May 1 – 5.  STAFF APPRECIATION WEEK:)

May 4. Lindemann PTA Mtg. 6:30 PM.  Art Room.

May 8. 6:30 PM. Kindergarten Roundup.  7:00 PM. Board of Education Mtg.

May 16. Lindemann 4th/5th Grade Spring Concert.

May 19. Lindemann Carnival 6:30 – 8:30 PM

May 24. 7:00 PM.  PTA/PTSA Council.  Lindemann Elementary

May 29.  Memorial Day.  No School

---

Our Children all Need Great Teachers Like You

You once had a choice
And you chose to teach
And every day
It’s our children you reach

You make the difference
In the life of each child
Those that are quiet
And those that are wild

It’s the way that you teach
You do it so well
They look up to you
And think you are swell

You teach from your heart
That’s plain to see
They think you’re divine
And we all agree

Please never forget
And remember it’s true
Our children all need
Great teachers like you

We appreciate you
And we value your time
And if you should forget
Please re-read this rhyme

---

Autism Awareness Event–Success!

I want to commend and congratulate Pam McGuire, Ann Persinger, and especially, our 8th grade student, Braden Albright.  Saturday afternoon, all of their planning and hard work came together. The weather cooperated and we had an amazing turnout.  The sheer number of volunteer students and adults was impressive.  Thank you Mike Darga and Guy DesJardens and all of the staff that came out to support our Autistic Students and Autism Awareness.  It looks like we may get a nice News Herald story written up as well.

TO VIEW PHOTOS FROM THIS EVENT PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/yubck03818zk093/AAAokcbWgcoH_BMvNfkzqOmja?dl=0

---

---

Happy Friday!

As you may have heard, Mr. Rimsa (My husband), visited our class to teach the kids about nutrition and health. Mr. Rimsa is currently obtaining his Doctorate at the University of Michigan to be a Nurse Practitioner. He brought us an entire set of sight word readers as part of the My Plate program from the USDA. Yesterday, we focused on eating a balanced meal in general. We will go more in depth each week as we focus on fruits, veggies, grains, proteins and dairy. He also brought in a special stethoscope, and alcohol wipes =), so that the kids could listen to his heart. I have attached a few photos and will be uploading more to our Shutterfly Account. Check them out!

Also, this week is Laboratory Scientist Week! I sent Ms. Houpt, Ms. Blake and Mr. Steve (the dragon maker) flowers from our class.

---

13 Ways to Simplify Your Life

How often do you find yourself feeling overwhelmed? I sometimes feel like I have at least a hundred things going on. Work, family, my social life, my daily responsibilities, goals, blogging- it’s easy to start feeling like there aren’t enough hours in the day to do it all. Next thing I know, the mail is piling up because I was distracted when I got home and instead of putting it away, I just threw it on my kitchen counter, I have at least 10 emails to reply to, laundry to do and two blog posts to write. It’s easy to start feeling overwhelmed.

I never considered myself a very organized person. I do love to clean, de-clutter and organize, but I always felt like things went back to being messy in no time. I call it an “organized mess”- it’s also something that I’m constantly working on changing. Getting rid of everything that you no longer have use for, things just sit and collect dust, things that maybe could be of some use to someone else- these are all things that make life so much easier.

CLEAN AS YOU GO

Wash your mug right after you finish your coffee- don’t let the dishes pile up. Do your bed right after you get up in the morning. Open the mail as soon as you get home. If you do these things “as you go” you will notice that you won’t have to spend a lot of time constantly cleaning and throwing things away, looking for things.

RE-EVALUATE YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

Don’t waste your time for people who aren’t good for you or people whose company you don’t enjoy. Don’t be afraid to cut ties if you feel that the relationship is toxic. Your time is precious, make sure to spend it with those you care about- not those you don’t.

UNSUBSCRIBE

I have a tendency to immediately subscribe to blogs and websites, if I happen to like them at a first glance. Truth is, there are very few of those newsletter emails that I actually read. Once I unsubscribed from a whole bunch of them, my inbox is much neater and a lot more pleasant to browse through.

DE-CLUTTER

Get rid of old things like clothes, dishes, electronics, magazines, furniture,  old makeup– donate what you can. If there are some pieces in your closet that you’ve been keeping for years in hopes that you get to wear them some day- get rid of those, too.

WRITE DOWN YOUR SMALL GOALS

I’m talking about small goals like getting your workout in, finishing reading that book, organizing your pantry, etc. Writing things down can help you get them done, especially when you feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start; write down a list of things and start with whatever task you dread the most.

SCHEDULE YOUR “EMAIL TIME”

I try to avoid replying to emails right away (unless it’s something urgent, of course)- it can be very distracting, especially when you get as many emails as I do. I try to schedule some time twice a day when I go through my inbox and respond to emails.

