Field Day 2012

Today we had our annual 3rd - 5th grade Field Day. Our theme this year was the Olympics. Each class chose a country to represent and then we designed banners and flags and "uniforms" to go with our country. We chose Egypt and my class decided they wanted to be The Mysterious Mummies of Egypt! LOL! So I enlisted the help of my extremely talented and artistic son (something he did NOT get from me LOL) to help us out. He made us 2 banners and he drew a picture of a mummy that I then copied onto iron on transfer printer paper and ironed on to our shirts. Here are a couple pictures of our finished products:

This is a close up of the kids' shirts - my baby drew that picture!

Here is my very talented and artistic son holding one of the shirts, standing in front of the banners my class made for him. His birthday is Tuesday so we had a surprise "Thank You/Happy Birthday" party for him yesterday

Not a very flattering picture of me, but this is my shirt, and my son had one just like it

Today was the big day and the kids were so excited! We always have an opening ceremony that includes a parade of classes and gives the judges a chance to see all the costumes and banners the classes have made and at the end of the day they choose a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winner. The winners are judged on their costumes and creativity but also on their sportsmanship and their respect for each other and the other teams. I am very proud to say that my class won 3rd place out of all the 3rd - 5th grade classes (about 22 classes) Here are some pictures of our parade "gear" and some of the kids participating in the activities

2 of my little mummies holding the Sphinx

The flag of Egypt

a scene from Egypt including the pyramids and some camels

my mummies

more of my little mummies

more of my little mummies

My son is awesome! He let us drape him up in linen cloth like a mummy!

Me and my baby boy!

Getting ready for the parade

my group with all their banners

my son doesn't give us time to pose, he just starts snapping pictures LOL

Now we're ready! 

Scooter races

cone/ball race - hopping on 1 foot

Belly Ball

My son has a heart as big as the Egyptian Pyramids - this young lady is a 4th grader from another class and none of the kids would be her partner for belly ball so my son stepped in there and was her partner - he encouraged her all the way! I am SO proud of the young man he has become.

Here they are coming around to the end of the course

getting ready for the foot races

Lets go girls!

There goes the boys!

bat relay

Literature Circles

Since we are all finished with state testing I have been trying to figure out what is the best use of time for my reading block. We are currently reading "Hoot" as a class and we have been doing class novels all year long. So I thought I would try something new and do literature circles. I have never done them before but I thought that since we have sort of been doing them all year long as a class that maybe it was time to let the kids try it on their own as well. SO I found some great resources on Teachers Pay Teachers for literature circles (sorry the link is on my school computer) and I made a folder for each group and let them choose their book and explained to them the expectations. They were so excited! They did so well choosing their jobs for the week and figuring out how many pages they needed to read each day to meet the goal of finishing the book buy the set date, and they started reading.  I am thinking, if this goes as well as it did today, this may be something I begin to implement every year after our state testing. Below are some pictures of my kiddos in their literature circles. Since this is all new to me if you have any advice for literature circles please share!

Walk Like An Egyptian...

I have been absolutely MIA lately I have been so busy taking care of my sweet daddy and I set up a family blog to keep family and friends from out of town updated on my dad and posting pictures from our visits. I haven't had much to post either because it has been testing time here in Florida but now I'm back...

Well one of the best times of year is upon us my school does an annual Field Day and every year it is a big deal! Every year we have a theme and each class comes up with a team uniform and cheers and other team building and class spirit things. Then we have Opening Ceremonies where we have a parade and the classes are judged on class spirit and sportsmanship and the kids just have a blast with it! They even have trophies for the classes with the most spirit and creativity. 

My school has only been open for 6 years and each year the themes get better and better. The first couple years it was just colors. Last year each class in the school chose a different college and we used their colors and mascot to define our team. This year our theme is the Summer Olympics and each class in the school had to choose a country that was participating in the 2012 Summer Olympics and my class chose Egypt! We have spent a few days discussing our team name, our uniform and our banners. The kids have all made an Egyptian Flag to carry during the opening ceremonies (just like the real Olympics). The kids have decided that they want our team name to be "The Mysterious Mummies of Egypt" and they want to dress like mummies LOL They are too funny! So I had to figure out a way to make them look like mummies and still have them able to participate in the sporting events that are the main focus of field day. So I got white t-shirts and tie dyed them tan to give them an old look. We weren't done yet...

We enlisted my son (the soon to be art major) to come and help us draw up 2 banners, one with the pyramids of Egypt and the other with the Sphinx. We set up 3 stations and had the students volunteer for a "committee" we had a flag committee, a shirt committee, and a banner committee.

The Flag Committee was in charge of creating a large Egyptian flag banner that we can carry in front of our class for the opening ceremonies

The Shirt Committee was in charge of cutting up the tie dyed shirts to make them look "mummie-ish"

The Banner Committee was working with my son Garrett to create our banners. While Garrett drew the scenes for us the banner committee wrote out each of their classmates' names in hieroglyphics!

