STOP! It's JAMmer time!

I hosted an online Jamberry party earlier this month with a fellow SLP, and I instantly fell in love! I am so in love with Jamberry that I became a Jamberry Independent Consultant!

You may or may not have heard of Jamberry Nails by now. If you haven't heard of Jamberry already, now you must be thinking, "what are Jamberry nails?" Well, they are super cute heat activated vinyl wraps that adhere to your nails (as well as gel, shellac, and acrylic). Jamberry nail wraps last up to TWO WEEKS on your fingers and up to SIX WEEKS on your toes! You can't beat that! They are extremely convenient, safe, AND adorable! You can choose from over 300 designs for yourself here!

I highly recommend hosting an online Facebook party to have fun with friends, learn about all of the amazing Jamberry products we have to offer, and earn free products for yourself! The hostess rewards are unbeatable! Plus, I do most of the work. You just have to simply log onto Facebook, comment on posts, participate in games, and spread the word about Jamberry. The best part of this is that you can sit comfortably at home while you earn free rewards!

I'm getting married and starting grad school this year, so Jamberry is an amazing opportunity for me to make some extra income. If you're interested in becoming a consultant, please join my team! You will be in very good company... many other SLPs are part of the Jamberry family!

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at cmyers@mail.usf.edu or message me on my Facebook page. Don't forget to like my Facebook page to learn more about Jamberry! If you're interested in browsing all of the designs and products now, here's the link to my website: http://christinenorato.jamberrynails.net/

Since I've Been Gone...

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I have been absent from my blog for WAY too long, so I wanted to share the (exciting!) reasons with you. Many things have changed since my last post! My high school sweetheart proposed after 8+ years together... I am now an engaged woman! Our date is set for November 14, 2014, so I have been keeping extremely busy planning my wedding. I have gotten a lot done in less than three months including saying yes to my dress, booking our venue, photographer, DJ, and caterer, and starting to design our décor.

During spring break, I received a letter that I had been waiting to receive for what seemed like forever...

I GOT ACCEPTED INTO GRAD SCHOOL! It was such a feeling of relief and excitement when I opened that email. I plan on getting a post together for next week on the graduate school application process, what I did, and what you can do!

I have also been swamped at work! My school is a pilot school for a new evaluation that our district wants to adopt, so between that, tutoring before school, IEPs, trainings, working on my inquiry project (more on that later) and meetings, I have been desperately seeking time to blog. The kiddos and I have been working on some wonderful activities, including our Springing into Speech crafts!

My artic kids were excited to make flowers to brighten up the speech door, and they didn't mind practicing their sounds to do so! They really enjoyed coming up with spring themed words with their sounds in them. 

My kindergarten classes have been working on living/non-living things, and my PK classes were learning about plants at the same time. I read Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert to my language groups last week. We then made some pretty cute flowers... If you take a close look you'll see that the roots are the kids handprints! They loved this, and they all did an excellent job labeling their plants!

So now that I am back to blogging regularly, I am back for good!

Holiday Update

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It has been exactly two months since my last post! Between all of the holiday excitement at work, getting ready at home for the holidays, AND trying to get my grad school app ready to go, I have just been too busy to sit down and relax. I apologize in advance for the length of this post. I really want to share some of the things we did during the holidays, though!

I was really excited to read The Great Turkey Race by Steve Metzger for Thanksgiving. The book is out of print, so when I started looking to buy a copy the only copies on Amazon were $2500 and $500, and on eBay they were around $260! Luckily, I found two sets of four with the CDs for $23 each on eBay and bought them immediately (one set for me & the other for the other SLP at my school)! It looks like the price went down, so definitely don't wait until next Thanksgiving to purchase a copy.

It is now one of my favorite books! Three turkeys compete to become the special Thanksgiving turkey, until they find out what happens to turkey on Thanksgiving. Once they find out, they team up and flee the farm. In addition to great vocabulary words for fall, it was fun to see what the kids thought was going to happen to the turkeys. The book ends with them fleeing the farm, and we never find out where they go. My pre-k and kindergarteners loved illustrating where they thought the turkeys went.

After Thanksgiving break, my students and I got a surprise visitor that we decided to name Buddy. Buddy stuck around until he had to go back to the North Pole on our last day of school. The kids (and I) were sad to see him go!

