all morning reminding them to stay quiet and keep working. Upper grade teachers... we feel for you. We only do this once a year and we know the third-fifth grade classrooms do a LOT more! EWWW. 

As a motivator for us our students, we have planned our annual Luau Celebration for this upcoming Friday. We have been doing it the last two years and it's been a blast! 

We sent invites home today!

We are only asking for food donations because we have tons of decorations and attire from the previous year. We promise to post lots of pics of this event! We are integrating our "Luau" theme with our learning all week. By the time we are finished our students will have learned all about volcanos and the Hawaiian culture. They can also add some new Hawaiian phrases to their vocabulary (right next to all the pirate lingo we learned last month)!

Mahalo, for stopping by!!!!

Confessions of a Shopaholic...

My name is Melissa and I am a shop-aholic! Seriously, I could go on the show Confessions of a Shopaholic. I should only go in stores where everything is full price because maybe then I'd practice self control. (Brittany will read this post tomorrow and COMPLETELY agree). She knows about my addiction and she still loves me. Frugal friends are the best!

I was just about to fall asleep when I decided to just take a quick minute to check facebook (never a good idea)! Wouldn't want to miss an important birthday! Well, While doing a quick scan (ahem... 45 minutes) on FB before calling it a night I noticed that one of our favorite bloggers Cara, from The First Grade Parade had posted a reminder that the BIG sale on TPT ends tonight. Plus she was offering an additional 10% off tonight!!! Any who, $75 later, I'm now heading to bed just a little more poor and A LOT less tired! Besides, how can I sleep when all I want to do is checkout all of my new fabulous purchases! I just love a good sale... I admit I wasn't incredibly FRUGAL this evening, but at least everything was 30% off in the end!

Make sure you stop by TPT tonight before midnight! I'm off to print my new purchases sleep!

Silly Shapes and Cinco De Mayo

Hola! Hopefully everyone had a fun-filled Cinco De Mayo! I teach ESOL this year and have seven sweet Spanish students in my class. I felt that it was important to learn and discuss this holiday even it was the 6th day of May. We had a great time learning about the Mexican culture and making festive maracas to celebrate!                                Pinterest Maracas

The lesson went really well, but I think their favorite part was learning that the word cucaracha means cockroach in spanish! They found this simple word to be hilarious! I was pretty surprised to see how interested they all were in the spanish culture. It was awesome! 

Did you see Jimmy Kimmel's Cinco De Mayo episode? Oh my my my... Too funny! I was shocked that so many people didn't even know what the term "CINCO DE MAYO" stood for. It certainly makes for a good laugh, though! 

REWIND <----------------  Back to last week. 

Now for a totally different topic... SHAPES

I'm not sure why, but teaching shapes is my least favorite math concept to teach. Strange, I know. 

Anyway, to introduce shapes I always like to give my students a few minutes to PLAY with their math manipulatives. This helps them to NOT play with them when they are using them as math tools. I allowed them a few minutes to build a shape picture. After everyone was done we walked around our "shape city" and took a look at what our peers created with their shapes. They really enjoyed this activity and it only took a couple of minutes. 

Many students even began composing and decomposing the shapes. Such smarties I have in my class! 

I managed to make it around the room to see all of their art and I was very rather amused when I got to this particular desk.... hmmmmmm

???? Really. Did you feel the need to use every circle available? Goodness Gracious! 

***For the most part*** everyone did a nice job and had a great time playing with shapes! Luckily, no one even seemed to notice how odd the "mature" shape-people looked. Thank goodness!

Currently... MAY!

It's MAY... hooray!

We decided to participate in this month's CURRENTLY. We are "currently" thrilled that it's the last full month of school before summer vacation! YAY!

Little Recap:

Listening: Brittany and I both agree the rain is very peaceful and sometimes, after spending the day with 19 delightful, sweet, hyper LOUD little munchkins it's nice to come home and just enjoy a peaceful storm. However, we are both OVER the rain. It's been raining for days and we want the SUN to come back out! Whoever is doing the rain dance may now stop!

Loving: My new chair (Melissa)! My fiancé picked up a new computer chair for me on Tuesday and I'm L-O-V-I-N-G it!! I was using a dining room table chair for awhile. I have a MAC desktop and and I really like my computer but sometimes I just want to sit on the couch and search the web. With my new chair, I'm back to loving my desktop! 

I think my future hubs was just sick of me stealing his laptop! Whatever the reason... I'm lovin' it! 

Thinking- This is a big one for Brittany and I. Most teachers have already gotten their reassignments for next year. We have not, and we are dying to know! It has caused many sleepless nights. Hopefully, our principal will be calling us in soon with the news! 

The rest is pretty self explanatory... we are both getting married within the next year. Brittany's wedding is in October and as her M-O-H I have a lot of planning to do for her big day! I should add that to LOVING because I'm loving every minute of it! 

Gettin' Our Hair Did

Well folks, we've been so busy at school lately, that we felt we deserved a little pampering. We called our friend, Aimee at The Private Room Salon and made an appointment for Tuesday afternoon. Luckily, she had time to squeeze us in after hours. In fact, we had the "private room" completely "privately booked!" That's right, it was just us and our favorite stylist. Brittany has her engagement pictures coming up in two weeks so she wanted to do something fun but not too drastic. She decided on a deep brown that came out with a hint of red.

                                                         My friends, it looks gorgeous!

The overhead light made it look a little more red than it really was and I think Britt was a little  lot  surprised!
She got so many compliments on her new do at school yesterday, so I think her worrying is over!

Frugal Girls
getting colored!

Here goes... 

Waiting on her color to set!

 We had a great evening with lots of girl talk, wine and laughs! 

The pampering isn't quite over yet! After school tomorrow we are planning a fun evening involving our four favorite things: 

*FRIENDS* 

*Happy Hour*

*Food*

*SHOPPING*

We hope everyone has a fun, fabulous and frugal Friday!!