Saturday, May 17, 2014

Five for Fraturday: May 16/17


Wow, it's been a while since I've done a Five for Friday, but I'm going to try and pull one together here!

May filled up quickly, especially weekends! Last Saturday we had a baby shower for my sister-in-law. She's having a boy and is doing a nautical theme in the nursery (right up my alley!), so I had to order these precious cupcakes for the shower. A high schooler from our former church made them! She's already building herself quite the little business, and I will probably be ordering from her again!


Oh, and a certain little boy's presence was also requested, so I have to share a cute pic of my silly boy!


We were supposed to start testing Monday, but there was a power surge over the weekend that knocked  out our network for a good chunk of the morning. Since all of our testing is now online, that really messed things up, so I wasn't able to test any of my kids that day. Instead, I helped our Guidance Counselor get video clips to put together a little test-taking video to the song "Happy". It turned out really cute! Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of it, but I can link you to a similar one on Youtube!


It was a long day because that night was our Title I Fun Night, and I had 16 of my 28 students show! I would call it a successful night. We decorated cookies, played games, and made bookmarks to take home. Then we ended the evening with some Wizard of Oz since that was our big theme back in March for Reading Month. It was interesting because most of the kids had never seen it before!


Tuesday began the testing madness! In the past 4 days of testing alone, I have managed to read one "grown-up" book, a kid's book, and I started a new one. Oh, and I finished the last 20-ish crossword puzzles in my book. Glad I have quite a few new books to read through because we still have 3 weeks of testing left!


This was just the reading from Friday! Any book suggestions? I've got Riding Freedom, The Strange Case of the Origami Yoda, and The Fault in Our Stars lined up to read after I finish Prisoner B-3087.

At home, we've been getting ready for our annual yard sale. We were blessed with SO many hand-me-down clothes for Keagan that he couldn't possibly wear them all. Some of our Spring Break was dedicated to narrowing the clothes down to one storage bag for each size.


We picked our favorites and put the rest in yard sale boxes. I'm happy to say that we were able to get 5 boxes down to 3 this morning! Becky was taking the rest to her neighborhood to see if more would sell, then we'll take what's left to Goodwill. I love cleaning out the clutter!


7 comments:

  1. Wow! I am so glad you linked up for 5 for Friday! I love your blog.
    I can't believe all your testing. Doesn't it seem weird and counterproductive for kids to spend that long taking tests, the teacher not teaching (although I am jealous you get to get some reading in) and no new learning taking place? I teach 2nd grade and we used to have about 6 hours of testing over 2 weeks (the fill in the bubble tests) but they decided to try the FAST which is online, and it is about 60 minutes. But.... I think the FAST is really weak and does not give us any useful information. I want the fill in the bubble tests back, believe it or not. There's a balance between valuable testing and how much time we spend on it. Thanks for sharing your experiences!
    Bex
    Reading and Writing Redhead

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  2. Doesn't it feel good to get rid of clothes you probably won't use?! And I got some good reading done during testing too. We are all done with testing and get out on Friday! It is hard to believe that we only had to fill a few days with something to do instead of 2 weeks. Love this schedule!

    Good luck with testing!

    Andrea
    Reading Toward the Stars

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  3. The Fault in Our Stars was a good book...wondering if the upcoming movie will do it justice? If you haven't read Wonder by RJ Palacio to your list you definitely should. Great book!

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  4. I'm jealous of your reading! I'm in VA, but our district won't let us read or anything during testing. Just sit....and wait.....and sit...and wait! I was worried about the storms knocking out our power too -- but we were lucky not to lose power or internet. Three years ago, we came to school with NO POWER on the day of our science test. We had to stay the whole day too. I love your blog!

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  5. Hope testing is going well for you! Very jealous of your reading, our district won't let us. We have to walk in circles around the room the entire time. I want to read The Fault in Our Stars as well. Thinking about using The Graveyard Book with some of my kids next year and am in the mist of reading it, you might want to check it out! Love your blog!

    http://fifthgradeconfessions.blogspot.com/

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  6. If you have a consignment store in your area, you should definitely look into taking any left over clothes there instead of Goodwill. I take my kids clothes to a local consignment store, and I get 40% of what they sell the item for. Plus then you never have to mess around with everything that goes along with a garage sale, and generally I get the same or more for an item than I would if I had a garage sale.

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  7. The Fault in Our Stars was great, but it's a tear-jerker. Might distract the kids during testing if you're a sobbing mess like I was. :)

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