That's a Wrap for 2014!

Well folks, that is a wrap for 2014 with our kiddos! One of mine thought today was the last day of school. Not yet, friend. Here are a few things we did together this week.

On Monday we read the book "Prancer" as a read aloud. Students took notes about the book to compare to the movie, which we watched the following day. They also took notes during the movie and then discussed similarities and differences. 

Today we filled out a graphic organizer to organize our thoughts for our Santa letter. The organizer included: ways you've been good/bad, things you want for yourself, things you want for your family, and things you want for the world. 

This little fellow said he was sick last year at Christmas so all he really wanted was for no one to be sick. Bless his sweet heart. He really does have a heart of GOLD.

This friend is pretty upset about her cat who has cancer so she wants for her cat to get better for Christmas. Bless her heart. It is hard to lose a pet. 
Today we also had Christmas craft rotations! My classes made Christmas tree ornaments. They turned out pretty cute if you ask me! One stuck a pipe cleaner and made me a Tennessee Vols ornament. 
The best present I got (besides the buses getting here early!) was this sweet card. This is a student who wrote me a card at the beginning of the year and I wrote her one back that mentioned how great of a writer she is, how much I appreciated her effort, etc. She told me later how much that card meant to her. This card made my day. Her mom (also a teacher at my school) also wrote on the card and told me how much her daughter felt encouraged and believed in by me. MELT MY HEART. Best.Gift.Ever.
Merry Christmas, friends!

Five for Friday

Happy Saturday, friends! Even though Doodle Bugs Teaching is taking a little mini vacation, I still wanted to share 5 things from my week with you! 

{one}

A local high school reached out to our fifth grade team asking if we would partner with their Advanced Acting class. We shared a student's writing with them and they came and acted it out. Little did we know that we teachers were also acting! We didn't know anything about it, but it was really neat and so much fun! I was so proud that the student's writing was one of my homeroom students!

{two}

Yesterday we had a school-wide Polar Express/pajama day. It was so much fun! We started the day with the performance mentioned above. Then we made Christmas foam ornaments, had lunch, watched The Polar Express, and just enjoyed a fun day. AND...we had a visit from the conductor of The Polar Express!


{three}

Another fun activity we did was our December STEM challenge which was to make snow! It was really neat and the kids LOVED it.



{four}

We finished and assessed our novel, "Which Way to the Wild West". In the back of the novel there is a section called, "What Ever Happened To...?". We picked one person from that section and wrote letters to them. 


{five}

One more week, friends! We have lots of fun things coming up next week. We are reading the book "Prancer" and watching the movie to compare. We have our Christmas party and we have one full day of Christmas craft rotations! This will be my motto for next week!

I'm Still Here!

I just wanted to pop in real fast and tell you that I am still here! Life has been super busy lately and I haven't spent any time on the computer. My laptop has been dead for weeks and if you knew me, you would know that's not me!

We have completed our informative animal reports and are currently doing oral presentations on them.
I haven't shared a lot about this school year because I don't want to share negativity, but I got this POSITIVE card from a student on one of my worst days. It is so sweet.
Hope to be back soon with more!

Five for Friday - Short and Sweet!


Today I am linking up for Five for Friday with a short and sweet post! :) 
We celebrated Red Ribbon Week at school this past week. I saw lots of cute socks on "Sock it to Drugs" day!
We also had a "Dress like your hero" day. I loved how this student created her own cape with her "heros and sheros".
We completed our October STEM challenge. Our question was, "Do you think the number of seeds in a pumpkin is related to the size of the pumpkin?" Our pumpkin had 840 seeds!
Last night I dressed up with my son as a Ninja Turtle and enjoyed trick or treating! 
And this is what I look and feel like today...haha! 16 meetings this week, arriving at school by 6:30-6:45 and staying until after 5:00 everyday, being a single mommy most of the week, Fall Festival at church, Halloween, and one very stressful day in the midst of that....whew, I am tired!
 

Five for Friday {Disney Edition}

Happy Friday, teacher friends! Today I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for her Five for Friday linky party, except I am not talking about anything school related. Why, you may ask? Well, I have been at home with a sick little boy (stomach bug) most of the week. So our week has consisted of yucky stomach bug symptoms, the doctor, and lots of cuddles on the couch.

The only other thing going on this week is some DISNEY planning! That's right.....

While I rarely share anything personal on here, I chose to today for a few reasons:
  • Disney is more fun to talk about than vomiting.
  • No school pictures from this week.
  • I AM SO EXCITED!
So, we are a LONG way from our trip, but y'all, I am so excited! So, let's take a break from our regular 5th grade happenings to talk Disney!
{one}
We were able to book our dining this week so with the help of our travel agent (which is free, I might add - Mouse Tales Travel) we were able to get into all of the restaurants we wanted!
{two}
I have been purchasing items for Disney from various places (mostly the Dollar Tree) so I thought I'd share a few items! We plan on going to one night parade while at Disney and I've read to buy and bring your own glow sticks. I'll still buy regular glow sticks, but I found these Mickey glow wands that will be perfect!  

