The Sunday Five

Hello friends! It’s been kind of forever since I wrote a real blog post. I am blown away that we are almost at MAY (are you kidding me?!) and our schedule has been so jam-packed lately.

We’ve been doing lots of review to prepare for our last round of state tests next week, and I am trying out a sort of math centers approach that I may use more often next year.

I got to review a couple of new Scholastic products this week, and I’m excited to tell you more about them soon. Have you heard of Knowledge Quest yet?

My kids got to go to a special nanotechnology field trip at our local university. How many kids learn about the Higgs-Boson particle or get to try on a clean room suit in the 3rd grade? (Also- SO cute!)

One of my tutoring students and I created a “Happy Journal” for him. It was one of those spontaneous ideas that worked out much better than expected! I’ll be posting about it later this week.

Okay, this was technically last week, but I’m counting it. My husband had his last improv comedy show with his current group, since he’ll be graduating in 2 weeks! This is him playing “Helping Hands”… he smelled like peanut butter for the rest of the night. (TOTALLY not complaining.)

That does mean it’s getting to the awkward time where everyone’s asking about next year, and if I’m going to be at my school, and honestly… I don’t know! The husband is in the oh-so-fun world of the job hunt, so our future is a little up in the air right now.

It will all work out, though. :) Hopefully soon!

Hope you are enjoying your weekend! Link up at Doodle Bugs Teaching!

First Time Five for Friday

I’m linking up for the first time with Doodle Bugs Teaching’s Five for Friday!

What a week!

1. TESTING- ugh!

To start out, imagine this- the front of my room a few weeks ago- with everything taken down or covered but the alphabet and the quotes. For testing, my room had to be completely bare. But after a few days, we finished the first round. (Whew!)

2. Old West Day! (I can’t wait to post about this.)

My kids chose this as a reward and we had a blast.

3. Grown Up Bucket Filling

After seeing some wedding photos recently, I was reminded of how much I love ours and how much we loved our photographer. I emailed her randomly just to thank her again, and she said it made her month. LOVE getting a chance to randomly cheer someone up! (And seriously, Mindy is an amazing wedding photographer if you’re anywhere near Indiana!)

4. Good news!

My husband will graduate soon and has been job hunting, which is never a fun process. This week he found out about an exciting opening! It feels great to see him so excited and optimistic.

5. SPRING BREAK!

I have just started up on MyFitnessPal (find me- I’m luckeyfrog!) and I’ve done really well this week… but I splurged tonight and got a peanut butter milkshake and burger from one of my favorite places in town (that’s their peanut butter one on the right). I may not be going away anywhere, but this was a pretty great way to kick off spring break!

(And the other half- okay, third- is in the freezer to finish up tomorrow!)

I won’t be at school this week, but I have a few posts ready and I’m hoping to put together a giveaway for when I reach 500 followers! Let me know {luckeyfrogslilypad @ gmail.com} if you’re interested in helping out!

What was the best part of your week? :)

Photo Dump!

I love that Miss Nelson is running her monthly Teacher’s Gonna Snap! linky party. It gives me an excuse to post all the old pictures of stuff we’ve done over the last few weeks! Please, feel free to pin for next year, when I’m not way too late for these ideas to be helpful to you!

Here’s what we’ve been doing lately!

Weekly Must Do’s board is new, and I’m loving it. Our CRAFT board (thank you Ladybug’s Teacher Files and Sisters!) and Reading Response journals are going really well, too, and the pile of 6 books are the new books I got from the book fair (thank you Parent Council- they give us a gift certificate every year!)

Our fall party snack and some favorite pumpkin book reports…

And finally, some of the work from our government unit:

(Thanks for the citizen freebie and branches of government flipbook, Fourth and Ten!)

And finally, how cool is this?!

Yes, that’s me with Jack Hanna. Not a school event, but so, so cool to get to meet him!

Make sure you go link up with Miss Nelson!

Quick & Easy Tips for Teachers- Linking Up!

I love simple, easy teacher tips, so I'm so excited that there's a new linky party just for them!

My goal is to give you 5 quick tips:


1) If you have a SmartBoard, and you've written a bunch of stuff but need to clear the page, use the eraser to draw a big circle around it all and then tap the middle. Everything inside the circle will disappear.
 

2) Take double grades when possible. My kids get a grade for spelling and a grade for handwriting when they take a spelling test. I grade with a two-sided marker and use one color for each grade. Yay for killing two birds with one stone!

3) Have kids taking too long for transitions? Go to Hallmark and annoy everyone who works there (I know this because this used to be me) by opening all the music cards until you find the perfect upbeat-and-fun-but-not-crazy tune. Whenever you want the kids to transition to a new center, new place, or new activity, open the card and let the music play. It's just a little snippet of the song- perfect for a transition, and your kids will get to know how long the song goes. By the time the card stops playing, you and your kids will be ready for a new song anyway!

4) Put important phone numbers ON YOUR PHONE. I realize there is probably a much cuter way of doing this than the way I have here, but it's so worth it not to have to look up the nurse's number when I need it (or for the sub not to have to search through my sub folder for the nurse's number when someone suddenly gets sick).

 

5) Do you *hate* passing out dice and counters for games whenever kids need them? I keep "game cups" that have a variety of counters and at least one die. The kids know where these are to get them, and know where they go to put them back when they're done. This works incredibly well for center games or early finishers, and the mini cups can even stack for easier storage!

So, there you have it! Five simple teacher tips :) Let me know if one of them works for you!




And of course, be sure to link up your own tips with Miss Kindergarten!

Teacher’s Gonna Snap

One day we were doing a special project, and one of the kids looked at me and said, “Aren’t you going to take some pictures?”

They know me well, already. Time to link up with Miss Nelson’s Got the Camera!

I am dying to win a cute camera strap, so here are a few photos from the last month(ish).

Our awesome field trip to the airport to learn about the Tuskegee Airmen (and each student got to try flying in a flight simulator!).

I love teaching about animal adaptations, and this year I got to add owl pellets.

Owl pellet dissection- did you pick up your unit ideas and freebie yet?

Field trip to the Farmer’s Market to learn about local agriculture, produce, and seeds. (The next week, we learned how to make butternut squash soup with one of our finds!)

Our BFG Party to celebrate filling the cotton ball jar and finishing the novel (also with a freebie, if you didn’t pick it up yet!)

So much content lately! We get together with 3 other classes monthly to do a science activity, and for the first one, we microwaved Ivory soap. Super cool. We also translated the Pledge of Allegiance into kid-friendly language.

We’ve been starting The Daily 5/ CRAFT (but modified), and I think my favorite thing about the program may be the stamina piece. I have seen a big difference in some focus behaviors (especially with ADHD kids!) just because Read to Self also practices sitting relatively still for a significant amount of time. I also liked incorporating some graphing, though!

Our school had a special visit from Olympic gold medalist diver David Boudia! He was so nice and humble.

We have been tuning into interesting words for reading and writing, and setting up our Writer’s Workshop binders with these categories.

Finally, it’s the beginning of the year, so I feel like I’ve been doing endless assessment. But on the plus side, I can now do DIBELS Next on the iPad instead of doing them by hand or waiting for a finicky Palm Pilot!

I feel like we have done SO much in the past few weeks! I don’t bring my camera every day, but it’s been fun to document a few of our biggest events!

Have you linked up yet? :)