Five For Friday October 31, 2014

Happy Halloween! Time to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday! We have had a crazy busy fun filled week!  Lots of history and lots of candy make for an exhausting week!

My week started with a field trip for the Earth Science STEM class I am taking.  We all met at the Churchill County Museum in Fallon, NV (which we toured a bit before leaving) and then headed to a place called The Hidden Caves which were used by Native Americans.  It is the site of several archaeological digs, and they have opened it up to the public.  Here are a few pics from our visit:

 

 

 

 

Monday, I took my own class on a field trip to City Hall as part of our social studies curriculum.  They were able to meet and greet with the mayor and then take a tour of the building.  They had a ton of questions for our mayor!  They were also able to see voting in action as we are currently in the middle of early elections.

They were so surprised to see their teacher's picture on the wall (I am on the city council).

They even got bags of goodies!  They were filled with pencils, city pins, Nevada pins, along with candy and glow sticks.

We received dictionaries from the Rotary Club this week and they were so excited to each have their own!  They also noticed that there were resources in the dictionary such as a map of the United States, common conversions, and even a multiplication chart.  They were quite amazed by the longest word in the English language and were extremely thankful that I would not be putting it on our spelling test this week!

In Nevada, we celebrate Nevada Day on October 31st, so we actually have today off!  Yesterday we participated in a record breaking attempt at the most people singing Home Means Nevada as part of our state's 150th birthday celebration.

 

We also learned about the Pony Express - complete with a reenactment!  Photo creds to one of my third grade team members.

And since we have today off.. we celebrated with our Halloween party yesterday.

 

 

Be sure to link up and share your week as well!

Five for Friday - July 18, 2014

It's Friday!  Fridays in summer just don't have the same meaning, but one thing is the same - time to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday!

This last week has felt kind of like the grand finale of a fireworks display.  You know how they send a ton of different fireworks off all at once?  I feel like this week has been a rush of activities getting ready for the end of summer. Although our kiddos don't go back to school until August 18th - I go back for training and PD on the 31st!  Where is my summer going???

My week started out last Friday with the TpT conference!  I had so much fun and learned a ton!  If you want to read more about my experience (along with my notes from the conference) you can find a link to all of the posts I wrote with my notes here.  That is Natalie from File Folder Heaven.  She has had a website for YEARS but has only recently started selling on TpT.

The day after I got back from the TpT conference we went to the water park for my hubby's company picnic.

Then the next day my husband's uncle came to visit from Boise.  He has a time share in Reno (about 35 minutes west of where we live) and he reserved us a room to staycation with him.

We had to have a silly and serious pose!

Here was my view for the rest of the week:

We spent a lot of time at the pool!

And we finished this crazy week last night at a Reno Ace's ball game!

 It was a crazy week for sure!  I hope you had a good week too.  Link up and share!

Five For Friday May 23, 2014

This week has been so much better than last week!  I told you about the crazy week I had last week when I found out that my grade level was reducing one position and I would have to move grade levels again!  Originally I was supposed to move to first or second, but luckily one of my co-workers made a trade for me so that I will end up in third which is where I was last year, so I won't be starting completely new! YEAH!  There is a chance that I will roll up again with my class like I did with this current group.  I will also have Luke (my son) in my class as well.  I am excited and nervous about that!  And now, without further ado, time to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday!

With all of the craziness of last week, I forgot to tell you the most crazy part of last week which happened on Friday, so I will share this week.  One of my students has a guinea pig who had 2 babies, and he wanted to bring them to class for show and tell.  I told his mom to let me know if she wanted to bring them in the morning or afternoon (assuming a 15 minute or so visit).  They ended up staying the whole day.  I had run to the copy room and when I got back to class the cage was sitting in my room and mom never came back (despite the 100 calls we made).

And while that may seem crazy enough... it wasn't.  Another student showed up that morning with a box of 5 rabbits!  Again, we couldn't get a parent to answer the phone, so my class was officially a petting zoo!

I got the opportunity to spend some time with a few of my students outside of school this weekend because I was invited to a baptism/communion for a family of students at my school.  They have a large extended family of cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. that all attend school together. I have one of the boys in my regular class and several of the girls are in my cross stitch club.

Do you ever attend your students' outside activities?

Wednesday was our end of the year trip to the swimming pool.  Our school is about 3 blocks away from the city pool, so we walk down there for our field trip.  About 20 minutes before we were set to leave, it started raining heavily.  Luckily it cleared up just in time for our trek to the pool and the sun was out and shining by the time our soaked kiddos left the pool.

Thursday was our county's Special Olympics.  A few of my students competed and our class was on hand for the opening ceremonies to cheer them on!  I also had a few students who helped out as volunteers.  It was a great time for all!

I am currently working on this book study for 100 Minutes to Balanced Literacy by Lisa Donohue hosted by Thinking of Teaching. 

 I am hosting chapter 3 on May 31, but you can read about chapter 1 here.  I will be posting my chapter 1 thoughts tomorrow.