Five for Friday: My Tell All Tuesday Lie Revealed!

Hi all!  Summer is quickly approaching! This time next Friday, I will be saying good bye to my sweet firsties and celebrating the start of summer vacation.  This time of year is so bittersweet because my students have learned so much and become so much more independent from the beginning of first grade.  I always say I have them just how I want them and now they leave!

  This year had some wonderful ups and challenging downs but I learned a lot about myself as an educator.  I’m thankful for this experience and can’t wait to start up again in September.  I’m needing summer vacation to give my brain a needed break to sort through my plans already for September!  With a busy but exciting weekend ahead, let’s recap with my Doodle Bugs Teaching’s Five for Friday!

This week my friend Diana and I from My Day in K hosted our first linky party together called Tell All Tuesday!  Our first theme was called Two Truths and a Lie!  The response to our first linkup was ABSOLUTELY AMAZING and I am so grateful to each blogger who participated!  It was so much fun to read all of the “facts,” that everyone posted and try and guess which facts were true and which one was the silly little lie.

I LOVED reading all of your comments as to which one of mine was the lie!  I chose to go more detailed to make it a little trickier for everyone to guess.  Surprisingly the guesses were mixed with most thinking that either number 1 or number 2 were the lie.  Well, I’m here to set the record straight!  

Even though I may be a Disney-a-holic and dressed as a Disney princess almost every Halloween (see picture above of myself as Ariel I had just ditched the red wig, my sister as Tinkerbell, and my cousin as Peter Pan) I NEVER applied for an internship to work at Walt Disney World.  I do know that those Disney princess height requirements are true, you need to be between 5″3-5″8 to qualify and I would NOT make the cut BUT I still never tried!  

Some days I joke that it’s my back-up plan if teaching doesn’t pan out! As far as my other two facts are concerned, they are COMPLETELY true!  I did start working at a PR firm right out of college and hated every minute of it!  I also was a terrible patient and kicked the nurse straight in the gut.  I am not proud of it but it does make for an interesting story!  

Make sure to check back next week for our next theme to linkup with us!

I’m currently in the process of creating end of the year adjective collages for my students.  My students and I always love this gift at the end of the year!  I put papers out on each student’s desk with their name on it and we “scoot,” around the room writing adjectives to describe our friends.  We use kind words and shower them with compliments.  We try to just use ONE word to do this activity.  The kids never know what the end result will be and it’s always so much fun on the last day of school seeing their faces!  They get so excited when they realize that the collages they are given are words that their students used to describe them.

I will be putting their collages in frames that I found at the Dollar Store so they can be displayed at home.  I make these collages in Tagxedo and it’s very easy to create!  I just love them!  I’ll share more details and pictures of them when they’re all finished!

To celebrate the last few weeks of school, we are reading and learning about ALL things Mo Willems! My class this year is absolutely in LOVE with his books so I thought it only appropriate to spend our last few reading lessons learning about their favorite author’s craft and characters.  We’ve been using Thank God It’s First Grade’s amazing author pack and my students are having so much fun with these activities!  I highly recommend it!  One of our favorite activities so far has been adding speech bubbles for Pigeon.  My kids have gotten so creative and are begging to write their own stories for these beloved characters!

Have you ever had a field trip fiasco of your own?!

Speaking of those wonderful aides, my co-teacher and I are so lucky this year to have a wonderful support system.  We have three aides that work with different students throughout the day.  Some that just push in for reading, some that leave for resource room and stay for social studies/science/writing, and others that need full-time support.  My inclusion classroom is a little bit of a revolving door this year but as I said before, it’s been a learning experience that I wouldn’t trade!  To try and show our aides just how much we appreciate them, my co-teacher and I are creating these adorable plates we found on Pinterest.  I can’t find the original source but if this is your idea please let me know so I can give credit!  We’re in the process of putting all of our students’ fingerprints onto 4 plates.  

We’ll be turning their fingerprints into little bees to go along with the saying, “Thanks for “BEE”ing so helpful!”  We’ll be giving them gift cards and some wine as well.  They deserve it!  What do you do to show your volunteers, paras, or aides that you appreciate them?  I’m always searching for new ideas!

Thank you so much for stopping by and reading through my week!  I’ll be busy this weekend celebrating my brother’s graduation from University of Washington in Seattle and then working on closing out the year strong next week!  Woooooh this will be one tired teacher come next Friday but it will all be worth it!  

Enjoy your weekend!