Random Thoughts about my week - Five for Friday

{OK, I really, truly was writing this on Friday, but Firefox kept shutting down on me. I finally gave up when my daughter and a friend came home, but I was thinking about it and realized it was the way I was trying to add pictures. So here's try two, a day late.}

How was your week? How was your Friday?
My week seemed long. And my Friday started on a sad note. I was in a meeting this morning when I found out I didn't have the sub I had planned for so I could do DRA testing with my kids. {I don't have to tell you how much fun it is to make sub plans and then have no one come.} All through the day, my kids kept asking when the sub was coming. They just didn't understand why no one was coming. Crossing my fingers and hoping for Monday.

 But here are some good things:

1. Watercolor and Salt paintings - I wrote about this earlier, but now I have pictures! This project went along with our story Half Chicken. Half Chicken only has half of everything, that's why most of the chickens only have 1 leg. Anyway, we drew the chickens on one day, then watercolor painted the chickens on the next. After they had painted, the kids sprinkled some salt on their painting. Most of them didn't work out as well as I had hoped. I don't think their chickens were wet enough for the salt to suck up part of the liquid to make a textured look. Next year. The next day they added backgrounds. I let them do whatever they wanted on the colors because the illustrations in the book were pretty bold.

 2. Dinosaurs - I'm taking part of Deanna Jump's dinosaur unit and adding some of my own things and books that I have available. Of course my kids are enjoying this. And I've made some learning charts. I should say, we've made some learning charts. {This idea is from the Teaching with Intention book.} After almost everything we've done, I've had the kids write on a sticky note and we've added the sticky note to a chart. {As usual, pictures to come, I guess, since I didn't take any.}

3. Subtraction - I've used Math Coach's Corner's Regrouping unit and Hooray! in my low math group, almost everybody "gets" it! I think I'm down to 3 or 4, and quite frankly, that's 3 or 4 out of the whole 2nd grade (since we've grouped them by level). This is such a hard concept - I didn't realize until I started trying to teach it!

4.  I hope this isn't too silly - but I think the end of the year is getting to me. The behaviors - ack! Anyway, I've made a conscious decision to try to enjoy my students the last couple days. To laugh with them. To take a minute to notice something. To put a hand on a shoulder.

5. Happy Anniversary to us! I was thinking this morning, my hub-bub and I have made it through lots of thicks and lots of thins - and we still enjoy each other. To celebrate - a nice lunch out and the movie 42. Looking forward to spending the day with him.

I'm linking up at:

Have a great weekend - Sara