Oceans of Fun, Leprechaun Luck, and COMMENT TO WIN!

So I have been pretty MIA lately, but jeez louise you guys, there has been testing galore in our room. Last week was so super busy with testing and this week will be as well. Ew. FML people, FML. I hate having to test all day! It is beyond stressful for me and the kids.I didn't take NEARLY as many pictures as usual last week because it was booooooring in our room. And I didn't blog due to the borefest. Here is the most eventful thing that happened last week (which is pretty sad): We have a new {living} {breathing} class pet.

 

Let me explain how this happened. The fair came to town and my kids were all raving about how they were going to go after school. Well, many of them did and came in the next morning going on and on about their festivities. I usually love going to the fair, but being on crutches was not all that conducive to the fair environment. I could just picture it: crutching along, crutch stuck in mud, falling forward, no hope for survival, landing in crap, and standing up with hay stuck to my a**. No my lovelies, no fair for me this year. Anywho, back to the story. One friend came in a bit late and had something hidden in his hands. He says, "I have a surprise for you! I won it at the fair!" Here I am thinking it is a small stuffed animal or something. How naive I was. He pulls out this fish tank with a little goldfish swimming around and says it is for me. Me *thinky* that some parents did not feel like maintaining a fish. At least they sent in food with him. I did not realize how often I would have to clean his tank or how bad he would smell. Poor little guy stinks to high heavens. Can I give him a bath?! Ha. Probably not possible. But leave it to me, I plan on figuring out a way. I guess I would stink too if I swam around in my food and my own urine.

So we named him Nemo and the kids get a kick out of him. When the kids were at specials, I was just chilling with Nemo. I watched him swim round and round and started feeling terrible for him. He must be so bored in there. So I started googling "fish toys" and I saw everything from dog toys to adult toys {jeepers!} and did not see any toys for a fish. I have to imagine that they make toys for fish to play with, right?! One forum said that fish only have a 3 second attention span so they can't focus long enough to be bored, but I still felt terrible. I tried to put some tank rocks and a little tunnel thing for him to swim through but he was scared to death of them so I took them out. In summary, I did not find any toys and I also realized that he wasn't fed over the weekend because he was in my classroom. At least he was still alive and kicking flippin' when I got there this morning. Sigh. How on earth did I end up with one more thing to keep track of?! And a living thing too for Pete's sake! Here's hoping that he makes it through the year!

 

Here's a recap of what I have worn recently (since I can't seem to keep up with it daily as I had hoped):

 

Sorry that the last pic is barefoot, my shoes were in the other room and I didn't feel like crutching all the way to get them and back for a picture. I'll describe them for you: they were black. HA! Now let's move on to the fabulousness that was today. We are learning about ocean animals this week! Woot woot! Love me some aquatic life. We are using my BRAND spankin' new Ocean Animals unit and the kids are totally loving it. Isn't it the best when your kids get into the things that you make? This is my newest fave creation! Check it out below:

 

 

We started by creating a KWL chart! I modified things a bit to make it SmartBoard friendly. It's much easier for me to do things this way because I can set it all up just by sitting in my chair at the computer :) I do love making anchor charts that we can keep posted though, so I cannot wait to be back up on two feet. My favorite "K"now moment was when one of the kids said, "I know that eels can electrocute you by sending fireballs through your veins like they did to my uncle Jimmy". So sweet. Love those heartwarming family stories!

 

 

 The kids also filled out a student version of the KWL chart. Next we read an awesome octopus story, one of my favorites. It is extremely informational, yet very understandable for the kinders.

 

Then I introduced my littles to our new octopus friend! This thing is awesome. I bought it for only $10 on Amazon and it is very detailed. It even has the suction cups under each of the 8 arms. 

 

 

Click the picture below to check it out on Amazon.

 

Of course we had to name this guy! We created a graph on the SmartBoard to choose which name we liked the best.

 

 

  I made the graph editable so that the kids could choose the options along the bottom.

 

This is when it got a little "fishy". As much as I loved all of the names the students picked, I had to sift through them a bit. I literally had to stop myself from snorting out loud when one of my tinys said they wanted to name him "Octopussy". Sigh. There was absolutely no way I could live with calling the toy Octopussy for the next 2 weeks. It would be so fun to have my principal in the room and one of my kids scream, "HAVE YOU MET OUR PET OCTOPUSSY?!" And you can only imagine what we would call him for short. Sooooo I convinced him to go with "Octy" instead. We also had "Pus Pus" and "Pusasaurus". Needless to say, those two were vetoed immediately. There was just no saving either of them. Next we had "Squirty". Still a bit iffy, but I let that one slide. In the end, here were the options we voted on: Squirty, Colorful, Octy, GG, and Jiggle. I was totally rooting for Jiggle! In conclusion, I'd like you to meet our new pet Octy. I, for one, am happy with the how things turned out.

 

 

 After meeting our new octopus friend, it was time for each of the littles to create an octopus of their own! The templates for these cuties can be found in my Ocean Animals unit. After cutting out and assembling all the pieces, it was time to add the suction cups. We used little fruit loops for them! I let the kids snack a bit during this part :)

 

 

 

  The kids did such an awesome job on these. We are going to hang them up outside the room for our ocean themed "Student Showcase" this week.

 

After our ocean fun, it was time to get down and dirty with some testing. No super cool pictures of that nonsense. After some testing, we had a bit of leprechaun fun! I was beyond excited to start using "The Naughty Leprechaun" story with my littles. Today we read the story and they were seriously into it. They could NOT believe that Liam and Leyland left them a gold coin from their treasure. And when they heard that it was magic, they went overboard. Holy Crow.

 

 

I changed things around just a little bit to make it classroom friendly. In order to have a visit from one of the leprechaun friends, our class must have less than 3 people on yellow or red. If there are more, we will not get to choose a leprechaun to visit. The students get to choose between Liam the friendly twin who leaves us treats, and Leyland the naughty twin who leaves us a mess. We used a graph on the SmartBoard to decide which leprechaun would visit us tonight.

 

 

And the kids decided that tonight we would have a visit from Liam! He is going to leave us some yummy treats in the morning and a new special friend! I will tell you all about that tomorrow.

 

 

 Get ready for tomorrow, because I will be posting some AMAZING pictures of the leprechaun traps my kiddos have made. They are so good. Can't wait to share them! You will also get to see what Liam has left for us. Woo hoo!

 

And as I promised, I will be giving away my new Ocean Unit to 2 lucky followers! All you have to do is:

*Follow My Blog

*Follow My TPT Store HERE

*Leave a Comment About Anything! {be sure it includes your email} 

I will choose my 2 winners on Thursday!

 

Hope everyone had a MAGNIFICENT Monday my sweets! And here's to a TERRIFIC Tuesday!

Love and Hugs!