Five for Today! ;-)

Happy weekend!

I CANNOT believe how fast November is going! I like to do a Scholastic News once a week (and my kiddos love them). Yesterday I realized I would need to do one of the Thanksgiving ones on Monday in order to get them both in before break. Only one full week and two days! Yikes!

That also means I need to get busy cleaning and planning for Thanksgiving dinner at my house as well...

Anyway, let's jump to my pics for this week's Five for Friday.

1

The way we reorganized our day this year gives me a short prep time before I teach science. I love it! The last few years as we cleaned up from math, I sent my 2nd graders out the door to their specials and the Kindergarteners were already waiting for me in the hall. Ugh! 

This way I have been able to prep some more fun activities. The 1st and 2nd graders have been learning about the Solar System, so we finished off the unit by drawing it. I was pretty impressed with how they turned out!

2

In Kindergarten we've been learning about living things and how they grow and change. We spent a couple of days specifically talking about the frog life cycle. 

3

I'll be the first to admit that this presidential election was kind of tough for me to be excited about. To keep this from getting political, I'll leave it at that. BUT I wanted my students to know how the process worked and that we could be thankful that the citizens of the United States of America have a voice in choosing their leader. I also wanted them to know how important it is to respect the opinions of others whether our chosen candidate wins or loses--something I wish the protesters would acknowledge at this point. Again, with the politics. So sorry. We studied the branches of government, the election process, U.S. symbols, and the office of the president leading up to Election Day. It was a great way to move into Veteran's Day yesterday!

4

This just made me laugh. :-) The directions said to write the compound word, but once this was turned in, I could totally see the macaroni. Ha!

5

No picture on this one...just one word!

THANKFUL!

December 19, 2016

and

February 27, 2017

If you're a follower of our blog, you know that I have a Bible study being published. It has been a long back-and-forth process, but I finally have the official release dates. The first is my author release date. I can't believe I could be holding my book next month! EEEK! The next date is the official release date. 

So thankful that the Lord has allowed this and that the publication process is nearing an end!

Have a blessed weekend!

Five for Friday - Peek at my Week!

Happy Weekend!

I'm linking up with Kacey again to give you a peek at my week.

1

I missed last week's post, but I think I had a good reason. Our volleyball team (I'm the assistant coach and my daughter plays) made it to the state tournament! We played pool play Friday and advanced to Saturday. We lost a close one in the semi-final match and then played flat in the 3rd place match to come away with 4th. It wasn't the finish I had hoped for, but I'm still thankful for a fun 40-5 season with these girls!

#6 is my niece. She missed the Saturday games because she was running in the state cross country meet. It was tough on her and the team! The girls carried her jersey around all day and took pictures with it.

2

After such a big weekend, I was feeling pretty rough on Sunday and Monday. I was exhausted, fighting some sinus bug, and my back was out either from sleeping in the hotel or cheering so much for the girls. Yes, that last one reminds me of how old I really am. ;-)

Even though I was feeling awful, I survived the Halloween party on Monday! I dressed up as a "coach" so I could be comfortable in sweat pants. #Lame #ButSweatsMakeMeFeelBetter

Check out these cute Capri-Sun drinks one of the moms brought:

3

And this is me the next day...it was the first day I had to "dress up" for work in a week (thanks to Red Ribbon week and Halloween) and I was definitely struggling. Ha!

4

The election is fast approaching (I'd love to end this sentence with an exclamation mark, but I don't think this election has left most American voters--including me--too excited.). I've spent the last couple weeks teaching about our government, election process, and the U.S. Symbols. We will have a mock election on Tuesday and then keep right on moving into Veterans Day activities this week.

These activities are from this Social Studies interactive notebook pack. I'm glad I figured out a way to use them even though we don't do INBs for Social Studies!

5

 This is the mess I make when I'm preparing for a sub. Ugh! 

I'm headed to an Autism Conference on Monday. I'm very excited to learn more about how to help autistic students be successful in the classroom. 

6 or Bonus, I guess...

I was so excited to sleep in and have nothing planned on a Saturday that I had to snap a screen shot of the time when I woke up. 

I love coaching volleyball, but I miss my Saturdays at home! We had tournaments every Saturday (except for one) since the beginning of the season so this was long overdue! :-)

Have a great weekend!

