The 30-Day Challenge

You hear that phrase all the time!  Losing weight, building up stamina to run a race, car dealerships running a sale, etc.  I think that the biggest 30-Day Challenge is the First 30 days of school.  My lack of posting is first of all a bad habit and second of all directly related to my school year craziness. Everybody is their own kind of busy so I won’t try to compare stories or carry you through my day, but I do want to carry you through the last 30 days! 

For the most part my kids are great, actually the best class I have ever had, but the MOST challenging.  We are settled into our morning routine and reading stations are running as smoothly as one could expect in fifth grade. We are finished with Reading Street Unit One and will take our Benchmark Test this week.  Hopefully, all of the hours of pinning and creating lessons to help teach the skills and strategies will pay off. Even though I admit that part is fun for me. Envisions Common Core Math is going well. We’ve covered cells,and completed an AMSTI kit on Variables (the kids LOVE this) in Science and covered map skills and Early Americans in Social Studies.

I hope that your year is going as well as you hoped.  I finally had an original idea and I am going to be using it for our Halloween Bulletin Board.  Check back for a glyph freebie before Friday!

Hoping the next 30 days are even better!

    

 

Football Fridays and College Game Saturdays

Baby Birthdays and Births

  

Flying our Airplanes

Great way to review…I put up posters with the names of all of our skills that we need to review… the kids had to choose at least three skills and write down their schema about that skill.

  

We love Pandora playing over my speakers… our top stations are:

1. Tween Radio

2. Radio for Kids Radio {Pretty much all Disney}

3. Lady Antebellum

4. Justin Beiber

5. Pachelbel's Canon in D

6. Praise and Worship

Have a great week!

Week Three Already

WOW!  It has already been 10 days.  I feel like it is taking me forever to get in the groove.  We are traveling for volleyball EVERY Tuesday and Thursday, I can’t wait for a home game. I have also been keeping my goal of being at school on time (7:40) and am proud to say with the exception of one over sleeping day I have been there by 7:30!  Let’s hope I can keep this up! My co-teacher and I are on a roll with our lesson plans and centers.  It makes us love teaching because so far we have taken the stress out of it.  Envisions Math on the other hand is a little stressful.  If you are an avid reader of Open House you know that we are starting a new math program.  Last year we used Go Math and really didn’t like it till the end of the year and now we are using Envisions.  I’m pretty sure its not the program it is Common Core.  I think that the kids who are starting as fifth graders on common core are getting the short end of the deal because “they are supposed to know” ALL kinds of prerequisite skills, that we usually teach during fifth grade!  AHHHHHH we will just go with the flow and do it the BEST we can.

I haven’t been an avid picture taker during the week, but we did do some cool stuff. One thing that the kids loved was a wrap up activity for plant and animal cells.  After we went over their graded tests, we got out our science notebooks and passed out the cookies!  The kids loved drawing the Cookie Cell. ( we originally had planned to get gummy savers for the vacuoles, but we forgot so we just went with a different color M&M)  Kids didn’t care!

 

On a side note… I got paid Friday and spent a little time at my Target.  I Love Target!  Seriously love. Usually I can find something to pick up, clothing, shoes, jewelry, home décor, school supply, and sometimes one of each of those.  Most of their stuff is oh so cute, HOWEVER…..see exhibit A below:

These are HID-E-OUS…. plus they are $35…. please girls…. stay away!

Gonna Get my Groove back this week!

Laura