19 Days and Counting!

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday and can't wait until I'm linking up with Summer preparations for next year!

 So there are 19 days left of school, and we're hanging in there... thank goodness it's not too hot in New England right now because we'd be barely hanging on if it was hot!!!

 Last Friday my grade level partners' butterflies were ready to release and none of our chrysalises had opened yet... I was so nervous we wouldn't have any butterflies in our room, but thankfully we came into school Monday and ALL our butterflies were ready! Butterfly release day is always an exciting day, and we got to have 2 this year!

This year instead of the 2D/3D shape snack sort we normally do, we built shapes with marshmallows and toothpicks. The kiddos had a ton of fun and had to think about the number of sides and vertices/edges, vertices and faces while building. Grab the recording sheets here.

One of my girls came in with this and it made my heart smile! There are NEVER 'name things' with my name spelled correctly who would think there'd be a bottle of coke with it spelled correctly!!! Proof that it is the little things in life :)

Loving our end of the year door! I have families sign up at the beginning of the year to decorate the door each month. Families that work schedules that don't allow them to volunteer love to help out by coming after school and decorating the door! I also love to see how proud the kiddos are when they helped their parents.

Until next week... (or hopefully sooner!)...

Five for Friday, 1 week until summer!

I haven't linked up to Five for Friday in a few weeks which is pretty rare for me this school year! If you want to see what I've been up to (my end of year checklist) go check out my post earlier this week here.

I'm also linking up with Teaching Blog Addict for Freebie Friday. Scroll down to #5 for a classroom volunteer freebie!

[one] Tie Dye!
Remember a few weeks ago when we tie dyed? Well last week at Challenge Day (field day) we rocked our shirts! We also rocked them (if we remembered) on our field trip yesterday (see #5). Challenge Day was such a fun day and hands down the most organized field day I've ever attended (comparing to 2 other districts)

The shirts came out pretty awesome and all 3 second grade classes looked just a little different which was neat to see!

[two] Author's Purpose
I LOVE teaching author's purpose mostly because this craft is just too cute! Although I 'indirectly' teach author's purpose all year, making sure the kiddos can say why they think the author wrote it or why the author made certain choices, the last 2 years towards the end of the year I've done a set of very explicit lessons where we make these on the first day. I found this craft here last year.

Author's purpose is also one of the only anchor charts I have laminated to use year after year. I love anchor charts when kiddos help make them either by giving ideas or literally writing on them, but no matter how hard I would try, I'm almost positive my kiddos would not come up with P.I.E. for author's purpose so I use it as a kick off to the craft instead.

[three] Father's Day!
I always feel bad for the dads because many times they get left out of the "cute crafts made by their kids" game because Father's Day is usually after school gets out. I still try to do a craft when we won't be in school for Father's Day (we made tickets for dad last year) but this year it was a must because we are in school the week before and after Father's Day.

I found this ADORABLE craft for dads on Emily's facebook freebie page. Go check out her blog, I Love My Classroom and follow her on facebook to grab this cute freebie (maybe for next year!). My kiddos were SO into this, making it look great for dad :)

[four] Field Trip!
We went on our end of year field trip yesterday to the CT Science Center... had SO much fun with my grade level partners. They're the best!

On our way home we checked out a cool butterfly exhibit!

[five] Volunteer Gifts!
Since I will be gone at the WBT National Conference most of next week, I had to catch my volunteers this week. Thanks to the brilliance of the 3rd grade teacher across the hall, these ended up looking WAY better than originally (she suggested wrapping them in tissue paper).

If you'd like a copy of the tag without volunteer names, find it here or on the picture link below. If you'd like me to add names leave your email address in the comments and I'll be happy to get in touch and get those tags to you ASAP :)

When you hear from my again I'll either be at the WBT National Conference or just home from it!!! So beyond excited :)

Ready but not ready for Summer

So today marks 19 days to go... in some ways that feels like a lot of days to get through... like when I have to repeat my directions 85 hundred times but feels like not enough time AT ALL when I realize that 19 minus 4 days at the WBT conference minus Challenge Day (field day) minus end of the year field trip minus the couple afternoons that will be spent at meetings minus the last day of school (bc it just doesn't count).... equals.... 11(ish) days of instruction left with my kiddos! Ahhh... I still have an entire math lesson to teach, yikes!

Anywho... I'm linking up with Doodlebugs Teaching for Five for Friday...

[one]

The exercise balls are here and inflated! Mrs. R was NOT kidding when she said she had to do LOTS of modeling with them for her kiddos. I already have 2 kiddos who lost theirs for the week because they decided to "dribble" theirs around during packup... oy vey! But on the plus side, it is easy to see how much it is helping the kiddos I chose to test them out!

[two]

We released our butterflies this week. The kiddos were so excited! It was amazing how quickly these creatures went from little teeny tiny caterpillars to beautiful butterflies!

[three]

Terrible picture, but we tie dyed shirts this week to wear on Challenge Day which is our school's version of field day. Every class does some kind of shirt so they all match. The whole second grade team decided on tie dye. I let my kiddos tie them up but myself, my sister and a mom volunteer handled the dye. I was a little nervous what 7 and 8 year old hands might do with dye that just so happens to be very permanent!

[four]

We decorated our door for the end of the year. It didn't look like much like an ocean until we got the fish and turtles up.

[five]

On Thursday with 20 days left of the school year, my kiddos each wrote about what they hope to do in the remaining 20 days. It goes along with an ice cream cone count down I have outside my door. I got both of these in Just Wild About Teaching's freebie here.

Have a great weekend!

5 5 5 Weeks to Go!

This week has been very long and I just realized this morning that there are 5 weeks left of school and I'm out 4 of the 5 days the last week for the Whole Brain Teaching National Conference. So naturally I seriously am starting to stress out!!! (haha)

But anyway, I'm linking up with 5 for Friday on Doodlebug's Teaching.

[ONE]

If you didn't already check out part 2 of our visit to Mrs. R's room to see her fantastic Daily 5 routines, go check it out here. Mrs. R is seriously awesome!

[TWO]

My first ever rafflecopter giveaway came to an end on Monday. Go check out the blogs of the winners on the winners revealed post here.

[THREE]

I didn't get to share this awesome cup one of my students gave me for Teacher Appreciation last week, so here it is! It has my name on the other side, so darn cute. And had $100 (yes that says $100) giftcard to Education Works... I almost FELL OVER!

I plan on using some of the giftcard to buy some of these awesome stamper sets for Word Work next year!

[FOUR]

We've been working on fractions and I found a few fun (and free) fraction games for the kiddos to do. One game was a fraction memory/match-up game. You can find it here. The other was St. Patrick's Day themed, but the kiddos barely noticed. You can find it here.

We also made fraction books from Amy Lemons. Find it here.


[FIVE]

My kiddos have been going wild the past 2 days because we've had some butterflies emerge from their chrysalises.  It's so hard to take a picture with the screen in the way.


Have a wonderful weekend!