Our Talking Turkeys

 

Boy did that election wear me out!  LOL!  We did have a fun time with it.  It is funny how those little things can make you so tired.  Then to top it off, Crystal decided that we needed to get our bulletin board changed and paint turkeys....what???  I was already tired... granted the craft of the talking turkeys she found was very cute, but the thought of another project and a painting project at that made me even more tired.   

 

She found it at:  

 

http://pinterest.com/pin/244320348506340013/

I was actually able to talk her out of painting the entire thing (I think she was tired too after the election, so agreed with me about not using paint on all of it LOL!) and using crayons on some of the parts.  They turned out cute and the kids had fun doing them.  Sorry that the pics aren't too clear, I will try to get better ones to post this week.  Like I said, I was tired and took them and didn't really take a glance at them until I got home.  That's when I noticed that they are a little hard to see :-(.

 

 

 

Hope all of you have a great weekend!  I plan to get some much needed rest!  :-)  Kristi

And the Winner is...

The results are in...

 

...and the winner is...

 

HORSE!

 

The kids took this election so seriously. It was so stinken' cute! Here's some pictures:

 

Isn't our voting booth cute...and private? We had an awesome K teacher bring in the decorations for us! That is a blank ballot my kiddo is holding up because, of course, we would never tell who we voted for. :-)

Our election workers took their job very seriously. They checked in each voter and gave them an "I VOTED" sticker when they were finished.

We even had a line for voting because this had to be as realistic as possible - or maybe it was because Kristi kept shoving sending kids out the door so we could finish voting before our specials. Granted I did leave her in the "party room" with ALL of our students so I could maintain the integrity of the election.

And just for giggles...we were searching the room for things that were taller than us and I had one little sweetie draw GOD. Thought it was cute -- and true. He's pretty big alright! ;-)


Have a happy Friday! We're in meetings...so no kiddos tomorrow.

Crystal

ANIMAL ELECTION DAY EXCITEMENT!

The kids are so excited about voting next week for their favorite animal.  Most of them have already decided on who they want to win and who they will be casting their vote for next week.  It is so cute to see them because they are taking it so seriously.  In fact, this week, Crystal had one of her students ask her what they should wear on the day that they are going to vote.  LOL! 

We have it all planned out for Nov. 6.  One of our Kindergarten teachers was so nice to let us borrow her patriotic tablecloths which we will decorate a cubby desk and this will be where they will vote.  There will be 2 students that are in charge of marking off the names as students finish voting.  We have a red voting box where they will place his/her ballot when done voting.  One of our 2nd grade teachers found some old I voted stickers that came in one of her scholastic book orders and she gave them to us.  Now, we will have stickers for them after they vote.  WOW!  It is really nice to work with a group of teachers that are always willing to help out! 
 :-)

We decided that while they are voting, we would be in one room having an election party.  The students will enjoy cookies and we will all watch a video on the animals that are the candidates for this animal election!  We will post some pictures of the kids voting later next week! 

Have a great weekend!  Kristi

More Election Fun!

We worked on our campaign posters this week for our Animal Election.  The kids are so excited about it and are taking it very serious!  Check out their cool posters:





We will go through the actual voting process on November 6th.  Only they will be voting for their favorite animal.  :-)

We had parent-teacher conferences this week and put in extra hours to have today off.  I think we all agreed that we were very tired and would be doing a lot of napping throughout today and this weekend.  Along with being tired, our weather has gone from around 85 degrees to 38 degrees in a day!  So, it's a dreary day which makes it even better to stay in and take a nice long nap.

Hope all of you have had a great week!  Kristi

Animal Election - Thanks to Tori!

This week we started an Animal Election! Meet our candidates:

 

We are busy learning about each candidate and will hold an official election on November 6th. As we talk about the election, we have been discussing how it is similar to the Presidential Election. I was very excited when some of my firsties told me they had watched part of the debate with their parents saw their parents watching the debate last night.

 

Here is our vocabulary words proudly on display:

 

The candidate posters and vocab words are part of an awesome packet from Tori over at Tori's Teacher Tips.

  

Kristi and I won the set in a contest this summer and I was super excited to get it out and get started! Best of all, when I went to her site to copy her button I stumbled on her posting that the Election Time pack is ON SALE!

So scoot on over there right now and grab it up! You won't be disappointed!

Crystal