Ohh Baby, Baby, Baby Ohh

The past week I have been consumed with baby. I went to my "you're half way there" ultrasound last Thursday. We had a full house with daddy, grandma, and grandpa! I am overwhelmed with the amount of love this baby has and he/she isn't even here yet! I well up every time I think about it… darn hormones! Anyways we got to see our little baby. Baby was excited to see us too… look baby is waving!!!

Ugh, it just melts my heart!

We finally settled on some bedding! I was glued to the internet trying to find something that would work for a boy or a girl. Boyyy (or girl!) it was a hard task! Everything seems to be either boyish or girly… where is the neutral???? Finally, I found something that I am just absolutely in LOVE with. I can't wait for it to arrive, 6 more days… but who's counting?!?

I also discovered that I am eligible for these parking spots…

I felt bad doing it but after circling the lot 3 times and finding no open spots I decided, what the heck? I'm expecting! So I went for it. And it was totally worth it. Ahh the perks ;)

Now on the the stuff you came for… Seeing as how this is a teacher blog and all! 

This week we are knee deep in measurement. We started with inches. We've done some fun activities from Amy Lemon's unit! LOVE HER. We've measured our bodies with measuring tapes, we've done a measurement I Spy, and we've also practiced measuring in our math workbook. We' have a few more tricks up our sleeves for later this week! Our classes are totally digging measurement. 

We are also finishing up our continents and oceans unit. We have our location quiz tomorrow. I always get so nervous for them before a quiz or test! I just worry if I've given them everything they need and they are prepared enough to be successful. After the test I always yell at myself for being such a worry wart! Check out some of our fun activities from our Mapping Skills and Continents/Oceans unit! 

Alright everyone, this momma needs to catch The Voice! I'll check in soon.
- Sister 3 -

Five for Friday Fun!



We're back for this week's Five for Friday!  It has been a loooooong week and before you ask...yes it was only 4 days!  We only have one more Friday and are as anxious as the kiddos for summer vacation.

1.  Sister 2 took a day off this week to go on a field trip with her son.  They went to a historical building in their community to see how school used to be "back in the day."  The kids dressed up in period clothing and had a great time!  Boy was it a wake-up call when they had to write on slate boards with chalk instead of typing on their ipads.  The most disturbing  funniest part of the experience was when the "teacher" of the schoolhouse called up one of the boys for being disruptive and showed them what would have happened to him "back then" by pretend beating him with a ruler.  Seriously...it sounds bad but was hilarious because of who the boy was....trust us on this!  Just ask his real teacher....check her out here.  She's new to TPT!

2.  We are whipping up some fun measurement activities to wind down our last math unit of the year.  Sister 3 came up with this "brilliant" idea to cut construction paper in all different lengths and then have the students work in partners to plot the measurements.  Great activity.....really great.  Well....except that Sister 1 needed RtI for the cutting instructions.  Took her about 20 minutes longer than Sister 3....and Sister 3 did 2 class sets worth!  Look for this to be included in our upcoming graphing unit on TPT!  It's almost finished and worth the wait. 

3.  Movie review time!  Since the weekend is upon us (thank goodness) we know many of you may be heading out to the movies!  Sister 1 saw 2 movies over the past week.....two thumbs up on both!  First, she saw Fast and the Furious 6.  Yes don't judge her, she loved it....who wouldn't love a movie with Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, The Rock, Tyrese, and Ludacris?!? 

She also saw "The Hangover 3."  Hilarious....another 2 thumbs up...although for different reasons....and Bradley Cooper....yum.

4.  We had a great assembly at our school today!  Our whole school went outside to see a BMX show....and they were silent....quietest assembly we've ever had!  Yes, it was educational somehow, although we didn't get to that part because a storm rolled in.   A dark, rainy storm...so we rushed 960 students back inside.  Such a bummer but a great time....hoping they come back to finish!

5.  Okay...here is a disclaimer for our #5.  If you are easily offended or won't find some of what kids "shouldn't know" funny then stop reading here.  However we HAD To share this because it is just one of those moments where teachers can laugh together...."kids say write the darndest things!"

AND that's how our week ended!! :) lol

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!