FORGET MULTITASKING

It’s stressful and most of the time you’re not as productive as you would be, if you were to focus on a single task.

CREATE A MORNING ROUTINE

This can be life changing. If you find yourself rushing out the door every morning, being in a hurry, getting an early start can give you more time to do things like sitting down and writing down your to-do list, preparing lunch and getting ready for the day.

RE-EVALUATE YOUR COMMITMENTS

Out of all your responsibilities and hobbies, which ones are of most importance to you? Home life, social life, work, side-work, family, any pastime activities- if there’s something that you don’t love doing or it doesn’t give you value, give it up- if you can. Pay close attention to what you do with your time.

Don’t feel obligated to say “yes” to things you don’t feel like doing. Don’t feel the need to explain yourself- if you don’t want to do it, just say no.

CLEAN UP YOUR DIGITAL MESS

Decluttering is also important when it comes to your digital life. Delete any apps you don’t use, any documents you don’t need, close those tabs. Old school papers, old photos; if you store anything important on your laptop, transfer it to an external drive.

STAY ORGANIZED

Have a place for everything, and put everything back where it belongs. This will make your life much easier.

PLAN YOUR DAY AHEAD

Know what to expect, plan ahead and you will feel more organized and will find time to do pretty much everything. Write to do- lists and set yourself small daily goals that will help you stay on track.

We live in times, where we’re constantly connected, we constantly have something to do and it’s important to know how to slow down. Keeping things simple is no longer… simple. It’s important that you value your time and spend it doing things you need to get done and doing things you love doing. De-cluttering, getting rid of anything that doesn’t serve you will help you simplify your life and feel more at peace. It’s hard to admit it, but sometimes you just can’t do it all. And that’s okay; focus on the things that matter the most.

---

7 Great Ways to Use Google for Education

Tuesday, April 18, 2017 / GOOGLE / 1 comment

7 Great Ways to Use Google for Education

GUEST POST BY: Ben Russel

The Google Apps for Education services were first introduced ten years ago. They aimed to increaseinnovation, participation, and creativity among the students and teachers. Since then, Google has worked hard to improve many of their educational products. Google Apps such as Google Hangouts have revolutionized the general view of what an app should do today. Recently, Google has launched a new set of applications called G SUITE for education that seeks to improve the schooling system. Below are some of the educational apps included in the package and how they can be effectively used to improve the education system.

1. Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a simple search engine that is designed to explore scholarly and educative material correctly. It is free to use and can be easily accessed by a student, teacher or parent at any given time and location. Students can take advantage of its great features to enrich their literature knowledge. It allows students to search various forms of research material, be it books, journals, articles or other works of literature. It can display links to original books and articles from the libraries. Also, any student can save the acquired material and reference for future usage.

2. Google Classroom

Google Classroom is a learning platform for institutions and schools that seek to simplify creating, grading and distribution of school work in a digital way. This program aims to remove the tedious process of learning and also minimize the usage of papers and books used in our classrooms. Google Classroom takes advantage of Google Drive features in creating and distributing schoolwork. Furthermore, it can be paired with Gmail to enhance communication among students, school faculty, and parents. Google Classroom makes it easy for the teachers to plan their schedule and communicate effectively to their students and parents.

3. Gmail

Communication between students and teachers has never been easier thanks to Gmail. Gmail is among the best, secure, powerful and free mailing clients on the Internet. Most people use Gmail for business purposes, but it can also be used to enhance education. It is a very effective tool to any teacher, student or parent because it offers online storage, device synchronization and email alerts. Schools can use Gmail to easily relay important messages to their students, parents and the school staff. Report cards and school assignments can be easily and quickly submitted through Gmail. Also, as seen above, Gmail can be combined with more Google education apps to improve productivity.

4. Google Alerts

Browsing through the Internet looking for one piece of information can be frustrating to most people, but not anymore. Google Alerts is a simple tool that allows one to get notifications and emails on topics of interest. It can be a great tool for students when it comes to working on a theory of knowledge essay, for instance, keeping up with current events and just monitoring anything on the web. Like many of Google apps, this application is free, and it is available to anyone interested. Also, this app can be paired with Google Calendar which is also a great tool for both students as well as teachers. It is more versatile than most other calendars providing different features that enable one to create reminders, organize his/her schedule and also share your events with friends and family. Google Calendar can be synchronized with all of your diverse devices such as smart phones, laptops and tablets; this enables you to keep track of any activity marked in the calendar. It is a nice way to keep yourself on track and meet your goals as planned.

5. Google Books

Years ago we had no choice but to visit a library if we needed a book, but now things have improved and we have Google Books. Google Books is a book search engine, and it provides searches of full-text, magazines, and books that Google has collected over time, scanned and converted to text. The books are usually furnished by the publishers, authors or through the Google Books Partner program. Google Books is a useful resource for students who do not have access to a library and also to teachers who are planning their lessons, and they need a quick reference.

