How I'm Spending My Summer Vacation

It's day one of Clutter-Free Classroom's week-long Prompt of the Day linky party!

Every day is a different prompt (just like in our classrooms!) and today is.... How I'm Spending My Summer Vacation!

My summer vacation has been going too fast AND too slow at the same time. Too fast because it's almost the end of July and I am so not ready for my very first classroom. But too slow because I really want to get into my very first classroom! My brain is confused.

I've been spending a lot of time this summer looking through this lovely book. I'm 75% done with my Foundations of Teaching English as a Second Language class! I have learned a LOT! And it has definitely been a lot of work. Since it's a summer class, we are going at double-speed... so I am double-stressed. But I have an A so far, so I feel good about that! I just have three more chapters and one or two more giant projects, and then I am done-zo. Just in time to start school... ay caramba.

I spent a week of my summer vacation with no power or running water! Crazy storms tore through Illinois, leaving us with branches blocking all the roads and tons of power lines down. Since we have a well at my house, that meant that we had no water, literally, for almost a week. It was pretty terrible. It made me thankful that I do not live in a third-world country. It also made me thankful that the heat wave is going to be this week, because if it was 100 degrees last week AND we had no power..... I don't even want to think about it!

I've also spent my summer vacation shopping!! Today I spent a gift card that I had for a teacher store (and visited Dollar Tree), and I picked up a ton of stuff!

I got three posters - a Lost Tooth Graph that we can fill out throughout the year, a Daily News poster that I'll use for Morning Meeting, and a Welcome poster in sign language! I had been looking for a Welcome banner type of thing, and my dear friend Stephanie found this for me, which will go perfectly with my sign language alphabet!! This poster makes me so happy.

I also got the Scholastic pocket chart calendar I've been wanting AND two months of Poppin' Patterns calendar days! They make a pattern. Here I have displayed the AB pattern of August for your enjoyment! So cute! I also got name plates for my desks. I love that they are red.

Yesterday I went to Target and picked up some things from the Dollar Spot as well! I got some stamps...

And pipe cleaners for Word Work during Daily Five (Wikki Stix are cool but they are $20... and these pipe cleaners were $1) and a counting puzzle!

I have also seen friends, like my bff Stephanie who went shopping with me today!! Without her, I would probably not have bought all the stuff I did.... haha! She is a good shopping buddy, especially because she is sensitive to my snobby bee theme needs. Some of those bee products out there are just not right for me.... :)

How are you spending your summer vacation?