Five for Friday

It is a dark and stormy night. It is the kind of night to curl up and read a good book and listen to the wind whip through the tree branches and shower down bushel baskets of acorns. It is a night perfect for sharing five things from the past week. I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for (drumroll, please)

This week we celebrated our youngest classmate's birthday. No more five year olds in my first grade class. They are all more than a handful now!

These Owlets like a little chocolate cake with their green frosting! Do your girls pretend the frosting on their cupcake is LIPSTICK!? What a mess! 

#2

This little girl captured my feelings completely, as we finished globbing glue and glitter on green Gs. I mailed 25 of these to schools across the US and Canada for the Chicka-Chicka Boom-Boom alphabet exchange hosted by Chrissy at First Grade Found Me! This is my third year participating and this year my kiddos are more excited than any other class about it. We have gotten three letters and I'm expecting a full mailbox in the coming week! If you get something from the US Postal service covered in gold glitter, don't look at me. I know nothing!

#3 Applesauce is best served warm. We made a batch in a crockpot this week. I leave the peels on. I give my students each a plate, a table knife, and an apple. We halve and then quarter the apples. We add about 1/4 cup water and let it cook four or five hours before mashing it with a potato masher. We don't add sugar, but we do sprinkle on some cinnamon before we stir it up and eat it! 

I didn't have one kid turn down seconds or thirds. This pot was empty when the bell rang!

#4 we played a lot with "tricky teens" this week. Did you know that 15 is the number most often missed by young counters? True fact. To help my friends, I made this spinner game that required them to say the number correctly before they marked it on their game board/graph. They took this game home to play over the weekend, too! 

It looks like Pete the Cat is visiting today. He stepped in some strawberries and got his white shoes all red! If you would like a copy of this game click HERE! It comes with a funny book, too!

#5 My husband and I recently celebrated our 25th year anniversary. 25 years ago he stopped driving the car he had worked on with his dad when he was fifteen. My youngest daughter will turn 16 pretty soon and thinks she's getting the keys to his car since she's been working on it with him! They took it for their first spin last night. It was pretty cool to share their excitement!

I'm hoping they'll take me along next time. Would you like us to pick you up?

Hang in There...Friday is Coming!

This has really been an amazing week! We've learned about the Titanic, set up a museum of 10 and started working on our Gs to send out to 25 schools participating in the Alphabet Letter Exchange. On top of the extra fun I've been so impressed with my classes ability to stay reading, stay writing and stay working on words! I have to share a  picture that shows my students enthusiasm over books...especially ones that have to do with their current favorite subject...The Titanic!

Did you know that the Titanic was a mail ship? R.M.S. stands for Royal Mail Ship. Five mail clerks tried desperately to save 200 bags of registered mail, but the mail and the clerks went down with the ship. To date none of the 3,423 bags of mail have been recovered. Two of my favorite resources for using in our study have been these books.

This is easy to read with lots of pictures. I've been using it
during transition times calling them "Moments on the Titanic"!

Great information in this book! I really
like the photographs.

Our letter Gs are under construction, but I can hardly wait to have them all circulating through the mail. We colored our Gs green. Then we Glossed them with Green Glitter Glue!

I had my first casualty of the year today. One of my little puppies was not his rolly polly self! He seemed to have lost his spark! I could tell he wasn't feeling well. It wasn't long before he complained of his ear hurting. I asked someone in the office to contact his mom to let her know. As we waited to hear back from his mom I told him he could rest on the couch if he needed to. He would go back and forth from the couch to really trying to participate with our activities. Finally our office administrator came down to the room with a message from mom, "Hang in there. I'm coming soon to help you." After he got this message from his mom he perked up and was able to engage more fully. Just knowing that his mom loved him and cared about him made all the difference in the world to this little guy. He lasted until lunch when his mom came to the rescue!

I find that is so true in my own life. When the things of this world start to drag me down I remember that I too have a promise from a loving God. Hang in there...I'm coming soon to help you! 

"The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?"Psalm 118:6 and "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you" James 4:8. It is amazing how good news can change our attitude! Here is more good news for you...No matter what day of the week you are reading this...Hang in there Friday is coming!