Five For Friday

Ahhh, summer! How I love thee....Yesterday I had NO motivation. I'm talking so little that I didn't even take a shower until 3! Gross, I know. BUT! After my initial freak out and thinking I have SO much to get done, I realized it's only June. You have time. Take a lazy day. So I did. :)

Today I am back on top of my to do list, and I am taking a moment to cross one item off and link up with Doodlebugs Teaching and the weekly Five for Friday linky party.

So here we go...

#1. For Fathers Day this year we got tickets to go to a minor league baseball game. ( The White Caps for those of you familiar with that sort of thing.) My good friend Heather and her family were going with her sons little league team, so we kind of tagged along with them. I actually am the bigger baseball fan in our family ,but Kelly thought it sounded like a fun way to celebrate his day so I didn't feel too bad. :)

It was Peanut's first baseball game and we wanted to gauge whether she was ready to go to a Tigers game. ( She's not.) But we all had a lot of fun and will definitely go to another White Caps game next summer.

 

After the game the kids got to run the bases. Daddy went with Peanut and she did a great job!

 

 

#2 At my school, usually the 2nd week of summer break, we have a teacher institute where we focus on one particular area we need some help with or want to learn about/ work on for the next school year. This years institute was technology integration, specifically with our I Pads. Back in the beginning of May every classroom in my building got an I Pad for use in the classroom! Very exciting, but some of us didn't really know how to use it, or how we were going to incorporate it into our teaching.

 

My grade level team took a look at a Descartes strand for ELA and the MAP data for our incoming students. Then we labeled the strand with our students spring scores.

 







Then we took that data and found the areas that we felt we could use more work in for next year. We made a chart with that and then made a list of different kinds of APPS we wanted to search for. We got A TON accomplished for next year and just became more familiar with our I Pads in general. Plus, I always love hanging out with my grade level team in a more unstructured way.

 

                      

PLEASE excuse the fact that I CLEARLY spelled categorizing wrong on this. I have summer brain! :)

 #3- 5
Spending quality time with my Peanut!
Ok, so I realized after I had all of these pictures on here that they involved food. I swear we are not just sitting around and eating our way through summer break! LOL!

I also wanted to share that there is going to be a Michigan Bloggers Meet Up next Saturday June 29th. I am SUPER excited about it. ( Unfortunately I may not be able to go...boo, silly family vacation! HaHa!) If you want more information and to RSVP check out Christina's blog Bunting, Books, and Bainbridge.

 

                                                          

 

 

Well, that's all from me. I'm off to work on my students photo albums. I'll be back later to tell you more about those!

 

~Jean~



Five For Friday!

Happy Friday Friends!

Linking up with DoodleBugs Teaching and Teaching Maddeness for their Friday Linky Parties.

                                                       

#1 The countdown has begun! I wanted to do something fun to celebrate the end of school. I really liked the idea of hanging balloons and popping them, but my ceiling is WAY high and I am afraid of heights. So I made this paper chain instead.

This is a picture from last week. We are only down to 5 days! ( Plus 1 in service day for teachers!)

 

Each day before we leave we take off a chain and read what it says. We have done things like wear a hat to school and bring a book from home to read to a partner. Today they got to sit anywhere that they wanted to in the room.

 

They are really having a blast with it. Makes me wish I had done it in years past as well.  It has really helped with behavior too because we only get to do what it says on the link IF they have more tallies on the smile side of our scoreboard. So far so good. :)

#2 Next year we are switching from using Accelerated Math to TenMarks as a math enrichment activity. So we tested it out this week since they do have a component of it that you can use FOR FREE! You can check their site out HERE.

We were working on multiplication and division concepts.

Students can get help while working by watching a short video that explains how to solve a similar problem or get hints that will help them solve it.

 

 

When they are done I can check out how well they did, how many they got right/ wrong, if they watched any video prompts or needed hints. They will also be able to do this at home! It is pretty cool and I am excited to use it next year. 

#3 This is actually a picture from last week but since I didn't link up then I wanted to share it. These poor kids this year have had HORRIBLE weather to contend with. We had our Christmas Party rescheduled for two months due to snow days, we almost had an ice day for our last field trip, and then our fun movie day was cancelled because we had an Ice Day...IN APRIL!

