Five for Friday....

I know I am not alone in this. This was a tough week in Kindergarten. We've been discussing character development and discussing and discussing. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.... Throw in Valentine's Day and sugar and the word "party."  So I will look for Five Random reasons to be grateful and not focus too much on the negative. Five for Friday. Join Doodle Bugs Teaching for a linky party! Five for Friday, five random things from your week or day, from school or home. I don't think that there is a "rule" for comments, but read other blogs and comment, it's a great way to be encouraging and to build your own community of web friends.

1. Gorgeous snow. It didn't get cold enough to stick really and it didn't snow enough to call school.  But it was beautiful. Monday night it snowed.

2. Valentine Fish. I could have played this up a lot more than I did. The idea for this comes out of a Mailbox magazine for teachers. Does anyone else still use these? I could have added a cute phrase to my bulletin board that said "Fishing for Valentines." But I wanted the students' writing papers on the board. Also, normally when I develop something for a bulletin board, it is a final draft that has been written, corrected and written in "personal best" handwriting.  This one just came about and we did our handwriting on the papers we could use to add with our fish and that was that. I am proud of these because I see where some students' handwriting has improved, some students' letter shape/fine motor skills has improved, and some students' confidence has improved so they will venture into "kid-writing" (phonetic spelling). My students are working so hard and improving so much. Sometimes I forget how much they have already grown and changed. During writing time today I was working with a student and decided to video her.  I didn't start right when I walked over to her, but I got a lot of hard work recorded (sounding out, identifying the letter, writing the letter, reading the words/sentence that she wrote). I should have it up by the end of the weekend. 

3. Today we read Have You Filled a Bucket Today. We've read it before an we'll read it again. I just realized as I was typing that my students are able to sit through it now, but at the beginning of the school year it was too long and "complex" for them to handle all at once. I found some resources to use with this, some post cards to encourage and praise students who fill buckets, and a chant to say as a class. To get bucket filler resources, look here.

4. More character development... today we watched Jessica's Daily Affirmations on youtube. Then we developed five affirmations that we can do daily in our class. After we finish saying them, we agreed to say/yell/chant: "Let's Do It!" We are planning to post a video after we've practiced a bit more. So be watching next week. 

5. We made a video of our class saying our Five Classroom Rules. I am aware that whatever drawl I had before we moved here is nothing compared to the drawl I have developed. This is somewhat curious to me since my friends and neighbors don't have that strong of a drawl. But listening to myself on the video cracks me up.  How will my poor students learn English when their teacher's English is hidden behind a great big southern drawl? Hmmm. Anyway.... character development, rules, etc. Here it is.

That is my Five this week. I am looking forward to having Monday without kiddos. And technically we have it "off." But I usually work on school every weekend, and generally I work on school stuff all weekend.  So this weekend I am not doing that. I am not doing ANY of it until Monday.  What I'm saying is this... I will be at school Monday morning, just like usual, working, but without my students there. Just because the calendar doesn't say "Teacher Workday" doesn't mean we aren't working. 

Happy Weekend! I would love to hear about classroom rules, and what you do for character development. I had a room full of girls who were not kind to each other today: laughing at another's misfortune, tattling, making up things to tattle about, being rude, hurting feelings. :( What do you do in your classroom to stress to students that we care about each other and do not treat each other this way?