New Year...New Adventures!

Well, I'm about a week and a half away from the first day.  Still can't get in my classroom until Monday but at least I can get some things ready before that.  (We have a year-round school in our district who's building is being worked on over the summer, so they are occupying our school until the end of this week.)

I'm sticking with the OWL theme just because I LOVE it and may also be too lazy to change it...but I do have a few things I will be adding to my room this year.  And of course, these ideas are from Pinterest!

The first is for pencils.  You know how your kids are always breaking or losing their pencils.  Well, this  clever teacher decided to use a straw dispenser for new pencils.  You fill it up and any time a student needs a new pencil, they just go and grab one from the box.  Genius!  I bought one online a few weeks ago.  It finally got here and I pulled out my Cricut to cut out vinyl letters for the front.  I saw a few people had also lined the inside with cute scrapbook paper.  I may have to do that too.  Anyway, here's what I've got for now:

OK guys, I'm SOOOOOOO excited about this next idea!  I don't know where the original idea came from.  I got this from a friend's pin but it doesn't link it to a sight.  Ready?....

I'm not done yet, but basically, the idea behind the ReadBox is that the display shows several books that the students might want to try.  I printed off a couple book cover images that I will put up on the red background.  Some of these are in my library but others are just to get ideas of what to read.  I also went to my local library and they had pamphlets recommending books on various interest levels.  I grabbed a few of those and will have them located next to our ReadBox display.  I'm really hoping that my students will get excited about this and find some new things to read.  I'm tired of everyone ready the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" series.  While they are funny and easy...they are TOO EASY!  My kids need more of a challenge and I'm hoping that this will help pump them up.  If you want to use this in your room, feel free to download the "screen" and use it however you'd like!  I'll make sure to post pictures of the finished project next week when it's all set up!

**UPDATE:
Here's the finished ReadBox.  My kids LOVE it!

A Week Later

It's been a crazy, fun week!  We had everything from running laps, pajama parties, pizza parties, game/mim-golfing parties, and lots of laughter mixed with a few tears.  We even made s'mores in a solar oven (made from a pizza box) to finish up our heat and light unit.  It got SUPER messy!

This afternoon, I updated our bulletin board out front.  We have our fun pictures mixed with running for Boston.  The pictures are an upgraded version of what I did last year.  We talked about what we would like to be when we grow up.  I wrote that down on a whiteboard for them to hold.  They then got to hold it, put on some fun glasses, and took a picture!  The title was going to be "Our Future's So Bright We Have to Wear Shades."  Then we wanted to add in the Running for Boston totals.  Here's what we've got know.

Our total for the week includes the miles that we got from a few other classes.  I just got a few more miles that we can add to it.  We're at 392.25 this week!  Almost 400!!  These kids are incredible.

We also had our art contest for the design on our fliers.  This is what we came up with:

Only 12 more days until Summer Break but I'm sure going to enjoy them!!  :)

 

"Most Inspiring Students" Award Goes To...

...Liliana, David, and Hawke!  These three are in my morning class.  Today, I had us go out and run one lap before they could start recess.  During recess, these three kids kept running!  They ran 6 laps, or a mile and a half each.  Then we came in and they announced that they wanted to start a running club during recess.  Monday through Thursday during both morning and lunch recess, they plan on running as long as they can.  Well, I think this in and of itself is pretty awesome.  However...

...we stepped it up a little bit.  I told them that I had heard of a group that was attempting to finish running the miles that were left unfinished in the Boston Marathon.  All those runners who were unable to finish because of the bombing left a total of over 8,000 miles uncompleted.  (Visit this facebook page for more details).  As soon as they heard about this, they wanted to know how many miles they had run and if they could add it to her project.  So we added them up.  They ran a total of 9.25 miles this morning.  But...

...It doesn't stop there.  My kids are seriously amazing. Liliana, David, and Hawke decided that they wanted to keep track of how many miles they ran during the week with their running club so we could contribute to the Run for Boston project.  We spent the next 45 minutes forgetting about the lesson I had planned and worked together as a class to figure out how we could make this work.  We set up a system of tallying our laps as we ran and are even having an art contest to see what picture would best work on our poster.  We want to get the whole school involved if we can.  It's going to be a lot of work, but they are so excited about this new project.  I've never seen them so excited and work together so well.  We found a way to start today during our lunch recess and my kids got the word out to the other third grade students.  We had SO MANY join us in our run.  They took care of everything by themselves today and it went off so well!!!!  After just today's running we have a combined total of 66.5 miles run!  These third graders are truly amazing!!

This has also helped wrap up the Leader in Me program that we've been introducing this year.  We are trying to encourage the students to step up and become leaders in the class, school, and community.  During our discussion, we were amazed to find that we were using all 7 Habits at once and we felt so good about it!  

Here are some pictures I took as I came out at the end of lunch to see how things were going. They were all so happy to help show their support.  Today was such a great and inspiring day!  I am so proud to know and teach these incredible children.

(David is in the orange shirt)

(Hawke is in the light orange shirt with the awesome hair!)

(Hawke again in the orange, Liliana is bringing up the next group in the blue shirt)

(Liliana in the lead)

Nearly made it

Hey all,

Well, sorry for the incredible lack of posting this year.  It's been hectic to say the least.  Jessica found out she was pregnant early on and she just had her baby on Monday morning!  We have a great sub for the rest of the year that speaks Chinese and she's super fun.  We had interviewed her for Jess's job next year but she took a job a little closer to home but at least she's here to finish out the year with us.

Today we did a fun project for the bulletin board outside.  I did this last year but upgraded a little.  The title is "Our Future's So Bright, We Have To Wear Shades" and we took pictures.  Take a look:

Only 25 days left of school!!  :)

Almost there

I'm almost ready and thought I'd let you see a few new pics. 

"OWL" have a blast using these!

Great find Mom! She found this cute little, wooden owl puppet and so I went and got two more and painted them. I may have to go get a few more later this week. I think I might end up using them for groups. When they have an answer ready to share, they have one person hold up their group owl. I was also thinking they would be good on field trips. Give one to each chaperone and they will be a lot easier to find. They just have to hold up their owl and the kids find the right color group. There are an endless amount of opportunities!

Getting Down to the Wire

We're almost down to a week of summer break left and I love setting up my classroom.  Here's a few pictures of my favorite things for you to see!

This is my new management system!  One of my teammates from last year also decided to use owls this year and found this beauty.  She copied it for both of us and I can't wait to use it!

 A new reading comprehension poster I found on Pinterest.  I finally got around to making it and can't wait to use this as well.  It breaks down the story line into the most important aspects that the kids can remember to summarize quickly.

 New birthday calendar: (red and blue class names are written in their respective colors)

 Cute listening poster I found on Pinterest...again!

 And finally...my bulletin board!!!!  :)  I LOVE how it turned out.  Each little owl has the students' names and the color of the class they are in.  As I went to put it up I found out that I'm missing the 'r' in "hooray" and I lost the exclamation points.  I'll recut those this weekend and put them up next week.