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 Sept 12, 2014

A few weeks into school and I am finally starting to feel like we are in the groove!  Time to link up for Five for Friday with Doodle Bugs Teaching.

This week started with a surprise for my kiddos.  They had been begging for a class pet, so I surprised them.  My class had persuaded me two years ago to get a class pet.  It became a whole unit of study and they loved the frogs we got.  Unfortunately, I moved classrooms last year, and the class I went into did not have a sink which meant it would be difficult to keep the tank cleaned.  The frogs came home with me.  Then, this summer I found these tiny tanks and we have class frogs once again!

We had to get a little math in there, so I had them choose names for the frogs and squeezed in some data work.

As you can see, their names are now Luke and Lisa.  I think it is funny that they named one of the frogs after my son!  LOL!  He was flattered!

We got to experience a little more science as we jumped into a unit on matter with a fun little experiment with water, plastic baggies, and pencils.  All of the students predicted that the water would spill out of the bag if they poked a pencil through it.  Boy were they surprised with the results!

They wondered what would happen if they poked more pencils in the bag...

We have also been learning about multiplication and division.  The students love working on the white boards.  I love that they all do the work!  

I felt like I won a prize when I found these issues of Storyworks in my mailbox today.  I have been wanting to try it for awhile, but I just couldn't justify the cost.  Luckily, I got a Donors Choose project funded and these were part of the project.  I can't wait to try them.  Have you used them before?

Speaking of winning a prize, don't forget to enter my contest to win a $25 TpT gift certificate and 70 product donations!  Contest ends soon!

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!