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Thursday, May 16, 2013

Bye Bye Birdie

It's that time again...
Five For Friday

This week was Daddy & Me Night at Little Love #1's preschool. I was in charge of coordinating all of the food. I decided to supply the chicken nuggets and cupcakes. Her school logo has a rainbow on it, so we made rainbow cupcakes. They were a huge hit! And all the daddies were so super cute with their little loves.

We said goodbye to our feathered friends today. Don't mind all the poop in the bottom picture. That's just what baby chicks do. Kind of like baby babies.  They were quite feisty when we had them out of their brooder box on Thursday so I knew it was time to head off to the farm. It's pretty very neat - a family friend of ours has a farm. She is actually the labor and delivery nurse who delivered both of my Little Loves. She takes our baby chicks every year and raises them on her farm.

Have I told you how much I love our new headphones? We have a community organization that raises money for the sole purpose of awarding grants to teachers in our district. Last year I applied for a grant for wireless headphones and new tape cassette/CD players for all of the first grade classes. I love how my little loves can sit anywhere in the room to listen to their books. And clean up is so much easier! Of course, now I wish I had asked for iPods instead...Oh well. Maybe next year!

Our district buys into a science program from our regional BOCES. Each grade level gets a living thing to investigate during their last unit of the year. First grade gets hermit crabs. I usually love these little guys. But not this year. That's because they are far from little! This year we got the biggest hermit crabs I have EVER seen. They can barely fit inside their shells. The kids all think they look like tarantulas. I just think they smell bad.

Can I get a WOOP WOOP!  I gave our last Fundations assessment of the year today! Don't get me wrong, I like Fundations and it has certainly taught my little loves a lot about letters and sounds. But it can get rather um, boring. I've been thinking of some ideas for next year to help make it more interesting and take less time each day. I'd love to hear from some of you that use Fundations. How do you keep it interesting?

Have a great weekend and don't forget to spread a little LOVE around! (especially in the comments below!) I would also LOVE to have you as a new follower, so join in the love!

Friday, May 10, 2013

What a week!

This week was unbelievably jam packed and I am so excited to share it with all of you! I'm linking up with Doodlebugs for Five For Friday! I was so totally ready to write this post on Thursday night so I could link up nice and early on Friday but.... my fairly new MacBook Pro decided to play dead at precisely 7pm! Thankfully, all is well in Mac Land now so here we go!
Five For Friday
1. This was chick hatching week! I was feeling pretty sad on Tuesday when all I heard all day was the cheers and excited screams from the other 3 first grade classrooms as their chicks started hatching. I just kept looking at my 2 little eggs that had teeny tiny cracks in them.

By the time I left on Tuesday, there were 4 eggs with teeny tiny cracks, but nothing else. I was actually scared to walk into my classroom Wednesday morning. I couldn't look in the incubator. I made one of the kindergarten teachers look for me. Then she started counting: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6!  We had 6 chicks out of our 9 fertile eggs! Look at these cute little guys!
There were still two eggs with little cracks, so I left them in the incubator overnight and on Thursday morning, we met our last two chicks!  We have 8 adorable fluffy friends. One of the K teachers takes them all home for the weekend every year, but I took home my two newest little guys. They are a little weak and their legs are a little funny looking, so I didn't want their big brothers and sisters picking on them. Look at my Little Loves loving on our babies:

2. Next week we are giving our post assessments. This is our first year with APPR and we are giving our local assessments for both ELA and Math. I broke out my Primary SMART Response System to do some quick math assessments with them to help them feel confident about their "big kid tests". My little loves had such a blast using their clickers to answer the questions. They didn't even realize when we were doing. They have all learned SO MUCH this year and I am so proud. I know they will do great!

3. Check out these A.D.O.R.A.B.L.E. Mother's Day cards we made. I am in LOVE with them! And the writing inside!  Oh my word. These little loves of mine are simply amazing and they sure do love their mamas!

4. Speaking of Mother's Day, I went to my own Little Love's preschool on Thursday for their annual Mother's Day Tea. It was one of those days where my heart just melted. Take a look at the adorable flowerpots by big girl and her bestie made for the teachers to show their appreciation! Wouldn't you love to get one of these from your students?

Afterwards, we went to the most incredible nursery to buy some plants for Nana and Gram for Mother's Day. Take a look at this place:
After MUCH debate, we finally decided on these two lovely hanging baskets to give our special ladies!

5. We have been up to our eyeballs in non-fiction!  We spent a couple of weeks pouring over loads of non-fiction texts exploring the text features. We also read lots of books about chicks, of course!  Now my little loves are writing their own non-fiction books about the animal of their choice. We will be presenting these books to our families at our Author Celebration in a couple of weeks. The kiddos have been working super hard on their research and I can't wait to see the final results!

Hope you all had a great week as well!  Happy Mother's Day everyone! Spread that LOVE around (especially below by leaving a comment...LOL!)