Five for Friday--January 18, 2013 Edition

My friend Kacey at Doodle Bugs has this linky party. It is so much fun. I like to go to her party.

Kinda crazy that I start my Fridays now thinking about what will I post tonight; do I need a picture of that; and Wow, that would be great to put in a "Five" post.

1. Some guys (a writer and a photographer) from Reuters came to my school this morning to interview us, take pictures, and have a look around. I had my speech ready, but they did not come to talk to me.

2. Because these guys were in the building, we all tried to do "Ag Project Based Learning." My lesson wasn't really PBL, but it was ag. We talked about farm safety. Specifically what kind of shoes are a good idea to wear when working with animals. 

Our experiment was: in which shoe would the hot dog not get smooshed if a horse stepped on it. Here are the results...

Steel toe boot was the winner. Then the kids created a poster that spoke to something "farm safety" for a state contest.

Once a sheep stepped on my foot. Ouch. I was wearing tennis shoes, now I do not do sheep chores without my boots.

3. My Amazon order came today. A book about a Disney vacation, and some cool resource books for my class.

4. The kids are really learning that I value neat, tidy, and readable handwriting. Today during the handwriting lesson a little friend who had trouble with a p in her name, brought her paper to me, to show me that she did it correctly. I started to sing "Celebration" and the kids looked at me like I was an alien. Then another friend made a g that gave her trouble the other day and I sang "Celebration" again. Now the whole class decided to quit working and just have a party. Oops!  Thanks to Teacher to the Core for the unit Print Like a Jedi Master. We have fun and we learn to make neat and tidy letters. Sometimes I call the kids my "younglings," other times "padawan." It doesn't crack them up (like it does me), but they love the game of it.

5. If something has to be left out of the day, it is our writing time. But not today. I made time for it. The kids worked for 10 minutes (independently, I know, wow), we had a little powpow to regroup and they went for another 10 minutes. Then it was time for the museum share. Again I loved walking around and then letting the kids brag on each other. 

My brilliant idea was to have the kindergarten teachers come in (spur of the moment--their kids were off at PE or something) and walk around and brag on the kids and see how much they have grown since May 2012. Many smiles (and some tears) from kids and adults alike.

These pictures are oozing LOVE. Walton first graders are amazing. What a great place for me to grow up!