During the first week in December we read The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. I absolutely loved this book! There were so many activities to do with it, and it was the perfect book to introduce winter to my pre-k kiddos. For my pre-k groups, I had them sort clothes into "Winter Clothes" and "Summer Clothes." This was a great activity since we very rarely get to put on boots or heavy coats.

Then, during the last week of school we read another winter classic, The Mitten by Jan Brett. All of my kiddos made their own mitten to store their animals in (to tell the story in sequence at home!) and learned about some unfamiliar animals that they loved.

I made homework packets for all of my speech students to take home over the winter break. Two weeks is a long time to not practice, so I gave them an incentive (a trip to the treasure chest!) to bring their packets back. I'm excited to see how many practiced during their break.

Over the break I got a new phone, so all of the pictures of my students work are on the old phone. I'll try to add the pictures as soon as I can :)

If you're not lucky enough to get two more snow days, have fun going back to work tomorrow! I'm excited to see my kiddos and hear their holiday stories!

Happy Fall!

I got to work extra early this morning to get my fall & Pinterest inspired classroom door done. I think it came out pretty cute :) This week we are reading Ten Apples Up On Top by Dr. Seuss. So far, it's been going great! I'll have lots of activities to post once this week is over :)

Halloween Recap!

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I have been very busy over the past two weeks, so this has been the first chance I've been able to sit down and blog! Two weeks ago, we read The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiano. I bought the iPad app when it was on sale for $.99, and it was well worth it! You can choose to have it read to you, read it yourself, or even record your voice reading it for the kiddos. I chose to have it read to us, and the kids LOVED touching the pumpkins, scarecrow, farmer, and all of the other interactive pictures. As we read, we learned new vocabulary words, shapes, and how being different is so special!

Spookley is a square pumpkin that gets teased by all of the round pumpkins in the beginning, but goes on to save them all during a terrible storm. After this, the round pumpkins learn that being square might not be so bad after all. At the end of the story, the farmer plants "special" seeds like Spookley's and grows a variety of pumpkins on his farm. This has to be my favorite Halloween story because of its amazing message! It is all about being different, tolerance, and acceptance.

This gave me a wonderful idea for our Spookley craft! I cut out different colors and shapes for our pumpkins. I let each child choose their color and shape to decorate. I then attached a craft stick with the child's name on it to put in our pumpkin patch! The kids were engaged through this entire activity (from reading the book to making their own Spookleys)! This craft also gives you a wonderful opportunity to ask wh- questions and use descriptions.

 

 

Spookley was such a hit, the kids were asking to read it again last week! Instead, we read Go Away, Big Green Monster by Ed Emberley. 

Before we started the story, we went over shapes, colors, descriptive words (squiggly, scraggly, etc.), and body parts. The first time I read the story, I didn't let the kids see the pictures. While I read, I had them draw the BGM's face just by listening to the color, size, and body part. Then, I read the story again. This time I let them see the pictures, but they didn't draw anything. Finally, I read it a third time, and again didn't let them see the pictures. All of my students who did this used the right colors each time! I was very impressed :)

During our second session, we made our own BGMs. I cut out each body part (which took forever!) from a template I found here! I asked the kids to build their monsters as we read the story. Then, we glued our monsters on a sheet of black construction paper with this freebie I found at Dream Big Kinders!

 

The kiddos were very excited when they walked in my room and saw this guy on the board!

 

 This is one of our completed projects!

 

In speech, we were busy making spooky speech webs! I made a sheet with Halloween graphics from MyCuteGraphics.com for the students to find their speech words in. Then they cut them out and glued them onto their web. The students worked on these while I went around with the iPad to do some drills. It worked perfectly, and the students stayed engaged throughout the sessions!

Happy Halloween!

Over the past few weeks we have met a Little Baby Mummy, a square pumpkin named Spookley, and a Big Green Monster! I plan on posting about our activities tomorrow after school, but wanted to quickly post a picture of the homemade costumes my boyfriend and I wore this year...

 

 

 

and wish everyone a very happy Halloween! 

The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin

Spookley is visiting my speech room all week! We have been having lots of fun with the interactive app, learning vocabulary, and saying our speech words to color pumpkins. I will give a Halloween update next week :)