You know that stomach-dropping, nail-biting, cringe-worthy moment when you plug in your phone to back up/restore/update and suddenly it says there's an "error" and your phone is in RECOVERY?! WHAT?!?!? If you don't know what I'm talking about...consider yourself incredibly lucky. For some of us not so lucky ones, it's happened multiple times. No matter how many times you see this... it never feels good. Needless to say, what I thought would be a night spent prepping for the week, putting kiddos to bed, and making a few new workstations, has turned out to be a much. much. longer. venture. ugh. Fortunately, being the unlucky one with the phones and having a little experience with this loss, I was able to restore and recover everything and besides a few mysteries still lingering on my phone, I think it's back in action. OH. THANK. GOODNESS!!! Whoever said Mondays off was a bad idea was clearly not a teacher. I love a full week for academic and educational reasons for sure, but every once in a while it's great to get that time to spend with family, rejuvenate, and catch up on some things. (And spend the weekend doing report cards!!! Bleck!) (One of us in this picture is sporting an extra wrinkly forehead and no make-up!! Yikes!!) We started the weekend off with a little playdough...which then became a weekend of playdough. ;) Then, of course, there was some cheerleading where this beauty got to show off her new back walkover. Still working on the form but so proud of her. She was determined to get it! Proud sister and cousin! We spent the weekend with this little love. Definitely keeps us on our toes and always alert! Is it just a boy thing? Or just him? One of my favorite parts of the weekend was working on report cards (not the favorite part) and listening to my Kinder teaching our two-year-old some math. First, they worked on some patterning and one-to-one correspondence. Then they did some counting and finished it off with color naming. It was the calmest, most peaceful awake moments of the weekend...for about 15 minutes. ...until he was done and decided to throw those pom poms all over my office. Grrrrr. During times when little mister was not around, the girls and I had fun decoupaging these little Franken jars. We were inspired by Crafts by Amanda at craftsbyamanda.com. Frankens created by E and Z Since my husband goes through so much coconut oil, after years of recycling jars, I finally got smart this summer and started stock piling them. I have several, several ideas for their use but this one seemed like a good activity for the weekend with my girls. (I'll post tomorrow what they are for. Shhh...) We changed ours a bit from the ones we pinned. We used tissue paper and mod podge (LOVE that stuff!!!) and black acrylic paint. And of course, no Franken would be complete without glitter! The ties and tags I'll share next time. The girls were so proud of their little Frankens! As for this week, I have a few new great ideas I'm adding to my workstations. We are no longer allowed to supplement our math curriculum with any extra activities since we have launched a new program this year. That being said, last year I was inspired when I read about this activity from one of my favorite bloggers Cara Carroll over at The First Grade Parade. I tweaked the activity using the eyeballs, pumpkin trays, and bowl to create a math activity that worked for my firsties. However, this year, due to the NO MATH SUPPLEMENTING rule...I now have all these fun supplies and no math to use them for... until now. As I was in report card mode yesterday the pumpkin trays were just sitting there taunting me... I knew I wanted to use them for my literacy workstations but there were so many ideas spinning in my head. Suddenly it hit me and one thing lead to another and I had several new activities in the works. This week I will use it for sentence unscrambling and I can't wait to see how my firsties love it. I will snap a few pics of my workstations and share throughout the week. Since today is/was Columbus Day, we took some time on Thursday (no school Friday for students) to learn about Christopher Columbus and add to our existing schema. We started with an empty anchor chart. Next we found an informational video about the holiday on Learn 360. As it played we paused throughout to check their understanding. I had students turn and share during our pause breaks to be able to repeat what they were learning. Then we added to our chart above. Students then received their own webs/organizers and chose six facts they thought were the most interesting. On each of their webs, they added their facts. We then used these ideas to write complete sentences. Since we are learning the importance of a main idea, we wrote ours altogether. Then students were responsible for writing their own sentences. (Missing...three more pictures of the writing and both sides of the finished product. Darn phone!) Tomorrow we will be completing our Columbus ships in bottles. I will be sure to take some new photos to share what the finished product looks like. (The bottle was a free-handed drawing and then enlarged so please don't judge. #notanartist) the view from the front of the bottle And now it's on to more prepping for the week. Going to be a long night. Where did this weekend go?!?! ;)