Five for Friday - Building Ramps, Counting Races, and More

Good morning!

I'm headed out to watch some of my kiddos in their little league basketball games today, but I thought I'd quickly share some VERY random pictures from the last couple weeks first.

1

Counting races in Kindergarten science! I know...not necessarily science, but we were needing a little break and it was pretty fun for me to see how they could do at this. We counted by 1's and 10's.

2

The 1st and 2nd graders are learning about energy, force and motion so we spent a couple days building ramps for our toy cars. SO MUCH FUN!

And easy prep for the teacher...I'm thinking I need to come up with some more of these types of experiments!

3

We had conferences last week. I took this screen shot when I got home after teaching all day and having 15 back-to-back conferences. Can you say tired teacher? I know you understand. :-)

Yep, that is my handsome hubby and his favorite toy, I mean car. ;-)

4

I know I've posted before about my fixer-upper house...the latest project is finishing up the laundry room. I'm wondering if I need this shelf...

I told you...VERY random!

5

The weather here has been insanely warm for February. I enjoyed my quiet time on the porch last Saturday with temperatures in the 70s. Today it is 25 degrees. Really.

6

Last, but not least, a little feedback that made my heart happy. This teacher just "gets us" and why we love games in the classroom. 

 

This feedback is on our all-time best seller - Time to the Hour and Half-Hour.

Well, that wraps it up for today! As always, I appreciate the Five for Friday linky from Doodlebugs! 

I'm off to support my kiddos who have been begging for me to come to some games. Enjoy your day!

Five for Friday - Precipitation, New Student, and Daily 5!

Hi there! 

It's been awhile since you heard from me. 

Mostly because when it was my turn to blog, I was having computer/internet problems. I think I've got that all sorted out now. 

And more recently I've been a little consumed with getting my online presence started for my book. Things are really falling into place fast now! Eeek!

Linking up with Kacey at Doodlebugs!

Now for a random peek into the last couple of weeks:

1

We've been learning about the water cycle in science, so I was looking for some quick and easy experiments we could do. I even took some pictures, but when I went to put them in here... I must have deleted off my phone. :-(

Anyway, here's the pin (and pic) that inspired our experiment and the kids thought it was pretty cool. I loved how many times I heard the word 'precipitation.' Ha!

2

If you do not have new student bags, you need them. I found out late last Friday that I would have a new student on Monday (odd for a new student to start on a two-day week, but hey...). My new student bag was a LIFESAVER (old pic). 

3

Since we only had two days this week AND a new student, we spent some time reviewing and practicing our Daily 5 procedures. I miss using my PowerPoint (I don't give "choice" until 2nd semester).

My technology problems have not just been at home, but also at school. We have had internet problems--still can't connect our iPads. :-(  

I've also been without my projector for about a month. I realize I am SUPER spoiled, but I miss it. A LOT. We are "this close" to me having a working projector again. Cross your fingers? Say a prayer for me? ;-)

4

My son (17 years old) first started asking to take piano lessons when he was 4 years old. I put him off for three years because I did not want to have to make him practice. He has played the piano for ten years now and I have never had to make him practice!

In fact, his desire to practice far exceeds my desire to listen! Please understand, I love to hear him play, but the piano is in the living room. We have only one television in the house, so we are constantly running him off the piano when we are ready to relax. In fairness to him, I know he plays the piano TO relax so I had a crazy idea...buy him a keyboard to have upstairs in his room.

It took some trial and error, but we found one he likes at an affordable price. 

Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas to him! 

He is thrilled. 

We are thrilled. 

Everyone is thrilled. :-)

5

Last, but certainly not least.

Here's where you can follow along with me and my writing (hoping there will be more than one book someday):

Twitter

Facebook

Website/blog (not active yet, but getting there)

I attempted to use WordPress instead of Blogger based on several recommendations for authors. It has been a learning process! I think I'm almost there, but still a few tweaks to make. 

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are enjoying the extended break! 

Five for Friday: Video Tour, Science Success, and Back to School Fun!

Happy THREE day weekend!

After our first full week with students, I need it! My week has been crazy busy and last night was the first evening I made it home before 8:30. 

Exhausted is an understatement, and I've decided the world will be lucky if I get out of my pajamas today. ;-)

I've got LOTS to share with you today, so if I blow past FIVE I'm sorry (but there is some good stuff toward the end so hang in there).

Thanks, Kacey, for a great linky!

1

I love task cards, so we started practicing our task cards procedures right away with this "Get to Know Me" roam the room from Amanda Madden. 

P.S. If you don't follow her, you should. She gives amazing freebies to followers now and then, and I'm pretty sure this was a freebie at one time. Priced at $3, still a great deal!

2

Um...did I mention I love task cards? 

These were new to me this year and perfect for teaching my kids how to read QR codes (another thing I love) using the QRafter app.

This "Back to School Fun Quiz" is a freebie from Teacher's Toolkit.

3

Read to Self stamina is at 10 minutes after 7 days of school. We tried 12 on Friday, but...well, let's just say that ended in an impromptu lesson on "stamina breakers" (activities, not students though maybe I really would have liked to name names!) and "stamina builders."

P.S. I love two things about my tiny room (okay, three).

1. Two walls are covered with whiteboards (no wasting chart paper for this stamina graph).

2. One wall of shelves.

3. One wall of windows.

So the walls. 

I love the walls.

