Lunch Linky and Grrr Thursday

First, the fun! 4th Grade Folics is having a Lunchbox Linky. OK, my lunch is quite boring, but I love it! Almost every day I have a peanut butter sandwich and an orange. If the oranges are nice and sweet, I feel like I've had dessert. Sometimes I just go crazy and have a cup of pudding, too. I have this cute lunch bag a friend gave me - it makes me feel special :)

 I always finish up with one of these Brach's Nougats. You can tell they are a Christmas candy, so I have to stock up in December, but they have a nice minty flavor, so I have wonderful breath when the kiddos come back :)

As far as my lunch time, it's at 12:20. I always used to eat with one of my teammates, and sometimes one of the other 2 teammates would join us. Then my lunch buddy moved to a new position and I had sad times, 'cuz nobody else wanted to stop working and eat and chit-chat. But then I decided YES I want some adult conversation. So I go to the lounge and eat and there's always somebody in there and we usually talk about silly things. We get 40 minutes, but once a week I have recess duty and only get 20 minutes. Other days, I only take 20 minutes and spend the other 20 getting ready for my afternoon.


See what everyone is eating:
 



Now, my grrr. Thursday was just a horrible day. I felt like all my kiddos were loud and off task. And especially during centers, when I'm supposed to be doing Guided Reading, I was continually saying, "What is your job?" My diabetic lied about going to the nurse, my SPED kid just whined and whined that he didn't get it, and my behavior problems (uh, challenges) were challenging! And that evening, I went home and just vented. I even sent notes home with 3 children - got two back and had better behavior on Friday.
BUT - ah, here's the deal. I think I was in a better mood of Friday. OK, let's not call it a better mood. I was determined NOT to let them get me down. I made up little songs when someone was bugging me terribly.  I used my "happy" voice, not my growly bear voice. And things were better. Why do you think that is? (ha, ha!)


I hate to think that Heather at Heather's Heart is right - ok, I don't really hate to think that, and I'm pretty sure she's right. MY attitude makes a HUGE difference in my classroom. I only wish I could remember that when things get just a teeny bit stressful.


I am having a NO WORK weekend - because I worked all last weekend, and (ha, ha) I totally forgot to bring home what I meant to work on, and I just made an Executive Decision not to go get it.


Have a great weekend! Sara

Foldables

I guess it's a big no-no to post twice in one day. But hey, I have the afternoon off for a dentist appointment, so I'm going for it!

I have 2 foldables (I guess "foldables" isn't a real word, because it has that red squiggly line under it.) Anyway! Our comprehension strategy for this week is Sequence of Events, so next week in centers, I'll have the kids do a Sequence of Events. I'm having them write about their day with this foldable. This is one that they need help with the folding. 

 I tried this last year and got pretty good results.


The other foldable is one I'm using in Science this year. We have been studying States of Matter. We made this foldable together, and we have filled in information about the various forms of matter. 

(I'm running out of copy paper, so we did this on notebook paper. As you can (hopefully) see, we wrote the name of the type of matter on the outside of the flip. On the inside, we describe that type of matter and draw a quick picture. My thought is it will help them remember :)

Laura Candler at Corkboard Connections is hosting this Link Up. Visit her site for lots of ideas!

Spring Linky Party

A spring Linky Party! What fun! 

I made this a while back - I like the Bump games and have enjoyed using them in my class, but I wanted to have the kids focus on specific addends - 7, 8 and 9. My version is called BUMP Plus. So one of my versions of Bump has them rolling a special die (10 sided die - I don't know the fancy-pants name for it) and then adding 7. The same for 8 and 9. 

Anyway, here is my BUMP game. If you use it, please leave me a note :) 


And here's the Linky Party.