Miscellanea!

Miscellanea: pl.n.    Miscellaneous items or written works collected together. (See below)

Essentially, this week has been a total hodgepodge.  This is our second week in a row of the OAA, and midterms are due Friday.  Of course, I've done my best to maintain some semblance of normalcy in the classroom.  I'm going to QUICKLY do a run-through of some of the activities I managed to snap photos of and actually uploaded.  (Some are basically in limbo on my camera at the moment.)

Of course, most obviously, we took the OAA.  I'm really hoping that I prepared my little peanuts enough to blow that test out of the water.  Yeah, we don't aim to pass it.  We aim to "blow it out of the water".  My kids will tell you that I am the queen of idioms.  Really lame ones too.  When the librarian read My Teacher Likes to Say to our class, they got a few laughs out of it.  I am that teacher.  Oh well.  Anyway, you can see that one of my cuties reinforced the testing sign I made with a larger red sign.  It made me giggle a bit.  :)

We've also been working on some Charlotte's Web lessons & finishing up our Wax Museum Biographies.  We're almost ready for the big night! (I promise to take lots of pictures once we finish!)  I'm so excited!

The last picture in that series shows words that the kids found in chapters 1-4 after we read them.  Each student "harvested" a word (using the Harvesting Words sheet in my unit), then we had a little tea party.  I run my tea party a little differently than the conventional way.  I like to have my kiddos turn & talk a lot in class to interact and make connections, but sometimes I like them to get up and get moving.  I like them to share with multiple people.  So, I have them raise one hand and quietly walk around until they make eye contact with someone else who has their hand up.  In this case, they shared the words they harvested and the definitions.  Then, they find someone else.  I typically let them circulate for about five minutes before reining them in.  Today, I had someone tell me a word they found, and then I asked someone else to tell me the definition.  They were dazzling!  Few things make me as excited as expansive vocabularies.  Aww...BLISS!

We also did a cute little fraction activity from my pals at Lesson Plan SOS.  The kiddos turned fraction pieces into jungle animals... and they really enjoyed it. You'll definitely want to check it out!  Thanks ladies!  Here's a few examples.  I had to stop myself from posting 22 of them!  Haha!  They are all so cute & creative!  (They weren't required to label each part, but some chose to.)

We talked a little bit more about the food chain and animal classification.  I'm absolutely itching to get outside for a fun tangible (& edible) lesson, but it won't quit raining!  Que sera, sera.  All in good time! 

Okay, and now for a "funny".  My birthday is this upcoming Sunday (May 8th), and I'll be celebrating the big 2-7.  I brought in yummy cookies for my kiddos to celebrate the end of testing and my birthday, and this is what I got the next day.  SO PRECIOUS!  I totally appreciate the honesty of children...