Five for Friday on Saturday

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday.

On Monday, the teachers had professional development while the kids got to sleep late. We heard several excellent speakers that talked about how schools provide a service and since we are service providers we need to make sure that we are giving good customer service. One of the speakers, Liz Jazwiec, spoke about driving negativity out of the workplace. She was a fantastic speaker and I left feeling rejuvenated. She has a book that I am wanting to read.

She talked about letting go of things that bug you because you can end up with such a long list of things that you are constantly being bothered.

Tuesday were discussing our new vocabulary words. I was explaining the word haste to the boys and girls. Dutch raised his hand and said "Haste makes waste." I said great job and went on to try to explain the quote and the word haste. ; ) We had studied Ben Franklin last week so I told the kids that I thought "Haste makes waste" was a quote by Ben Franklin. Dutch looked at me and said, "I thought the Smurfs said it."

Wednesday, we woke up to these beautiful giant snowflakes, I don't know if I have ever seen them as big as they were that day. I did try to take a picture, but you couldn't see the snowflakes, I guess the lighting was wrong. The roads weren't icy, just slushy so we still had school.

Thursday, the phone rings at 5:30 with the news that school has been canceled due to icy roads. I was happy to have a break thinking about all of the things I was going to get done on this extra day off.  There was a part of me that was trying to calculate in my head how I was going to catch up once we go back on Friday.  When I told my daughter that we were out of school, she started crying. No, it wasn't because she loves school so much, it was because she loves the OKC Thunder basketball team. The Rolling Thunder Book Bus was coming to our school today and she got enough AR points to get to get on and pick out a book.

One of these days I'll get my act together and start taking more pictures. Since we had no school Monday because of professional development and no school Thursday due to ice, I had the great joy of having 2 Mondays this week. You know what I'm talking about and to make it even worse, we only got to go outside one day this week. To make the point, here's how my second Monday Friday went. I look over and see Jazzlin bawling her head off, I ask her what's wrong. She said "Kody called me a name." I said, "What did he call you?" Of course I'm expecting her to say one of the usual names like Loser, Little Girl, etc.. So I really had to bite my tongue when she answered, " Ben Franklin!" I told her that was a compliment and to tell him "Thank you." She did, but the tears were still streaming. I called her over and told her she should take it as a compliment. I reminded her of all of the wonderful things we had learned about Ben Franklin. I told her I would love for someone to call me Ben Franklin. I'm not sure that I ever had her convinced that it was a good thing. HA!

Enjoy your weekend!

 

 

 

Snow Day Freebie

Since we are out of school today, I thought I would go ahead an share a couple more versions of my sight word card games. the words are pretty much the same in every set, I just switched the pictures to hit different interests the kids had.

These are card games, just print, laminate and cut apart. The kids draw a card, if they can read it, they keep it. I usually have them pass it to the next child if they can't read it or phone a friend for help. To make it fun, there are some extra cards like draw again, put all of your cards back, etc... The person with the most cards at the end of the game is the winner.

 

Curious George Sight Word Game 

 

 

 

Girly Sight Word Game

 

My Little Pony Sight Word Game

Hope you like them! : )

 

Freebie Sight Word Games

It's been a while since I posted any type of freebie. It may be a little late in the year for these games to be much help to first grade, but maybe some kindergarten teachers can use them. I made them to send home with some of my low kids who needed extra practice. since I was wanting to actually use them, I asked the kids what character they liked best. Here are a few of them.
 

Cars Sight Word Game 

 Spiderman Sight Word Game 

 

If you like them and would like to see some more, please leave a comment so I'll know there is someone that can use them them. ; P Thanks! 

We had a Skype visit with Mr. Marc from Adventure to Fitness last Friday. the kids were super excited, especially when he showed his muscles. lol If you are interested in getting one for your class, like them on Facebook. They offer them frequently.

My Daughter and the Bully

This post is a little of a downer, but it DOES end on a positive note.

My daughter has had to deal with a bully before, but it didn't even compare to what happened to her this year in 4th grade. She didn't tell me about it for a long time, but finally one night she told me a 5th grade girl was calling her names, bad names. She was pushing her around, shoving her out of line when she would see her. She would make fun of what she was wearing, say things to her friends and get them to laugh too. One day Delaney was playing with the girl's cousin at recess. When the whistle was blown the girl came up to her and said, "If you ever played with Antwon again, I'll kill you." I reported all of the incidents to the principal and to her teachers. They were doing what they could, but this girl was very sneaky. She would catch Delaney in the hallway by herself and do something to her. She got suspended for 2 days for the killing remark. I hoped that might put an end to it. Wrong!

