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!

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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!

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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!

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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! 

The MOST Honest, Random Five for Friday

Good morning!

I apologize ahead of time for this very random, yet very honest post. This week as I was thinking ahead to my blog post, I really struggled with coming up with any sort of useful teaching tips or information for you. 

So in all honesty, I am surviving people. 

Just surviving. 

We have three weeks left of school and everything is crazy with resignations, hirings, activities, and students who have already "turned their thinkers off." Add to that my attempt to prepare the K-2 students for their Spring program, Hats!, and I have been sick for two weeks and taking Mucinex around the clock. 

Survival, ok?

These first two pictures go together...

This is the second bird in two days I have found in my driveway. The first one was not this pretty, but when I saw this bluejay I was bummed.

Please forgive me. I am not a cat lover. We are just not cat people (sorry, Kristi!). However, we have a constant supply of cats around our home because they live in our barn. See below:

I don't mind a couple of cats in the barn. Really, I don't. Because it helps with some other pesky problems, you know? 

But please, cats, stop killing my birds. That I do mind! Especially a pretty bluejay. Blue is my favorite color.

Normally, by now we have a mama fox move in to have her babies. That kind of clears out the cats for awhile. But no mama fox this year…which means the cats are multiplying…

P.S. My daughter's new truck…even trade for an old Blazer we had. Benefit of hubby being an auto-tech at a dealership. It is not crooked, the ground is… She is excited. And she can even see over the steering wheel and reach the pedals.

Harley's the short one. :-)

Speaking of Harley, she won an award for writing an essay "What the Pledge of Allegiance Means to Me." We knew she got 2nd at the local ELKS lodge, but it was a surprise that her essay went on to win 2nd in the division and 1st in state! Pretty cool. 

She got $125 gift card to Wal-Mart--which I confiscated to go toward the cost of repairs to a borrowed, broken saxophone. 

Long story. 

Yes, I felt bad taking her winnings. 

However, she has no other $$$ and needed a lesson in following the rules of caring for an instrument.

 Harley is in track, so I've been spending some time at track meets. We have two this next week to add to our busy schedule.

Chaz is obviously not in track. But he got that brace opened up this week and can now put some weight on his knee. I can't believe it has been six weeks since surgery. Four more to go with the brace… He has actually lost 15 pounds (of muscle). :-( I guess that is not uncommon, but I'm not used to him being so scrawny.

He really was excited--just not about Mom taking his picture.

Finally, just so you know I am still trying to teach my class. 

We started our plants unit with some beans in wet paper towels. The kids don't think they are going to grow. I can't wait to see their faces when these babies sprout!

Thanks for sticking with me for Five for Friday!

Wishing you a dead-bird-free week!

Making Butter!!!

We had our extra fun thing this week and it was extra special!  Every year, we have this extra fun thing.  There is a parent that does a lot with 4H, so she comes in and does some lessons with different grade levels at our school.  On Friday, she came in and had the kids make homemade butter! 

This is always quite an experience for them because they don't realize how much work it can take.  Many of them got tired and said that their arms were hurting after shaking the jar several times.  They worked in groups and passed the jar around, so luckily they didn't have to shake it up all by themselves LOL!

They always have a great time with making butter and when they get their butter made, they get to try it on homemade rolls, YUMMY! 

It is fun to watch them try the butter because many of them are so used to the store bought butter and the taste of it.  They assume that the homemade butter is going to taste the same.  Many of them didn't expect for it to taste different. 

After they got done, a lot of the students talked about how they were going to go home and do this again!  What fun!  Check it out!

 

Hope all of you have a great weekend!  Kristi

Solids vs. Liquids - What *Did* I Teach Them?

Coming back after having a substitute is sooooooo hard! I felt like in one day, my kids had completely forgot the rules of my classroom. It was exhausting...

Has anyone found the secret to motivate students to behave for a sub? Anyone ever came back to a "glowing" sub note and had your colleagues actually agree (because they know how your kids are supposed to act normally)?

Just curious...

This is my 3rd year teaching and I think I'm giving up on it...

As promised, here is the pictures of our Solids vs. Liquids Venn Diagrams. We did these last week. We thought it would be the perfect way to incorporate science into our reading skill for the week - compare and contrast.

I didn't get the chance to look them over until this weekend - and some of them had me laughing out loud. Take a look:

And solid can hurt you? Really? I don't think we ever talked about that one... Or eat a solid for that matter, but hey, they had drink a liquid on the other side so I'll give them that one. :-)

Good examples. I especially like the blood and spit...but giving examples of each was not part of the directions. :-)

This one was close - soooooo close. I appreciated that they remembered liquids flow. However, I spent a good five minutes demonstrating and discussing that solids were not always hard (even had them feel a towel and talk about its properties to prove my point). Hmmm... Wonder where these two kiddos were during that demonstration...

Just to prove that I did actually teach the differences between solids and liquids, I had to show this last one.

Hope you are having a good week! I'm hanging in there...

Crystal

Johnny Appleseed Craft

We studied Johnny Appleseed this week and were very excited to do our first big art project of the year!    The kids were so excited when they were told that we would be doing an art project. 

We had a lot of little giggles in the classroom as they got their hands painted (they all thought they were a little ticklish LOL). 

This cute project was found at The Ramblings of a Crazy Woman http://jennwa.blogspot.com/2008/09/another-pre-school-apple-craft.html

The kids did a great job with it!  Check out the results:

 

 

Hope you have had a great week!  Kristi

 



YUMMY! YUMMY!

This week, we were very excited for our extra fun thing.  At our school, we are so lucky to have a parent that loves to come in and do various activities with students at all grade levels.  So, this week we were fortunate to have her come in and make homemade butter with the kids.  The kids were put in groups and were told the directions on how to make the butter.  They used their big muscles to shake the cream and milk until it turned into some nice smooth butter.  You should have seen their eyes when they saw how it changed from a liquid to a solid.  They were very impressed with themselves LOL!  After making the butter, they were able to enjoy it on some homemade rolls!   We had a blast!  Check it out!

Hope all of you have had a restful weekend and are ready to start a new week tomorrow!  Have a great week!

Kristi

Olivia the Pig Bulletin Board and Earth Day Writing Fun

This week, we read the story "Olivia" in our Treasures Reading Series.  The kids just loved Olivia so we decided that for our Extra Fun Thing this week, we would make these adorable Olivia pigs that I found on Pinterest here. The kids had a great time making them and we were so proud because as you can see below, our kids followed directions so well! LOL!!

We also talked about Earth Day and things we could do to help keep our Earth clean.  The students then wrote about what they could do to keep the Earth clean and made the Earth guy that I found on Pinterest  here.  Crystal was not too thrilled with the shirt part of it and all the folding and directions to be followed that had to occur to get the final product.  But in the end, we made it through and they turned out very cute.   Check them out!

I hope all of you have a great and restful weekend!!! 

Kristi