Five for Friday!

Hi all! I feel like I have been so out of the loop with blogging lately! Life just gets so super crazy sometimes! I'm sure you all know how that feels. I'm glad to be back today with  Doodlebugs for her Five for Friday linky!

The last few weeks we have been working on story structure, with an emphasis on characters. We have talked a great deal about character traits, motivations, feelings, and actions and how these all work to move the story's plot along and also how characters' actions can effect the events. I created some organizers that deal specifically with main characters. These organizers have a fall theme and are perfect for a seasonal bulletin board display. For November, I have included an acorn and turkey organizer along with a bat, spider, and pumpkin. For October, we used the bat organizer to write about what characters do and say along with the traits they show. The kids enjoy making these and they are perfect for a quick formative assessment.

Click HERE to find these in my TpT Store.

We are one of the few schools in my district that allows the students to dress up for Halloween. The 5th grade, though, has a tradition of assigning a scientist project where the students have to dress like the scientist they researched and present their findings as the scientist. My hubby changed his up a bit this year. He had his students research a science field. For example, students researched paleontology, astronomy, marine biology, botany, meteorology, etc. The written portion included research that explained the field, told why it matters to the world, and included famous scientists in the field. The real creative part came when the kids had to dress like that field. Well, our daughter happens to be in his class and she selected paleontology. Her and I worked on the project together, without showing Dad/teacher at home during the process. He did not see her costume or project until it was due. She created a newspaper using a template in Pages, added photos from a recent trip to the Museum of Natural History, and added some clip art. She wouldn't let me take a picture of her in class....said I was embarrassing her! LOL! Her costume had bones hanging from the sleeves and bottom of the shirt. I made her a necklace with skulls and bones. It turned out mighty cute. The other little girl in the photo below was anatomy. She made a sign with an x-ray on it.

Here is her newspaper:

This student was meteorology! He had a baseball cap with painted batting on top. Hanging down were blue beads and inside the "cloud" were little lights that looked like lightning. So clever! All in all it was a lot of fun and I'm so glad I was able to step in the class and see some of the presentations.

I made these little treats for my teammates. If you drink Starbucks coffee in the small bottles they come in handy for projects like this. On the lid I glued black ribbon around the rim. I stamped and punched out the orange card stock that I glued on top.

 The labels are from Martha Stewart which I purchased at Michael's. I simply tied a ribbon around the top and filled with candy corn. Super easy and cute! Everyone loved them!

Halloween week was packed with lots of fun activities. On the 31st we had our school parade in the morning. After the parade, we settled in for some owl activities. Cupcakes, owl pellet dissection, and an owl craft from Oriental Trading.

Our owl study is going to continue next week as we create this adorable Owl Flip Flap book from Simply Skilled in Second Grade. Check it out HERE.

On a personal note, I recently returned from a 5 day trip to New York City with my daughter, niece, and sister. We had a blast! My daughter, Lily, has been begging me to take her for a very long time, so for the past 6 months we have been planning and saving. We had the most fabulous time and we were able to see everything on her list!  She was so appreciative and I know she will have some fond memories!  The same weekend we were away, my son, 13, was on a trip to Denver to play in a water polo tournament. Though his team did not come back top winners, he played his heart out. His coach told us that "this was Dane's weekend. He was the pillar of the team." To be able to give my children such opportunities makes me feel so blessed. October was a month to remember!

Dane at practice, #8!  One of the highlights of our NYC trip was seeing Newsies AND meeting the actors after the show!


Thanks for stopping by!