Friday, May 31, 2013

I'm Back! Five for Friday

So, um, I haven't blogged for like two weeks!!! I'm disappointed in myself. :( But to be fair, these last two weeks have been CRAZY busy and there just has been no time to blog at all. But now that a lot of the craziness has settled (sort of), I am going to make this Five for Friday post! :D


1. I'm just going to bunch the beginning of the week together with the previous weekend since we had a four day weekend last week. No school Friday and Monday. It was pretty awesome. My friend from Canada arrived on Friday. She's a photographer and visits me annually so I always coordinate with her about when her visit should be so that I can also utilize her photography skills in the classroom. This time, we scheduled it for Memorial weekend plus week so that she can take pictures of my students with their published class book. I print them out 8x8 and display them on our hallway bulletin board for all the see. Then the prints go home as a gift to the parents. 

2. I had to report for jury duty on Tuesday and was out all day. My substitute did an awesome job helping me get the kids ready for Open House by making sure they did everything I wanted them to do for our Open House display. Open House was Wednesday and thank goodness Sherry was there to help me set up. I had been wavering about creating a slideshow to play in the classroom and didn't make the final decision until an hour before the event started. I started making the slideshow 30 minutes before the event started!! But it was a very success night. A more detailed post to come (I hope!)...


3. We also finally released our butterflies after keeping them for two weeks. I had originally wanted to release them last week but there just wasn't any time! I know butterflies have short life spans so I was really concerned that they would all die over the long weekend. Thankfully, that didn't happen. We lost a few butterflies but most were still alive and well when we released them in the garden. In fact, these butterflies didn't seem to be scared of humans at all! Many of the kids even got to hold them before they really flew away!



4. Thursday marked the beginning of our 10 day countdown. Last year, I pinned the balloons to the bulletin board. This year, I tried something different, creating a line and then clothespinning the balloons to the line! It's a pretty awesome display! I also decided to utilize the idea of popping a balloon at the end of the day to see what is going to happen the next day. Perfect way to create a reward for an awesome day!


5. Last but not least! We finished our read aloud book, Sideway Stories from Wayside School, today. For read aloud books, we do this thing I call Book Cinema Club (idea taken from my student teaching days). After we read the book, we get to watch the movie. Normally, it takes maybe a week after the book is done to watch the movie. So naturally, when the book was finished, the students were all like, yay we get to watch the movie next week! Except, I surprised them and we actually watched the movie at the end of the day, complete with popcorn and juice! The kids were overjoyed. Unfortunately, I did not think to take a picture of them watching the movie as I was working on other stuff. But, here's a picture of how to dry 30 plastic popcorn containers (obtained at the Target dollar section)!
I used to just use brown paper bags. But these are simply more environmentally friendly!

My photographer friend leaves on Sunday, so we are off to do more fun stuff tomorrow. After that, it's time to get back in teacher mode and figure out what to do during the remaining 9 days of school! And report cards too! @@

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