I’m a huge fan of Halloween. It’s because I have so many good memories of the holiday while growing up in Michigan. It’s enmeshed in my brain with other delightful fall experiences like walking in crunchy leaves, visiting cider-mills, and taking hay rides through pumpkin patches. Students are always excited about Halloween, but it can…
As an adult, I’m pretty immune to scary things. I can watch a horror movie by myself during a thunderstorm and still sleep soundly afterward. But when I was a child, I was creeped out by a lot of things. That’s why I liked the story The Woman Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by…
October will be here before you know it, teacher friends! October is full of terrific themes that students love—and a great way to get activities with those themes and necessary skills are with ePackets. What’s an ePacket? It’s a small bundle of goodies from The Mailbox that you download and print. EPackets are inexpensive and…
Do you have good memories of trick-or-treating? I loved swishing through the crunchy leaves in the dark with my skull flashlight and pumpkin pail full of candy. I feel like Halloween involved all of my senses: the sound of the crunchy leaves, the feel of my costume, the sight of flickering jack-o-lanterns, the taste of…
What’s on my mind today? Eyes. I have an eye appointment this afternoon, which I’ve been avoiding. I don’t have an optometrist phobia, but I haven’t been all that eager to go due to Covid-19. It just seems like it’s a bad time to have someone poking around at your eyeballs. But I gave in…
When I was little and staying at my grandparents house, a bat got into my bedroom. Grandpa tried to catch it with his fishing net, but ended up knocking it onto the bed and thus onto me. As you can imagine, I wasn’t a fan of bats for awhile after that. But now I’m rather…
I am a lover of Halloween. I have the best memories of walking through crunchy brown leaves in the dark while going house to house begging for candy. I love fall and I love chocolate so it’s really the perfect holiday, in my mind. I’ve taught in schools that celebrated Halloween and those that did…
When I was little, we would spend a couple weeks every summer in a rustic cabin up in Michigan’s upper peninsula. I loved it! The cabin didn’t have much in it–other than furniture, a supply of mosquitoes, and a selection of books. One picture book it had was an old version of The Little Old…