Phantom Ghost Town - FREEBIE

Today's freebie is one that I discovered over a year ago and just had to share!  

I have been striving for years to teach my children that holidays are more about more than what you can receive, it is about what you can give to others. Giving selflessly without expecting anything return is a skill that seems to be disappearing.

To get a copy of their poem check out their blog post from last year called Halloween Printable Fun!

I am planning on doing this at home with my children and at school! This means that I will need to prepare and leave 4 treats. However, I am actually going to make 6. My sister's in law live in another neighborhood close by and I plan on leaving this at their doors. I may even make more and take it over to my other 2 sister's in law and my bff. I will just spread the love around the city. 

I am so excited for a new twist on this holiday. I am planning on starting tonight..... Please leave me a comment if you are planning to join in. 

Stop in tomorrow for another Halloween Freebie! 

More on the saga from home.... 

We made the hard choice to move to a new area. The schools here are horrible and I have been warned about the black hole in our school system. I have heard from 3 different teachers on 3 different occasions that the schools are known to give bad reviews to teachers looking to move to other districts to avoid them being hired away. So with hubby being laid off next week (or so rumor has it), it is time to cut our loses and run. 

If I go MIA... send someone to find me. I will be the one buried under a pile of boxes.

Book Review, Linky Party, & a Giveaway Too!

I was so excited and so happy when a friend of mine, Maria Dismondy, sent me a surprise in the mail! Autographed copies of two of her books AND a tiara cookie cutter. Now being a mom of boys, anything pink or girly just doesn't happen so that cookie cutter was the best surprise ever.

I am so gonna make Pink Tiara Cookies!

The boys have even agreed to eat them. 

I have rarely seen pink in the last 13 years. I own one pink shirt, I bought it a few months ago when I had nothing to wear for a job interview. It was the only color they had and after 4 hours of not liking anything I bought it.

You should have heard the boys!

Every month Maria challenges us to think about a different character trait and how we can make a difference in the lives of our own children as well as our students. She takes this a step further by creating books for parents and teachers to talk about these traits in an easy to use format.

The best thing for me is that while they look girly they appear to both boys and girls. These books arrived at my house YESTERDAY evening. They have been read at least 6 times over so far and by BOYS!

Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun is about a little girl who is different from everyone else. She has big hair (I LOVE her hair!) and eats strange foods. She is an easy target for bullying. She ends up crying but because she doesn't want to be a tattle-tell (I know the feeling! I am the same way!!) she suffers in silence.When she finally gets the chance to be the bully she reaches deep down inside to find courage and remembers the words of her Papa - everyone has a heart! 

Pink Tiara Cookies for Three is by far my favorite. (And not just because I get to make pink cookies!) I have three sons. They also have a best friend triangle issue where one is left out just like these girls. I have tried so many times to explain it but they never got it .... until now!

This book is the story of two best friends who share everything and the new girl in town who wants to be friends with them. How can 3 people be friends? It will never work laments one of the girls. After much heartache and tears they figure out that three people can really be the best of friends and no one gets left out!

Now.... my sons can read and I have taught them to read about the author. They said "She wrote three books and we only have two!" Oh whatever shall we do! I know.... we will just have to order up her last one to read as well!

So I will be reading and reviewing this book at a later time. In the mean time, you should pick up these books and share them with all the kids you know as well!!

This month Maria is talking about fairness. This is a tricky character for me as I do not believe that anything can be fair. Fair is getting what each of us needs to succeed. I often hear from my boys that it is not fair that one receives a different punishment than the other.But the each need something different to learn the lesson. 

I am more of a "Life isn't Fair" kinda girl and try to teach my children and students to make the most of every situation even if it isn't ideal to you. 

Taking turns, following the rules during the game, dividing a treat equally - these are things that we can also use to demonstrate fairness but I have to emphasize fairness is not necessarily identical. Have you heard the fairness song? It has lots of examples of how to be fair. 

Did you hear I have 400+ followers? 

You know its giveaway time right? 

Soooo... I am giving away an autographed copy of

Speghetti on an Hot Dog Bun

AND

$25 Gift Card to Olive Garden

not sure that they will serve the Speghetti 

on a hog dog bun though =(

a Rafflecopter giveaway

So what could be better than a giveaway?? TWO GIVEAWAYS!! Stop by Maria's Blog to learn how you can get a free drink at Starbucks! 

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Do you remember this song?

It is always the first thing that comes to mind when someone asks me about respect. I wasn't even thought of when this song was made but I have heard it so many times. Even my children know it. Some songs are just classic!

I was so shocked (and a little intimidated) when Maria sent me a personal email asking me to join her linky party as she wanted to hear my thoughts.

Really? Me??

So here I am on Wednesday 

linking up to the Monday party. 

I am just fashionably late. Not overly late. 

I hope!

 

Respect.... this is a hard topic for me to write about. I feel respect should be the foundation of our society. Sadly, I feel it has gone the way of chivalry. It is now a rare occurrence when respect is shown. It is no longer "cool" or "sweet" or "in." Being respectful is seen as something only old people or nerds do. And sadly, I believe that we are all the root cause of this. 

Society goes through the shifts of being too strict then to lax and it seems to rarely find the happy medium. You can see this in parenting techniques. There was the too strict phase then the child-centered phase and now these children who think the world revolves around them are entering our classrooms.

I often wonder what life will be like when these children grow up. We are no longer retaining students who aren't trying. We are catering more and more to them. We are pressuring teachers to meet goals that seem unattainable yet provide no consequence to the student who doesn't even attempt to reach them. 

What happens to these students when a boss in the future expects something to be done and they decide not to? They will be fired and won't understand. 

The only solution that has been given is to teach character in schools but I wonder if this is enough? What if character is seen as only something required at school? Too many believe that reading is only necessary at school. You only find worksheets in a school. Society as a whole too often lacks character so are we trying to swim against the tide?

I believe we first must learn to respect ourselves and set boundaries. We must learn to keep a promise and to control our emotions. 

I simply LOVE LOVE LOVE this system of learning how to control our emotions. We must learn to put others before ourselves! We must learn how to handle when something is disappoint to us and do so in an appropriate manner.

 

I have heard so many amazing things about this book. I love the ideas in it and it is on my "to do" list for summer. In fact, I will be spending a lot of time this summer working on adding in whole brain teaching strategies to my classroom.

Create an anchor chart about respect at the beginning of the year. Discuss what it looks like, feels like, acts like, demonstrate it, practice it, reinforce it, and reward it. 

Teach students that respect goes beyond the classroom door. Make it part of their homework. Do something respectful outside of class, share it with us, tell us how did it make you feel, how did it make others feel? Reward it, praise them. 

Respect, share, repeat. 

Perhaps, just perhaps by teaching our students and our children that respect is important we can change the tide of society.

Don't forget!