My week

So this week has been crazy hectic, but it's been fun. My Student teacher unit of course started this week, and I have been running around like a crazy person! My mentor teacher has been taking the opportunity to go to the teachers lounge and get work done during this week, which is really the first time she's ever left for long periods of time and I've been soley in charge. It's been an experience!!! :)

I jokingly made the comment this week that I've discovered that I don't have much patience when 15 people are trying to all talk to me at once, and with having to repeat myself 10 times in a span of 5 minutes, so do you think it's too late to change my major?! ;) But of course I'm just joking. Although those things are very frustrating to me, I know I belong in the classroom. I love it.


I started the kids on a 2 week group research project, our topics include mummies, The Salem Witch Trial, The Bermuda Triangle, The History of Halloween, The Loch Ness Monster, and scorpions!

Look at these guys, they were so interested in learning more about their topics...












This was Red Ribbon week, which means some kind of dress up day every day. We had sports day (I wore Texas even though I thought I might be drawn and quartered, lol), crazy sock day,wear red day, crazy hair, and my personal favorite, decade day!

The Red Ribbon fairy made visits to the classes (she's the counselor).......





TheDecade outfits cracked me up!! I look good as a hippie.....

































We started the mealworm investigation this week, the kids are loving it of course! They are not only learning about life cycles and what an organism needs to survive, but they are also keeping a worm journal, writing as if they are the worm. There have been some pretty funny entries....

















Today was crazy hat/ crazy hair day, and this school has some of the most elaborate hair creations I have ever seen!! Like this girl, you can't quite tell in the picture, but it is sticking straight out, and in fact she has a cup stuck in the middle giving it the shape, and then her hair is all around it. I bet there were 6 or more girls with hair like this today, so it must be something that word got around on before, I've never seen anyone put a cup in their hair to make it stand up!




this is a bit better picture of her hair on the right....





Me and my hat twinkie.





Today we did "Pumpkin-ology", which went much smoother than I thought it would! I had 6 stations set up, and 4 adults (2 parents came to help!). The kids were in 6 groups of 4 (one group only had 3). My UCO supervisor came, and even made comments about how well it went, how well the kids behaved, and what a creative and fun lesson it was. Kudos to me. :)

We had the measuring station, where first they estimated how much their pumpkin weighed, how tall it was, what its circumference was, and how many vertical lines it had on it. Then they performed the actual measurments, and graphed the data on bar graphs.




We had the Observation station, where they had to write observations about their pumpkin and then draw it. They had to be much more specific than just "round" and "orange". I told them that if we lined up all of the pumpkins, they would need to make observations that would allow them to pick out their own pumpkin, so it needed to be specific characteristics of that particular pumpkin.




There was a writing station where they had to write a haiku about their pumpkin.




There was the Art station where they learned about symmetry and did a symmetry pumpkin pattern.




We had the 'sink or float' station. They had to quess if the pumpkin would sink or float, and then try it out and discuss why it floated.





We had a seed counting station. First they had to estimate the amount of seeds, and then count them, then graph the amount on a bar graph. I had spend last night cutting open all 6 pumpkins, cleaning them out, washing the seeds and putting them back in. Little did I realize just how many seeds there were. 2 of them had over 500 seeds!! They put them in piles of 10, as you can see, it was quite a task! After they did that, they had to estimate how many days it would take a seed to sprout throught the ground when planted, and then we planted one seed per group in a dixie cup.




Then I served up pumpkin pie and pumpkin roll....yummy!





A former NFL player, Jeff Neal, from the team that was once the Houston Oilers, came today to speak to our 4th & 5th graders about believing in yourself, never doing drugs, not hanging around the wrong people, treating people with kindness, and about his personal faith in Jesus.

This was one big fella.







His main theme was "Never let go of your dreams" the towel here is supposed to represent the kid's dreams and he was to never let go. It was pretty cute.




Then right after that, The Mad Scientist came and did a presentation, which was of course lots of fun.






Now I am beat down, and about ready to go collapse on the couch and zone out in front of the TV!! Gotta gear up for our busy halloween tomorrow though. We have a toddler party with Starla's friends at 11am, and then we are going to have dinner and then go trick or treating with another family. Fun times!