Positive Fridays - Week of October 28th, 2013

Wow this week sure flew by for me, did it fly by for you too?  It's Friday!!!  I hope everyone had several trick or treaters.  Me, I only had 1 cute little witch, but she was adorable.

I had another super amazing week in Kindergarten.

• A school board member and a human resource lady stopped by to speak to me for a minute, welcome me to Volusia county, and give me a pin for being a teacher in their district.  What a way to fill my bucket!
• My students are getting better and better at following routines, directions quickly, and raising their hand before they leave their seat.  
• We started centers this week!  The children seem to enjoy them.  They are computers, word work, reading games, library, and listening center.
• The tech guy finally showed up and fixed my student computers and also hooked it up so my projector works and I can use my document camera and also show things on the computer.  Whohohoooooooo!  I am super duper excited to try it out on Friday!
• We had so much fun making -at family bats this week.  I got this cute idea here for free.  I will try to do a blog post with pictures of them as they turned out so cute!
• We also finally started practicing Teach/Okay and they are doing amazing!  I can't wait to do a full lesson with it.  This is from Whole Brain Teaching and is perfect for engaging children as you talk for 30 seconds to a minute tops and say Teach and clap twice and they say Ok and clap twice.  Then they tell their partner what you said while using the gestures you taught them.  All, but a couple seemed to think it was really a lot of fun!  In my class that's the goal the more fun the better!
• We also got to do tons of The Learning Station videos on the computer since our DVD player has worked all week.  The children loved singing and moving while being able to see the actions.
• A parent told me she wasn't so she sure how her daughter would be moving to a new classroom because she is quiet and shy.  She said well after the first day she came home so excited!  That was my goal to make things so fun that children are so excited to come back and it looks like I succeeded with at least one child!  She filled my bucket today and then stayed after the conference to help me with the orange day activities.
• Orange day went really well, the children did my fun pumpkin bowling, rolled a pumpkin to a cone and back, had a marshmallow pumpkin on a spoon and had to go backwards, then arms to the side and so forth for a relay, played hot pumpkin, limbo, and threw bean bags through a jack o' lantern. So much fun!  Many also dressed in orange.  Our party is today (Friday) due to me having a sub in the afternoon for school improvement plan training.
• Finally I started checking children's letters, sounds, and sight words (whole school year even ones not taught yet).  I have one who knows all of them and another one who knows all, but 1 sound and all, but 4 sight words for the entire school year.  I have only checked 1/4th of the class so I can't wait to check the rest!

I would LOVE to hear how your year is going.  Feel free to post your positives in the comments below.

Thanks for hoppin' by Hopkins' Hoppin' Happenings.  Keep on smiling!