Wachowiak's Wonderments: Slacker

I'm a total slacker when it comes to this blog. There has been so much stuff going on and usually I'm too tired at night to come on and blog about what's been happening. Major kudos to all of those bloggers who blog daily and make all of those things for TPT. I have no idea how you do it. I was such a slacker that I even missed the Monthly Made-It for this month, the first time since I started blogging that I didn't do it. Well I'm taking the time now to catch you up on what's been happening.

So we went to the CAFE workshop by The 2 Sisters and it was of course, wonderful!! They are great speakers, so fun to listen to. They were also great about explaining everything and showing examples. I knew everyone at my whole table because there were 6 of us from my school who went and then 3 from my old school that I taught at before my school was built. We had a great time all together. Going to their workshop, we kept joking throughout the day, as like being at Oprah's Favorite Things episode. They'd be talking about something and then they'd be like, "and you're all getting one!" We walked out with a whole bag full of great things. It was definitely motivating, but of course there has been no time to sit down and implement everything we want to do from that workshop. Maybe this upcoming in-service day I'll have a chance. We'll see. If you do Daily 5 or CAFE and can get a chance to see them, definitely do. You won't be disappointed! :)

Moving on to Halloween. We celebrated Halloween on the Friday before, which was FABULOUS! Parade, party, then weekend. My teammates an I were Super Teachers, an idea I found through Classroom Freebies. I linked to it in a previous post. It was fun dressing up together and we got so many compliments.

The kids loved it too. We had a great party with a Halloween sugar cookie decorating and eating station, a trick-or-treat counter where the kids filled up goodie bags, Pass the Pumpkin (like hot potato), Pumpkin Buckets (like Bozo buckets), and a spider web craft.

Even though the day is always hectic and crazy, I love seeing the costumes my kids dress up in and how excited they are about everything. I had great parent helpers so it was a big success and pretty much cleaned up for me by the end of the day.

Last weekend I did my bi-annual (is that a thing? I go twice a year lol) scrapbooking weekend. I took off on Friday and went to a conference room in a hotel for a scrapping weekend with this group of ladies who put it together. We go to the same place every time and there's anywhere from 10 to 13 of us. My friend and I found it by accident. Her husband had found a flyer about it at work and asked her if it would be something we'd want to do. We went and now 3 years later we're still going. :) This was our 6th time. I always get a ton of pages done. We only scrap Friday and Saturday. I usually have too much school stuff to get ready to do it Sunday too. This year I also brought my teacher's manual along so I could get 3 more packs ready for tpt. I did one Friday before I started scrapping and one Saturday before scrapping and let me tell you I was very happy to have the time to get them done. I'm trying to keep ahead. I'm hoping to get more done over Thanksgiving break but we'll see if that happens or not. They take me 3 hours to do one pack, so I don't usually have 3 uninterrupted hours of time and I like doing it all in one sit down, not having to come back to it.

This week for Election Day, my teammate and I did our yearly election process. We read The Three Little Pigs and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and the students have to vote on who's telling the truth. We've been learning about the election process in social studies, so this fits right in. I tell the students that the stories are like debates where the candidates are trying to tell their side of the story to get you to vote for them. Then I picked 4 election judges to help me run our classroom polling place. The students have their library cards as their voter registration cards and they have to show it to an election judge and sign by their name. Then they get their ballot and go over to a ballot booth (Really Good Stuff privacy shield) to vote. Once they are done they bring their ballot over to the ballot box where another election judge is standing and the judge gives them an I Voted Today sticker. While the students are waiting to vote or after they have voted and are waiting for the results they did an election day abc order sheet. Then 2 election judges tally the results and display them. This year it was 3 Pigs 12, Wolf 11, so very close. It always depends on the group of kids. We have had some years where the Pigs win by a landslide. In my teammate's class the Wolf won by 1 vote. It's fun and my kids get to go through the election process as well, in a fun way.

Now that leads me to this weekend, where yesterday since it was 65 degrees here, I put up as many of my outdoor Christmas lights as I could so I wouldn't have to do it in a couple of weeks when it will be cold. I'm not going to turn them on, but they are up. Hopefully they are still working after how windy it was last night and how windy I hear it is today! Today I'm going with my siblings and their families to the circus. We go every year, so it will be a fun outing again today. :)

I'm going to leave you with my last October "bulletin board," courtesy of A Cupcake for the Teacher. It was one of our Art of the Week projects, "We Are Batty for 2nd Grade." My teammate and I did it together. We had the students do the acrostic poem. Very fun project.