Seven for Sunday

   After 4 snow days this past week, I am ready, yet not ready, to be back to school.
  My sons need to get back in the routine for sure, and I am certain many other parents are ready for the doors of the school to be open again.
  I enjoyed the time off with my family, but at this point the boys are starting to irritate each other. Their bickering means I am being rubbed the wrong way, and that is never good. I think we need to do something fun today and definitely need to get out of the house so we all don't end up under each other's skin. Think the park across the street might be just what we need, now I just need it to warm up, it is still 31 degrees.
  I missed linking up with DoodleBugs on Friday, so I think I am going to add a little to the post.
  How about 7 for Sunday?

    Snow, ice, and cold! That summed up my week. Here are some pictures....

  While at home, the boys created some art. They were so helpful with each other and very proud of their work. I really love the piece my oldest son created(the one in the middle).

  He was inspired by his art teacher at school and she was really excited to see how he carried out the lesson on his own.
  In case you ever wonder if your students listen to you, they do, even if they do not show it!

  Last week I mentioned that my oldest son wanted a snow board. He was inspired by the Olympians we watched. We hardly get snow, and there are no snowboarding places to go nearby, so it is not practical.
  Well, he made do with what he had (skim board) and the kid might actually have some potential. Think we might need to schedule a trip to a ski resort.

 

 We all had fun playing in the snow and sledding on our pool tubes.

  By Friday we were sick of being indoors. School was cancelled because the roads were too icy to run buses on. Even a 2 hour delay would have been too risky since the ice did not start melting until after 10.   We did not stay home all day though. We picked up a friend, ran some errands, and then went to the park. I thought it would have been warmer and that the snow would have been melted, but it wasn't. It ended up being perfect though, we had the whole place to ourselves and the boys had fun playing in the snow and at the park.

    No, I am not a worry wart mom. I don't require my son to wear a helmet when playing at the park. We brought scooters to the park with us, and my youngest kept his helmet on for a good portion of the time.

  How about this for random? We had an earthquake on Friday night at about 10:23 p.m. I was laying on the floor and felt the ground rumble about 4 times. The quake lasted about 5 seconds.
  After the tremors, my husband and I both looked at each other wondering if it was a quake. Using my science teacher skills, I sent him searching on the USGS website. Sure enough, about 7 minutes later the earthquake registered on the website. The epicenter was in South Carolina and registered at 4.1. We did not have any damage and nothing fell. Although, we did feel the shaking.

 Talk about wacky weather last week in Georgia! Snow, ice, and an earthquake! It will be great for our earth science discussions next week.

   Ok, so I mentioned that I am not really ready to go back. Why? Well, being out for 4 days last week I feel overwhelmed and behind! Losing a week is a big deal during this time of year. I need to shake off the stress and roll with it. Easier said than done.
  Of course, I can pick up where we left off, but we really need to move on a little faster now. 
  We are now down to 2 weeks before the HUGE writing test. This means super crunch time. Time to confer, time to empower, and time to practice. We were working on stamina and the week off means they are out of their routine. Writing for 2 hours straight is going to be tough. We will need to stick to building up their stamina daily.
  To inspire the kids, I created some posters for our hallways to cheer them on. The images were inspired by World War II images, figure I need to kill 2 birds with 1 stone as much as possible nowadays! 
  During the year we did "Live" lessons that we play over closed circuit. We make them fun and always open with a theme song with images of the teachers dressed in fun costumes. This year's theme song is, Brave by Sara Bereilles. So the posters also incorporate that theme. Our students know the words by heart and sing along to the opening credits. We will be hosting a writing boot camp 2 days before our test that will include the same theme. Here are some pictures of the posters...

   We have an awesome poster maker at school, so I can have them printed poster size and hang them throughout the hallway. I also made a power point with the propaganda pictures to help the kids understand what the role of the images were during World War II.
(The pencil in the one picture is from the awesome Ashley Hughes and her Amazing Accents collection - she has a total of 14 days of freebies! The background in the Uncle Sam picture is from Graphics from the Pond, Teacher Maker Set, a great collection of papers and frames and on sale still for $3!) The other images are public domain pictures.

 





I did some planning during the days off and am ready to finish up our fractions unit. The pages for their notebooks and practice problems will keep us moving.

    Eventually I will finish this packet and make it available in my store. I think I am trying to hard to make it perfect, it is taking forever!
    To help ease my planning stress, I grabbed this awesome deal on educents. Have you tried educents? This awesome math packet is available for under $10. A total steal with tons of practice for multiplication, division, decimals, and fractions.

   The packet price is already a discount as bundled. I was able to save 10% off with the coupon code Pres10. If it is your first time making a purchase, click here and you will save 20%.  
    I am really excited about the basketball madness set from Fifth in the Middle. I think my students, boys especially, will love competing and having choices of which problems to solve.
For this week I am going to use Fourth Grade Flipper's Multiplication with fractions math centers. I love the game boards and the set up of the centers. I know the kids will have fun while practicing their fraction skills.
    I know they are tired of working with fractions, so getting a chance to play will be a nice break!
    I also really like Fifth in the Middle's Mighty Multiplication packet too, think I will pull some of my struggling students and show them the box method to help them with their multi-digit multiplication. Sadly, I still have a few who are forgetting about the middle numbers and are weak with the process. 
Approaching the problems in a new way, may be exactly what they ordered.

      Have you seen I {Heart} Recess' Fractions with Yummy Recipes? Oh, the sheets are fantastic. It includes the recipes and then math questions to go along with each recipe. I am going to add some reading comprehension questions on sequence to go along with the packets. Reading recipes is usually a new concept for my students, and there have been questions on our state exams using recipes, so the packet is a complete recipe for success!

 

  I cannot let this past week slip by without mentioning Valentine's Day. We had a pretty laid back day with simple treats.

  The boys helped me pick out a gift for their Dad, then we picked up some treats for them. They were so excited with some sweets and a new movie.

  My husband showed me some love with some roses. So sweet, and calorie free!

 

  For dinner I made the boys' favorite roast with their favorite pasta. My youngest son was delighted and jumped up to give me a huge hug and a kiss saying, "You are the best! You made this for us, because you love us?" Oh, that made it worth it!

   We missed Valentine's Day at school, so the boys will deliver their treats on Monday. Using my awesome Silhouette I created these lollipop flowers for the kids (thank goodness for the days off, 4 classes took a long time). The design is by Lori Whitlock and I downloaded it from the Silhouette store. (Dum Dums for the Pre-K's, and BlowPops for the older kids)

 

   For their teachers I created these cute boxes and bags and filled them with Dove chocolates.

 

Whew, that turned out to be a long post! I guess I had a lot to say, thanks for hanging in there with me! Hope you have a relaxing Sunday and a fantastic week!