Jolly Postman and Rapunzel

I would like to start an official movement to change Valentines Day to a Friday - like move the date like Thanksgiving or Easter.  The 2nd Friday of the month would be fine.   Valentines Day on Thursday was killer.   OMGoodness.   There were a lot of subs in the building on Friday....

I am not a fan of all the Valentine plastic junk that seems to have become mandatory to pass out with your little cards.   It breaks,  kids have fits,  it shows up in desks for weeks.   I hate it.   I have decided next year we are going full on OLD SCHOOL.   I am going to proclaim it as a handmade holiday celebration.   I am going to have the kids make their cards and try my best to discourage all the little stuff that comes in.   We shall see how that goes.

We did do one thing that I LOVED.   We are starting our Fairy Tales unit - so I read The Jolly Postman.   I used a template from my Letter Writing Unit..  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Letter-Writing-Friendly-Persuasive-and-Business-Letter-Writing-Unit  and we made our own Jolly Postman Valentine Book.    I assigned each child a friend to write to (so everyone wrote and received one note) and they made these little envelopes.   I attached them altogether to make a book.   There notes were so sweet.   They had to write something about the other person's heart - not their clothes, shoes, or looks.   They melted my heart.   At the end of the year, I will just pull out the binding and give them back to the recipient.  Here are so pictures of the finished product.

 

The kids love their book so much - we will definitely be making more of them.  If fact,  I have decided that I am going to use this format for our next Donors Choose thank you package as well!

 

I am excited that the kids do not have school on Monday.   Well, sort of.   We have an all day meeting about everyone's favorite topic.... testing.   The season is upon us.   I swear,  I don't get it.   It seems that EVERYONE knows that all this testing is wrong, except for the government.   But I am not even going to get started.

 

On Tuesday,  we are going to see a live performance of Rapunzel!   We received a Target field trip grant to cover the cost.   I am really excited about it.    We are using it as the big kick off to our Fairy Tales unit.   Friday we read several versions of Rapunzel and talked about how fairy tales are folktales,  and they change to make sense with different cultures and groups.   I am excited to see how the story is portrayed live.

 

One of my pet peeves about field trips is that the kids always bring their lunch boxes even though we beg them to bring paper sacks.  I understand why,  most people don't even have paper lunch sacks anymore but that means we end up carrying a big old box around all day or we are constantly going back to look for lost lunchboxes.  So this year,  along with their reminder notes,  I sent home bags that the kids decorated,  so they could just pack their lunches in those!   I felt mighty proud of how clever I was with this!  LOL!

 

 

 

Happy long weekend to those of you who have one!