Thursday, September 26, 2013

Bushels of Fun && Gallons of Benadryl

How it's not Friday night right now is beyond me. My patience has been worn pretty thin this week && my energy levels are even thinner...too bad pudgy areas don't shrink like that huh?? Any week with a half day involved is bound to be nuttier than a jar of chunky peanut butter, but crikey was this one a doozy. Don't get me wrong...I love my kids and all of their adorable little quirks, but combined with the ever growing demands from the district to assess, assess, assess until you're buried in a heap of ungraded assessments is making me go a little bananas. I feel like when I'm not assessing I'm trying to mentally prepare myself (and my kids) for the next round of assessments. I can't be the only one out there in Common Core Madness Land feeling this way...right??? Sprinkle on a ton of random bug bites and I'm in full freak out mode. Anyway, on to happier pastures & a benadryl induced stupor...tomorrow is Friday, it's a Jeans Day, and I'm tossing in some apple-liciousness.

The last few weeks we've been working on word problems. Basic addition and subtraction problems...no problem. Finding missing addends/subtrahends has left me wanting to poke my eyeballs out with unsharpened/gnawed on/glue stick covered pencils. They just aren't ready for the abstract thinking that is involved with solving these "tricky" word problems. I'm not one to throw in the towel (I searched for weeks for a cheetah print cardigan until I finally found one) so we've been working really, really hard this week to make the "tricky" problems not so tricky. I think they finally have it {{knocking on wood}} so tomorrow we're changing gears. Some of the district created word problems have number words which have thrown my loves for a loop. We've practiced reading them, matching them, spelling them, chanting them, blah, blah, blah. My kids are extremely kinesthetic this year so we're getting crafty about it. Even my boys love craftivities...they love them more than pizza day in the cafeteria && this makes me happier than a person walking on sunshine with their pet unicorn while eating skittles (who I would imagine to be a very happy person...I mean you're eating skittles && they're fabulous).

Here's the plan...we're going to get some scissor action going to make an apple and then pick up the million pieces of teeny tiny pieces of paper on the floor...did I mention my kids are half billy goats? Then they're going to pick a number word card, read it, and use finger paint to make the corresponding number of "seeds" on their apple. Fingers will be washed && the number word will be written neatly on a sentence strip (that will later be trimmed to size). Simple, easy && of course, fabulous!


Even more fabulous than an apple crafitivity...benadryl sleep && a pumpkin beer (I probably shouldn't mix the two but I'm feeling rebellious). I have more apple stuff to share, but I can feel myself getting closer to sleeping face first on my keyboard so I'm logging off for the night. My only request, please pray that whatever bug is lovin' up on my sweet meat stays away from me...I'm tired of looking like a human connect the dot page. Until next time, live, love && be as happy as a person walking on sunshine with their pet unicorn while eating skittles.

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