Spring is in the Air

WOW!  That's really all that I can say about the past few weeks in my room.  This year I was blessed cursed with a group of very spirited children.  I have 7 or so kid's out of 22 total that are just really hard to manage. Which means keeping them at separate tables is a no go.  I've tried every technique known to man, from clip charts, to spending time in other rooms, to making them all work together, to try and correct the aggressive, snarky, disrespectful behaviors, to no avail.  I had one of them tell me "summer is getting close and we are just excited!"  Trust me kiddo, SO AM I!  One of those students was suspended for the 4th (4TH!!!) time today in as many weeks...when is enough enough?!?

In a last ditch effort, I busted out our new carpet that I got through Donor's Choose.  It has 30 colored squares and each student now has a place to call their own.  I was trying to wait until our school moved into our new building in the fall, but if ever a class needed some structured space during whole group, this is it!  So my question is this, how do you deal with your "spirited" children?  How do you handle repeat offenders? Any advice is welcome...only one more month to go...

2 weeks of being sick, a new student and a great neighbor

I've been sick for 2 weeks!  Yes, 2 WEEKS!  It started last Tuesday when I had what I thought was just a cold.  I stayed home with my baby girl in hopes that I would be able to just relax and be better.  Well I woke up Wednesday and attempted school.  I only stayed for 1/2 of the day and slept that afternoon.  I felt much better Wednesday night.  But Thursday I woke up with a fever.  I went to school, thinking that I'd be fine, but didn't even make it 10 minutes.  The diagnosis...Strep Throat.  The good think is that strep goes away within 24 hours on meds but I was still contagious on Friday, so a doctors note meant no school for me.  Thank goodness the meds kicked in because I had a trip to Disneyland for my daughters first birthday that weekend.

Monday was a Holiday and Tuesday was my babies first birthday so I had already pre-planned to have that day off.  Wednesday I had a district training on the CCS.  I was pretty excited to get back to work on Thursday, but in the middle of the night I woke up with a nasty stomach virus and fever.  So here I am, 2 weeks of not being at school!

Luckily I work with the best group of people!  Especially my neighbor, Jill.  I could not have dealt with all this without her.  She has basically given the subs everything that they have needed from copies to instructions.  The kids, I've heard, have started to get a little anxious and who can blame them!  Oh yeah, I also got a new student last Friday that I haven't even met yet!!!  I'm a little scared what to expect on Monday when I get there!

Please keep your fingers crossed for me...

Daily 5 Math

Are any of you doing Daily 5 in math?  I came across some info on it last night, and I think it is just what my kiddo's need!  I'm super excited about the prospect of it, but would love to hear from some of you before I try to get started.
Thanks!

A Little Off Topic...

In a few short weeks I will be embarking on a journey to help end Breast Cancer.  For the second time, I will be walking 60 miles over the course of 3 days to raise awareness.  Too many of us have friends and family that have fought this horrible disease and I don't want anyone else to have to fight that fight!

I am asking for your help.  I need to raise $2300 in just under 30 days.  I have no doubt that I will raise that and beyond, but I'm dedicating my blog to the cause today in hopes that someone out there in the blogosphere will be able to help.

Please, if you can help by donating (a few small donations goes a long way!) I would very much appreciate it.  If you can help by sending others to this post, I would appreciate that too!  Below is the direct link to my page to donate, or simply click on the link to the right of this post!

Thank you, from the bottom of my "soles" :)

Click here to Donate today! 

When I Grow Up

My class just wrapped up a unit on Community and Community Helpers.  We started off by talking about what a community is and what you find in a community.  Once they had a hang of that, we talked about all the people that help a community run smoothly.  They worked in groups to come up with a community helpers for each letter of the alphabet, then we worked as a whole class to come up with one helper for each letter.  Once that list of compiled, each kid drew a community helper out of the bowl to make a page for our "Community Helpers A to Z" book.  It came out super cute!  I will try to post the page that we used later (it's at school and I'm at home on Fall Break).  


Next, we invited parents to come in to share about their jobs.  We had 6 parents between 2 classes; police officer, fire fighter, interior designer, graphic designer, lawyer and insurance agent.  The kids rotated through the 6 jobs and completed a bubble map at each station.  The kids had a blast learning about their jobs!


Finally, to wrap up the unit, each student did a "When I Grow Up" project.  The had to write a "report", complete a project and dress up.  Then we had a Celebration of Learning for everyone to share!  I was totally impressed with the quality of work that all my kids did as well as how much they learned.  


I have included the report page and the project guidelines.  Feel free to use, but please leave a comment below in return.


When I Grow Up