Five for Friday!

A couple of weeks ago, I started my Five for Friday post and I'll be darned if I didn't have time to go back and finish it. This week, I'm making sure to finish because I have some fun stuff to share!

1. Halloween was a blasty! Let me just say how awesome my neighborhood is. There are....let me see....EIGHT families with babies 2 and under on my little street. Plus a few more with kids that are a bit older. We all got together and had a block party. We had chili, one guy was grilling hot dogs, there were TONS of sweets and candies, and we just hung out and talked. We had so much fun! This was the first Halloween for my sweet Olivia and she loved looking around at all the people and puppies and other babies. Bless her heart -- she was so worn out by the time it was over that she was falling asleep in people's arms while she was being passed around from person to person. We also went to Boo at the Zoo a few weeks ago and she went as a peacock. Momma, of course, had matching eye makeup to coordinate. Love having a living doll baby. :)

This picture basically sums up the party. Love. 

{This is my best pal, Deanna. She was having her turn with Olivia when Olivia decided she had had enough.}

2. I am loving Goodreads. Are you on Goodreads? I have been making sure that I am reading every single night, even if it's for a short bit. I have SO MANY books in my "To Read" list...and I'll never get through unless, um, I actually READ. I want to read a Stephen King book, but I still (after almost a year) haven't finished Beach Music by Pat Conroy. So, I'm finishing that one and then once I'm finished with that one, I'll allow myself to start a Stephen King novel. Any suggestions as to which one I should start with? I'll add it to my Goodreads "To Read" list.....

3. We are still doing SciFri in my room every Friday. {Or at least attempting it on most Fridays...} On most days, we only have about 10 minutes of class left over for SciFri, but it's just enough for them to look at a cool science magazine or search our Twitter feed for something interesting. Some days, however, like today -- we have 25+ minutes for SciFri! I tend to feel like the kids kinda get off-track if they have more than 10 minutes, so I searched high and low for something cool to share with them that is science-related. I am thinking about reintroducing my Daily Discoveries on SciFri, but I'm also toying with the idea of introducing a "Creature Feature" and have some neat nonfiction articles for them to read about a new species that was discovered, or maybe even just about an interesting species that they may not even know about. Then I could tie in some CCSS work into the mix. I found a couple of neat websites that I thought I would share! I shared a few articles from these sites and the kids really enjoyed reading about real stuff that's actually going on in the world, like, right now. Check them out if you are a science buff {like I'm pretending to be}. I

Science News Magazine
Student Science

4. On a completely random note, Christmas is 53 days away. This post is exactly how my brain works. I jump from one thought to another. I actually had something else that I was going to share until this thought popped into my mind. So, have I done any shopping, you ask? The indefinite answer is NO. However, I have started to at least think about what I am going to get a few folks. Ok, two folks. And my list has 752,001 people on it. Not an exaggeration.  Good luck in your shopping endeavors this holiday season.

5. The big clipart bundle offer on Educents is ending in a few days! If you have no idea what I'm talking about - click here! It's a great deal on clipart featuring 19 artists and it's filled with graphics, fonts, borders, and digital papers. Don't miss out!! And please join Educents! You'll love it. I included my Carnival clipart pack in the bundled offer, but there are still over 1,000 fonts, graphics, borders, and digital papers in this offer.

Link up with Doodlebugs Teaching for this Five for Friday!

Science Fridays

Hello out there! I'm still here, taking care of my little one - and starting to do a little more thinking about heading back to school! Only 6 more weeks until we go back. Yikes!

I'm major struggling with not really reaching - and exceeding - my goal from last year of trying to incorporate more technology into the classroom. I want to rollover this goal into next year, because I think it's really important, especially in science. I've been doing some Twittering (not really tweeting, just looking at different science-related tweets and tweeters. Tweeters? Huh.) I've decided to do something called Science Friday, or SciFri for short. {Turns out, there's a radio show called ScienceFriday, which I found through my Twitter "research". Guess it's not that original, but I like it.}

I wanted to do something different, something fun on Fridays, to give the kids something to look forward to every week. In my classroom, I share math responsibilities with my fellow math teacher friend and the kids take their DOM Quizzes in my room every Friday. This eats up about 30 minutes of my class time, which is no big deal, but just makes it a little difficult to start any new material. I just got back from a two-week vacay visiting friends and fam in Louisville and on my way home, I thought about how I could make this SciFri fun and engaging, yet still relevant to the curriculum AND while tying in technology somehow. Each SciFri might look different, but will basically have the same structure. We will start with a quick writing prompt or discussion, followed by a class activity, and then end with a recap. Here's what I've come up with for the different activities I may use:

- Every other week, or when appropriate, begin SciFri with a writing prompt: 

 {This week, I learned......     I'm still perplexed about.....    I'm really curious to learn more about.....}

This will be beneficial to me for obvious reasons.

- TwitterTime! This will be a time where students will break into groups and search our class Twitter feed to find something worth sharing. The possibilities are endless with this one, because you never know what will be discovered. 

- Science Pictionary. I'm thinking about creating a Pictionary game for some of my units of study. We could use this as a study tool to prepare as a class for upcoming tests.

- Science Trivia/Zap Game. Self-explanatory.

I'm just thinking outloud about how to make my Fridays a little more peppy and exciting. What do you do on Fridays? Does your Friday look different than any other day of the week?