Five things about my week... on a Saturday

I almost didn't attempt to join Five for Friday this week. I was just going to write a summary of our week and let it go at that. But seriously, it's my favorite linky. So thanks again to Doodlebugs Teaching for hosting!

http://doodlebugsteaching.blogspot.com/2014/11/five-for-friday-linky-party-november-21.html

This week seemed to really fly by. On Tuesday night we had our Thanksgiving potluck meal for families and students. I am admitting my shortcoming here. I knew in my head that we needed to prepare some sort of presentations for this, but I never got it in my lesson plans. So.... at 1:30 Tuesday afternoon we started writing skits, stories and poems! But here's what the teacher learned. There's nothing like a hard deadline to make kids buckle down and pull together! The hardest thing for my students is to understand the importance of speaking into the microphone. I talked to them about it, and gave examples of the wrong things to do and the right things to do, but when the rubber hit the road, we could really only hear the Kinder and First grade students, and that was because I held the microphone in front of them.

Second graders wrote a skit about Squanto getting kidnapped! I loved their headgear! 

We worked on our First Thanksgiving project. The housing group decided to recreate the setting of eating outdoors and include a Pilgrim cabin and a Wampanoag teepee by setting up in an empty classroom and making the walls looks like the outdoors.  The clothing group are making items to identify Pilgrims and Native Americans: head coverings, collars, etc. The foods group, well, they are struggling a little. They finally decided to have students vote on meats. That is all the farther they have gotten which could cause a bit of a predicament since I will be purchasing the groceries this weekend. So.... I am not sure how to play this out as a "real world" problem solving skill, but I'll come up with a master plan and introduce it and then see how it plays out. The activities group made games for the students to play, as well as learning Blind Man's Bluff and Leap Frog to teach us. They will explain that one of the adult activities, Log Throwing, is something we chose not to recreate for safety reasons and share their research with the class. Photos really don't portray the excitement in the students' actions and words.  Photos can portray so much, but sometimes they lack so much too. So.... hold tight, we'll have photos of the big day!

We worked on word problems and measurement in math this week. My group of early finishers needed something to do, so we started working on making up a roll-a-turkey game. They are still in the process of recording all the steps so they can teach it to the rest of the class.

Our finished turkeys! I was right there with them, making a big, fat turkey.  The lower turkey had his feathers all over his body! I call that thinking outside the box. 

p.s. Have I mentioned that these impromptu moments are my faves? They are. Times when we come up with something on the fly that just makes it all fun.

We had so much fun that all levels were asked to make a math game to share with us.  Here are the Fourth graders....hard at work?

So I found out this past week that I have a classroom budget and how that works is that I turn in receipts for purchases made. But the way I found out was when I was being informed that they are soon going to be frozen, so I am losing it. I have thought of a million things off and on again that I "need" for my room.  What are the things you cannot live without? I am thinking a cart with a drawer for each student may help simplify things considerably.  Each drawer could hold their corrections/not done work and a folder for done/ready to be graded work, reading homework folders and math homework folders. That is where my mind is headed. I know many other things we could use, but this may be the most organizational of them all. And goodness knows I need all the organization help I can possibly get. And advice. What helps you organize the most? I am all about the biggest bang for my buck... the most organization with the least amount of space as well as conserving the almighty dollar.