Five for Friday-June 14

I'm BAAAAACK! Did you miss me?  I missed you guys!  I've never gone this long without blogging. It has been a crazy month.  Cuhrazy.  So this Five for Friday will be more of a Five for the Month (because this blogger is a big time slacker)

1. The week after Memorial Day we had the dreaded....

well I'll let you guess by looking at the pictures. 

Hmm...Bare Walls and No Groups. Yep, you guessed it.  Testing! This is the first year we implemented Common Core, so we didn't really know what to expect from the test.  My students worked so hard and  I was so proud of them. 

Before we tested, we made the cute rock stars, because we were going to ROCK THE TEST!  You can check them out here!

2. After testing, we had one week left of school.  So we had some fun.  We had so much fun that I didn't take very many pictures. 

One day we had Patriotic Day.  We wore red, white and blue and celebrated Memorial Day, Flag Day and Independence Day!  

We made these cute windsocks.  They were easy peasy. 

All you need is some red, white and blue construction paper and some streamers, plus a piece of string. I had the students create a flag with construction paper and then they added 3 streamers.  They hole punched two holes at the top and added string.  They had lots of fun taking them outside and playing with them!  I love how much fun kids can have with something so simple. 

3. No end of the year celebration is complete without a Water Day! Our whole third grade competed in lots of fun water and beach relays. 

Like the Beach Ball Hop

and Sponge Relays. For this one they carried the wet sponge over their head and then squeezed it into a jug. 

The Partner Water Balloon Waddle was funny to watch!  The studenst link arms like in the picture below and we placed a water balloon between their backs and they had to waddle across the field and get the water balloon in the bucket!

4.  I made a video for my class with all of our pictures from the year.  It turned out great.  (All 25 minutes of it!)  I invited the parents to come and watch it before our Awards Day.  I'm not going to lie, I was a little emotional!  I LOVED my class this year! 

I burnt a copy of the DVD for my students too!

5. Then it was finally here! The last day of school.  

I hate those pictures in a mirror, but I couldn't resist because I loved my shirt!!

After we cleared all the desks out of the room, we had a walk down memory lane.  I gave them a big piece of bulletin board paper and they wrote down all of their memories from the year.  

  Well school ended last Friday.  I had to work Monday-Wednesday.  Lots of paperwork and lots of cleaning.  I am finally done.  I've been enjoying my free time.  Since Friday, I've spent a lot of time at the pool. 

Ignore the ominous rain clouds, the weather has been crazy!

I went to my favorite store. 

and I bought a new bed. I'm in love! Thanks to my mom who spent two hours helping me put it together!

I got an awesome deal on the most comfortable mattress ever.  My bed is now very tall. I feel like I'm living the Princess and the Pea. 

I've gotten a pedicure, I've drank lots of wine, I've slept in, I've gone to the gym.  Basically I love summer.  

For those of you who aren't quite on break, hang in there! :) 

Have a great weekend! 

Seed Dissection!

I love teaching science and one of my favorite units is Plants!  That is one reason why I am in love with my Plant Lapbook Unit!

I'm super proud of it! It's a complete reading unit, filled with reading selections, fold-its and quick checks! Ok, enough self promotion!  On to some fun stuff!

Like I said, I love teaching plants.  When we are learning about the plant life cycle and parts of a seed, I love to disect seeds in class!  It's super easy and so fun!

First, buy a bag of lima beans. You'll need some dry beans.  Then, soak some overnight in water. 

The kids are always amazed at how large the beans grow when they are soaked in water!

First, the students observe a dry seed. I usually let them use a hand lens, because it makes it even more exciting. :)

Now, the best part! Take off the seed coat, split the bean in half...

Guess what you'll find inside?

It still amazes me when I see the little seedling, or embryo, inside the seed!  

It is such an easy science experiment, but the kids always love it. 

I was going to make a recording sheet, but I decided to do a little search on TPT and guess what? I found an excellent freebie.  It was step by step and used great vocabulary!  Click here to check it out!

