Five for Fraturday. - Happy Halloween!

Once again I had good intentions and then Halloween happened and well . . . .here I am again joining Doodle Bugs with Five for Fraturday.

I don't know about anyone else, but it has been a CRAZY week! Monday evening another kindergarten teacher and I were walking out to our cars only to meet a snake - a LONG snake! Let's just say we ran back in the classroom and went the LONG way to our cars. Then Tuesday we had no running water at school because there was a water main break across the street. Between the district and our school, six portable toilets for 800 students were brought on campus and a case of water was delivered to every classroom. Let's just say it was DISGUSTING and GROSS!!!

I love my kindergarten team! There are 8 of us in all and it may have taken us a who years to all gel and bond, but we truly do support one another and work as a team. One of the best parts of working with these ladies is that throughout the year we do special days where each one of us selects one activity and the students rotate classes. It's a great change for everyone, we all get to know one another students a bit, and it helps keep their energy filled bodies moving to a different activity every 30 minutes and not driving us bonkers. Friday was our Halloween themed rotation day. I spent all day helping 120 five year olds make these number pumpkins. I planned ahead and copied them on colored paper, my wonderful husband whole punched them all ahead of time. All of the students had to trace the number,  draw a picture to match the number, and if there was time they wrote the number word too. 

My friends have been working really hard the last two weeks on identifying characters and settings. This week we added a little fun twist and turned ordinary pumpkins into characters. My friends had to work together to pick a character, plan what they wanted to do, what supplies they might need, and execute their plan. I plan to blog about this tomorrow to share a bit more. 

I have spent the last two weeks eradicating signs of my less than mediocre sub. Truthfully, I could write a whole post on this topic, but for many reasons I will not. Instead I will only share four things.

• She did not read anything! She missed the big note that said all the assignments in the lesson plans that were highlighted yellow needed to be collected so I could grade them. She sent everything home for two and a half weeks.
• When October started, she changed the calendar by changing the heading. That's it. She never once moved the dates to the proper days of the week. I was so happy to fix that this week!
• My class never left their desks. How sad! They never went to the carpet, they never moved around the room, they never danced and sang songs. She had no concept of what was developmentally appropriate for kindergarten. 
• She had no clue how to use the copier nor read the plans and notes to know what to copy. She managed to go through five of my 6 reams of paper. It takes about three weeks for me to use a ream of paper. I have recycled about three large piles like this over the last two weeks. Thursday I found this pile sitting on the bookshelf in the corner. It's just so much wasted paper. 

Now I will move on and never bring this up again. I am very happy to move on to November!

This week we spent time comparing numbers. I love when my friends can participate in a group activity, like this. Two friends selected a number, two more friends used ghost counters to model the number, one friend selected the sign we needed, and then we all said "(the first number) is greater/less than (the second number)".

Happy Halloween! We spent the evening at our friends' house. Every year they host a Halloween Trick-or-Treating party. They ordered pizzas, everyone else brought a dish to pass, and then all the kids go trick-or-treating. Edison was the cutest Olaf with his four Elsas. So were clear, Edison did not collect any candy, and we eventually went back to the house ahead of everyone to get away from the mosquitoes. YES -Mosquitoes! Growing up in the Midwest I only had to worry about making sure I could wear winter clothes with my costume, but in Florida I have to worry about putting on enough bug spray. Overall, it was a great way to end the week and this guy is totally worth melting for!

Don't forget to head on over to Doodle Bugs and see what everyone else has been up to.

Now to enjoy the cold front this weekend. It's a chilly 64 degrees this weekend. I am not cut out for Midwest winters anymore.