Five for Friday

Our poetry unit has officially begun in third grade!

We are writing acrostics, couplets, haikus, free verse, perspective poetry, and black out poetry.

The kids are so excited!

We've also been experimenting with our sharing time during Writer's Workshop. Instead of sharing whole group and only having time for 2 kids to share what they wrote, every once in a while we have sharing partners. The partners share with each other in the final five minutes of Writer's Workshop and offer feedback. It has worked out really nicely!

LEGOS!

They are the most engaging toy that I can convert into a learning tool, by far!

Use them for morning work, STEM/STEAM time, or incorporate them into subject areas.

Lego Bundle of Awesomeness!

It's time to prepare for our annual NAKED EGG EXPERIMENTS!

I do this every year with my class. We practice writing experiments, using an observation journal, and writing a hypothesis through this super duper engaging experiment.

If you have never done it, it is basically putting a raw egg in white vinegar for a few days. After a few days, run the egg under warm water and gently rub the shell off. It will feel like rubber and be bigger. The kids love it. From there, I let the kids design their own experiments to conduct on their naked eggs!

Be aware...sometimes eggs pop. So, I always have a few extra ready to go!

Naked Egg Experiment

Exciting news...

I've been crazy busy lately, but I am thrilled to say that I'm in the midst of looking for a new home, and I think we've found it! Since my boyfriend and I moved in together and I sold my house, things have been a tiny bit cramped. It's hard to stay organized when you're smushed and a lot of your stuff is in storage! So, I'll cross my fingers and hope that this new house works out for us! :)

I tried cleaning Lucy's toy bin (one of THREE toy bins) out today. But she hoarded her toys. Toys she NEVER plays with until I want to clean house. Of course.

What are they all staring at?

My class has a special recess on Fridays. You earn it by doing your work throughout the week and being respectful. AKA being a good student and a good person. We do fun science experiments, like making ice cream in a bag or mixing corn starch and water (BEST.EVER.), or going to the playground. And then one of my stubborn kiddos who has been having a rough year got really into a book about rocks and minerals. So, I went online and ordered a rocks and minerals kit, along with geodes. And that was Fun Friday. It was awesome. We smashed the geodes with hammers and ooooh-ed and ahhhh-ed at the crystals inside. The kiddos marveled at the rock collection I spread on the back table. It was fun. And then it was over.

One week later, we celebrated Fun Friday again. And I had a fun afternoon planned, BUT my kiddos requested the rock collection. They wanted to sort the rocks and classify them with the chart that it came with. They wanted to look up more information about the rocks on the computers. One kid brought in a notebook and took notes!

Another week goes by and once again, I have kiddos asking to sort the rocks. We even went out to the playground one day and I saw kids sprawled out in the rocks searching. It was pretty adorable. And the easiest indoor Fun Fridays I had planned in my 6 years of teaching!

Anyway, if you're looking for an engaging and semi-education recess idea...scrounging up some rocks might just hit the spot for your kiddos, too!

Making Five Minute Ice Cream in a Bag

Eveery Friday, my class celebrates FUN FRIDAY! Basically, kids who did all of their classwork and homework receive a half hour and fun activities. This week, I planned five minute ice cream in a bag!

So, I spent some time putting cream and vanilla extract in little plastic baggies, and put those into bigger plastic baggies. Next, the kids and I went outside in the freezing cold and put snow into the big plastic bag. We spent 2 minutes outside and froze our buns off.

After that, we went inside and SHOOK OUR BAGS!!! Five minutes of shaking a plastic bag of snow is seriously a blast. The kiddos were grinning from ear to ear. And then I look over to see the one kid who was taking it too far, slapping her baggies on a small table. Let's think this through. Plastic bag + sharp corners of a table = exploded bag and ice cream goo everywhere. And that's exactly what happened.

Except it exploded on the girl doing the slapping, two unfortunate boys standing nearby, and my entire listening center.

I wasn't mad. I just said, "It was an accident. Clean it up and then join our Fun Friday."

Of course the tears came. Crying. Sobbing while cleaning up ice cream from the crevices of the listening center. Upset that her ice cream was ruined.

Oh, by the way, it turned out to be more like ice cream soup. Still fun!

Option Number 3: Cry in a pile of coats.

This week, I made a few students cry. Pretty typical for fourth grade. They tend to be quite sensitive at this age, but also bounce back quickly. So, a few kiddos crying in one week doesn't have a tremendous impact on me anymore. Five minutes later they're giving me hand drawn pictures and telling me about their favorite video game.

So, one of my little girlies was out sick one day this week. The next day, she returned. About 15 minutes into the school day, she asks to go to the nurse to get her temperature checked. (Sidenote: her guardian sent in a note saying that she was FINE.)

"No, you can go to the nurse in one hour, if you are still feeling sick. Work on your math center folder."

I walk away. I look back to see this lady with a tissue against her ear, coughing into the air rudely and loudly, and a whole table of girls just staring at her. Their math work open and untouched in front of them. Obviously this sick show is way more interesting.

"Fine. If you're going to put on a show, go to the nurse. But you better hope you have a temperature for causing this scene in our classroom. Your choice. Stay in class and do your work quietly, or go to the nurse and go home."

I walk away. I turn just in time to see her sitting in a pile of coats, sobbing. (Yes, fourth graders struggle to hang coats and SOMETIMES there is a pile of coats on our floor.)

Planned ignoring. Planned ignoring. Planned ignoring.

Five minutes later, she is working on her math center folder at the back table.

...I knew she wasn't sick.