Hi-Ya!

I was a little too lazy to do my hair this morning, so I put it in a ponytail and tied a colorful scarf around as a headband.  I thought it to be pretty stylish, but my kiddos usually take a different spin on some of my "stylish" decisions; one of the first comments I got while my kids were walking in the door today was, "Ms. W--you look like a ninja!"  Why, thank you . . .

On to some more of the good stuff:

"Hugger of the Day"
At the front of my classroom, I have about a dozen jobs hanging up--everything from chair stackers, to weather reporter, to librarians, and, of course, the helper of the day.  Really, this person helps me by turning on and off the lights, pushing buttons on the SMARTBoard, and passing out papers if there are any.  Well, yesterday my helper was hugging me all day long.  Y'all, I love hugs, but it was getting to be a little overkill.  Early afternoon, I said to her something along the lines of, "sweetheart, Ms. W needs a little personal space for right now; can we save our hugs for the end of the day?"  She looked a little shocked and said to me, "but Ms. W, I'm your hugger of the day.  I was just doing my job!"  Can you see why I love my job??

Hard words to spell
of = uv
has/his = haz/hiz
drop = jrop
(Say these out loud . . . these kiddos really are on to something!)

Blogs aren't the only thing I write
Yesterday during reading groups, I had a stack of guided reading books on my reading table that I was in the middle of sorting.  We got to the end of one of my groups and one of my students looked me right in the eye and said, "Gosh, Ms. W, did you write all of those books?!?  You must be realllllly busy!"  Oh, the free time that my students think I have!

Shapes galore
Today we started our math unit on Geometry--I can already tell that I think it might be a favorite of mine :)  (I owe it to give a shout-out here to my mom, a math teacher who taught me everything I know about geometry--thank you, mom!)  We started out classifying shapes: a circle, square, rectangle, and triangle.  I was so impressed with some of the things my kiddos said in regards to how many sides/corners they had and what the shapes reminded them of.  After talking about them, we sat on the rug and looked around our classroom to see if we could find anything in the room that matched those shapes.  I heard examples like, "the coins we counted last week were circles," and, "our cubbies are squares," and, "the lights on the ceiling are rectangles."  But my favorite was when we got to a triangle, when someone said that Ms. Hall's (our fabulous math specialist who was in the room) shoe--she was wearing some fierce pointed-toe heels--had a triangle on the toe part of the shoe!  Adorable--and so observant!

Then we eased into some investigation time with our pattern blocks--if there is one thing I am so thankful for in our math curriculum, it is that we use a ton of manipulatives.  Before moving into the task at hand for today (making specific shapes with the pattern blocks), the kiddos got to explore with the blocks.  This helped a ton so that they weren't tempted to play while we were in the middle of the lesson!

One of my students made "a flower growing with rain coming out of the clouds above," another made, "a throne with the king's crown next to it," and another created, "a pumpkin with a face on it--a jack-o-lantern!"  Some things I was able to capture on camera:

"My neighborhood"

"A slithering snake"

"Carrots growing and a rabbit about to eat them!"

This week's been a crazy one--hopefully those that surround you at work are keeping you on your toes as much as my company is!  (For many of you, that would be your coworkers; for me, that's my kiddos!)  Happy Hump Day!


Love from Room 106,
Allie