Five for Friday: Writing, Running, and Family

It has been a tough year for me professionally but I think there might have been a breakthrough this past week. I would love to see this little flower bloom before we leave for the summer =)

I started cutting out pictures from the newspaper that my kiddos could use in their writing. I'm always looking for new ways to make writing fun and they really seem to love that time of the day. I explained to them what a journalist does and how closely they can work with photographers in writing their articles. I wanted them to pretend they were a journalist and I was a photographer giving them the picture they were going to use in their article. I wanted them to use their imaginations in coming up with their own story. They did such a great job! I will definitely be doing this again before the end of the year.

This one was a riot! "The guy was fat and chubby and lazy. He put on a weird tv show. It was so weird all he did that day was watch tv all day. The end." She used those adjectives for sure!

"In the woods I see a waterfall. It was beautiful. I loved it. When I had to go home, I was sad. My mom saw me crying and said we could come back again." -seriously, so precious!

"The gorilla likes grass and he likes to play with a green ball and he plays with his friends."

"The cat is rolling a ball. He is making a snowman. The snowman is big and it is outside."

We had to throw in the ways to be great to the Earth in celebrating Earth Day. The kids made a large web of ideas that I then typed up. We placed each one on a green heart cutout that was the leaves of our trees (which happened to be our forearm and hand).

I am already starting to think about next year. When the new class comes in, I like them to see some of the projects the previous class did. I had the kiddos grab their punch cards to look through to serve as reminders of all of the things they could do throughout the year. We had a long talk about why Kindergarten is one of the best grades to be in and why it is my FAVORITE! I explained that they come in knowing some letters and sounds but leave with the tools they will use their entire lives....reading, writing, and arithmetic! They now know all of their letters and sounds, compose sentences into paragraphs, complete simple addition/subtraction, tell time to the hour, and so so much more! So, they wrote why their futures are so bright and added their portraits with sun glasses =) They are in the library getting laminated because I loved them!

I am thrilled that the weather is FINALLY starting to get nice again. We had a fantastic weekend filled with all of the favorites....hiking, soccer and more soccer, as well as some fishing.

I also got in a longer run outside. I have to admit that I am nervous about my upcoming race as all of my training has been on the treadmill. Even though I run everyday it is such a different feeling running on the pavement.  I hope to get a longer one in this weekend if the weather cooperates and in between all of the soccer games again. LOL! You can see that my exercise can be a bit excessive on some days as it showed my medal for 204 minutes. It is either that or therapy. Oh wait....it is my therapy but much cheaper =)

Have a great weekend!