The space between the walls is tiny!

4

 We are also building our Work on Writing stamina. I think I have a group of authors because this has been easier than read to self!

Friday we tried Read to Someone, but that also needs more work. Volume is a biggie for this bunch!

5

We also got busy with some math this week using two of my favorite resources.

Math Helper on the right.

HOTSHOTS on the left.

6

This is one of the good ones, so I'm sorry the explanation is long!

In case you don't know, I teach 2nd grade, but I am also the K-2 science teacher. This year I have 1st and 2nd grade combined for a 20 minute science block (and then K for 20 minutes while 1st/2nd goes to music). That's 30 students in science at one time. 

I know, I know. Some of you have 30 students all day, but for me that is a large group!

The first week was a great success because of this blog post! You must check it out. She literally has everything you need for a great first week of science and it was all FREE!

I stretched her five day plan into 7. We watched the books suggested on YouTube because I didn't have them. The "Super Scientist" procedures and badges (see red arrow in picture) made it possible to do a non-chaotic experiment with 30 kids! I'll be using her "Super Scientist" procedures all year for experiments. I just cannot explain how excited I am about how the week went!

7

And finally, last Saturday I made a video tour of my classroom on Facebook. In case you missed it, here is the link.

I wish I would have dressed up a little--or maybe even fixed my hair--because it has about 2,400 views now! But oh well, that is the real Saturday me. :-)

If you have questions about anything you see, leave them in the comments here or on the FB post and I'll try to answer. I'll be making a video later today to explain the Fluency Tubs so keep an eye out (and I promise I won't be in my PJs ;-))! 

Have a wonderful Wednesday!

Five for...Well, I'm Late!

Hi there! I hope you're enjoying this beautiful (here anyway) Sunday afternoon. I just woke up from my nap so I'm good. ;-)

I'm linking up for Five for Friday to share some VERY random photos with you from my week.

First, I snapped a photo of some of my kiddos working on a science inquiry from our curriculum. 

They were given two plastic cups each containing one ice cube. One was the "control" and was to be left alone. They had to figure out how to try to keep the other ice cube from melting. I provided them with foil, wax paper, cotton balls, and tape.

 

It was fun to listen in on their plans and watch them work. They did great!

Second, in this picture my kids are hard at work on their Showbie assignments.  

 

Showbie is an app to go paperless...while we won't be a completely paperless classroom, it has made some of our work more fun! It works really nice on our story selection tests...not wasting paper for filling in those bubbles!

Remember how my kids break/ruin everything? Well, we've already had to talk about not pressing the stylus too hard because they are scratching up the iPad covers. Yikes! 

Third, we celebrated my son's birthday with dinner, cake and ice cream with the grandparents. 

 

I can't believe he is 16!!!

Fourth and Fifth, our girls basketball team had a photo shoot on Saturday. Here's a couple pictures of my daughter (#33) and my niece (#22). 

 

My niece is a year older, so they were not on the same team last year. We're excited for them to be playing together again! First game is on Monday. Whoop! Whoop!

***Some of you may remember my son's ACL injury...he is playing basketball too and so far doing GREAT!

Have a great week! 

Making Rain Experiment

My co-teacher and I get our classes together every Friday for about 30 minutes to do a Science experiment or some Social Studies.  Last week, we talked about the water cycle.  Our science experiment was making rain.  We had a cup of water and put shaving cream on top of it (clouds) and then the kids used droppers to drop food coloring (precipitation) onto the shaving cream (clouds).  Once the shaving cream (clouds) couldn't hold the food coloring (precipitation) any more, then it started to come down to the bottom of the cup which looked like rain.  The kids were so excited about it and couldn't believe it when their food coloring started to drip down from the shaving cream.  It's always fun to watch them do science experiments because they are always excited about them!

Have a great day!

An Eventful Day!

We had quite an eventful day and I have to say that I am pretty tired right now!  The day started off with it being crazy hat/hair day.  The students in our school raised money for Jump for Heart and had a goal of $1,000, but they ended up raising more than $6,000.  Pretty Awesome!  So, they were allowed to do a crazy hat/hair day since they raised all this money.  Here are some of them today:

Some of it is hard to see in the picture, but we had spiked hair, several ponytails, hats, a bird in the hair, Easter eggs in hair.  As for me, well one of the wonderful kindergarten teachers helped me with my hair, she put some colorful string in it. 

The second eventful thing that occurred today was that it was the homework club luncheon.  My co-teacher came up with a great idea of the homework club and if the students do all of their each month, at the end of the month we all eat lunch together.  So today was the day and we all (total of 19 kids) came into the classroom and ate and talked.  They get very excited for this and had been asking about it all week.  One of my kiddos even said to me one day, "Homework club is so awesome and I am going to be in it all of first grade!"  :-)  (Sorry, I forgot to take pictures)

Finally, we had our extra fun thing today and had one of our parents come in and do a science experiment with the first graders.  It was really cool!  They put a skittle in warm water and watched the S float off the skittle and to the top.  All of them were saying that they were going to go home and show their parents this one.

Needless to say it was an eventful day and I am tired, but I am also very excited and will have to get some extra energy because if you haven't heard, Teachers Pay Teachers is have a Spring Cleaning Sale!  YAY!!  So , I will have to do some shopping and then get some rest.  Don't forget to go check their sale out!  All of our items will be 20% off as well on March 29-31.

Have a great weekend!