Five for Fraturday

Hello there!!  Kacey at Doodlebugs Teaching is taking a little Christmas Vacation from Five for Friday, but I just can’t seem to stop myself from blogging about it anyway.

So here we go!

This is Madison, my niece.  She is 14 years old now.

Madison takes art in high school and her latest assignment was to do a self portrait using a picture of herself from when she was younger.

AND . . . not only was it a self portrait, but it was a self portrait OUT OF WORDS.  IN SHARPIE.

She had to pick six words to describe herself.

I am in awe.

When Kerry sent this to me, I promptly forwarded it to all of my friends because I brag.  I’m a braggart.

And now I’m showing all of you because I am the worst braggart and I can’t help it.  And Madison wouldn’t let Kerry share it on her Facebook page so I’m sharing it instead.

Isn’t it amazing???  I mean, even if she wasn’t my niece, and she was your niece, I would still be in awe and want to forward it to all of my friends.

Cross my heart.

 

 

Steve and I decorated our tree last weekend.  We did our annual order pizza, drink red wine, decorate the tree, gaze at the tree, watch The Holiday and then fall asleep watching Love Actually.  Some years, it’s Santa Clause and Elf, or Christmas Vacation, and Santa Clause 2 . . . but the pizza, wine, and decorating are all the same.

We don’t have a themed tree.  It’s not all red and silver with ribbons and fancy things.  Or blue and silver with fancy things.  Or cream and green with fancy things.  You get the idea.

It’s not themed in anyway whatsoever.

When I was growing up, my parents got me an ornament every single year.  After Steve and I had been dating for a couple of years, my mom started buying Steve ornaments too.  And then when I got married, my mom gave me all of my ornaments so I had a really nice collection.

They are all super super super special and every year, while we’re decorating, we talk about each one.  Steve has a ton of hobbies so he has several skiing, snowboarding, motorcycle, baseball, cooking, etc types of ornaments.

And I don’t really have any hobbies, other than reading, watching reality TV, and drinking wine and coffee, so I have some more generic ones.  😉

They make me so happy, though!!

I highly recommend this tradition if you’ve got little ones.

I just can’t explain the special-ness of it.

Our school had it’s annual Family Night at Barnes and Noble this week which means my partner, Laurie, and I read to the kids.  Laurie is really not comfortable doing this, but I keep begging her to do it with me anyway, and she does.  🙂  She is a fantastic story reader and we are a hit, if I do say so myself.

We read three Gerald and Piggie books with puppets.

How could we not be a hit?  😉

Laurie was Gerald and I was Piggie and for the first time, we each brought a copy of the book so we didn’t have to share.

DUH!!

Before we read, we went out to eat at the Macaroni Grill and it was pretty much the highlight of my day.  🙂

We’ve been doing lots of Christmas-y things at school, but we’re also hitting the books!  I am IN LOVE with Annie Moffatt’s Subject and Predicate pack.  It is actually a part of a growing bundle that you can grab HERE and the price is amazing.  Really!

My kids are becoming Subject and Predicate experts, let me tell you.  And yes, we are using the words SUBJECT and PREDICATE which is new territory for me.  I used to only call them the Naming Part and the Telling Part, but now I’m all about the ACADEMIC VOCABULARY.

I mean.

Look at me go.

Seriously, every page in this packet is perfect.

I’m using Annie’s packet in conjunction with Stephanie’s Sentence Buddy, which is FREE, and Kelley’s Super Sentence Writers pack.

It might almost be Christmas break, but we are getting some good stuff in, let me tell you!

 

We’ve also being working on long a this week!  Hooray for the long vowels!  Sometimes it feels like all we’re saying is ah ah ah and I’m waiting for someone to sneeze.

Instead of fishing for fish, we’re fishing for whales.

Get it?

Wh – A – les.

My friend, Sheri, came up with this idea a million years ago.  And my whales are a million years old.  They are die-cuts from the IRC at my old school district.

And then I wrote long a words in sharpie on them.

And that piece of blue fabric is a million years old, too.

Sometimes, that’s just how it’s done in my class.

If you want cuter whales, and you want to type words on the whales, and laminate the whales, and then cut out the whales, because maybe you have a parent volunteer or you are the queen of free time, you can grab this EDITABLE whale freebie right HERE.

And that’s all I know.

 

Have a happy Saturday!!