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Friday, January 30, 2015

102nd Day Recap!

Hey friends!  Every time I blog I say I'm going to get better about blogging on a regular basis and I don't.  I forget to take pictures of what we are doing, "in action", and then I just use that as my excuse not to blog.  I really want to get better...maybe I need to focus on one aspect at a time - so, what would YOU like to know about our day - writing, Daily 5, math, or something else?  Let me know and then I'll have a reason to take pictures and make a point to blog about it!

Anyways, this past Monday was our 102nd Day of School - whew!  Only 74 more days to go (as of today!)  Last year was our first year celebrating the 102nd Day of 2nd Grade and our kids just love it. In Kindergarten and First Grade they celebrate the 100th day, so by the time they get to 2nd all of the activities are old because they have done them before.  Plus, I had to put a Disney twist on it by watching 102 Dalmatians!



I found this GREAT dalmatian sweatshirt at Target this past fall and as soon as I saw it I knew it would be perfect for 102nd Day...but like the good-deal-finder I am, I waited until it was on clearance for 30% off before I bought it.  I was tempted to return mine and buy another one when it went to 50% off, but I ended up not wanting to deal with the hassle.  Then, over track-out, I found this dalmatian bow from when I was in elementary school that topped the outfit off perfectly!  

So, after we did our Letterland lesson first thing Monday morning, we dived right in to our 102nd Day centers, all of which came from my 102nd Day of 2nd Grade Activity pack.

Students had to do some skip counting, double-digit addition and subtraction, predicting, graphing, writing and even just some plain old adding spots to Oddball!



While the kids worked on their center activities, I pulled table groups to make Puppy Chow.  The recipe included is peanut butter-free as I, and probably many of you, have nut allergies in your classrooms.  We are fortunate enough to have microwaves in our room, so melting the chocolate and such is so much easier.  Now, I will say this - I don't really follow the recipe included in my activity pack.  I always use more chocolate, cereal, butter, and powdered sugar than the recipe calls for, in part because I'm making it for groups of 6 kids at a time.  And I add more butter to keep the chocolate creamy when I am melting it.

We made our Puppy Chow snack mix and then ate it in the afternoon while we watched 102 Dalmatians.



The kids made shirts with 102 spots on it to wear for the day.  I had a few that didn't go for the traditional white and black dalmatian and decided to just add stickers to a shirt they already had.  I think next year we are going to push the white/black shirt thing.



After Health, we came back for lunch and started watching 102 Dalmatians.  The movie is over 2 hours long, so we didn't finish it until Wednesday!  On Monday after specials, we watched some more of the movie, and had an afternoon snack (puppy chow and capri sun) before packing up and going home.  Then we finished up the movie Tuesday and Wednesday during lunch.
Some of my kids have this movie at home, but since it was made in 2000, and my kids were born in 2006-2007, most had not seen it - which was great!  And they loved it!  The story line is great and there are some funny talking animals that are quite entertaining.

Overall, it was a good day.  I just wish the kids could behave - follow directions and listen - on days like this, but they just can't.  We had another event we were planning for February - but I think after Grinch Day and then this, we need a break for a while!  Besides, Valentines Day is right around the corner and Jump Rope 4 Heart is going to be the same week, so we are just going to forget about having snowed in at school day!

Have a great weekend y'all!

Monday, January 5, 2015

Grinch Day (Week) Recap...Finally!

It is so hard to believe it is 2015!!  I know many of you went back to school today - don't hate me - we had an optional teacher workday, have a required teacher workday tomorrow, and kids come back on Wednesday.  So it will be a nice 3-day week for us, with the kids at least!  I went in for a few hours this morning and got things back in order and have some things left to do tomorrow afternoon once we get done with our morning PD.  But I'm here to recap what we did the last week before Christmas/track-out and all of our Grinch activities!  This year, I want to blog more about things we are doing in our classroom, not just the weekly Five for Friday...so I'm going to try to start off on the right foot!



We started our week off with a non-Grinch activity - wrapping presents for parents.  This year I relinquished some control and let them wrap their own presents with me walking them through the steps.  I of course had to help several of my friends and some didn't follow directions, but they got to do it and it made it so much more personal for them because of that.



After that, everything else for the week was Grinch!  We read How the Grinch Stole Christmas and did comprehension activities from my It's a Green Christmas pack.  After some whole group activities and snack, we did "Daily 5" rotations but they were all Grinch activities - comprehension, grammar, spelling, and even some fun things too.  The kids loved it!

On Monday, we tried to spell our words with green spaghetti noodles, but after the first group tried it without much success, we just gave up.  But it was a great idea - just didn't work - noodles were sticky and falling apart - just a mess.





As if we didn't read and retell this story enough - we downloaded the How the Grinch Stole Christmas app on our iPads so the kids could read, listen, and even RECORD themselves reading the book!  My classroom got so loud at one point with kids recording themselves reading the story!  Then, they could choose to listen to themselves reading the book rather than listening to the original narrator.  It was great!



We also did a little Grinch-inspired writing.  This one was about spending a day in Whoville - evidently one of my little boys has a crush on Cindy Lou Who.  And...her name was spelled correctly on the board - but that doesn't mean much evidently!


I made my shirt using my Cricut and some heat transfer vinyl.  I LOVED it!

Curtis and Chet must have gotten sick of the Grinch getting all the glory!


Grinch Day finally rolled around on Thursday.  Our school day starts at 8:15, and we started watching the movie at 8:30ish.  We watched it in 30 minute chunks with other activities in between.  Our first break we had snack - all of our green and Grinchy food!  Be prepared for picture overload of all of our Grinch food!

Who-Pudding

Grinch Punch (w/o sherbert) just Diet Sierra Mist and Green Hawaiian Punch





During our second movie break, we made Grinch Dust.   Just sugar, green food coloring, in a ziploc bag and the kids kneaded their sugar until they got it the color they wanted.  I stapled on a cute little tag and they were ready to go!



After our second break, we watched the rest of the movie and then compared the movie and the book with a Venn Diagram - time to be quiet and chill...I wish.  Off they went to Health, then we had lunch from Chick-Fil-A, then they went to Spanish (specials).  I finished filling their Grinch Bags while they were in specials - filled with Grinch Dust, extra candy, Grinch Day ornament, and their Christmas present (book).  Check out their Whoville drawings posted above their Grinch bags!  They had so much fun doing these.



After they came back from specials, we did our book exchange.  And because of how my kids acted during this book exchange and how our afternoon ended, that's all I'm going to say about that!

Our Friday was an early release, so we just tried to make it until 11:30!  Then it was time for track-out!  I told myself that Friday that I was NOT going to miss my kids and I needed a break from them because of how they had acted those last couple days...but I am missing them some, I have to admit!  I'm looking forward to the pre-December, more-well-behaved, children that I used to have!