Five for Friday - February 12

Happy almost Valentine's Day and almost 3 day weekend! I'm hopeful to survive the Valentine's Party at 2pm today.  Should be a fun one! We're playing Minute to Win It Games with Valentine's candy.

I'm linking up for another Five for Friday.  Link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching here.  Here's what we've been up to this week....

This week our study of measurement has taken us to finding the area of shapes.  To start off, we found the area of rectangles and squares using Cheeze-It's.  Much more fun than just counting grid squares :-).  We did that too, but I love starting with a fun hands-on activity! Gets them engaged from the get go. This is from the Common Core Classes' Cover Up Activities on TPT.

We also begun our next PBL Project. For this project, we are studying important historical figures and how they have contributed to the world. Students were able to choose between George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and Rosa Parks.  Each group has a bucket full of books, articles, and websites (on the iPads) and folders with planning packets.  Excited to see where this project takes us! I love doing project based learning. Best way to teach social studies in my opinion in addition to other curricular areas.

So I'm not sure who was more excited about this project...me or the kids. I found this awesome area activity from Blair Turner. It's called Dream House project. I couldn't wait to make my sample of my dream house and then find the area of all of the rooms.  The kids are loving creating their "dream" house that fits their passions! I'll show the finished projects next week!

So I'm sort of the queen of wearing flip flops. Now, I've not been proclaimed queen, but I am well-known for always wearing flip flops. As we know, flip flops do not last forever. Yesterday was the day for a pair to go to a better place. And of course the flip flop broke at about 8:10. School starts a 8.  Not the best way to start the day. Luckily I had unused socks that I have in my room for white board erasers, so that saved my feet until I could run home on my break.  I received this little note from one of my kids during writing station. They were all very concerned.  One even offered to make me a new shoe out of cotton balls! Gotta love kids! 

http://other98.com/teachers-dont-just-teach/

So this one is not a picture, but a link to a letter I saw on Facebook. I'm sure most of you have seen this, but it's always good reminder and validates the many things that teachers deal with. It's a letter written by a teacher to parents, letting them know that they do in fact see and worry about everything that goes on in the classroom, but we still can't discuss it or explain it or share it with parents. It details the worry and the struggles that teachers go through trying to reach each child and especially those kids that are more difficult to reach. This letter really strikes a cord with me as I've had kids like this, but I had an especially tough year a few years ago where many of the situations mentioned were happening in my room.  I felt like no matter what I did, it was never enough and I literally worried about these kids every minute of every day to the point of making myself sick from stress. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is take a minute to read it or re-read it and know that we are doing the best we can in a very difficult job.  And, what we do matters!

Hope everyone has a wonderful Friday! Happy 3 day weekend!

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