Five for Friday May 17th: Tour the States, Class Meetings, and Other Randomness

OMG is the week actually over?! It felt like it lasted ten years! I'm not sure how this teacher is going to make it through THREE MORE WEEKS of school. In times like these, I turn to my most trusted personal advisor:

As she would say, "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming!" If that doesn't make you smile, I'm not sure what will!

I'm linking up with Doodlebug's Teaching again for this week's Five for Friday! Let's see if I can find five sharable things from this week.... (might be hard to do)!

 Research!

We were up to our ears in crocodiles and alligators this week. We're taking a field trip on Monday to the Houston Crocodile Encounter and the kids are seriously about to die from excitement. So, to prepare, we had to learn as much as possible about these oh-so-adorable creatures. Did you know that an alligator can go up to two years without eating?! ME EITHER!

Tour the States

To give our little third graders a bit of geographical awareness, we have been studying our country and learning the states and capitols. Last week, Sabra from Teaching With a Touch of Twang shared this awesome video and I finally had time to show it today. I think it would be fair to say we watched at LEAST five times. It's addicting. It's stuck in my head. But I love it. The kids fell in love and seriously tried to learn the words, which melted my heart. They would stumble and mumble through the verses and then burst into glorious harmony on the chorus. It was beautiful! The remembering of the states and capitols will come soon, I'm sure of it!! ;)

You can get a copy of the lyrics HERE.

And for some reason my class wanted me to take a picture when we were watching it. So, in case you didn't believe we actually watched it (lol), here is our proof! By the way, this is the DARKEST my room ever gets.

A Walk Down Memory Lane

One afternoon, we took some time to remember all the fun we have had this year. I made up this little sheet to record our thoughts. It was interesting to see what they remembered. This sheet is nothing special, but it serves the purpose!

Click HERE to get your own copy!

New Class Meeting Options

In our class, we have class meetings. At this point in the year we are having them daily! Most of the year we have them once a week or so, depending on what's going on and if we have a need for it.

The first thing we do in every class meeting is go around and share how we feel. We use two things to do this: Weather Report and Tribbles. Both of these ideas were given to me by my professor in college. I'm not sure where she found the weather report idea- I have looked all over and haven't been able to find it. If you know who originally came up with this, let me know and I will give credit where credit is due! I have been using the same two pieces of paper for several years, and they were starting to look pretty shabby. So, I decided to recreate them and give them a much needed update!

Weather Report is pretty simple. They choose the weather condition that best depicts how they are feeling that day and explain why they are feeling that way. 

Another option we use is called Tribbles. To be honest, I have never seen Star Trek *gasp* but from what I've seen online, they are small furry fictional creatures.... my professor called them Tribbles when she introduced this to us in college and I have used it ever since! And surprisingly, none of the students have ever asked me why they are called Tribbles! Again, I'm not sure where the original idea came from, but I was able to find the little guys HERE. You will have to color them with crayon, so you can make them any color you like!

To pick up your own copies of these, click HERE 

Need I say more?!

If you are still with me after this mammoth of a post, thank you!! Be sure to grab all of your freebies and then head over and link up yourself!! 

P.S.- I totally copied the way those amazing girls over at Collaboration Cuties, Amanda and Stacia, do their Five for Friday posts with the numbers! I hope they don't mind!! ;) I finally have a use for those cute numbers!