Five for Friday - Back to School Style!

WOW!

First week back to work complete.

I am exhausted!

How is it that an experienced teacher can never be completely prepared for the physical and emotional back-to-school demands?

I set up my room the first week in August. I lesson planned for the first weeks and have my year long plans done. I started waking up at 5:00 a.m. a week ahead of time. I was taking about 10,000 steps each day during my final weeks of summer.

And still, I came home from the community cookout and scrimmage last night feeling a lot like this:

I seriously limped to bed. :-(

Anyway, let me give you a peek at my week Five for Friday style!

Thanks Kacey for this weekly link-up!

1

The Christian Teachers Facebook Group leaders have put out a prayer journal for this school year (started Monday). It is based off of Psalm 119 and covers four verses a week. I'm accepting the challenge to memorize it! I love this app for practicing my memory verses. 

2

Monday morning it was back to work for inservice. It was plagued with technology issues. Ugh! I felt so bad for our administrators who had planned good things, but nothing was working correctly. One of the drawbacks of a small school...no full-time tech person. I did manage to score some goodies though! Can't wait to read this book!

3

No tech person means we have get to do a lot of techy stuff ourselves. I had an issue with my computer/projector connection all last year, so they promised me this Google Cast thingy would solve my problem. I was a bit skeptical, but happy to report that it did solve the problem after I spent an hour installing it and setting it up. I fear it will only work when our internet is working though. Can anyone confirm that?

4

Thursday was our first day of school, so of course, I had to make my kids get in a picture with me! He's a junior. She's a sophomore. Me...well, I'm a 2nd grader (year seven).

Also, from the first day of school, my students working/playing with their morning tubs. 

This is new for me this year, but so far I'm liking it. We have our morning meeting in the gym, students come to my room and do their lunch count, check their GO (getting organized) book, and then head to breakfast (if they choose to). The morning tubs keep the non-breakfast eaters busy and encourage the breakfast eaters to be quick! I rotate the tubs each day and as the year progresses, I'll add different activities. The first few weeks, we are sticking to Legos, Play-Doh, and Pattern Blocks.

5

Day two (yesterday) we started building our stamina for Daily 5. The students did 3 minutes really well, so they wanted to try 4. It really went better than I expected based on some of my littles this year!

We are also building our stamina for school right now. This bunch is doing pretty awesome in the morning. The afternoons are a little rougher, but we will get there I'm sure. So thankful that our administration agreed to a morning and afternoon recess PLUS our kiddos get PE every day. :-)

I even got things done during my PLAN time (if you've followed us long, then you may remember I did not have a plan time during the school day the last three years) so I do not have to go work at the school today! I think I'll go up for a few minutes just to make a video classroom tour for you though. We'll have to see the how the day goes. ;-)

Have a great weekend!