Vacation Ramblings

Ahhhh, I've got my sweats and fuzzy socks on. The couch is cradling me and the dogs are snuggling up to me. I've officially begun my five day Thanksgiving vacation. WOO HOO!

Today and yesterday weren't extremely productive days with all the kids who take the whole week off for family trips or are sick from the recent stomach flu outbreak. Don't you just love the ones that take off on those short weeks...especially when the parents want to take school work with just to keep the kids busy. Uh!

So we did some "fun" work like the fraction turkeys Becky over at Dots-n-Spots created. We played Odd and Even Turkey Trot from Denise over at Sunny Days in Second Grade and I was planning on playing her Turkey Scoot Game and doing the awesome Odd Thankful writing activity too, but some interruptions (unscheduled assembly, kids getting sick in class, and incredibly unfocused kids) kept us from getting to everything on my list. Well, that's part of the joy of being a primary teacher, correct?

Now, forgive me, I know it's almost the end of November, but I finally have pictures of a few of the activities we did in October. And I am a firm believer in "better late than never" so here goes.

I taught a "how to draw an owl" lesson from Art Projects for Kids which we did on black construction paper after practicing on scrap paper first. Then I went over the drawing lines after school with white liquid Elmer's glue. The next day the kids used chalk pastels to color their artwork. In spite of all the smudging, I think they turned out great and each is unique. To set the chalk I sprayed each with a light coating of hair spray. (FYI we've been told we aren't supposed to do art since we have an art specialist once a week, but let's just say her stuff leaves a little to be desired. Guess who walks in while the kids are working on these? The PRINCIPAL. She immediately asks one of my little innocents "What are you doing?" The innocent says with glee "ART!" Uh-oh!)

We wrote some facts about spiders using Reagan's (Turnstall's Teaching Tidbits) spider writing idea. Learning about spiders when you have a tarantula for a class pet is essential! And even though spiders truly creep me out, they ARE fascinating and amazing creatures. The kids are always surprised to find out that I don't really like spiders. (Okay, I'm a wee bit scared of them!) But hey, Kiwi (our pet) doesn't crawl around the room. If she happened to get out . . . STOMP . . . STOMP . . . and the shoe(s) would go in the trash . . . that's all I'm saying!

Then we made the adorable silly spiders from Kacey over at Doodle Bugs Teaching. But we bumped it up a notch (since we aren't supposed to do art because we have an art specialist once a week...remember) and used our spiders to practice different ways to write numbers. On the spider's nose each child wrote their number in standard form. The body had a portion of the hundreds chart (think tic-tac-toe grid) with the child's number in the center and the numbers one less, one more, ten less, and ten more written around it. Each leg had a different form of the number such as tally marks, expanded notation, symbolic form (using base ten blocks), comparisons using greater than and less than (two separate legs), odd or even, word form, and money. The kids LOVED it! I gave my little friends the choice of choosing an easier or a harder number. Then knowing their abilities, I gave them the number I wanted. But they didn't know that! ;)

Well, enough ramblings for tonight. I need to go check out everyone else's blogs and catch up on Pinterest! Happy vacation to all!