And it's Sunday.

What do you get when...

1. Your parents call the whole family together.
2. They give everyone a beautifully wrapped box to open.
3. Inside the box you find sand, seashells, and 23 letters.
4. They tell you, you have to unscramble the letters to figure out the surprise.

A trip to Sanibel Island!!!

December 27th our family is off to the sun! [Which will be awesome especially because the weatherman is calling for snow (yes, snow) this week.] It's even more exciting that this trip will be Baby T's first trip on an airplane, her first time to Florida, her first time in the sand... so many firsts! It's great that we get to share these firsts with my parents, grandma, brothers, and sister-in-laws.

Speaking of Baby T, here's a picture of her and I [and Jack] from Halloween. She was the cutest ladybug I ever saw!

Tina, Lindsay and I have been busy creating some new reading strategy packs. What I love about this is we are really digging deeper into our classroom read alouds. Each day the students are working with a different strategy for a book or topic. We've done Room on the Broom and Together We Gather, Now Get Lost. This week we are diving into nonfiction, all about turkeys! We've uploaded Room on the Broom to our TpT store already! Look for the other two soon.

Guided reading is in full swing! My kids this year are really struggling to decode words independently, or at least attempt to decode them. They just come to a word they don't know, stop, look at me, and wait. What's up with that??? So I made a strategies card that we keep right in front of us. I love that it's a visual reminder of the strategies and that the students are responsible for picking a strategy to use. You can grab it free! Take a look at it in action...

I printed out both cards, glued them to a piece of black construction paper and laminated them.

It's already 10pm. Where do these weekends go! I guess I better go get a start on grading my math assessments.

-Amy-