Friday, December 13, 2013

thirteenth schmirteenth

While I have never been much for superstitions, today the Friday the Thirteenth superstitions were crushed to smithereens. It all started with the mister shouting out at six this morning that we were on a two-hour delay. I had already gotten my workout in and was in the midst of getting ready for the day, so I progressed as I would on any other day.

I got to school with two and a half hours of sweet silence to myself. I finished lesson plans for next week, I prepped the classroom for next week, I made a new batch of salt dough to replace ornaments from yesterday that had been too wet and therefore broke when they were taken off of their plates, I revised our daily schedule to fit the late start, and I found time to start writing out lesson plans for the week following Christmas vacation. It was busy, I was running around like crazy, but came away feeling very accomplished.

My kinders showed up bright-eyed and bushy tailed and full of energy. After a sugary breakfast of syrup-infused waffles and saying the pledge we jumped right into learning. Our morning circle went off without a problem and the kiddos read the morning message without any help from me (they're good, I tell you)! We moved on to a quick review of the week with sounding out CVC words and going over our comprehension skill for the week - drawing conclusions. We moved right on to our weekly assessment and all of my little learners earned a 100% on their work! Yay! We cheered and everyone got a sticker for their hard work this week.

From there we moved right into a math review so that we could tackle the math assessment before lunch. We had big holiday plans for the afternoon, so we wanted to get the hard stuff done right away. We reviewed making and taking apart numbers four through ten and everyone was on their A-game. Each person was called on to give examples for different numbers and they were given guidance when needed. With all of my kinders showing off their smarts, we squeezed in the assessment right before lunch and were able to give ourselves another cheer when once again everyone passed with flying colors (there was one 94%, the rest earned 100%)! Stickers were awarded and we lined up for lunch.

When my class returned we worked on creating pony bead ornaments for them to take home. Wreaths and candy canes took up the majority of our afternoon. While the kinders were hard at work I pulled them for individual assessments in reading. Once again they did great. My lower leveled students are showing some growth and overall twelve of the sixteen that have been here this week scored 80% or better! I'm in heaven today. What can I say. To reward my kiddos they all received a roll of Smarties for being such smartie pants today.

To top things off, all of my students were picked up in a timely manner. I'm almost afraid to leave school for fear that my magical bubble of goodness will burst. But, as I mentioned, I'm not really one for superstitions. Off to my magical crafting world to knock out some of those looming Christmas gifts!

Some of today's ornaments

Our classroom tree!

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