PE on Thursday

Our class has PE on the first day of school, so please remind your child to wear (or bring) tennis shoes to school on Thursday.

Welcome to 4th Grade!

Hello,

Welcome to the ‘Burgeson Family!’  I’m excited to be your child’s fourth grade teacher this year!  I look forward to meeting you and your child and partnering with you to help your student grow academically.  Each child is coming to me with different strengths and talents.  I can’t wait to discover them all!

As a reminder, tomorrow night (Tuesday, August 11^th) is our Back-to-School Night and Meet & Greet.  This year the schedule is a bit different than in years past.  From 5:00-5:30 there will be a curriculum presentation in our classroom (room 302) for the parents.  Supervision will be provided for the children.  At 5:30 the students will join us in the classroom, so that I may formally meet you and your child.  Feel free to drop off school supplies tomorrow, as well, to alleviate your child from being ‘overloaded’ on Thursday.

Also, if you feel a ‘getting-to-know’ conference would prove beneficial to the success of your child in my classroom, I am happy to meet with you (or hold a phone conference) in the next week or two either before or after school.  Just let me know your availability.

Lastly, thank-you in advance for sharing your child with me.  Your children truly are “my” children and will hold a special place in my heart! 

See you soon,

J  Janet Burgeson

Summertime Guilty Pleasure Link-Up

Hello,

I'm excited to be linking up with Nichole from The Craft of Teaching and Sara from Miss V's Busy Bees to blog about my summertime guilty pleasures.

First of all, did you notice that "pleasures" was in plural form?  I love, love, LOVE teaching, but I also love that my job affords me the opportunity to have such a substantial amount of time off, especially in the summertime.  (Which, by the way, makes my husband jealous.)

Although not necessarily a guilty pleasure, I most enjoy the fact that I can work in my classroom and at home on school related tasks at my leisure during the summer.  It is also my time to create fun TpT resources in a more relaxed state of mind.  I currently have Common Core language notebooks for grades 1, 2, 4, & 5.  So, by popular request, I'm now working on one for grade three.  :-)  Look for it to be in my TpT store by the end of summer.

Now . . . on to my top three summertime guilty pleasures!

#1  Visiting Family

Let's face it, I'm a Nebraska girl living in a Colorado world!  My entire family, plus the majority of my college sorority sisters live back in Omaha.  I absolutely LOVE that I have time to visit family, without feeling rushed to return so soon.  Plus, I can visit a couple times.  I usually fly to the Big "O" in June for Father's Day, then make the 550 mile journey via car towards the end of July.  I absolutely adore spending time with my four nieces (ages 16, 10, 8, & 6) and can't get enough of them.  Plus, I'm crazy enough to take all four of them school supply shopping AND foot the bill!

#2  Gardening
I can easily spend hours outside in my backyard gardening.  I tend both flower and vegetable gardens; however, this year the veggies are suffering due to a month and a half of rain and hail.  The flowers, on the other hand, have blossomed beautifully.  I enjoy the bright red, pink, purple, and yellow colors!  I'm also one of those odd people that find it relaxing to pick weeds.  In fact, I'm overly obsessed in removing a weed if I see one in my yard or garden.

#3  Candy Crush
Don't judge!  I admit, this is easily the BIGGEST waste of time ever!  However, in my defense, I blame my friend, Amy, for hooking me on this time sucking app.  I am proud (or maybe not) to say that I'm currently on level #902.  I don't even want to think what that equates to in terms of how many hours of my life I'll never get back.

Thanks for reading my post and be sure to follow my blog for great teaching ideas and products.  Feel free to link up with your own guilty pleasures.  :-)

Colorado Blogger Meet-Up

What better way to start off my blogging career than to meet up with a gaggle of gorgeous and talented TpTers and bloggers at the 2nd annual Colorado Teacher Blogger Meet-Up! 

The amazing Ashley Cook from Teaching in Bronco Country planned the event.  She started making arrangements clear back in February to ensure that the meet-up was a huge success (which of course it was).

                                                   

The Rio Grande restaurant near Park Meadows hosted our lively group.  The wait staff was amazing, as was the food.  I ordered the steak enchiladas.  Mmm, delish!  Who else, but a blogger, would take a picture of their food?  Lol!

We started off the afternoon by getting to know each other.  I was amazed at how talented and successful these ladies are!  To have all this talent bottled up in one room was awe-inspiring!  We could have talked on forever.  Several people were from the Denver Metro area; however, others traveled from Colorado Springs and other towns as far as five hours away.  I met teachers that are at other schools in my district and even met someone who lives less than a mile away from me.  How crazy is that!?!?  The fabulous Deedee Wills was also there, after only moving to Colorado a week ago.  It was very motivating to hear her accomplishments and how close she is to joining the million dollar TpT club.  

On each of our seats was a swag bag, full of useful products generously donated by several fabulous venders, such as GoNoOdle, Learning Resources, BIC, and Lakeshore Learning.  Love, love, love all my new freebies!  

To win your own swag bag full of goodies be sure to enter the Rafflecopter drawing.  I am linking up with some of the other Colorado sellers to give you the opportunity to win one of five bags!  If you don't enter, you can't win.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

During the event, I was sure to have photos taken with two of my TpT inspirations, Cecelia from I Love 1st Grade and Mary from Teaching With a Mountain View.

After lunch everyone anxiously waited for their name to be called for raffle prizes.  

The table was FULL of prizes from Learning Resources, Little Knits Studio, Scentco, Lakeshore Learning, Learning Expeditions, Gifts By Gaby, Classroom Friendly Supplies, KristyBear Designs, and Plan Book.  In addition, several people brought products from their TeachersPayTeachers store as give aways. It was overwhelming to see how many companies showed their respect for teachers by donating items. 

                                       

I was the lucky recipient of this creative hand made "Write" banner from Gifts By Gaby.  Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you, Gaby!  I love the banner and can't wait to surround it with student writing. Surprisingly enough, this was the prize I had my eye on at the beginning of the event.  Guess sometimes I do get lucky after all!  I also thought this pencil scarf by Little Knits Studio was super adorable!

At the end of our time together we conned the wait staff into taking a group photo.  What an A-M-A-Z-I-N-G group of ladies is all I can say!  I can't wait to meet-up with them again!  

Hello out there!

Yeah!  I finally decided to join the blogging world!  This way I won't have to feel as though I'm talking to myself.  Lol!  If I type it on a blog it's ok, right?!?!  Although, as I clicked around trying to self-teach myself how to set up this blog, I realized that I had an amazing blog set up about four or five years ago.  I wonder what ever happened to that?  I don't even remember the name of the blog, let alone the url or password.  I like to say I have "Sometimers."  Sometimes I remember, sometimes I don't!  

I'm a fourth grade teacher in Aurora, Colorado, and just finished my 20th year of teaching.  I love teaching, and feel blessed to have been led down this career path!  I feel that I really can make a difference in the lives of students and enjoy working collaboratively with students' parents.  I've come to the realization that I do have a lot to share, and thus the beginning of my blogging career!

Anyway, I hope to use this blog to communicate with students, keep parents in the loop, share useful teaching resources, and introduce you to the amazing products I've created and posted on the TeachersPayTeachers website.  Be sure to follow me at Bloomin Bees to gain fabulous teaching tips and advice, as well as see the amazing resources I have available to help make your teaching life easier.  :-)  

That being said, I'm wondering how often most people blog.  What do you think? Do you schedule a certain time for blogging or whenever the mood strikes?