Five for Friday

It's already Friday again!  The hours are long, but the days are short!

It's time to link up with Casey from DoodleBugs again for a little Five for Friday!

This week kinda flew by for me.  The twins had dentist appointments on Monday.  I don't know about y'all, but when I was growing up, the dentist office was not a bright, cheery, colorful place with a tv above my chair, sunglasses so I didn't get blinded by the light, nor were there hygienists that explained everything and made sure I wasn't scared! 

Here's my big kids loving the dentist!

This week we talked a lot about food webs.  Today we did the most fun food web simulation!  I cut out about a cajillion (what?....That's a number...Don't judge me!) green squares that was grass.  Then, I assigned about 13 of my kids to be grasshoppers, 4 to be shrews, and 2 to be hawks.

The grasshoppers began the game by collecting as much food for energy as they could.

Grasshoppers gathering food.

 About 10 seconds later, the shrews entered and started eating the grasshoppers.  The grasshoppers had to pass their energy (green squares) to the shrews, and then exit the game.

Energy being passed from a grasshopper to the shrew.

10 seconds later, the hawks entered and started eating shrews and grasshoppers.  The energy consumed (green squares) by the grasshoppers and shrews were passed to the hawks if they were eaten.

Hawks, shrews and grasshoppers Food Web Activity

Then I stopped the game and we saw the results of how the food web had been carried out!  Each time we played, both hawks survived, a couple of shrews, and maybe one grasshopper.  It was a great, kinesthetic simulation that I am sure the kids won't forget and we solidified that concept!

I live in Texas, and our state flower is the bluebonnet.  Every March, for about a month, we get the most beautiful bluebonnets and everyone takes pictures in them.  It's a Texas tradition.  I've done it every year since the twins were born!  Here's our pictures for this year!

 

 

 

One of my favorite things about my school is our Character Houses.

We have six character houses: honesty, kindness, respect, perseverance, empathy and responsibility. Each student is assigned a character house in Kindergarten (or whenever they move to our school) and they stay the same one until they are finished with 4th grade and move to middle school.  All of the houses are mixed within the grade levels, so every class has a handful of each character trait.

The kids can earn tickets for their house by being caught using our character traits.

At the end of every week, we tally up how many tickets each house earned, and the winning house gets to spin our big wheel to see what kind of prize they earned.

Then, at the end of the six weeks, we figure out which house had the most points by each teacher entering their points onto the Google Drive spreadsheet, and they earn a fun party!

All of the kids and teachers have their character house shirts, and we wear them on Fridays!

Our awesome PTA has even painted our character houses in the hallway!  They are on little life saver rafts because our school is right by the lake. So cute!

Last week we had a day where you were supposed to wear as much of your color as you could.  Here is our AP!

Isn't she a sport!  She was outside after school doing car duty!

We also just finished up our Alamo unit.  We did a novel study in Social Studies over a book titled "Journey to the Alamo" written by Melody A. Cuate.  It's a fictional piece where three kids journey back in time to the Alamo right as the Texians are about to battle Santa Anna and the Mexican Army. My kids were GLUED to this book! 

You can get it by clicking on the picture below. 

I had the kids do several activities with the book, but this one was my favorite.  The kids each chose their favorite person from the Alamo and researched facts about his/her person.  Then, they created their person with construction paper and put the facts inside!  Didn't they turn out precious?!

                             

         

That's my Five for Friday!  Thanks for stopping by!