The kids are so excited for Field Day on Friday and they have decided that they are also going to use toilet paper to add to the mummy look LOL I can't wait to take and post pictures of them all decked out! Below are some pictures of them working in the committees

Making our Mummy shirts

Having fun cutting up shirts

Flag committee hard at work

Writing a classmate's name in heiroglyphics

Hard at work on the flag

Garrett busy working on our banner

Putting the final touches on the flag

Spring "Break"?? I think not.

It has been a little while since I posted and I am on Spring Break this week. I HAD planned on spending my Spring Break resting, relaxing, and looking for great ways to integrate the new smart board I just got in my classroom. Well that all went down the drain almost exactly 2 weeks ago (1 week before Spring Break started). 2 weeks ago my sweet 79 year old Daddy (who suffers from Alzheimer's and dementia) fell down the stairs at his house and broke his hip. He was rushed to the hospital and had to have emergency surgery to replace the ball part of the hip and repair the break which was just under the ball. My daddy lives an hour away from me and the hospital is an hour and a half away but it didn't matter I was going to be there as much as I could. My dad stayed at the hospital for a week before he was moved to rehabilitation nursing home to begin his rehab therapy. While in the hospital we began to notice that my dad was having trouble with simple skills like feeding himself and his hand eye coordination was terrible. Now his doctor believes he most likely had a mild stroke either at the time he fell, right before the fall, or right after. My dad has been in the nursing home rehab center for a week now and is making progress He has physical, occupational, and speech and cognition therapy daily.

My father's wife is 88 years old and she is unable to care for him, especially now, so the therapy team has deemed it unsafe for him to return home so I have spent my entire Spring Break either sitting with him (he hates to be alone) or touring nursing homes trying to find a place for him to live when his rehab is completed. This has been so hard because he is so confused about where he is and what is going on. When I go see him he always asks me to take him home. Next week is going to be even worse for me because I have been with him almost daily since this happened and I go back to work next week plus I start working on my 2nd Master's degree so I am only going to be able to see him once a week.

So, that is why I have been MIA. I have been living on stress overload, thank goodness I have my brother and sister as well. The great thing about her family is that at times like this we all pull together to get things done. My momma passed away 20 years ago and my daddy is all I have left. Even though Alzheimer's has stolen most of him away from us, I love him so much and I worry about him even more.

Reading Reading Reading!!

This week is going to be a very hectic week, we have a science program tomorrow, a mock FCAT test on Friday and I am being observed on Friday as well, the first time I have been observed in like 8 years ugghhh I really can't stand Mr. Marzano and his ideas of teacher evaluation right now. Anyway, this morning started out hectic and when the morning starts hectic it usually doesn't get much better LOL My students were rowdy this morning as well, I hate the time change, and I thought "Oh boy, this day is going to give me a headache" Thankfully things got better this afternoon and the last 20 minutes of the day were amazing and reminded me how muchI love my job and my kids. 

Before I get into that let me show you my reading rotation board!!! Elizabeth over at Fun in Room 4B created a reading rotation chart as a companion to the Math rotation chart that was created by Clutter Free Classroom  I LOVE my math and reading rotations boards now! (for pictures of my math board check out this post - Math Rotations  or Math Rotations Rock

 This is the entire board - I have my groups set up by color and the kids names are on post-it notes then placed on laminated colored paper, this works great if I need to move a student to a new group. 

 The set Elizabeth made has a header for all 4 areas but since my teacher table and Read to Self center never changes I only needed these 2 pages. I just put the headers onto a pier of card stock, trimmed it and laminated it. That way I can write on it exactly what they are to do for At Your Seat and Enrichment Stations

I put the board right next to my class library

Now, onto my day...

This weekend, my husband and I went to a couple of local Goodwill stores and bought some "new to me" books for my classroom library. We finished up all our work for the day so I was letting my class read silently for the last 30 minutes of the day while I labeled the books and prepared to add them to my class library. My class was still a bit rowdy and were not into their reading much at all so I thought, "Ok I'll tell them about the new books I got and that will kill a little time before we pack up" so I called their attention to me and told them I had gotten some new books and that I wanted to show them what I got. As I started showing them the first couple books I got some "ohhhh"s and one of my students asked if he could have the book I was showing so I said yeah of course and handed it to him, all of a sudden my desk was flooded with my students all asking me for books which I started handing out. By the time they were all goneI on;y had like 5 books left to put on the shelves LOL. All of a sudden the room was silent and I looked up and this is what I saw - 

Isn't that a beautiful sight??? Its one of my favorites!

As I said, it was near the end of the day and at dismissal I was out at car rider duty, which is always such a crazy place, the kids are loud and rowdy and ready to go home. I was standing near the 4th grade car rider waiting area, waiting for my duty to be over so I could get out of the chaos when I glanced over and I saw 2 of my students, who are usually part of the rowdy crowd, sitting on the ground waiting for their car to be called and this is what they were doing:

Another beautiful sight!

Now on to tomorrow, which I hope is a lot more like the last 20 minutes of today LOL