The Beginning

Well, here goes my attempt at a blog. The inspiration for this blog comes from my love of anything crafty as well as my love for my job as a school counselor. Any opportunity to meld the two together is bliss for me.

I wanted to start a blog for selfish reasons - I needed a place to jot down ideas, think through projects, and be able to keep all of my fun lessons and craft ideas in one place. I am often looking for fun ways to incorporate crafts into my guidance lessons and wanted to be able to share what I come up with. I spend a lot of time Googling ideas for bulletin boards, supplements to lessons, and fun group counseling activities but sometimes don't find what I am really looking for. So, on the occasion that I come up with (or in some cases tweak existing ideas) fun and crafty ideas, I thought it would be helpful to share them in case there are other school counselors out there looking for similar ideas.

So, I guess I should give a little background info on myself. My name is Ann and I am the full-time school counselor at a Catholic PreK-8th grade school in Northern Virginia. This is my second year at my school and I absolutely love my job! This year I started a new monthly virtues program for all grades. It is very similar to the character education programs adopted by many schools and districts around the country. Each month we focus on a different virtue and I conduct classroom guidance lessons touching on that month's virtue. It has been a great jumping off point for guidance lessons but still allows me the freedom to incorporate other topics into the monthly virtue. For example, the virtue for the month of November was Stewardship. I took a career exploration and education spin on the idea of stewardship with most of my lessons. In the lower grades, we focused on the importance of all jobs and the idea that all work has value. In the intermediate grades, we looked into talents and skills and how these can be used to better our community. With the middle schoolers, we took a career education approach, focusing on career clusters and interest surveys.

But, November wasn't one of the more "crafty" series of lessons, so I probably won't touch on that anymore.

Other things about me: I was born in St. Louis and am married to my high school sweetheart. My husband and I got married in June 2008, but celebrated our 10th anniversary as a couple in January 2010. We bought our first house in November 2008 and adopted our pound puppy, Sadie, in June 2009. Sadie will be celebrating her 1st birthday later this month and I have to admit I am going a little overboard with the party (but more on that later).

I think that's me and why I created this blog in a nutshell. I can't wait to post some ideas!