 

So it should have come as NO surprise that it rained all day when we scheduled a trip for the zoo. And because of bussing and schedules there was no way to reschedule it. So it was now or never. We went and the kids had a great time...and of course it stopped raining after we got back on the bus to go home. 

 

 

This is all 75 of us huddled under a band shell in the zoo's park while we ate our lunch.

 

#4. Last Friday was my birthday. I aged backwards.  It was a modern day miracle. :) Ever since then, Peanut has been making me " birthday cakes" in her sandbox and singing me happy birthday. Love it, love her. I will REALLY miss my "Teaching Kids" but I am also SO ready to enjoy my summer time with her!

#5.  Stop by Hoots 'n Hollers blog. They are having a giveaway that yours truly is a part of. :) 

 

 

 

So that's my five. I'll be stopping by tomorrow to link up with June's Currently. ( What?! June already! Crazy!)

 



Friday Link Up

This Friday finds me enjoying some girl time with my peanut.  Fins been wanting to sleep in my bed a lot lately and I do NOT want to start that. So I suggested that we have a sleepover on Friday and watch a movie on the dvd player in mommys room. Currently we are lounging in my bed watching Barbie: The Princess and the Pop Star and enjoying some popcorn.

First some cool news. I reached 100 followers last Friday, so I am going to be having a SWEET giveaway! I've had about 8 awesome bloggers offering to help me out as well. Come back on Sunday to register for a chance to win!

We actually had 3 whole days of school this week..one scheduled day off for President`s day and then ANOTHER snow day! When I was grading math papers the other night I realized that of the 20 school days we should have had this semester, 10 of them have wound up being days off!

A couple of weeks ago I shared the winter people we made, but I never showed the bulletin board I made with it. Unfortunately, my hallway bulletin board is not large enough for student work so I usually decorate it with whatever theme I have hung up in the hallway. There are some bulletin boards that you use year to year.My winter board has never been the same in 6 years of teaching. But this one is so cute I might do it again next year.

 

We have been studying forces. motion and simple machines in science. I bought a packet from Common Core and So Much More during the Super Bowl sale and we have been using that. You can get yours HERE. Tuesday we did a push and pull scavenger hunt where the students looked for things in the room that we push and things that we pull. They put a sticky note on them and then recorded it on a Venn diagram. One of my favorites was a student put a sticky note on a tissue because we PULL out tissues. It was great. I highly recommend this packet if you are looking for one on this topic.

Today we learned about using comparison symbols ( greater than, less than, and equal). When I learned about this my teacher compared the symbols to alligator mouths and that stuck. So today we made alligator mouths to practice comparing two numbers. They were super simple to make. I  cut strips of construction paper that the kiddo's fastened with paper fasteners. Then I let them draw teeth on using a black marker. I wrote two numbers ( or two number sentences) on mini white boards. I placed them around the room and had the kids rotate through. At each one they chose the greater number. I really liked this activity because I was able to see immediately who was getting it and who wasn't. Plus after having inside recess this morning they NEEDED to move!

I'm on a hot chocolate kick, what with it being winter and having a bajillion snow days. So we have done these two crafts/ writing projects.

One was a how-to writing about how to make hot chocolate.

No these are not all of the writings. I have WAY more than 12 students.

 This is a close up of one of my favorite writings.

The other thing we worked on today was adjectives. We brainstormed adjectives that would describe hot chocolate ( with marshmallows). We came up with a great list. Then each student chose one word to use in a sentence about their noun ( either hot chocolate or marshmallow). I put these out in the hallway too. How do you like my free hand mug? I'm eh about it. But over all I think it turned out cute.

 A close up of my super cute sign. Love this font. I found it on Teachers Pay Teachers. You can get it HERE.

 This is a close up of one of the peanuts writings.

 

Ok, well speaking of peanuts, I need to go back and join mine for our sleepover. So I am going to go link up now. Check out DOODLE BUGS TEACHING and TEACHING MADDENESS for their Friday link ups.

 Remember to check back Sunday for my great 100 follower giveaway. :)