Pittsburgh

I had a whirlwind trip to Pittsburgh last week. I just loved it there. Man, it was sooo pretty! As I sat there, in awe of its beauty, I realized how boring the scenery in Texas is...and Oklahoma for that matter. The mountains and rivers, bridges and amazing architecture. It's beautiful!!! For reals. So many cool things to do there. And I will be back soon so that I can go see my Steelers...and my family again. :)

Here is Pittsburgh...through the eyes of Instagram

The Hunger Games

Tomorrow Night.  Midnight. I will be at this movie and I cannot wait!

Thank you Scholastic Book Clubs for my Mockingjay pin. :)

With all the excitement of The Hunger Games, I decided it would be fun to make a graph. I had to get creative (since I don't teach reading) on how I could get my kids excited about the books. It wasn't hard, it's spreading like wildfire. 

I covered half of my chalkboard with this. The Mockingjay Club. 

When a kid has read a book, they can write their name on a post it note and put it on our graph. I can't wait to see how it grows. I have a lot of kids in the middle of one of these, but I wouldn't let them put their name up here until the finish the book. :)

 (The last section is for the movie)

This was last minute. One of my kids says "What do we get for being in the club?" So we made stickers using labels. I guess the satisfaction of completing a great book didn't work like it did for me. Ha! 

Who's ready for the movie??

Diaries of Aunt Katie

It's been a while since I've showed off my beautiful nieces so here we go.
Diaries of Aunt Katie...straight from the iPhone. :)

Harper and Ella Kate,
I love you to the moon and back.
You guys have brought such joy to my heart and I hope you always know that!
I LOVE YOU!!!
Aunt Katie

Ella Kate

 and Harper

Twitter Board

A few months ago I found this super cute idea on Pinterest.

via

I knew I wanted to use it at some point so I pinned it. :) We use Twitter a lot in my classroom. I have a class Twitter page and we love to "Think-Pair-TWEET." Twitter in the Classroom is a pretty cool thing and there are tons of neat things you can do with it. It's actually pretty amazing how much effort kids put out anytime I mention we're going to tweet. :)

Earlier this week I sent home an assignment. It was called "A Tweet in the Life of of a 5th Grader." They basically just had to write what their status update or tweet would be all day/night. Anything they thought, were doing, etc. I put about 20 lines on the paper and just about everyone filled them all in. :) You would've thought I just gave them all a million bucks they were so excited that their homework was to tweet. Ha!

The next day we shared our tweets and did activities involving Elapsed Time. Then, we put the tweets in chronological order. :)

I just got my official Twitter Board up this afternoon (just in time for Open House) so I wanted to share.  As you can imagine, it's quite the hit in the 4th and 5th grade hall.

Kony 2012

Kony 2012 is a call for help, a social campaign and a worldwide movement to expose Joseph Kony and the horrible crimes he does against the children of Africa. He's been doing them for 20 years and Invisible Children are out to change that with our help.

If you haven't heard of this, please watch the video. Sharing it helps, taking action can help bring justice and change lives. It's a pretty awesome awareness campaign brought to us through social channels like this but also Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and more. Young people can make a difference.




HOW TO HELP:

Join TRI or Donate to Invisible Children
  http://bit.ly/yp5Ffv 
Purchase KONY 2012 products:

http://invisiblechildrenstore.myshopify.com/


Sign the Pledge:
 http://s3.amazonaws.com/kony2012/kony-4.html

I just bought my $30 kit and plan on doing all I can to spread the word.

P.S. Some Science Professor from Yale can say this is a scam and some people might believe him, but I don't. I personally know lots of people involved with Invisible Children and they are a wonderful organization. The purpose of this movement is not for anyone to make money, its to spread the word about something awful happening to kids. 

Teachers!

Tell me this isn't true....

Valentines Day

 We had our Valentine's Day party on Friday and boy, was it fun! I was so impressed with our room moms and their fun games. I wanted to share one of the things we did. Minute to Win It...Valentine's Day.

Each kid got a game board 

and a ziploc bag with all the items they'd need

                                 

1 Twizzler, 1 Pixy Stick, 1 Hershey Kiss and 20 M&M's

Here are the directions to the game...

Game board set up (via)

And here are some kids in action. At first I was nervous that Pixy Stick sugar would be everywhere...but it wasn't. Thank goodness! We timed them to see who could get through it the fastest, kind of like a relay. Fastest time in my room was 1 minute. 

It was a great Valentine's Day party! We had pizza for lunch, and then THIS for dessert! We like to go all out. Cupcakes and cookies just get boring every year. Why not have chocolate covered strawberries, marshmallows, pretzels, cookies, etc.

Then to end our party, we all sat in a big circle (oval) and opened all of our valentines. They made their boxes at home as a project when we finished up our Geometry Unit. It was their 3D/ VD Project. They just had to decorate (or in some cases construct) a 3D shape and make into their Valentine's Day box. Much cuter than the paper bag if you ask me...