Power of Positive Thoughts

Congratulations to Kelly from First Grade Fairytales and Lori Rosenberg from Teaching With Love and Laughter! You two guessed the closest to how many days of school I have left! I get out on May 30 at noon, so technically, I have 32.5 days left of school. Since no one guessed that, I'm giving my plant unit to the people who guessed closest! {Kelly and Lori, I will send you your packets via email today!}

I've been noticing a upsurge in my stress level the past few weeks and I totally believe in the power of positive affirmations to help change my life. I started doing my positive affirmations again and noticed such a difference in my life. So, I wondered what would happen if I did positive affirmations with my students at school. I noticed a huge change in the atmosphere in my classroom the past two weeks I've been doing them with my students. And, I've noticed a change in their scores on spelling tests and math tests. Of course, this isn't scientific but there are many books and articles out there that support the power of positive thinking.

Here are just a few of the positive affirmations I have my students say each day with me. I say them and just have them repeat them back to me:

I tape positive affirmations to my mirrors, I put them in my car, I say them when I get any sort of fear in my heart. Another thing I do when I am under stress is send love to people and to the situation around me. I just say in my mind "I bless this person with love. I bless this person to be surrounded by love." I even do that with my classroom! I'll say "I bless this classroom with love. I bless everyone who enters into my classroom to feel love." And so on. The sky is the limit! You can bless anything and anyone with love and the great thing about it, is that as you do this, your own heart begins to fill with love and to soften.

I hope everyone has a wonderful week this week! And if things start to get negative or stressful in your life, I encourage you to try using positive thoughts and affirmations to help bring peace and love into your life. If you do try it, I'd love to hear back from you on how it went!

There is Only Love,

Winners!!! and Five For Friday!

 

Congratulations to my three winners!!! Each of these gals have won my top selling product that was spotlighted in this last Sunday's TpT newsletter: Money For Young Learners. They also get my two newest packets, Mixed Addition and Subtraction Timed Tests and my OU & OW Word Work packets!! Thanks so much to everyone who entered my giveaway!! I absolutely loved reading how everyone spent their Spring Break!!  If you'd like a chance to win my top selling Plants and Flowers for Young Learners Packet, read on!

On another note, T.G.I.F!!! How many of you felt like this week just went on and on? I think this week seemed slower than normal after coming off of Spring Break last week. I've definitely been bitten by the Summer bug and can't wait for those warmer days of sunny weather!!

Anyone besides me started counting down the days until Summer break??  Want to take a guess at how many days I have left??? If you guess correctly, I'll send you my Plant and Flowers for Young Learners Packet!! Just leave me a comment below with your guess! I'll announce the winners Saturday night (April 13th).  We are starting this packet this week in my class and I'm super excited!!

And now, it's time for Five For Friday!! I love reading about everyone's week in review on Doodle Bugs Teaching's linkup! Here's a look back at my week:

1.) This is Bella Roo! She's my cutie patootie and cuddle bug! She used to look like a little poodle puff ball last week!! {I should have taken a before photo of her!!} I tried my hand at grooming her for the first time ever!! It took me two hours!!! {I have a new-found appreciation for dog groomers!!} It took the first hour to groom her body and the second hour to groom just her face!! Not perfect, but I was pretty dang proud of my first attempt! At least I kept her ears in tact!

2.) My students had a fun time working on my new OU and OW Word Work packet this week!  Here are just a couple of sample pages of their work. Almost every single student got 100% on their ou/ow spelling test today! Yeee haaaw!!

 

3. I have a new love!! It's my Aveda Brilliant Spray-On Shine!!! I love how it makes my hair shine with a natural shimmer! It makes my thick and slightly coarse hair look so healthy!!! And I absolutely LOVE how it smells!!! 

4.) I started a new craft this week!! I found this awesome book at Michael's on how to knit a baby project in a day...{Ummm...well for me, more like a month!} It has the cutest projects in it! And since my dear sister-in-law is having a baby girl in May I thought I would try to knit her something cute! Here are the two projects I just love! {Say a prayer for me that they turn out looking like these! Ha!}

5.) Every now and then I go out and buy myself something that connects me to my inner child. This week I bought myself a new coloring book and a new box of crayons, and I bought a jar of Super Hot jaw breakers from Cracker Barrell!!  There's just nothing like the smell of a new box of crayons!! And I just love coloring in a coloring book! It totally reminds me of my grandma because she would always color with me when I was a little girl. These little things just make me smile!

