Five for Friday

Yet again, another short break from blogging. I swear, I do want to blog! After all, I always take pictures during the week in anticipation for my weekly Five for Friday post. But lately, I have just been beat and exhausted to the point that I have no energy left to blog. I also write and send out my class newsletter when I get home from school on Fridays so that zaps a lot of energy out of me, leaving me with no energy to type another blog post.

BUT, given how we just finished our last full week of school, I am pushing myself to post even though I'm exhausted beyond no other.

I surprised my kiddos on Monday morning with a surprise field trip! We were going to walk to a park close by and have a field day and bbq there! My parents are great because they helped me keep this secret. I recruited some parents to help plan and get people to sign up for food for the bbq. I also sent home the permission slips in sealed envelopes and asked parents to do the same.

BUT, before I could reveal the surprise to the class, I got a surprise from them.

Belated birthday gift! I guess the kiddos secretly used Google Documents in their Google Account to make a page for my very special birthday book. Very sweet of them. Some of the messages in there almost made me tear up!

But, back to the field trip. The kids said hooray. The walking chaperones showed up and off to the park we went! Some of the activities for the day were...

Relay Races - three-legged race

Oops...some kiddos fell there...

Hike around the lake where we ran into a lost turtle.

Making some ice cream in a bag.

...and ending the day with some celebratory cake! A couple weeks ago my friend who is a photographer came to take pictures of the kiddos with their published book. We also took a class picture which all my parents say is better than the class photo from picture day. Guess the picture is so awesome it deserves to be on a cake!

The cake was also special on the inside too! Two flavors!

On Tuesday, we worked on our Father's Day gift. For some reason I thought Father's Day was this coming Sunday but I was wrong. Oh well, now we have our gifts ready already! We made a coupon book for Mother's Day so I thought it would only be fair to make on for the dads too. I had the kids draw a self-portrait of their dad wearing a tie. I laminated their pictures and then attached the coupon book from Savvy Second Graders to the bottom of the tie. They turned out real cute!

Wednesday was Judgement Day!

The kids spent the last two weeks planning and writing a persuasive letter. The purpose of the letter was to convince the judge (me) that they should be sentenced to third grade. (I saw this idea on a Teaching Maddeness)

On Judgement Day the kids went up to the judge one at a time and read their letter outloud. Then they waited to hear their sentence.

They did a great job and everyone got sentenced to third grade!

The students have been writing their autobiography for the last couple of weeks. Today was the day we added our peer comments (basically like signing yearbooks). We went around the classroom in Scoot formation and wrote some positive peer comments in our classmates' autobiography books.

Our last session with our Art parent was this week. The kids made house collages. They used a variety of scrapbook paper to create a house and some scenery. 

Well, I reached my five. Would you believe it if I said that there are still more things to share about this week? I guess you'll have to come back next time to find out more! (Hint: Has to do with opera and our published books)

Five for Friday...Almost There!

Almost done with school! Last full week of school! Also our last Friday of school (school ends on a Thursday). :)

1. I have a confession, my planner this week was BLANK (except for the "Specials" class). Don't believe me? Here it is!

Yea okay. I'm sure you all know how hard it is to plan when the core curriculum is done and the kids also have absolutely no focus or attention span to really do much.  So I basically planned as we went! However, we still did Daily Five every day which kept some sort of structure in the classroom. Also had the 10 day balloon countdown going as a sort of incentive so that was helpful too.

2. Monday was Bubble Gum Day as part of our countdown. Of course, we can just get gum to chew for fun...have to put some sort of academic twist to it! So, I had the kids write instructions on how to blow a bubble with bubble gum as a little preview of some writing they will be doing in second grade.

Most of the kids don't know how to blow a bubble so it was pretty interesting watching them try, especially when the gum accidentally goes flying out of their mouth when they are blowing.

3. Tuesday was Math Day. We spent most of the day doing random math activities. For part of the day, I pulled out the math manipulatives and had them sort them out. They thought they were doing some math stuff. Little did they know, they were helping me with clean up. :)

4. So my photographer friend was here last week and she took pictures of the kids with their page in our published class book. I got them printed out in 8x8 form and put it up on our hallway bulletin board. This is always one of my favorite bulletins to put up because the kids absolutely love it! :)

We also made a video recording of us reading the book. Check it out below! :)

5. I know last week is going to be super hectic with it being all minimum days and having other activities with wrapping up the school year. So of course, the Father's day stuff had to be done this week. When my friend was here, she helped me making photo magnets of the kids using their school picture stickers that all teachers receive. They turned out pretty awesome!

Of course, it's not really a gift from the kids if the kids don't create something themselves, so I found this awesome freebie from Little Learner Toolbox and had the kids create little books from them. Then  I had the kids decorate a tie template so that we could put the gift(s) in a cute little gift bag.

Of course, there's other stuff to post about that happened this week. And even though Open House was two weeks ago, I still want to post about Open House. I will try to catch up on blog posts this weekend and schedule them to show up next week! :)

Only four more days left! I still find it so hard to believe! @@

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