This Little Piggy Reads: February 2015

Ya'll

Bluebonnets

Dr Pepper

These three things are from Texas, just like me. While you might be celebrating Valentine's weekend with your loved one, I'm celebrating my love of Texas with my fellow Texas Teachers.

I'm a Texan, born and raised, North Texas is where I spent most of my days! Yes, I love Will Smith and no, he's not a Texan.
Currently, I live in Waxahachie (wax-uh-hatch-ee). I moved here when I got married about 9 years ago. It is a small historic town, south of DFW with impressive landmarks and a thriving bed and breakfast business. You might have heard about it recently because Jon Kitna is now our head football coach.

Photo Courtesy of Troy's Photos

Waxahachie's courthouse is one of the oldest courthouses in Texas. It was refurbished in 2002 with sandstone from the same quarry that was used in the 1800's to build the original.

This is an exact replica of the Munster Mansion.

Have you ever watched the Munsters? Well, a couple in Waxahachie built an exact replica of the Munster's Home. It's actually right down the street from my daughter's old daycare and I drove by it daily; however, I've never been inside. During Halloween, they have a charity event where you can tour the mansion and the owners dress up like the Munster family.

I have lots of lessons that I love! What matters is that my students love design challenges. In my gifted pull-out classroom we do them daily. Students are collaborating, problem solving, inferring, designing, hypothesising, researching and re-designing. The really awesome thing about design challenges is....you don't need to buy a lot of supplies.

This Freebie is from my font-loving friend, Nicole Shelby's TpT Store. I love that students can incorporate both STEM & Writing!

If you haven't visited Smart Chick's TpT Store - RUN over there and download this awesome STEM freebie. If feel like you don't have time to do design challenges in the regular ed classroom...do them on an early release day! I promise they are 100% engagement.