The day we had a fire

**I started this post a few months ago, but for whatever reason didn't publish it. Here it is a little late!



Well, so here I am again. Sorry I've been an absent blogger. I got a little busy with this small thing called GETTING MARRIED! I went from being Ms. H to Mrs. A :) Things in my personal life have just calmed down in time for things at school to get crazy. We're in the middle of state-mandated testing for grades 3-4 this week, and K-2 has their test next week. Yes, that's right. My kinder babies will take a standarized "bubble-in" test next week. The crazy thing? They're excited for it!

So anyways, this week 3rd and 4th grade are taking their tests. Wednesday morning my class was in the middle of doing our PALS lesson when "BEEP BEEP BEEP!!!!" Fire alarm. Did I mention 3rd and 4th were in the middle of testing? Did I mention it was pouring down rain and 45 degrees outside? We weren't sure if this was real or not, but headed outside just to be sure. We were getting into our spot (in the rain) when I heard the sirens. It was real!

Luckily, it was a very small fire that was contained to an emergency light in the library. However, it was still a scary thing and definitely a huge distraction for the kids. It was all they could talk about. So what did I do? Turned it into a journal prompt. Here's what some of them had to say:

"My adventure: We were doing PALS this morning and the fire drill went off. There was a fire. We got wet. It was scary for me and it was tiny."

"We had a fire. I was scared. We got wet."



"Picture" this

Back at the beginning of the school year, I had a project funded through Donor's Choose. If you are unfamiliar, this is a website where teachers can go and select items and supplies that they can use in their classrooms. People can then go on the site and either search for a friend's or loved one's project or select a project at random to donate to (yes, I just ended that sentence with a preposition. So kill me). It is GREAT! I have gotten some great stuff through here, things that either I wouldn't or couldn't afford to buy myself.

This project included some dry erase boards, markers, writing paper and the best part...picture dictionaries! My kids LOVE them and I love how excited they are to look through them. They're discovering new words, how words are spelled, expanding their vocabulary, etc. The only down side is that I only ordered 6, thinking the kids could share them. Not so much. Now we have to take turns, which in Kindergarten can be problematic. I'm thinking of creating a "dictionary center" to incorporate into my language centers. Any ideas on how to make a center out of these??

Check out how cute they are:

(ok, I have to admit these pictures are staged. Part of the whole Donors Choose thing is that as the recipient, I have to submit photos of the supplies being used and make a thank-you package. I had forgotten about the photos until the last day of school, so had to quickly "pose" some kids with the dictionaries. But you get the idea! They really do look through these like they are the most exciting books ever!)

Something different

I'm a big fan of doing things differently in my classroom. Anything that can get my kids moving (they have SO much energy!) but still learning, I am a fan of. So when one of my friends gave me a set of sidewalk chalk, I knew we had to use it at school.

We just went outside and I told them to practice writing letters, numbers, whatever they wanted. It was so much fun! (although very messy, sorry parents)
You can see in the bottom that some were doing a great job with forming numbers. Even for the kids that haven't gotten there yet, drawing with sidewalk chalk offers a lot of resistance that is great for developing all those muscles in our hands/forearms that we use while writing. If you haven't ever done this with your kids, I recommend it! My kids loved it and didn't even realize they were learning new things. They just thought I was a cool teacher because I let them be outside when it wasn't recess :)