A Very Exciting Package Arrived Today! and other randomness

Okay, so no other person on the planet is going to celebrate this like I am, but my school yearbooks finally arrived!!!  This was my first year as the yearbook sponsor (aka- school photographer, nag, and pretty much entire do-er of the entire stinking thing... grumble, grumble...) and while it was hours and hours (and MORE hours) of work, they're finished and published and look amazing! (although I might be a little biased.) Now, if someone comes up and tells me they found a mistake I might have to knock them out, but for right now I'm going to enjoy the feeling of opening a big box of a project that was pretty much completely mine and watching my little readers dive in and enjoy being engaged in text. And then I'll start knocking people out.

Do any of you do the yearbook? What shortcuts have you found? I am looping up with my class (heaven help them) and worried about time requirements.  For real. These bad boys took me about 150 hours! Yikesers... I'm going to pretend I never figured that number out.  

I'm selling some of my kids' old toys at a consignment sale this weekend and took it to drop off tonight. Here's what my car looked like when I opened up the back.  Hee hee.  This picture makes me laugh just because of how crazy I know it would make my very OCD husband.  I'm such a dang disorganized mess sometimes.

Lastly in this very random post (which I am just realizing has absolutely not one iota of classroom stuff in it... opps!) I leave you with one of my school darlings.  He loves his cowboy boots and wears them with everything- as you can see in this picture.  The day before he tucked his sweatpants in to them. Love him.  Lots. (And btw- that is not a passed out child behind him. They are rolling down the hill. Don't ask.)

 I'll be back soon to post our Ocean stuff!

Currently- April

This is my first EVER currently!  It was super easy!

I linked up at Oh Boy 4th Grade. Go over and check her out!

Oh Olivia... You Really Wear Me Out but I Love You Anyway!

Oh holy night.  What a week already!  I ALWAYS stay late on Fridays to plan/make copies/ prep centers. Well, last week was Spring Break and I decided to just mail it in.  I am paying for that b-i-g time. I just can’t function this way. I’ve been living out of a big pile of papers and it is driving me nutso. Lesson learned.

Anyway, amidst the disaster that is my desk, this week in Treasures we focused on Olivia by Ian Falconer.  Don’t you just adore that little pig? She cracks me up, and my class this year has pretty good listening comprehension so at some points they were hystercally giggling at her antics.

As far as their comprehension goes, I’ve noticed that they often struggle to identify problem and solution so we took an Olivia book a day, read it, discussed, and listed all the problems and solutions we could think of.  Here’s what that looked like. Not the most beautiful thing I’ve ever done, but it worked. 

Then we made an Olivia craft that sorta turned out looking like a bunny…  and added a Problem and Solution foldable. 

 

 

We listed adjectives that describled Olivia (this knocked my socks off- persistent, creative, and onry were my favorites.) I think the bubble map I made for this was attrocious so I’m not sharing. :)   It’s embarassing but I put it together in two minutes. My teammate played a fun little game where each group thought of adjectives together and the group with the most won a sticker. Isn’t it amazing how har they’ll work for a sticker? Gotta love first graders.

Have you read the newest book in the series? 

 

Ha!  I’m raising your typical pink fairy princess girl so this book cracks me up.  “There are alternatives.”  If you haven’t read it- run to go find it. It’s amazing. 

 We compared it to David Shannon’s Alice the Fairy to meet those CCSS about comparing characters and they really liked it!  Even the boys participated. :)  Here is a link to the GO if you’d like it. 

Did you make it to the end of this? Impressive!  Here is my Olivia positive behavior note as a reward. Thanks for coming by.