Wednesday WOW & Highs and Lows

First off, I am joining Em @ Curious Firsties (very late!) for her weekly linky party Wednesday Wow!

I have two WOWs to share this week. The first one is about pencils. I'm sure I am not the only teacher that felt like I was spending way too much time sharpening pencils. So one day I gave all of the kids a decorated pencil, but first I put their number on it with a Sharpie close to the eraser. Then I took a piece of tape and wrapped around the number. (Sharpies aren't always permanent, are they?  ;P) My sharpening time has more than cut in half. No one is purposely breaking their prized decorated pencils and in fact lots of the kids write with it until it is as dull as can be. 

The next WOW, I found by accident. I haven't seen any one else mention it so I don't know if it is new or just not well known. Baby Einstein has 3 videos called "Meet the Sight Words". I found it one day when I was looking for a sight word video for the kdg kids to watch while I worked with the firsties. It was tough, my firsties wanted to watch it instead of listen to me (imagine that!). They are very entertaining, take a peek.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL15fKo2AIE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UPtxRsigKg

I could only find number one and three on You Tube. they also had videos on letters and numbers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtEAJJwdpbY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxkonVn-M6Y

Next I am joining Jenny @ Owl Things First! for her linky party Highs and Lows.

I'll start with my high. I gave the kdg kids a song about plants for their poetry journal. It was the first thing they put in it and I wasn't sure if they would like having a journal or not. My firsties love it and I thought the kdg kids would too. Last week I had them add "Do You Know the Muffin Man?". It was so cool I had a group of girls singing the plant song while pointing to the words. We had only sang the song 2 different days and they were getting every word right!

So my low this week was to discover to thieves in my classroom.  : (  I had asked two of my boys to stack our chairs and then come to the computer lab. They spent waaay too long in there, but I didn't think anything about it until a day later I saw one of them with a handful of colored pencils. When I questioned him, I got nothing. After school, I looked in their crayon boxes, one didn't have anything but crayons, the other boy's box was full of markers and colored pencils. Now if he had been really smart and only gotten one brand, I might not have known, but no, he had Crayola, Crazy Art, Scholastic, School Specialty...it was obvious that he hadn't brought them all from home.  The next day I grilled them, one cracked but the other kept insisting that he hadn't taken any that the other boy had put the stuff in his crayon box.  I told him that for future reference, if he were with a friend that stole a car and he did nothing to stop it or didn't report it, he would be in the same amount of trouble.  Anyway thanks to their brothers, the truth came out. One has a kdg brother in class with us and he mentioned that his brother also had some Caught Being Good coins and some marbles (He told his mother he got the coins for good behavior!). The other boy's brother was wearing some necklaces that looked like some from my prize box, I asked him where he got them from he said his brother gave them to him. It just got worse as the day went! I told them I was not going to call parents, but if I were them I would come clean because their brothers might let it slip! I do not like having thieves in my room, I hope their life of crime ended last week!