Five for .... Sunday!

To say I am running behind this week is a tremendous understatement.   It was already a short week,  but I was a bad teacher and already missed a day!   I went home to Michigan last weekend and spent an amazing weekend with my extended family. My cousins and aunt and uncle came in from NC and another cousin from PA,  my brother from CA.   We had such a great weekend and surprised my 90 year old grandma by all being there! It was so wonderful!  I even got to see MC Hammer while I was there!  He was performing at a street fair near my dad's house!  It was Too Legit... LOL.  Here are a few pictures from the weekend!

I returned to work on Wednesday and hit the ground running.   I am so lucky this year,  I have 14 kids in my class (for real!), and they have amazing parents.   We are working learning about citizenship (through our PBL) community helpers, and first responders.  We are lucky to have both a firefighter and a police officer among our class parents and they both came in to present on Wednesday.   The kids had the most fun interviewing them.  

Speaking of our PBL - we have been moving v-e-r-y slowly with this because my partner in crime is having her class split (she was over the limit so we are getting a new teammate - yay!).  This week we should be able to go full speed ahead.   I am very excited.  We need to plan our trip to city council!   Luckily our procrastination has worked in our favor.   Over the summer I received a Donors Choose grant for four digital cameras and all the memory cards etc. They just got here on Friday so the kids will be able to use them for this project!  Yay!   I love Donors Choose!

While we have had a great week,  I have not had a chance to catch up with everything the second week of school brings.   I went in today to catch up.   One of the things I needed to do was make new Word Wall Wordo boards.  I needed to make new cards because I CAN NOT find the old ones.   I hate to admit how often this happens to me.  I love this simple game.  For years I had a word wall and did very little with it.   I referred to it often but my kids would never really remember what words were on the wall. I made a big effort a few years ago to add a lot of practice to my word wall routines and this game is my favorite activity.   I use these simple boards (get them free here), laminate them and have the kids pick 9 or 16 words from the word wall and write them in each box.   Then we play bingo (wordo) with the words until someone gets a WORDO (3 or 4 in a row,  a quadrant, half a board or the whole thing depending on my mood).  Then they erase their whole card and fill it in again.  They beg to play and they get practice spelling and reading the words.  They also begin to know which words are on the wall so when it is time to spell them they can find them! Simple Awesomeness!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Word-Wall-Wordo-Boards-FREEBIE-415159

I print them front and back so that the kids can just keep the board in their writing folder and use the same board all year.

My fifth thing this week is this fun website http://www.picmonkey.com.  Have you used this?   With our new cameras,  I wanted to find some fun sites to edit pictures and I LOVE this one!   There are so many fun options and so many fun possibilities. My son Grant's school's theme this year is Mustaches and I thought this would be so fun to do to the kid's pictures! I played on it for a long time tonight,  so indulge me for a minute here...

Hope you had a great week!

Sale on Everything in my TpT store!

No one labors harder than teachers - so I am throwing a Labor day sale on everything in my store to show a little love for all the hard work teachers do!  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/My-Products

Hooked Them! Project based learning - day one!

Today we launched our first day of PBL.   We have been working all summer on lessons to use with our second graders.   We decided to jump right in and start with our citizenship unit.    Our students will be researching what being an exemplary citizen means,  what they do,  what they DON'T do,  and comparing their role in the community to the role of a superhero.   They will be creating a digital presentation that includes some well known exemplary citizens, and highlights what they find to be the most important.    We had planned to have them present it to the student body at our school during a campus pep rally.  We backed our town mayor into a corner at convocation gently asked our town mayor to launch the project.

He very graciously accepted and joined us this morning at 8:00 (on his vacation none the less - the man is awesome).  Our kids were over the moon.   We practiced giving a respectable handshake,  making eye contact and greeting a guest.   Our kids dressed up (one lil man wore a suit and tie - be still my heart!). I think he might have been a little creeped out when he asked the kids what they knew about being the mayor and they answered things like,  "you have four kids",  "your wife's name is Amy",  "you used to live....".   What can I say, our kids did their research!  LOL!  He launched our project by explaining that he needed help teaching people about exemplary citizens and needed their help.   He even invited them to present their findings to the town council at city hall.   OMWord - they are so excited!   Our principal was awesome about it and said we would get them there.   I am so excited.   So tomorrow we begin researching and making plans.   I am really anxious to see what they come up with.   Let the journey begin!

 

 Our challenge brief:

Today was sooo hot!

I am like mono tired right now.   It was sooo hot here today,  it wore me out.   I was on recess duty and bus duty and my face skin is so burnt and tight it feels like it is going to pop ( I did have sunscreen on).   So gross.    As I was looking at my pictures, I came across this little gem from one of cuties from last year,  and I think it wrapped up today nicely...

Well of course you will... you will sweat a lot. 

And it's only Tuesday....

I truly believe that "first week tired" is like no other type of tired!  My new class is fabulous.   I have a TINY class - like I have 14 students.   I am crossing my fingers and toes that we don't have to collapse a class.  Time will tell.   Right now we would be over ratio if we collapse (we only have 3 monolingual teachers on our team).   The idea of having this small group is super exciting.  

We started out yesterday with "The Marshmallow Challenge" - www.themarshmallowchallenge.com.   I was amazed at how well they communicated with each other and by what they came up with.   The winning tower stood on it's own,  holding the weight of the marshmallow for over 30 seconds.   They were so proud!

We also all successfully logged into our netbooks.   We have new LONG usernames and passwords.   Last year we all logged in using a common school log-in and now each student has their own account.   It was not an easy task,  but they all did it.  We also all managed to log in to Edmodo.com for the first time.    We did some team building, and some rule setting.   Then came the most stressful part of any first day of school - THE DISMISSAL.  Thank God they all got where they were supposed to be!   I call that a successful first day!  

My daughter started a new daycare this week as well.   We have always had daycare at our campus - which was ideal. About 3 weeks ago we received a call that it was shut down.  We had less than a week to find new daycare. I have been heartbroken over it.   BUT God was ALL over this and we found the best possible option for our girl.   Here is the PROOF!

Tickled Pink to offer this GIVEAWAY!

Have you seen this???   The best pencil sharpener EVER is now in PINK!   Whaaaa?   For real.   So cute!  I have been checking out some classroom pics today and this would be PERFECT for some of those classrooms.   Of course,  they still offer blue, and green and black and red too.  

Have you tried this sharpener yet?  If not,  it's time. I have always used budget money or my own money to buy electric pencil sharpeners for my room.   But they drove me CRAZY.   They sound like helicopters taking off, overheat easily, only sharpen certain pencils, and as soon as your first little friend decides to try to sharpen the wrong end of the pencil... it's time to buy another.  Troy,  the owner of Classroom Friendly Supplies,  is a teacher, so he got this.  And he did something about it!   He created this sharpener -http://www.classroomfriendlysupplies.com/ .   It is quiet,  easy to maintain,  and ideal for kids to use.   I recommend it to anyone looking for a better option.   Troy is also a big fan of teachers,  so he generously offered a pencil for this giveaway!   You can choose any color you like! 

Good Luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

We have a winner!

Congratulations!  
a Rafflecopter giveaway