Snow days!

I saw this fun linky on Literacy Spark's blog about what is trending. With our Polar Vortex weather we've been having there have been a lot of snow days all over the country. We are on our 8th snow day this school year. I was looking at the calendar and we've only been to school 6 full days this semester and 2 days with 2 hour delays. I missed 2 of those days when my niece was born. So snow days have definitely been on my mind. I was really hoping that this week we would go all 5 days but when we left at 10:15 on Tuesday I knew this wouldn't happen.

So here's the deal with our snow days. We go an extra 30 minutes a day to have 13 days built in our schedule. It sounds crazy but I live in the mountains and there are some back roads that don't see the sun and they stay frozen over. The thing that stinks about this is if we don't use them we don't get the time off at the end of the year. This is my 7th year in the system and there has only been 1 year we've used more an 13. We have a winter break in February over President's day weekend and that can be taken away if needed. I was kind of over the snow but this snow we just had is beautiful and my hubby got to stay home for the day is it was nice. Here are a few pictures from a walk we took in the National Park.

It was cold! I thought about taking a picture of my whole outfit as my #ootd because it was pretty awesome. I was wearing a lot of layers mad my hubby' puffy jacket. I looked like Cookie Monster. 

It has been really hard getting any momentum going this semester. My kids are struggling with remembering the things we have learned this year. I had plans of starting a few new things this semester. I wanted to start Read to Self and rework my math block. I also wanted to work on planning my small groups better. So this week, I had my small groups all planned out. Monday I was able to meet with my groups, introduced Read to Self and reworked my schedule. It was great! Now if I could a full week in, I think I would feel better about it. I'm at a loss about how to proceed with my plans. We started a new unit in reading where we have 6 sight words and introduced short I. I am feeling behind but I think if I push my plans go the next week I will be giving my kids a better chance at mastering these skill. What do you do when you have unexpected days off? Be sure to check out the party at Literacy Spark.