For the Upcoming Week

Half a day of school, half a day for a workday. I'm now home eating Goobers which have 5 grams of protein (oh, gee, they must be good for me!).
(obviously this is a dated picture because it doesn't mention the 5 grams of protein)
I'm eating Goobers because my hub-bub bought them for me when I asked for chocolate covered peanuts. Well, whatever!

Next week is a short week because we have Parent/Teacher conferences on Thursday and Friday. I have already had 2 conferences, yeah! Usually I try not to schedule many on Friday; then I can do some work in my room. But it just worked out this year that I have 5! So I'll squeeze in work between conferences. (I will NOT EVEN mention how interesting/ strange/ crazy it is that our district has scheduled conferences for the coming Thursday and Friday - when just a week later, Thursday and Friday will be the days after Halloween. And we all know how fun those days are!  Why would I want to miss that??) 

For my reading centers, I'm doing a few different things - a break from the usual - for me and for them :) I've seen several "read around the room" ideas, so I decided to do that. I took a couple of the phonics patterns we had done recently - Vowel Consonant silent e; Consonant Blends with r, s, and l; and Common Ending Blends (I'm not going to type those all out - but like ng and nk.).  I put them on (now it seems rather bright) orange paper. Then this afternoon, after all the kids left, I put them around the room. The kids will get a clipboard and their recording sheet and write the words under the correct phonics pattern (I hope!). I know I'll have to move some of the cards each day to keep those little stinkers guessing, but it's a rather fun activity for them.

I also do an activity that I call "Beat the Teacher." What could be more fun to a 2nd grader than trying to beat the teacher at something? I get a bunch of letter tiles (I usually try to spell out something - this times it's "Halloween is Great.").  I have a recording sheet to go with it - sometimes I just put a piece of notebook paper with it. Then I tell them I made __ words. Like this time, I say that I made 32 words. So if they can make 32 words using only the letter tiles that they have, they Beat the Teacher! (Well, I guess they'd have to make 33 words.) Whoo Hoo, what bragging rights!

New subject: Inquiring minds want to know - what are you doing for your Halloween party? Or does anyone still have those? Our school had a vote whether or not to do costumes and the whole 9 yards, and doing costumes won by 1 vote (those darn kindergarten teachers :)  So the three 2nd grade teachers are each going to do a 10 minute activity and we'll rotate our kids around so they'll go to each room. I was going to do some relay activities, but then I got to thinking I didn't want to get them all excited like that. So I'm looking for some calmer activities. Any help?? Please leave a comment if you have a super idea.

Happy Weekend to you all. I'm hoping to have a No Homework Weekend! I'm painting the living room so maybe it won't be that hard :)
Sara