6. Google Hangouts

As mentioned above, Google Hangouts is one the most powerful applications. This app offers free video conferencing, voice calls and messaging services. It is freely available to teachers and students. Google Hangouts allows one to communicate with up to ten users at the same time. It also allows remote communication between a teacher and a student; this means that the teacher and the student can be from two different places but still able to communicate and learn. Teachers can help their students on projects, or he or she can pair up students to work on the same project together. Besides, Google Hangouts gives a teacher the freedom of easily inviting guests to give power speaks to the students through video conferencing.

7. Google Drive

The final and perhaps the most powerful of all apps is Google Drive. It is an online digital file storage that allows one to store documents and other files. Google Drive is so much more than a cloud base storage; it packs a lot of important features that are a must-have for any student or teacher. Some of these functions include:

• Google Docs – Google Docs is a powerful word processing tool that is built in Google Drive. It gives one an ability to create, edit and save any Word documents online. One does not have to spend a lot of money buying word processors such as Microsoft Word.
• Google Slides – Google Slides is more like Microsoft PowerPoint; it gives one an ability to create presentations.
• Google Sheets – This is another tool inside Google Drive that provides spreadsheet functionality; it is more like Microsoft Excel.
• Google Forms – This is a simple program that allows one to create surveys. A teacher can use this program to evaluate the students’ moral, attitude and skills.

As observed above, all these apps have different roles to play; if well utilized by a student, teacher or school in general, they can transform the education system for the better. The advancement of technology has provided new and effective ways of improving our intellectual ability. Many tools are at our disposal and we only have to take advantage of them.

Ok, I was getting a little hungry and took a break from the blog and started looking up recipes.  So, if anyone gets bored and wants to make a cake (please save a piece for Mike D.) here’s the scoop on how to make TEXAS SHEET CAKE!!!  YUM!!!

Texas Sheet Cake

Mason requested a chocolate cake for his birthday and so I knew it was the perfect time to try out this recipe for Texas Sheet Cake.  If you’ve never tried this kind of cake before it’s a really moist, thin cake with a delicious icing.

Here’s What You’ll Need…

– 2 cups flour

– 2 cups white sugar

– 1 teaspoon baking soda

– 1/2 teaspoon salt

– 1/2 cup sour cream

– 2 eggs

– 1 cup butter

– 1 cup water

– 5 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

– 6 tablespoons milk

– 1/2 cup butter

– 4 cups powdered sugar

– 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

– Step 1 –

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

– Step 2 –

Combine the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt.  Beat in the eggs and sour cream.  (It will look really thick… that’s okay!)

– Step 3 –

Melt the butter (1 cup) on low in a saucepan.  Add the water and 5 tablespoons of cocoa and bring it to a boil.  Remove it from the heat and allow it to cool slightly (like a minute or two) and then pour it into the egg/flour mixture.  (At this point it will look thin – but that’s okay!)

– Step 4 – 

Pour the batter into a prepared 10×15 sheet pan.  You can grease and flour it or use the PAM baking spray.  Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

– Step 5 –

For the icing you’ll want to melt 1/2 cup of butter on low heat and then when it’s melted stir in 6 tablespoons of milk and 5 tablespoons of cocoa.  Bring it to a boil, remove from the heat and stir in the powdered sugar and vanilla.

(At this point you can add in 1 cup of chopped walnuts.  I omitted them because it was for the kids)

– Step 6 –

Pour the frosting over the warm cake and spread it evenly.

And ENJOY!!!

– What You’ll Need –

– 2 cups flour

– 2 cups white sugar

– 1 teaspoon baking soda

– 1/2 teaspoon salt

– 1/2 cup sour cream

– 2 eggs

– 1 cup butter

– 1 cup water

– 5 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

– 6 tablespoons milk

– 1/2 cup butter

– 4 cups powdered sugar

– 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

– Step 1 –

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

– Step 2 –

Combine the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt.  Beat in the eggs and sour cream.  (It will look really thick… that’s okay!)

– Step 3 –

Melt the butter (1 cup) on low in a saucepan.  Add the water and 5 tablespoons of cocoa and bring it to a boil.  Remove it from the heat and allow it to cool slightly (like a minute or two) and then pour it into the egg/flour mixture.  (At this point it will look thin – but that’s okay!)

– Step 4 – 

Pour the batter into a prepared 10×15 sheet pan.  You can grease and flour it or use the PAM baking spray.   Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

– Step 5 –

For the icing you’ll want to melt 1/2 cup of butter on low heat and then when it’s melted stir in 6 tablespoons of milk and 5 tablespoons of cocoa.  Bring it to a boil, remove from the heat and stir in the powdered sugar and vanilla.

(At this point you can add in 1 cup of chopped walnuts.  I omitted them because it was for the kids)

– Step 6 –

Pour the frosting over the warm cake and spread it evenly.

---