Time Flies!!

I was on Facebook yesterday and I realized that Silver Dollar City's last day of the season was yesterday. It seems absolutely crazy that my last day there was already 2 years ago! I had such an awesome experience there and absolutely loved every person I worked with. I still keep in touch with many of them and consider them all great friends!! It was so much fun getting to do what you LOVE for a living! Not that I don't love and enjoy teaching, but performing is just an absolute blast!

Here are some pictures of my amazing experiences there:

Here is a throw back video to when I was performing there:

http://youtu.be/4E5nwYCTMKE

I hope you all have a great Christmas Season!!

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Every year for the past few years Trevor has gone on a hunting trip with his family. This year it just happened to be the same week as my fall break. I was not very excited to stay home alone all week, so I decided to book my own vacation and head to DC to visit my brother. Trevor left Thursday, October 10th and I had to work through the 15th and then I headed out of town myself. 

First up: Trevor's trip to Canada!

Him and his dad drove to North Dakota on the 10th and got there on the 11th. They met up with the rest of their group (there were 5 of them total) and headed up to Canada. When they got to Canada there were some complications, and they all didn't get in. Long story short: in the end 3 of them (Trevor included) went to Canada and Trevor's dad and great uncle stayed in North Dakota. Overall he had a good trip. It obviously would have been better had all 5 of them been together, but they made the best of it. I think the highlight of Trevor's trip was seeing Whiskey put all his training to good use. Trevor has been training this pup since the day we got him and Whiskey apparently did awesome hunting for his first time, so all of Trevor's hard work paid off!! The actual hunting wasn't as good as last year, but it was a good experience for both Whiskey and Trevor. Here are some pictures from his trip. 

I love this picture!! I have such a handsome husband. 

Sheridan and Gene

Trevor was so pleased with how Whiskey did that when we all got home he gave Whiskey his first steak and beer dinner!...I'm not kidding!

He looks so excited!! 🐶

I had an awesome time on my trip as well! I drove to OKC on the 15th to have dinner with some of my great friends (sadly, we didn't get any pictures). Then on the 16th I had a direct flight to DC. The first couple days in DC were just relaxing, which is exactly what I wanted!! 

This was at Rock Bottom Wednesday night. 

Our amazing (and extremely fattening) lunch. Chili Tots!! Yum!!

Hard Times Cafe

On Friday my brother, Wes, took off work to hang out with me. We made it a "touristy" day. I have already been to DC once to visit him a few years back and we saw all of the museums and such, so being a tourist wasn't my first priority. But we made it a fun day. In the Arlington/DC area they have a thing called Capital Bike Share. You can rent a bike and they have several stations where you can turn it in and then get another one later. So we rented a bike and rode to Georgetown. 

When we got to Georgetown we turned the bikes in and walked around and ended up in DC. 

White House

Old Post Office

View from the top of the Old Post Office

After we walked around for awhile, we rented the bikes again and headed back to Arlington where my brother lives. That night we had dinner with my brothers girlfriend Katy and then went out that night to a place called Penn Social. It was a lot of fun! They have ping pong, bean bags, darts, foosball, arcade games, and good music. 

I got the top score in Ski Ball! ☺️

The next day OSU was playing and it's really neat because the alumni association all goes to a bar to watch the game. So we watched the game in good company. 

That day we just hung out and watched football and headed home early. We had to wake up at 4 to catch my flight the next morning...so it was an early one! 

We both had awesome times, but this is probably the longest that Trevor and I have been apart. We definitely missed each other and were so excited to see each other on Saturday afternoon!! It definitely makes you appreciate your time together! 

Now we are back to work and home-cooked meals!! I definitely love our life together!

Interactive Notebook (Pt. 2)

If you haven't read my Interactive Notebook (Pt. 1) I would recommend checking it out. It's the start to my Interactive Notebook adventure taking place in my room this year. I have never done one before, so this is kind of new for me, but I wanted to share along the way.

Our first section we cover in the 6th grade is decimals. We review ordering and comparing decimals, adding and subtracting decimals. Then we begin teaching multiplying and dividing decimals. I didn't necessarily do a lot of foldables and things, but we had rhymes that helped us remember things and we took Cornell Notes. 

Here is my review of comparing and ordering decimals:

We then moved onto rounding-this really is a tough things for kids to grasp. 

Our little saying is: find your place, go next door. Five or greater, add one more. Flex your muscles like a hero. All the rest, turn into zero. 

We then started to review adding and subtracting with decimals. I use Cornell Notes format. We really focused on estimation before actually solving. 

After adding and subtracting, we multiplied. We first teach with just one number containing a decimal and then teach with both numbers containing a decimal. Again, we focused on estimation before actually solving. We estimated first to help us place the decimal until we learned a consistent way to place the decimal. 

We decided this year to put area and perimeter with this section since you are adding or multiplying to find those two things. 

Our last thing we taught in this section was dividing decimals. Most students coming into 6th grade aren't confident with just dividing, so we take a few days to go over that. I saw a foldable on Pinterest that I liked to help the students divide, so we made one of those. 

We then put our foldable to use and practiced with a few problems. 

Then we jumped in and started dividing decimals. Again, we took Cornell Notes for these. We start with just the dividend having a decimal and then we teach it with a decimal in both the divisor and the dividend. 

To sum everything up, we made a foldable that will help us with all 4 operations:

Gosh, we cover a lot first quarter. We also throw in Mean, Median, Mode and Range as a review for the students. I found this on Pinterest and printed it for all the students before I had them play a dice game with it. 

I like the little saying "hey diddle diddle, the medians in the middle; you add and subtract for the mean. The mode is the one that appears the most, and the range is the difference between. 

My dice game consisted of the students rolling 2 dice 6 times. Each time they rolled the dice they would multiply them together to get one number. Then they had to find the mean, median, mode, range and outlier for each set of data they collected from their game. 

Again, if anyone is interested in any of the printable things I have posted just email me at jilliancmorris@gmail.com

Thanks for reading!!