This and That

This:

We have been at the beach all week and I am so glad to be out of the car! We drove 737 miles straight through to get home. Luckily, my husband likes the drive and I like to play work on my laptop. 

I chose A Dog Called Kitty as my all-time favorite read aloud. It's such a sad book and I cry every time I read it, year after year, but I keep reading because I love it so much. I read it myself as a third grader (and actually use that copy to read to my students!) and love the ways it touches every single student in my class. Even my tough little boys love it.

Guiding Readers and Writers is my oldie, but goodie, go-to. When I think about a book that really pushed me to be a better teacher, it's the one that comes to mind. My copy is sticky-noted like no other. I secretly am afraid to lend it out (but I do, of course!) for fear that something will happen to it. 

That:
I received the nicest email from April at The Idea Backpack while I was on vacation last week. She wrote to say that she was using some of my frames and borders from TpT in one of her projects. A girl after my own heart, she’s organizing all of her curriculum into super cute binders and using my frames to create the covers. Here’s the sweetest part… she asked me which set I would like to have for free because she had used my frames. Of course she didn’t have to do that, but it’s just one more example of why I love our little networking community here in the blogging world. We’re real teachers helping other real teachers and reaching a countless number of students in the process. I love that! You can see all of April's covers in her TpT store and even pick up the holiday set as a freebie.