It's a Snowy Five For Friday (0n Monday)

It's funny how when you get out of the habit of doing something, how difficult and scary it can be to start again.  That's me.  I can't believe how nervous (and excited) I am to be blogging again.

I love linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching and Five For Friday...so this is a great place to start (even if it is Monday)!

Is it snowing where you are?  After two no snow winters we have snow that doesn't seem to want to stop.  We have been taking advantage of it and having some great fun and learning too.

On Tuesday we had cold frost coming out of the air forming perfect crystals.   We went out right away with little magnifying glasses and black paper to see if we could catch some....and WE DID!!

My best advice is to take advantage quickly.  If you wait, the flakes may be gone, or as the day warms up, turn into rain.  The colder the better (they don't melt as fast on the paper or your clothes) and you don't have to be out for a long time.  Be sure to write, draw, and talk about what you discovered.

If you have lots and lots of fresh snow try this recipe for snow cream:

You can keep the ingredients on hand if you use canned milk (for that surprise snowstorm)

Of course it is not a good snowstorm if you can't make a snowman.  But it was, so we did!

After making snowmen I got sooo much good writing!!!  My students were motivated!

We also reenacted The Snowy Day (good chance to talk about why we don't through snowballs).  No pictures, but lots of giggles when I knocked snow onto my own head.

No snow where you live??  I have a solution for that too.  Try this recipe for snow.  My kids went crazy over it.

You could also have a little snowball fight during math.  Try this game for practicing missing addends. 

You can pick up a copy of my recording sheets, instructions, and a Math Talk workmat in my TpT store for FREE!  Just click right here or on the picture.

Don't be afraid to bundle up and take your students outside in the snow....or if that is not possible, bring some snow into your students and have some FuN (and learning too).

Five for Friday....the First Week of School

Oh My Goodness....There is no tired like the first week of school teacher tired.  I can't remember when I have started off the year this tired.  Either my age is catching up with me or I had so many ideas I wanted to implement after the amazing conferences I attended this summer that I just couldn't do it all.  I tried...but I couldn't do it ALL.

So I am linking up up today with Doodle Bug Teaching to show a few little snapshots of what I did do and how my first week back went GREAT (despite not doing EVERYTHING).

First up...Back to School Night, which technically was last week.  I was not finished with my room, but it was done enough that my parents knew I was working on it.  I had these cute treats for my kiddos and ice cold water for my parents (note to self...there might be more than one parent with their student, so bring more water).  Thanks to Ashley Schroeder from Schroeder's Shenanigans in 2nd for the cute tags and idea!

On the first day we tried to open with major excitement by doing some minute to win it and get to know you games.  We timed to see if we could get an Oreo cookie into our mouth in just a minute (sorry no pictures) and we played Stand Up for Friendship (a freebie in my store).  Just ask general questions, like who has a brother?  And then they Stand Up.  Give your students a chance to see who has interests similar to theirs and maybe talk about it a bit.

Pete the Cat helped us take a tour of the school as we looked for his shoes.  Each of our specials, our lunch lady, principal, secretaries, and nurse decorated a shoe.  We collected them as we went along.  Later we will use them again when we write about our school community.

We ended the day making friendship salad.  I like to use different ingredients to describe the behaviors I want my students to exibit.  Then when it came to our banana they all yelled NO!!  Why no banana?  It was a rotten one of course!  This gave us a chance to talk about those rotten banana behaviors we don't want in our class.

We revisited this discussion later in the week, when we made our own little recipe books and chiefs.  The books came from my unit...but the chiefs belong to Miss Kindergarten.  Hers are so so cute!!  Don't you just love them??

Home to collapse and rest up.   It is going to be a GREAT year!

Five For Friday.....Spring Break

Spring Break, Easter, Parent/Teacher conferences have all come and gone.  Time to take a deep breath and look back at what I have been up to.

Linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching is a great way to do that.  Thank you Kacey for giving me the chance to share.

First up is Spring Break.  I had a wonderful time visiting with six of my grandkids and learning how to make these sugar eggs.  I wrote about my first attempt here, and we had so much fun I did it again with another set of grandkids.

Easter was a quiet day.  I am LDS, so I spent much of the weekend enjoying conference.

The rest of the weekend was dying eggs, having fun listening to the grandkids tell me about the Easter Bunny, and having a wonderful meal my son cooked for us (didn't get any good pictures of the smoked ham...but it was yummy).

Then spring Break was over too soon and it was back to school.  Parent Teacher conferences were this week.  They always make me nervous.  I like to have my students show off some of what they have been doing, so I created this self-reflection page last fall and I gave it to them this week.  I really want to get them thinking about their learning.

You can grab this from my facebook fan freebie section here.

Finally, as I was working on lesson plans this week, I realized that all week long we have palindromes.  Yes our digital dates all week are the same forwards and backwards.

Have a GREAT week!!

HUGE edit alert!  Next week doesn't work....because it is no longer 2014.  How did I not figure that out sooner.  Next Month...MAY is the fun one!   Here is the revised picture.  Have you ever had one of those days???

Christmas Craziness

I am TIRED!  Can I say that?  It has been a crazy week, with crazy fun, and crazy kids, and not enough time to do it all.

I am joining with other bloggers to share some of that fun on this last Friday of the year! ( Did I say tired?? )  Oops!, there is not a linky this week....but here are Five crazy things I have been up to in my classroom.  Enjoy and have some Christmas Break fun!

First up is Jingle our Classroom Elf.  He made his appearance late in the first week of December and has been having fun in our room ever since. 

He brought crayons and snow, he has put up a tree and paper chains, he hung out in the tree house with Jack and Annie, and he was the first thing everyone looked for each morning.  Today he was on top of the globe with the list of good boys and girls.

Jingle has kept us busy.  We wrote about him each morning, so along with tasks he brought from time to time, he has been a great asset to our journal writing.

Next is a shout out to my WONDERFUL husband....who suffers through itchy wigs to play Santa.

Our music program was this week.   Not only did our music teacher do a great job, but a fellow teacher gave up all her preps these last two weeks to play the piano for each class during their music class and got us organized with some backdrop decorations.  I work with awesome teachers!

I guess it is not Christmas without parent gifts....this year we made glittery candle holders with old jars, glue, glitter, and battery operated tea lights.  They were easy peasy and the glitter didn't scatter too much, but they did take a couple of days to completely dry.

We wrapped them up in Rudolf paper bags.

Today was party day.  We did a gingerbread house/Santa's workshop party.  I had several projects hanging around that we didn't have time to do, plenty of  paper, jewels, glue, markers and such, so my students got to choose and create while we helped them assemble their houses.  After lunch, when the houses had a chance to set, we added the candy.

All was finished just in time to head home.  Pack up was easy because we had paper bag "suitcases" that we started filling first thing in the morning.  As projects were finished into the bag they went.  The end of the day went....get your lunchbox and backpack, put on your coat, pick up your bag, hold on to your house and out to the bus you go!

Have a wonderful Holiday Season!  I am going to spend time with my crazy crew....