{three}
I love a good souvenir and always love to buy them on trips! I've heard Disney souvenirs can become quite expensive and I've read some people buy souvenirs ahead of time and bring them along. Being that I love a good souvenir, I am going in the middle with this one. I love the idea of Mickey (or any other character) bringing a gift to our room each day while we are gone with a personalized note (that I'll create and bring). So when I saw these figurines at the Dollar Tree, I had to get them. My thought is that I will create letters from each character and while we are gone, that "character" will leave the note and toy in the room. Something like, "Dear E, I am so glad I got to meet you at Chef Mickey's last night! I hope you have a fun time exploring Disney World! Here is a little toy for you to take home and play with to remember our fun time together. Love, Mickey". We will still buy some souvenirs, but these will fun little souvenirs each day!
{four}
We know lines can be long at Disney and I've read to bring something for children to do while waiting in line. E loves to dry and write letters and words so this Mickey dry erase board will be great! Does anyone know if this will be allowed on the airplane? I wasn't sure about the dry erase marker...??
{five}
One of our character gifts will be this fun picture frame for Mickey and/or the whole gang! We'll have it for the last day with a note along the lines of, "Dear E, we hope you have had a magical time at Disney! Here is a picture frame to print and frame our picture together!"
{one extra!}
A plain, blueberry waffle is about the whole thing my little one could eat this week. He requested a Mickey waffle (after seeing one online while we were looking at Disney stuff) so this mama made do and created one! He LOVED it!

How many Disney World lovers are there reading this? Any advice/tips?


* I will be back to my regular 5th grade posts now.

Five for Friday {October 10th}

Happy Friday, friends! I am usually so happy to see Friday because the weekend is near, but I have been on Fall Break this week so today it means I'm closing in on the last of Fall Break! 

I didn't get Fall Break in my previous district so I have thoroughly enjoyed my Fall Break this year! It was a much needed and has been a breath of fresh air!

{ONE}

Right before school ended for Fall Break, I received this sweet acrostic poem from a sweet student. It made my day!

{TWO}
For Fall Break we spent some time with family back home. The week prior to going home I saw an advertisement of a yard sale of a teacher who was getting out of teaching. I contacted her and asked if I could come a week later if she had a lot left. It turns out that she did! She gave me a GREAT deal on the picture books she had left and I ended up getting all of them! I got around 500 books for approximately 12 cents each!
Here were some of my favorite finds: a collection of Fall and Winter books, Jan Brett books, and Magic School bus books.
Here is another picture of some of my favorite titles!
{THREE}
I also scored two other GREAT deals. I purchased this straw dispenser (to use as a pencil dispenser) for $5.00 and a book scanner for $10.00! What a steal! 


{FOUR}
My son and I enjoyed painting some this week on a rainy day. We painted handprint acorns and a fall tree. He also painted a rainbow!
{FIVE}
Yesterday we toured a school that we are hoping my son will attend next year. I was thoroughly impressed with it and would LOVE this to be our school home. I am planning on applying as well, but we are working on one step at a time. This picture sums up my thoughts and prayers for now. I prayed before we went and I am putting my trust in God that if this is where he wants either of us, he will help us in our journey to get there.


International Dot Day

Have you ever heard of International Dot Day? I hadn't heard of it until it was introduced to us at school last week. International Dot Day is inspired by Peter Reynold's book "The Dot" and is a celebration of creativity and courage. We were told about the book and asked to do a craft project in our classrooms using coffee filters.
Since we didn't have the book, I found a YouTube video of the book so I started off by playing the video to my class. It is a story of Vaski who was inspired by her art teacher to "make her mark and see where it takes her". 

We had a great class discussion of what the story meant and I was pleasantly surprised that my students realized the theme of the story. We talked about encouragement, having courage, and making our "marks" in the world. We used these free task cards to further our discussion.

Afterwards each student made a craft for Dot Day. We handed coffee filters out to each student, let them draw/make their dot, and then sprayed it with water. We let them dry before turning them in to become a school wide art project. They are now hanging in the cafeteria in front of the windows and look SO nice!


Student Showcase Night

This past week we had Student Showcase Night. It was basically like Open House all over again, but with more of a focus on what the students have done for the past month. I decided to have stations set up so that my students could take their parents through the stations themselves. I liked the idea of stations and thought it worked well. Unfortunately, I only had FIVE students from my homeroom attend and ONE student from another homeroom attend. I have twenty five students total. Even though attendance was low, I still took a few pictures to share my stations with y'all.


1) Make an estimate o how many pieces of candy are in the jar. The family closest took home all of the candy. There were 144 pieces total and two families guessed 150 so we shared the candy with both of them.
2) On the Smartboard I had a review game for our novel "Steal Away Home". For some families, they realized their students needed to STUDY so that was a good eye-opener for some! 
3) Computer Station - Students could show their parents how to take an AR test or work on Reflex Math. I did have a couple of families write down their child's username and password for Reflex so that was a positive.
4) Letters of Encouragement - We have ITBS testing next week so parents could write their students a note of encouragement.
5) Be a helping hand - donate disinfectant wipes and/or tissues. Only ONE hand was taken. Sigh. 

Five for Friday

TGIF, friends! I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for her Five for Friday linky. And I am actually linking up on Friday! I'm usually a day late to the party. We really wanted to go to a football game {what's better than Friday night football?}, but it's raining, thundering, and lightning. 
 
On to Five for Friday... 
This week we completed our monthly STEM challenge which was to grow the largest creature. We were provided all of the materials and allowed the creature to sit in water for 5 days. Our seahorse grew quite a bit!
This week was our Scholastic book fair. I just recently ordered from a Scholastic book order so I didn't shop too much at the book fair. 
I did grab two Pete the Cat books that I didn't have. I love Pete the Cat!
We had Student Showcase Night this week. I'll share more on that tomorrow in it's own post, but here is a sneak peek. Unfortunately, I only had 5 of my homeroom students come. 
Next week we have ITBS testing so I've had to cover up and take down everything. It seems like I just decorated everything!
I love this quote and it really stood out to me this week. I have a challenging group this year and I have moments where I am just worn down. I am praying that through our moments, my students see God through me.  
Happy weekend! 
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