I sure hope you had a wonderful week! Remember to love yourself and be kind to yourself! Go out and do something to connect to your inner child this weekend! You'll be glad you did!

There is only Love,

 

P.S.

Thanks again to everyone who has linked up with my April Freebies linky party this month! Go check out some of the amazing freebies my friends have posted! And link up your own amazing April freebies throughout this month. Just follow the button below:

Spring Break Is Over! New Products Give Away!

Today was my first day back to school after a week off for Spring Break. I have to admit, I was SUPER tired all day! I think my kiddos were, too. During silent reading this morning there wasn't a sound! Everyone just came in, sat down and started reading! It was soooo nice!!

Spring Break was really relaxing for me and my honey. We went out of town down to Long Beach and stayed at the Hyatt on the ocean front. It was such a beautiful week in sunny Southern California! Our hotel was right on the marina and looked out on the Queen Mary. I so did NOT want to leave to come back to rainy Utah weather!

While I was on break I managed to make a couple of new packets! {Crazy! I know!} I also woke up Sunday morning to a HUGE surprise! My packet, Money For Young Learners, made the TpT newsletter!! I was soooooo excited!!! I wanted to pay it forward to all of you, so I'm giving away each of the new packets I made last week and my Money packet!

I'm giving them away to 3 lucky winners on Thursday so I hope you will join in the fun!

Thanks to everyone who has linked up with my April Freebies linky party this month! Go check out some of the amazing freebies my friends have posted! And link up your own amazing April freebies throughout this month. Just follow the button below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

April Freebie Linkup and Securing Your Images on Your pdfs

Hi my friends! It's day 3 of my trip to sunny southern Cali and I'm enjoying this time off for Spring Break. I didn't realize how tired I was! I've been taking a nap every afternoon! It is so nice to have some down time just to relax!

Thanks to all of you who've linked up with my April Freebie Link-up! There are soooo many cute ideas out there!! You are all so amazing to share your ideas and freebies with others. If you haven't linked up, or checked out the freebies, just click on the button and head on over!

I've noticed as I've made purchases on TpT and TN that many sellers think they have secured the images on their documents/pdf files but they are not secured. I was under the false idea that if I saved my document as a pdf that that was secure enough. Not so!!

When you purchase graphics from any seller, they ask that you make sure to secure their images in your  products. To do this (and believe me, I figured this out just a few weeks ago and I'm still going back over all my products and securing them...) all you have to do is follow a couple of extra steps as you are saving your document as a pdf.

1. On your file click "Save as PDF".
2. Next, the menu that pops up, click the button that says "Security Options" located just below where it says "Keywords:".

3. When you click on Security Options, a new box should pop open like this:

Click on the second, or middle box, that says "Require password to copy text, images and other content" and then enter  a password in the box that says "Password" and again in the box that says "Verify".

4. Then click OK and continue to save your document as a PDF.

How can you tell if images are secure or not secure on your pdfs? Easy! Just click on any image on your pdf...if a blue box appears around your graphic, it is NOT secure and can be copied and pasted onto a person's desktop or onto a new document. If you click on a graphic or image and nothing gets highlighted with a blue box, then your graphics are secure.

Believe me, many people falsely think that just because they've saved their document as a pdf that it is secured. I hope this helps!

Happy Wednesday, my friends!

April Freebie Link Up and Currently!

It's that time again! Time to link up your favorite April Freebies! Just grab the above linky button and place it on your freebie post on your blog and link up below! Please link up to a blog post and not directly to your TpT store! :)

Check out these posts for other monthly link ups! {Sorry! I skipped March!! It was a c-razy busy month!!}

I hope everyone had a fantastic Monday! Thank you to everyone who purchased from my TpT store during my weekend Spring Cleaning Sale! I'm in sunny Southern California for Spring Break this week! Time for a little r & r!

I'll leave you with my April Currently from Farley's linky party over at Oh' Boy! Fourth Grade..

I'm also linking up with Fun In First Grade's Inspiration Monday Link Up!

Be gentle with yourself,