A Moment in My Classroom: Let’s Create

A Moment In My Classroom
This seems to happen each year…this type of moment in my classroom.  Fresh off the ICE conference and well into a routine with my students.  I suddenly feel inspired to start changing things.  This year was the same as last.  The change meant it was time for my students to start blogging.

Student blogging is nothing new to me.  My class blogged last year too.  It should have been something that I started right at the beginning of the school year, but with a new group of 6th graders and a brand new Reading and Language Arts curriculum, it left me little time for anything considered extra.

Three quarters of school and more the six months into school, me and my students were ready…ready to start blogging!

A Moment in My Classroom: Let's Create By Carrie Baughcum

….as eyes lit up and smiles of inspiration took over faces, I wondered why they heck did I wait so long to do this and I knew that I would never wait this long ever again!!!

 

You can check out other Moments In My Classroom here!

SIT Conference 2015

My friend told me about it,  conference for students by students.”You totally should come. Tricia is finally old enough to attend. Tech and kids…it’s a fantastic day,” she said.
Trusting her and her knowledge of great things and things my daughter would love (bonus: our girls would be able to hang out together and well the promise of technology…no brainer).  I signed my daughter up to attend the Buffalo Grove SIT Conference 2015.  Then I decided why should she have all the fun and I signed up to be a volunteered at the conference!

Bright and early on last Saturday morning my daughter and I drove to Buffalo Grove. There we would join hundreds of other 3rd-12th graders for a technology conference for students by students. To top that there would also be four other SIT Conferences going on the exact same day and time as ours throughout the state of Illinois!!!

At check in I was amazed at every detail that had been noticed. Every procedure and process had been put in place and thought of  to make sure this conference for students by students was safe for kids.  It would allow this all the students to be as independent as they wanted to be and have a real conference experience.

As quickly as the keynote started she was off with her friend to the sessions they had selected.  The conference had started and to say it was a beyond awesome experience would be an understatement…

SIT Conference #SketchnotingLife

At lunch Tricia barely got a bite of food in as she talked non-stop about all that she was experiencing and learning she had done.

I honestly had never heard her talk so much in her life.

SIT Conference 2015

As we drove home from this fantastic event,  I looked in the review mirror to see Tricia’s head leaning on the window… she was sound asleep.  I smiled.  I knew in that instant that we will forever support and be a part of this incredible day!!!

It’s Not Fair

“That’s not fair!!!!!”

“It’s not fair Mommy! “

“No I don’t want to.  It’s not fair!”

It has been the phrase of choice for my lovely 9 year old.

The one phrase in the entire repertoire of phrases she could pick from that she knows gets under my skin…it really gets me.

So last weekend as we stood in the kitchen… I reminded her of a chore she needed to do.  As quickly as I could tell her what needed to be done the words burst from her mouth, “IT’S NOT FAIR!!” and this time I looked at her I said, “You know that is not true!  If it was fair…

It's Not Fair

Lost for words she just starred at me.  While I hoped for her usual giggles, this time I got a stomp and a huff as she walked away.  I smiled to myself and then looked up to see who else was in the kitchen with me (I actually was a bit surprised at what had come out of my mouth).  I saw my 7 year old looking at me.  Starring at each other for a moment I smiled again and then……..ohhhhh the laughter!

Cleaning Shout Outs…said no kid or mom ever!

Cleaning…chores….sighhhhhhh is an infinite battle in my house (I’ve been spending a lot of time talking about that lately haven’t I).  Well I can say we have reached a 80% no whining, melt down, do it because I am supposed to do rate but woooo momma that other 20%….lordy help me.

After years of battling and attempted “behavior modification” with my ever feisty and perpetually determined to make me crazy oldest I decided a few months back to take a route unfamiliar with me…I compromised with her. I decided we she would select the household chore that she could tolerate.  This all in the hopes that the tantrum, whine factor  and incessant battling over doing your chores would significantly decrease… and what do you know…it really did…well mostly…until last week.

“Go upstairs and separate the today’s laundry.”

{sighhhhh} overly dramatic grumpy face (because I didn’t already know how unhappy she was about doing her chores after say… years of tantrums and stomping and refusing) with a bit of mad stomping up the stairs for added effect.

“Hooowws the laundry separating going,” I ask from downstairs.

minutes later…..nothing…no sound….

I walk upstairs to see what is up (duh….I totally know what is happening)

“What’s going on?” I say looking at the rolled up mound of an unhappy child trying to make a statement that is way past very clearly being made.

“I hate this.”

…cue mom speech about responsibility, her job as a member of this family….you picked this chore blah blah blah…you know the speech (heck she knows the speech).

She stares back at me.

“Let’s try something,” I say, “How about every time you think something negative, something or some reason about why you don’t like doing your chores you scream at the top of your lungs a super silly no way it is possible true shout out about what you are doing!”

{Perplexed look}

{aahhaa moment}

{Smile}

Getting back to my chores I hear a my oldest shouting from upstairs at the top of her lungs …

“I just LOVE separating the families dirty underwear into piles! Nothing makes me happier” 

From the dining room craft room I hear my youngest shout…

“I just love cleaning up a million gazillion rainbow loom bands that someone left on the floor…oooo fun!”

and from the bathroom…

Cleaning Shout Out

…and in that instant the Baughcum Family Cleaning Shout Out was born.

WARNING: Teaching children the shout out method may cause rolling on the floor laughter during cleaning and may slightly….oh shoot really reduce the amount of cleaning that actually gets done! 

1/2 The Laundry…A Life Lesson

My daughters never cease to crack me up.  Their perspective of life…even the littlest moments, the ones that seem so routine, the so everyday can leave us in giggles.  So when I asked my daughters to put away some laundry, empty a laundry basket and bring it downstairs for me I couldn’t have imagined the on the floor belly holding giggles it left me in and a life lesson I felt compelled to share…one big sister to another!
Half The Laundry...A Lesson in Measurement

…see more #SuperFunDoodles here

Crazy Holiday Fun

Well that was fun!! I don’t know about you but I have a serious love hate relationship with Christmas. This year my procrastinating tendencies caught up with me and honestly I didn’t handle it oh so well. There may have been some anxiety and stress. In the end, as always we I got through it and I was able to look back at it all, laugh, smile and see all the fun we had!!

This is just a glimpse at some of the crazy fun I had!!
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Motherhood…Living on The Edge

Last week was one full of  those on the edge moments!  You know those moments you want to run out of your house screaming someone save me from this insanity.  Those moments you count down the time until your husband will be home from work so you can tag him…”you’re it”!  Those moments you filter so much, your families mouths would drop if they knew the things you really wanted to say.  Well…wrapped up in all that insanity there is awesomeness.  The you wouldn’t have it any other way moments of motherhood.

Last week was a smidge more on the am I going to survive side…
Motherhood...The Edge of Awesomeness and Insanity By Carrie Baughcum
 

Giggles, Fun and Christmas Lights

Early this week I shared my new found love for what I have now learned is called #sketchnoting (I personally think it is so much more then a boring name like that.  Don’t worry, I’m working on a new name, prettier and way more creative name for it).  Even with a boring name my love for what I like to think of as writing with intertwined words and drawings continues….

Last weekend my 9 year old asked if we could decorate the outside of the house on Saturday. How could I possibly say no.  So we brought the lights up from the basement and got to work.  It was so much more then I could have expected.
Giggles, Fun and Christmas Lights