Story Elements and Measurement

This week we've been focusing on story elements and measuring.  Along with assessing, assessing, assessing... ohh and the occasional brain break on the playground. The weather has just been too beautiful to not go out.

For one of our story element activities we partnered the students up and gave each pair a few sticky notes and a book.  They had to partner read the story and then fill out the story elements on the sticky notes.  Then we posted them up on the front of my desk.

Measurement is one of my favorite units... I know I say that about almost everything, except regrouping! Haha but I love measurement because everyone can get up and move around.  We do a lot of, "Be the first person to find something that is 4 inches.  Find something that is 15 centimeters." It's kind of turned into a game, but I'm okay with it!

We also like to measure ourselves!  I hear them comparing the length of their shoes or hands which others.  It makes me so happy to hear, "My shoe is 1 inch longer than yours." Real life story problems! And the best part is I'm not telling them to do it!

Today we had a parent volunteer come it... I just love those days! The kids love to have their mom or dad come in and do a special project or game with them.  Today's mom took groups of four to our pod to play a measurement game.  It was the first time they played and they absolutely loved this game!  They were begging to play again.  I can't remember the name of it but what they have to do is roll dice to see which body parts to add to their character. Some of them can get pretty funny.  Then they have to measure how tall it is and compare it to the other other players.  The player with the tallest character wins the round.

See you tomorrow for Five for Friday! 

Time to Catch Up!

We've had so much going on the last week.. I feel like we've been neglecting our blog!  Soooo this is your warning, this post is going to be a LONG one!

It's crunch time and we're starting to feel the pressure.  It's hard to believe we're in the final stretch and there's still SO much left to cover. I know we say this every year but seriously, where did this year go?

Last week we talked about hosting, An Afternoon of Poetry.  Our classes worked on our poetry unit for two weeks.  We didn't want their hard work to go unrecognized so we decided to invite the parents in for a poetry reading.  We called it, "An Afternoon of Poetry." Grab our invitation here!

At the start of our unit everyone made a Book of Poetry.  I'm not sure what happened to the pictures we took of them but somehow they are lost!  What we did was have the students fold a piece of construction paper in half to create a folder/book and decorate the cover.  After we completed each poem the kids slid them into their book.

The day before our poetry event each child selected their best piece of poetry to read out loud.  We did a few run throughs of the program the day before to make sure everyone was comfortable going up to the document camera to read their poem.

The day of the big event I set up a refreshment table.. I went a little overboard on the juices!  It's just so hard to judge how much you need.  Trust me, you'd rather have too much than too little!  We had rainbow cupcakes, rice crispy treats, and goldfish butterflies!

A Pinterest find!

It was such a fun, laid back afternoon.  We got lots of wonderful feedback...  The parents and kids loved it... which obviously means the teachers loved it!

We've also been covering timelines.  We were trying to think of some fun ways to teach a topic that can be dare I say.. boring.  I think you'll like what we came up with!

We started with a few simple timelines that can be found in our Timeline unit on TpT.  Here's one of them... a timeline flap book!

We also did a paper plate turn style timeline of Disney Parks.  We read a biography of Walt Disney so the kids had some background knowledge on the man who created the magic.  We also visited Disney's website to learn more about each park.  Most of them had visited Disney World before so they were pretty pumped to be doing this assignment.

One of my favorite wall displays is our timeline of pictures.  We start this in September and add all of our favorite school pictures as the year progresses.

We've also been knee deep in measurement.  We start our unit with, "Rulers are tools, not toys,"  otherwise we have helicopters, weapons, and who only knows the other things they might think of to do with them!  I bought Amy Lemons', I Can Measure! unit.  We've been having so much fun with all the activities.  Here's a look at the Measurement Garden.

This activity inspired me to make a Measurement I Spy.  You can grab it here for free!

We've also done a lot of practice measuring... I'm sure you have tons of these worksheets.  

Finally, informational text.  It's a biggie!  We started printing pocket size books from A-Z Learning and have been using them for everything, not just informational reading.  They are so cute and educational.  We needed a few grades so I whipped up this little half sheet assessment.

I foresee many more of these in the future! I can't get enough of these little books.