Five for Friday

Ah! My internet died last night while I was in the middle of writing this post and so I didn't get to publish it in time! :(

I guess it has now become a Five for Saturday!
===

For those teachers out there who just finished their first full week back from the break...we made it! For those who are still on break due to snow or freezing temperatures....lucky you! But I guess those lost days have to be made up eventually, right? @@

Time to link up for Doodle Bugs Teaching's Five for Friday!

On the first day back, a parent came in to share some Rosca de Reyes for Dia de Reyes (Kings' Day), a  Hispanic tradition. There's a whole story behind it, but Rosca de Reyes is a bread that is in a round shape that has some plastic baby figurines hidden inside. Basically, people take turns cutting a slice of the bread. If your slice has a baby figurine, you have to throw a tamale party. The kids got to choose where they wanted their piece sliced and some kids got lucky. Not sure if we are really going to get a tamale party though....haha.

I'm trying out a new thing in the schedule. On Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri, we will spend our morning block doing Reader's and Writer's Workshop. On Wednesdays, we will do centers to help cover other ELA standards (phonics, grammar, etc). So on Wednesday we did some centers.

I absolutely LOVE teaching second grade math! The material is just complicated enough to show the kids many different strategies to getting to the correct answer. We were doing 2-digit addition and subtraction before the break. Now we're on to 3-digit addition! Woohoo!

Went on a field trip to the local space and science center. The kids took a class where they were paleontologists and had to identify fossils. They also made their own plastic fossils. We also got to watch two films and visit the exhibits. 

We made Kandinsky concentric circles with oil pastels for art! They turned out pretty cool. :)

Before I end this post, I just wanted to share a book that our school librarian read to my kids this week. And the book is....

Click on the image to see it on Amazon.

Battle Bunny by Jon Scieszka. When you first look at the book, you would think some child scribbled all over it and ruined a perfectly good book. But, then when you look at it closely, you'll notice that it's the actual author who did it! Your boys will absolutely love this book! Just make sure to keep the markers away from your classroom books after you read it! :D

Alright, I am off to attend the California Teacher's Association (CTA) Good Teaching Conference. I feel like I have been seriously lacking in motivation these last couple of months with my teaching, so hopefully this conference will help me gain it back!