The Day I Was Called Nana...

It's been a while, friends!  Sorry!

 

The 100th day of school, Valentine's Day, an 11 hour parent-teacher conference day, and an "emergency drill that turned out to not be a drill" to top off the week on Friday afternoon will do that to a girl! 

 

I don't have tomorrow off for President's Day...but I know lots of you do so ENJOY and stay in your jammies for as long as humanly possible tomorrow so I can live vicariously for you.

 

I still have some school work to do to get ready for the week so I'm going to let the pictures do most of the talking!

 

We played tons of math games this week to work on new stuff (skip counting, numbers to 100, patterns on a 100s chart, etc.)  as well as to review some old stuff that was a little shaky on the last cumulative test.

 

My kiddos were still struggling with ordering 3 numbers from least to greatest and greatest to least.  I made a simple litle sheet for them to practice and used a deck of cards to spice things up a bit.  They worked with a partner to draw 3 cards, build cube towers for each of the cards, and order the 3 numbers from least to greatest before recording on the sheet. 

 

 

They LOVED this little fact family activity (more review).  It is available in my TPT store for 2 bucks!
 

We partied hard on Valentine's Day!  We kept the food simple because let's be honest...the kids are WAY too excited about those silly little paper valentines to care much about eating.  We did make these little Valentine Floats (lots of versions on pinterest!) as a fancy-schmancy drink!

They were a hit!  I used a scoop of vanilla ice cream, cherry 7-up, LOTS of whipped cream, and fun sprinkles!  I'm not a huge fan of anything cherry but the kids slurped them right up (and I may or may not have eaten a cup full of whipped cream and sprinkles).

 

I did glowstick valentines (thank you Target dollar spot!) and the kids loved wearing them as bracelets.

 

My favorite part of Valentine's Day was (and always is)  the "Bucket Books" that I make for the kids.  It's a kind of a pain-in-the-rear project that I always end up being glad I did once I make them and the kids read them.

Over the years, I've simplified it a little bit and it's really not so bad.

 

Basically, I call each kid up one at a time (you need to start a week or two in advance)  and ask them to give every member of the class a compliment...something to "fill their bucket."  They come up with some great things...some need a little prompting, but it's actually amazing what they can usually come up with on their own.

 

I type each compliment on a blank page of labels (in MS Word).

 

Then, I print them out and stick each label on a half sheet of paper.  I put all of the half sheets in a gallon ziploc bag and we take an afternoon for the kids to illustrate all of the pages of compliments that they came up with.

 

Then, I sort them by student so that each kid gets an entire book of compliments about themselves!

 

 

You should just see their sweet faces light up when they start reading through them. They're shocked at some of the things that people think about them! 

 

Here are some sweet examples of the kinds of compliments that my sweeties came up with.

 

Total sweetness.

 

Now...my LEAST favorite part of Valentine's Day was when a child called me "Nana" by accident.  Don't get me wrong...I get called "mom" every other day but "NANA"??

 

Sheesh...time to look into some new concealer and wrinkle cream, I believe.

 

The only redeeming part of this little cutie calling me Nana was that he also brought me a red rose and gave me this card.

 

My heart offically melted.  He can call me Nana all he wants now.
(and he gets an A on everything from now on forever and ever, amen)
Kidding...kinda.

 

On a completely unrelated note...look what I got in the mail yesterday! 

We are now officially ready for the wedding (hurry up, May!) because our "son" has his attire!

  How handsome is this little dude?

 

Stud. muffin.

 

 

Happy Monday!

 

Happy teaching to you!