Fantastic Friday Five

I love this idea. Reflect on the week. What are five great things/activities that I want to document or celebrate?

Saw this idea from  Jill's blog: Marvelous Multiagers  and she found it on Taylor's blog: Baking...Crafting...Teaching, and I want to do it also.

1. Math time is really coming together. Lesson, and then 3 rotations (teacher, seatwork, and hands-on manipulatives). Loved being able to make the concepts more difficult or easier as needed. And by Thursday, the students were really getting the rotation as well.

2. We had two birthday parties this week. On Tuesday we celebrated my aide that is with us during writing, and today we celebrated a sweet little girl. It was very fun and meaningful.

3. Writing minilessons: This week we focused on leaving spaces between words and today when we were writing our birthday letters a girl who has been struggling with remembering spaces raised her hand to show me that she remembered her spaces. You should have seen her beam. Lovely.

4. The smile on a sweet boys face as he realized that he can use his knowledge about letters and their sounds to read words and sentences and books. Another beam. More lovely.

5. Several times this week I had to remind myself (outloud, in front of the children) to keep my composure. So much work, but I did it! It has really helped that each morning our star helper has lead our entire class in a stress relieving activity (star, drain, balloon, pretzel).

6. Saw several kids wearing their t-shirts from last year. Today when I told him I liked his shirt another boy from our class last year told me, "you remember--it was from our school family." They still remember what I called them. Smile.

I might be able to go on, and on and on. I am feeling so grateful tonight. To have completed another week. To know that the students have a four-day weekend (I only have a three-day weekend). To start watching my boys play fall soccer. To know that my husband has a meaningful job (two of them actually). To know that I am loved and that I love.