Five for Friday - On Saturday, of Course!

May is officially kicking my butt!  With three four-day weeks left, the end is in sight, though.  I can do this! There are so many things going on, I don't have enough time to blog about them. Thank goodness Doodle Bugs Teaching hosts Five for Friday. Otherwise, I'd never be able to make time for blogging at all!

Here are my five random things from the last week (or so).

Our ABC Countdown is sometimes a joy and sometimes a "what was I thinking?!" Ice Cream Day was a mixture of both. The kids had a ball mixing and shaking their ice cream bags. I had the brilliant idea of using containers instead of bags so their ice cream would be ready to eat once it was mixed. This worked well until two of the students gripped the containers so hard that either the lid popped off or the container cracked. Once the ice cream mixture leaks into the ice and salt, there's nothing to do but start over. Sigh. The experiment itself was only partly successful as some students' ice cream never actually solidified. However, a good time was had by all and most agreed it tasted good anyway. We also had a great discussion trying to figure out what went wrong. A little science, anyone?

The fantastic Mrs. Parker, our Teacher Assistant and resident Science Guru helped us out!

The wonderful Mrs. Carter, a former TA at our school, also gave us a hand.

Shake, shake, shake!

I love it when I see evidence of kindness and caring in our classroom community! Over the last few weeks, we've been writing compliments to random classmates and posting them on their cabinet doors. One of my students did not receive a written compliment this week to put on her cubby. The student who pulled her name forgot to write it and then was absent the next day. When Chloe saw that she didn't have one, she took it upon herself to fix it.  When I read this, I felt warm and fuzzy all over. 

I posted this on Instagram earlier this week while I was working on the flyer. Isn't Scrappin' Doodles' clip art adorable? I'm so excited about our Second Grade Book exchange. I did this over the last two years, but this year four of my colleagues are taking part and it's turning into a big event. We're asking students to bring in gently used books that they no longer want. We'll collect the books over the course of a week. The day before the exchange, we'll count the number received and divide by the number of students to determine how many books each child is able to select. Last year, each of my students was able to choose four books! Since many of my students have no books at home, this is a great way to help them keep reading over the summer.

This year, another colleague, the amazing Maria, convinced me to reach out to the community, as well. My students decorated boxes and I made up a community flyer. I've been going around asking businesses to collect books for us. Our incoming PTA president is going to reach out to our church partners for me, too. I can't wait to see how many donations we get!  I'll blog about the event afterwards and let you know how it turns out.

We played Pinching Paper Clips to review subtraction from 100. Isn't it wonderful when you see them working together and talking about math?  Don't you wish it would last longer than ten minutes before you had to resolve an argument? Or is that just in my classroom? Sigh.

I got in some great relax time last weekend. It was a beautiful day for kayaking with friends on the Catawba River.

I wish I could do this every weekend!

I'm really bad at taking selfies. Can you tell?

Today, I'm relaxing by staying in my PJs 'til 3 in the afternoon (don't judge me), reading, and writing this blog post. But now, I really need to get busy. 

Until next time,