Pysanky Eggs

I love Patricia Polacco books.  The family stories are so sweet (I always get choked up when the kids want to buy Miss Eula an Easter bonnet so badly) and love her artwork. It is also fun for the kids to notice when she puts real black and white photos in her illustrations.) This week we read

and

In both books the main characters make Pysanky (or Ukrainian) Eggs.  We admired how intricate (this word is now on our vocab board thanks to one smartie) and beautiful they were.

I copied some coloring pages of Pysanky designs for the kids to enjoy as early finish work from HERE. We noted the geometric shapes, animals, and patterns.

I then let the kids design their own Pysanky-inspired egg. They drew the design with sharpie on white construction paper. I showed them that they could use crayon-resist if they wanted to. Then I let them loose with watercolor paints.

Sure brightens up the room! :-)

Daily Editing Word Problems for the week of 4/4

Here is the Daily Editing for next week. Wow, that elapsed time one today was a doozie, huh?
I'd love to know how many of you are using these.
4-4 Daily Editing Word Problems

Compound Words

Today was a much better day!
1. It was not raining. WooHoo!!
2. 6 students were absent (2 that take a lot of work) and 24 kids seemed like heaven.
3. My normal patient, cheery self was back.
Thank you all for the awesome support!!

Today we made compound word flip-books. A very easy activity that the students loved and really helped cement the idea for them.

Pet Shop Coin Game

Here is a game I made that I am hoping will become a class favorite so they get lots of practice with counting coins. The object of the game is to be the first to buy enough animals to fill your pet shop.

I forgot to take a pic of the die darn it but it is in the download, too.

 

 I used a divided fruit tray for the bank. {Note to Mr. B~see I do use those containers I save!}

Pet Shop

If you like it please let me know because this one took me forever to create!

GRUMPY

I should have made a t-shirt out of this to warn people today.

 It wasn't just one thing, but a bunch that just has me in a funk this week.
1. This week marked a year and a half my husband has been out of work. Not a happy anniversary.

2. I get to add dishwasher to the list of things that have broken this year that we don't have the money to fix {garage door (ever had to have your kids wheel their bikes through the house?), sprinklers, diamond came out of my wedding ring (thank goodness I found it but it now sits in a baggie.)

3. Extremely frustrated at sitting through two 2-hour IEPs just to have the district tell me they finally agree that my student is ADHD and Autistic but then they only offer 20 minutes a week of speech to practice saying hello after the teacher initiates. WHAT???? This kid cannot complete ANY task without constant prodding, he needs an 1-1!  Oh, and they recommend a behavior plan. Don't you think I have done that?! Have you even asked what I have done before making your inane recommendations?  Grrrr....

4. The district passed out anonymous surveys to the parents to rate us, the school, etc. One day I was collecting from the kids and I noticed one didn't have very good marks. Now I know I shouldn't get upset because you can't please everyone, and the other marks I saw were really good, but man, when you put your heart and soul in, that hurts. And it is not like they came and talked to me about their concerns... So for the rest of the week I made sure not to look at them..

5. And the kicker...short story...I had a parent not to happy this week. I DO NOT have unhappy parents-EVER-so this was again a blow to my self-esteem. It turns out it really was more or an issue between two families and I got put in the middle, but still..

Maybe it is the rain...hasn't stopped all week! I clearly should never move to Seattle! Anyway, thanks for joining my pity-party. I hope to be back to my cheerful, blogging self soon.