Five for Fri-turday??? (Feb. 10-14)

Busy Come, Busy Go!

Whew!  This has been one busy, busy week!  & to tell you the truth, we only had students through Thursday.  Did I mention it was busy!!  I want to retire that word for a while.  Let's start from the top:

Forgotten, Surprise, & Cancelled Parent Conferences, Oh my:  

On Monday, we had a 7:45am parent/teacher conference scheduled.  On Friday of the week before, Mrs. Newton (my S.T.) and I discussed needing to be at the school a little earlier than normal so we could set up for the kiddos and then be prepared for the conference.  And so we did.  But when 7:45 rolled around we waited, and waited, and waited.  NO SHOW!  Ugh.  The main reason I do not usually schedule "before school" conferences.  I have had that happen to me so often.  I do have to say that I received and email later that day apologizing.  But on Tuesday afternoon it was a different story.  I told Lacey that we had a little break because we didn't have another morning one until next week but SURPRISE...after we made our way to the classroom around 7:40ish on Wednesday, the phone rings with a voice that tells us our conference is in the office.  Wait, what?  What conference?  It's a good thing I had all the Data Portfolios ready to go.  & of course the ever so famous cancelled conference that left us with a huge gap between end of school and a LATE, LATE conference.  I'm not sure if we got all we should have in that nice little down time.  Needless to say, we only have one more week left with all that conference madness.  On the positive side of this whole hoolabaloo, this is the first time I am inviting students into the conference to share his/her Data Portfolio and it is going AMAZINGLY!  The kiddos are doing such a great job sharing and coming up with goals for the rest of the year.  I love how they are connecting the dots between their work in class and progress towards moving on.  Parents are giving me wonderful feedback about this approach.  I am in TX which is NOT Common Core, but I love the ideas out there about creating the data portfolio and helping students be accountable. How about you fellow teachers out there?  Do parent conferences drive you bonkers?  Any further suggestions for personal data portfolios?

    

Creative Juices Flowin'

  Creating is sooooo relaxing for me!  So Wednesday night after all the crazy first half of the week, I was excited to sit down to create my valentines for my kiddos.  So there I was with all sorts of ribbon and some JUMBO, colorful paperclips I found at Target a few weeks back.  They came out so cool! & I wish I would have taken a pic of all of them together so you could see the variety but...I forgot!  Ugh.  I added a Homework Coupon that I created and viola...V-day Bookmarks!  Here is a snapshot of the extra one I had left:

Money, money, money...MONEY!

Since it was a Student Holiday on Friday, we had our Vday party on Thursday.  It wasn't until the last part of the day, but we had fun incorporating some different Vday stuff into the day.  Since we are currently working with money, my S.T. decided to have students earn quarters throughout the day and use their earnings to buy decorations for their Valentine Bags.  Then we opened up the store and they purchased what they wanted.  There were lots of great conversations about coin amounts, costs, making change, and even subtraction.

The store was open for business at the end of the day.

Bring On the Party!

Our Homeroom Parent is in charge of our festivities and my room mom ROX!! She if fabulous.  For our Holiday Party, I shared with her some Minute-2-Win-It ideas and we had a blast so she brought the fun back.  We had M2WI V-day style.  

I couldn't show the silly pics of the kiddos trying to get that cookie from their forehead to their mouth because my cute, little smiley (from Emerald at IfYouMustacheIHeartTeaching) would cover up the cookie so I used my room mom's demonstration pic instead.  I'm sure she'll appreciate that.  Teehee!  At the end of the party, Mrs. Newton and I decided to have a Cookie Face face-off.  You already know who the victor was.  I'm surprised the kids and I didn't begin running celebration laps around the room, the excitement was so big.  All I can say is that when it comes to those Berry Oreos, I can make my face do amazing things to get it from my forehead to my mouth.

 

If your read my previous post, you read how much I love to surprise my loved ones.  Well, my hubby surprised me this time.  For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what he was giving me for V-day.  He dropped a hint earlier in the week but it just didn't spark anything.  So after I surprised him with my jar full of goodies and movie, he runs out of the room and back in with a piece of paper in his hand.  "Mine isn't as fancy as yours," he says.  & taadaa!

He's taking me to see Robin Thicke!!  Every year we gear up for the Houston Rodeo and Livestock Show.  There are so many great concerts.  Last year we saw The Zac Brown Band.  This year, there are so many other great artists, we might just be out there a few times.  I can't wait!  My hubby is the best!!