Wordless Wednesday: Staff Birthdays

I like birthdays apparently since this is my 2nd birthday picture & questions but... staff members have birthdays too!

Does your school do anything special for staff birthdays?

We are doing birthday lunches this year. Each grade level picks a month and then brings in lunch one day during that month. This was November's lunch. It was delicious!

Santa Fe Soup

Chicken & Beet Soup (yummy! even though I didn't eat the actual beets)

Salad and homemade rolls.

5th Graders are Thankful for

There are a few things that we make sure to do as a 5th grade team, not matter which reading class we have. That way all kids feel included and it helps create community. 

This is a great activity because students have the opportunity to think creatively and express themselves. We begin with the normal THANKFUL acrostic poem. I challenged my intervention students to think about things that weren't tangible. If they wanted to say something tangible, they also had to explain why. 

 Then we looked at different autumn scenes, mainly pumpkin oriented, and the students created their own using crayons. When they were finished, I washed over them with black watercolor paint.

The finished product….

I'm linking up with Joanne from Head Over Heels For Teaching and her Spark Student Motivation Saturday linky because my students were completely engaged in this activity. Being able to express themselves and draw with crayons made them feel really good about themselves. Since we spent a decent amount of time noticing things about the autumn scenes, the artwork came out much better than on others that we didn't talk about. Also, they love being able to have their work out there as a grade level. It makes every one feel good. :) 

 Thanks for stopping by!

*Steph*

Halloween Closure…

So I know that we have all moved onto Thanksgiving and some of us are even onto Christmas planning. I'm trying really hard to wait for Thanksgiving before moving on, but I'm really feeling the tickle to just put out all of of my Christmas decor! We'll see if I can be the master of my actions.

BUT… I took a bunch of pictures during Halloween because my school goes all out for it and I wanted to share. There are some teacher/team costume ideas here too...

Outside and our front office

The 5th grade team decided to dress up as Despicable Me characters. Our one team member has alopecia and she thought it'd be fun to Gru and our 5th graders be minions. I don't remember the scientist guy's name and I am Lucy from Despicable Me 2. 

I even borrowed my daughters play lipstick so I had my lipstick taser.

Minion goggles were ordered and the kids just wore a purple or yellow shirt.

Look at these adorable cupcakes for our party. I had to snag a picture before they were all gone!

Our 1st grade team dressed up as "Fly Guy"

Our Kinder teachers were all the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree.

This is our registar secretary.

A 2nd grade teacher

4th grade Jasmine and Abu

Our admin secretary

Our principal.. before the parade begins, she reads a Halloween story with the pages projected up on a screen and makes it interactive where the kids says certain parts with her.

Our school also hosts a safe night the night of Halloween. We had P/T Conferences so the parade happened on Wednesday and then the safe night was Friday. There are lots of activities and my hubby and I took our little girl.

Kind of playing Goblin Golf.

Waiting for the cake walk to start

A family pic (thanks to my mom for my dress and my daughter's)

Wordless Wednesday: Bags

What size of bag do you take back and forth from work?

I've noticed that I get more done at school and don't bring as much home when I use my smaller purse. It's just the right size for 1 maybe 2 assignments to grade. That means more time spent focusing on my little girl and sleeping, if I wait until she's in bed to grade!

Currently November

Finally…October is OVER! Not necessarily my favorite month. I enjoy Halloween but it gets kind of crazy at school. Also, the 1st quarter ends, grades are due, and we have Parent Teacher Conferences. It's kind of a lot to be prepared for. We also seem to have the possibility of snow looming over us almost the entire month. It becomes pretty tiresome.

Luckily, it is now November! I'm ok if we have snow this month, and we should have a fairly routine month at school. Routine = Sanity  :)

Silence: We put our baby girl down to bed and she asked Daddy to lay with her. He said for a minute. I'm pretty sure that they are both asleep by now. :) 

Loving: We spent the better part of our Halloween night at the fire station. My daughter just loved being around all of the awesome people there. They had out their fire safety training door and she made sure that all the kids (and even some adults) that visited went through it. 

Thinking: I love the holiday season! Thanksgiving and Christmas are usually a pretty happy time. Living so far from family can make it a little bit difficult. This year will be even more different as our "adopted" Alaskan family moved back to America, I mean the Lower 48. I'm going to look and see what things we can do as just our little family and maybe start some new traditions.

Wanting: Lately, the hubby and I haven't had much time for just us. He mentioned working on us having a "date night" and I think that I may remind him that we know of a great babysitter :)

Needing: Between everything that we do, work, school and homework, my house is in desperate need of a clean up! I'm thinking I may stay home one day and just clean away.  I feel as if I'm always behind on laundry. It is my nemesis, as are the dishes. Bah to them! If it wasn't so bad for the environment, I would totally use paper & plastic dishes all the time.

Reading: I'm part of a book club with some friends and I'm a little apprehensive about our book this month. Stiff by Mary Roach is a book about cadavers. I don't do well with death or dead bodies. I have my personal religious beliefs about death so it's not the "what happens to our spirits" that I'm not ok with. It's with the actual body that left behind. A couple of the people who have read the book so far have said that overall it's pretty interesting. I'm on the waiting list to get it so we'll see. 

Sorry if that was too much for you…

Hope that you are off to a fabulous start of the new month!!

Check out more Currently links here:

*Steph*