What? Friday? Already? or Finally? Five for Friday

Whoot! Five for Friday! I look forward to this all week! Some of the best parts of my week I already posted about here! So check it out.

1. The dry spell. I know every teacher feels it. I knew it would be devastating for me because I take everything SO PERSONAL. It's been quite a dry spell. I've been banging my head against the wall about behavior management/character development since Christmas break. After awhile, it kills the joy. We've been working on becoming bucket fillers. My kiddos know that one way to fill my bucket is to give me a hug. Somehow they have started doing this during bathroom breaks (...okay.... ????), but it never ceases to make me smile and last week on the Friday that came on Thursday we even did a group hug. It was silly.  It was good. I was sad when I filled out third nine weeks report cards because I thought I'd see more magic than I did. So I fall asleep wondering how I can be a better teacher and how am I going to ensure that my students succeed both academically and socially. It's draining and I see why good teachers quit. Well, in some areas I am still seeing red flags, some social situations still perplex me, but the magic is starting again and I couldn't be happier about it.When the magic happens, that is when I start to make centers out of love, prepare intervention activities and cheerfully give up a few more minutes of "non-teaching time" to prepare to be a better teacher with a cheerful heart. 

2. What a crazy week weather-wise that is! Wednesday there was snow falling most of the day. It was too warm for it to stick, but it was dark, damp, gloomy, and cold. Yesterday it reached 70 and today it was 81 degrees when we went to afternoon recess. CR- AY- ZEE! My adorable little monkeys had a blast on the playground today! I am posting a few pictures. As I was taking pictures of them today, one student says to me "Hey! We can post these pictures on our blog!" Yes ma'am, we can!

Saydi can do pull ups! Impressive! 

"Look at me Ms. Horn!" 

While we "enjoyed" the 80 degree weather it was blowing like we were in Kansas! Hey, that sounds like something a Kansan would say. Okay, you got me there. I am and always will be a Kansas girl. This made me think of our learning time today. I was tired, the kids were tired. They were sleepy-heads even. So AFTER we did umpteen wiggle songs, we had to do some stretches. Who else has their kids do crazy weird stretches or follow the directions, imagination movement sort of stuff? We had to reach up high and grab a little sunshine and sprinkle it on our neighbor. Then we grabbed ahold of a big gust of wind and "whooshed" it all the way to Kansas! I just thought of this when we were outside and I thought of how crazy it would look to the outside world. But the kids tolerate me at the least and most of them love my goofy antics. Finally, if it wakes them up without hyping them up like speed demons, my goal is accomplished. I thought for a minute today that the wind really might WHOOSH us into Kansas as it came whipping up from Texas! 

3. Today my students were in a second grade class for a little bit and discussed Penguins. We are into penguins in our room. It was probably almost a month ago that we read the book If I Could Go to Antarctica. My class LOVED this story and will write about Antarctica to this day if I get them the chance. Anyway... someone suggested to the second grade teacher (one of my Kinders of course) that penguins live in South America. She said they didn't and looked to me for support. I said we should research it because I thought that we had just found out that they can and do live in South America, but I wanted the facts to back it up. Look it up. My Kinders knew the score, they remembered accurately. Yeehaw! Which brings me to today's writing assignment.

4. Somehow, somewhere, I have misplaced a book for my lessons. Sometimes I borrow my teaching partner's book, and sometimes I make a copy of the story. I have the textbook, really, I just don't know where. Somehow my copy for today is missing print. It looked as if it was missing print at the top and bottom of the page. I found this out AS I WAS READING! Yikes! So.... I improvised. The end of the story is missing. So we made out our own. It is a story about a girl who can fly in her dreams. My students stories mostly ended with flying to some place special. Oh... I have to share this... sorry.... ADHD is in full swing here.... one of my students who does not speak English and is not native to the United States, is enamored with Idaho. I have no idea why or where he got his infatuation. But today his story ended with the girl flying to Idaho. It was precious. Some students' stories ended with the girl flying to Mexico, or the park, or the movies.... 

I love writing! I love seeing them grow and flourish. I love their imaginations. See? Magic. I'm telling you, the magic is back. I love that we could make up our own ending to the story. I told the students to think of it in their imagination and keep it there until handwriting so we could write about it. 

5. I felt so poor as I started my five. I felt like I really didn't have enough material to write about and what in the world could I blog about. Well, here I am at number 5 and I can't decide if I should write about a random something from my personal life (I have two of them, wait, three!), or something else from school because it was adorable. Okay... school! While were having a lovely time outside today a student comes up to me and tells me some "fact" that totally doesn't make sense and I am scratching my head about this one. And I get set to argue with her and she hits me with it... "April Fool's Ms. Horn!" Ugh! I've been April Fooled! It would be so much funnier if I could remember what silly anecdote she told me. But look at this sweet face? Who would think she'd April Fool's me? 

"April Fool's Ms. Horn!"

Read em and weep people! Okay, no weeping. Just hop on over to Doodle Bugs and read em. And maybe link up. Enjoy. I know I certainly do every week. My Saturday morning ritual is to read everyone's Five for Friday and drink coffee. Happy Friday everyone! I'm off to the movie with the Redhead!