I am heading to the beach tomorrow (yes, I'm taking two days off woohoo!), so I might be MIA this weekend. I'm sure I'll be posting some of my happy ocean pictures on my Instagram. Be sure you follow me @adventuresinthird! 

Have a great week friends!

Teacher Appreciation Winner

I had such a great Teacher Appreciation Week! My little sweeties showered me with sweets and cute little cards.  I hope that you had a great week as well.

Now for some fabulous news! The Teacher Appreciation Giveaway that was hosted by some of my favorite teacher bloggers is over!

Thanks again to everyone who entered.  We truly appreciate every one of you who takes the time to read our blog! :)

Have a great evening!

Celebrating Writers!

I have fallen in love with teaching writing workshop this year!  I LOVE it!

We spent the last month working on poetry.  We learned about haikus, limericks, sensory, concrete, freestyle, alliteration and acrostic poems.  We read lots of poetry, talked a lot about stanzas and lines, and learned about lots of figurative language.

The students wrote and wrote and wrote throughout the month. Then it came time to publish. They loved publishing on the computer! They published some on our fancy paper too! They created covers and Table of Contents for all of their published poems.  Here are a few examples!

Last week we finished our poetry genre unit. It is our last big unit of the year, so I wanted to really celebrate! One of my favorite parts of writing workshop is celebrating at the end of every unit.


We had a poetry jam, complete with snapping and a poet chair! Each student chose their favorite poem to share with the class.

Then they shared some of their other favorite poems with friends.

What's a celebration without food?  So I ordered a tasty cake!

My friend Elisabeth helped me come up with something cute to write on it!

Some of the kids shared their thoughts about writing.  I heard lots of things like, "I used to hate writing, but now I want to be an author!"  One of my little sweeties said, "When you handed me that notebook, I thought no way! I am not filling that up with writing! Now I want to get a new one to write in during the summer."  

I was so proud of my kiddos, they have turned into little authors! 

How do you celebrate writing in your class?

Teacher Appreciation Giveaway

I hope that you have felt very appreciated this week! I am teaming up with some of my friends to show some more love!

One lucky teacher will win all of these FABULOUS prizes!

Stephanie's TPT Shop

Amber's TPT Shop

Elisabeth's TPT Shop

Elizabeth's TPT Shop

Lisa's TPT Shop

Christi's TPT Shop

Lindsay's TPT Shop

Julie's TPT Shop

Gina's TPT Shop

Kristen's TPT Shop

Wow! I wish that I could win! :) 

Enter below with the Rafflecopter! Contest ends Sunday night at Midnight. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Fabulous Feedback and a Sale!

Have you heard? There's a Teacher Appreciation Sale starting tomorrow!

YAY! I love sales because there are so many things that I want. I just wish I knew what grade I was going to be teaching next year. Oh well, I'll still be stocking up on clipart, and things that could be used 3-5, because I'm sure I'll still be in a testing grade next year. (Thanks to Beth from Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah Designs for making that cute graphic!)

My store will be 20% off and you can get an extra 10% off with the code TAD13! Now is the perfect time to grab up anything in my store you've had your eye on!
Oh, and don't forget to add that extra code at check out, because I definitely forgot during the last sale! :)

As a seller, one of my favorite things about TPT is receiving feedback.
One, because it makes us accountable to the buyers to create awesome products.
Two, because sometimes we get feedback that really makes us smile!

So, the fabulous Christina from Buntings, Books and Bainbridge, started this great linky!

It was hard to choose from all of the fabulous feedback I've received over the past year and a half, but here are some of my favorites! You can click on any of the pictures to be taken to the product. 

They still bring a smile to my face! :)

Don't forget, if you have bought items and haven't left feedback, make sure you do that today!  Guess what? You receive credits for the feedback that you leave, and you can use those credits for discounts on future purchases! Hello?? How awesome is that??

So , know it's time to go fill up your cart, I know that I am! :)