She continued saying and doing things to her. A lot of the things happened at the end of the day when they were released from class. The girl would slip into the girl's restroom and wait for Delaney to walk by to come to my room. She punched her in the stomach and even gave her a bloody nose one day. One of the biggest problems was Delaney wouldn't tell me any of it until we got home. When I first found out about it, she even begged me not to tell her teachers and she sure hadn't told any of her classmates. One evening she told me the girl had said something to her but she didn't know what it meant so she hadn't told me . She said the girl told her she was going to get her older brother to come up to school and rape her. I was shocked and very upset. I reported everything to the principal and to her teachers. I requested that she have a buddy walk with her when she left the classroom. I started standing out in the hallway at the end of the day to make sure she wasn't hiding out in the bathroom. That girl was very persistent, she found someplace else to bother her. She unzipped Delaney's backpack and pulled stuff out and threw it on the ground. My daughter was begging for me to let her go to our neighborhood school. I told her there could be bullies there to and I wouldn't be able to help her as much (not that I had been successful).When I would wake her up each morning and she wouldn't want to go to school.

I am not a very confrontational person, but finally I had all I could take. It was at the end of the day and I had a parent standing in my doorway with me. I saw the girl down the hall and I asked the mom to stay there so she could be a witness in case the girl tried to tell something that didn't happen. When she passed by, I told called her over and said, in the toughest voice I have,  "Leave my daughter alone. Don't talk to her, don't look at her, don't touch her. Leave her alone!" She said she hadn't done anything to her. I just repeated it all again and told her people were watching her.

The girl's teacher thought that would take care of it. The next day I kept running into her in the hallway. It made me fell uncomfortable because I knew she was probably calling me names to her friends as I walked by. So that afternoon, I called her over to me as she was walking out to go home. I told her that I am a nice person and if she would just leave Delaney alone, I'd be willing to help her in any way I could. So as it has turned out, she has been staying after school and taking AR tests in my room a couple of days a week. I think she is really trying to change for the better. She has apologized to Delaney and they will even play together after school. I'm hoping that this can be a positive experience for the girl that will help her in the future.

Good news for me this week, I won the Quietest Pencil Sharpener Ever from Kim @ The Very Busy First Graders. Thanks so much, Kim!

Five on Friday

I'm linking up with Kacey @ Doodle Bugs Teaching for 5 for Friday.

Here are 5 random happenings from this week.

 

Number one: The best thing of the week... Barbara from Ruby Slippers Blog Design finished up my new blog design!!! She does excellent work and she really easy to work with. This is my first post with my new design, I just keep on looking at my blog because I like it sooo much! ; P

 

Number Two: I love seeing children learn and this year I have really enjoyed witnessing Isiah make his math observations. The problem was 6 + 5, Isiah says, " I know that 5 + 5 is 10 since six is one more than 5 then 6 + 5 must equal 11. YES!!!

 

Number Three: Peep Show This one has nothing to do with school , but it was too funny strange not to share. The other night I sent my daughter to get something out of the car. When she came back in, she had this horrified look on her face and she was saying, "PLEASE, PLEASE rip my eyeballs out!!!" over and over. When she went outside, she glanced at the neighbors window (which happens to be in the shower). She saw our elderly neighbor lady, well from neck to waist, in the shower! Delaney just kept saying, "She was really big and there were so many wrinkles. I'm going to have nightmares!" I'm too embarrassed for the lady to speak to her face to face to let her know that she needs to cover the window, but seriously who doesn't cover their shower windows when they have neighbors close by???? I've decided to write her a letter, how does that sound? And no,  I do not have a picture! Your welcome! ; P

 

Number Four: I have a student that keeps making scowling faces at people. I don't just mean kids in my class, he does to my daughter and even crazier, he does it to the teacher next door. Anyway, I asked him if he went around making faces at his mother and he said, "Yes." I said, "You do?" and he said, "I do it all the time behind her back." Too bad for him that I wrote it down and too bad for him today was parent conference day! His mother was very interested!

 

Number Five:  One more not related to school, but hopefully this will wipe out the lady in the shower for my daughter. My cousin took her to her first OKC Thunder game. She was beyond excited.

 

 

BTW for those who read my last post, I talked with my principal, she said the teachers were supposed to be tutoring small groups when they didn't have kids.

 

Have a great weekend!