Five For Friday... Grump-A-Saurus Style on a Saturday

It’s time again for another Five for Friday linkup.  Is it just me, or does the time between Fridays keep getting shorter and shorter? Yay for that! How do you people who do all year school survive?  I don’t know what I would do without being able to look forward to 9 whole weeks (it gets shorter every year) without anyone’s children to argue with but my own. :)

1. Insect research projects are happening here.  I got very brave and decided to let each kid pick whichever insect that had the most interest in.  Luckily, every group got at least two members so they could somewhat work as a team.  Even cockroaches.  Weird kids….  I borrowed the laptop cart from the office and tried to use google to find facts.  Oh geez- that was an adventure.  One kid actually said, “So we just get to look at whatever on the internet?” Yep. That’s what I said Buddy. Have at it.  They were actually incredibly engaged and successful. Here’s a picture of my ladybug group working.

And my praying mantis group… They were not as in tune with each other. One of these boys came up, book in hand, and asked “what is mating?” Uh… Working together to make new eggs…  What was I supposed to say???

      2. Each student made a hat to represent their insect.  Super cute. Some of them we got from Deanna Jump’s insect unit, and the bee was from a freebie by Angie Neal at Fall Into First.  The ant came from Mailbox magazine ages ago.  Aren’t they cute?

         

     3. Double Digit Addition has been the name of the game here for the past few weeks and they are Tearing. It. Up.  In a good way… Not in a “we aren't doing this junk so we’re literally tearing it up” kind of way… To finish it off we made these icecream scoops inspired by Smitten with First.  I made a quick little cone pattern that you can download by clicking on the image and then copied her adorable display.  Are you amazed by the four addend cone?  That was done by one of my little talented and gifted darlings.  All on her own.  She knocks my socks off each and every day.   

 4.  Teacher Appreciation Week. What a joke.  Here’s what I received from the district.

This weird clock that I don’t have room for on my desk and a stylus for the IPad that my classroom doesn’t have because I teach primary and we don’t get those.  It’s pretty much a slap in the face.  “Oh teacher who is so appreciated- your grade level doesn’t get Ipads because we don’t value you enough, but everyone else does so here is a stylus to… I don’t know.  Pick your nose with.”  I am sorry.  I know I sound SO ungrateful and grumpy but I work in an urban school and take a lot of crap from a lot of people, and I’d LOVE to feel like someone cared AT ALL. And it isn’t about a gift. It isn’t.  A sweet email, written just for me, would do the trick.  Instead I get a stylus.  Whatever. 

5. Monday is Field Day and we will be sporting our TyeDye shirts.  We make them in April to wear on our field trip to the aquarium and will be pulling them back out Monday.  I did something wrong because they are NOT beautiful but my awesome little guys were totally fine with using fuscia as our color.  That’s this group of kids. So easy going and willing to do whatever.  Do any of you TyeDye with your class? What did I do wrong here?  Why do they look like this?  I followed the RIT instructions closely and they’re still pretty much just allover pink.  Oops.  And don’t mind the wrinkles. I just pulled it out of a pile of clean clothes that is, seriously, about 4 feet high.  My husband just adores me.  :) 

My Final Assessment Pack... Hooray??

I'm finished with the last of my assessment packets and I don't know whether to laugh or cry!  Part of me wants to laugh because it's WAY past when I should be in bed but I just couldn't not get them finished in time for the sale, and part of my wants to cry because I'm leaving First Grade and will probably not get to use these assessments that I poured my life into for an entire year.  I'm having very mixed emotions.

Anywhoo- here they are if you want to take a look.  Eventually I want to bundle them all but just haven't gotten around to it yet so I'll leave links to the others, too, just in case you want to check them out.  Happy shopping!

 

Five for Friday!

Uh, holy cow. TGIF for REAL! Let’s see- five random things. Here we go!

1. Last week we spent the week learning all about plants.  They came in with so much background knowledge so I felt like we could totally run with it. We didn't take any time going through the parts of a plant or what a plant needs. We jumped right in to fun stuff like the parts of a plant that we eat.  Here’s our bulletin board, inspired by First Grade Wizards. My kids are obsessed with these weird crazy eyes, and they insisted that we add them so I obliged. I guess they’re not so bad.  Here is the writing prompt that's at the top. Super fast and easy and they really like it for some reason.

2. It was my week to take snacks to Addie’s preschool and mailed it in last month so I tried to do something a little more fun this time.  Enter these little cuties!  She loved picking out the colors for each kid and I was even brave enough to let her paint.

3. I got some big news recently.  I will be looping to Second Grade next year with my very loveable class.  Hold. The. Phone.  Everyone tells me that I will love the content of Second but I have been in First for EVER and I’m a little terrified by the newness of it.  Like I said before, my class is really great and they’re pretty excited that I’m coming with them but I think I’m a little in denial. There are some definite perks- my team can be a little toxic, I negotiated an actual reading table out of the deal... but I am still having to work on remembering this:

4. I got to school today and there was a surprise on my desk from my principal. I forgot to take a picture, but there were gardening gloves, a candle, treats and a Sonic gift card. She wrote me a sweet little card thanking me for all of my work on the yearbook.  Sorta made my day.

5. Scandal is back for a few weeks and that just downright makes my heart happy.Um, Scott Foley just gets dreamier and dreamier. Loved him on Felicity, love him even more now. 

12 days left!!! I can make it!! 

Go check out the rest of the link ups!

Two Fabulicious Freebies!

Look at me- two posts in two days. I'm on a roll!  I'm linking up with Freebielicious to share a couple of printables I just posted to TpT and will be using in my classroom tomorrow.

http://freebie-licious.blogspot.com/2013/05/fabulicious-freebies-may.html

The first is just a practice page I plan to use for Spelling.  They just write the word, illustrate it, and use it in a sentence. 

The other is a quick litthe graphic organizer I'll be using during Guided Reading groups to practice asking thin (Who/What/When) questions and thick questions that really encourage them to think.  So here you go!

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.