Down to a Whole Hand!!!

That's right we have five days left- a whole hand in first grade land! And if you do your math right that makes our last day of school a half a day on a Monday. I know best idea ever... right! That is exactly what you are thinking wasn't?  At least our school does a carnival so students will show up.

It has been a whirlwind at school and the rest of my life which is really just more school since I am working on my masters. I am starting to think that some days I think of myself as superwoman for what I signed myself for with these master classes and training for a triathlon. If you knew me outside of this blog this is totally not how I think of myself. Thankfully I am near the end of both. My triathlon is on Saturday. Hoping for good weather and no broken bones. (This is a story for another time.)

Back to school land, we are in the middle of a busy and I stress busy week. Here is a hint of what we are doing.

My fellow garden teacher and I went shopping with someone else's money for our garden. We realized we need to get better at spending money and get out of our teacher buying mode where we save wherever we can. I guess this is a good thing as we have a TON of money to add to our garden in the future! With our purchases we ran out of storage space so I am storing dirt behind my desk. At least my desk has another purpose. By the middle of the week I will have near 50 plants sitting outside my window. Friday is the day! Our big planting day. Boy, oh boy the students aka... native plant gardeners are excited to put the final pieces together.

This has been on pinterest and I know Natalie at Teachery Tidbits did this too. We have been doing a countdown each day with balloons in the classroom. We started counting down last week when we had 10 days left. I wanted to share our special days as some of mine are different.

So summer fever started setting in over two weeks ago. I came out with a huge roll of tickets and students had two days to earn as many tickets as they could for behavior, following directions, working hard, and helping out. We draw from those tickets each day to decide who is going to pop the balloon. It really has worked wonders.

So far we have had: 

Sit Wherever You Want Day

Write with A Pen Day

Bubblegum Blowing Contest

Free Choice for All

Paper Airplane Contest

and our upcoming days:

Read Outside Day

Nature Scavenger Hunt

Extra Recess

Make Goop or Oobleck 

Write on Your Desk Day - followed quickly by write with shaving cream.

I absolutely love this day! I totally play it up like I am going to get in trouble so they can't tell anyone I'm letting them get rid of the paper and write high frequency words on their desk. They think it is the greatest. Then we get the shaving cream out to clean up our writing. The best part is it is really a cleaning activity and they have no idea.