Wild Things, Made It Monday and Technology Tip Tuesday

Whew! Day 2 was a blast! A hectic, chaotic, nothing-went-as-it-was-supposed-to blast! From the breakfast line that never ended - (seriously we were in there waaay longer than we had planned)- the nosebleed that incited hysterics, and the hermit crab derby, it was a wild day! I also discovered why it is not a good idea to have the music room next door. They're called boom whackers and they're INSANELY loud. Even with our door closed we could still hear them!

At one point one of my sweet boys raised his hand and said "Can I go tell them to be quiet?" LOL!
"Sorry darling, you cannot go tell the music class they can't play their instruments!"

I am getting out my Chicka Chicka Boom Boom box tonight and bringing it in as many of my students seem to have forgotten 1/2 of their letters (if they even knew them in the first place!) Thankfully the children who came from our school are doing well - it's those kiddos from other schools who have me scratching my head, wondering what in the world happened in their kindergarten class!

Speaking of scratching, one little darling was doing just that - scratching her head incessantly. I went to check (oh please, no lice in the first week of school!) and realized that mama had oiled her hair down with olive oil - a sure sign that she's either been around someone with lice or had a case of it herself. I didn't see anything live, but my skin felt creepy crawly the rest of the day!

Oh, and there's nothing like having a child break out into hysterics because he's bleeding when you're in the middle of reading a story. I looked up to see him completely panicked and freaking out the other kids around him. My mind was racing - how on earth did he get injured sitting at carpet?! How am I going to write this up?! And then I realized that it was a simple nosebleed, probably caused by his own finger being where it shouldn't have been. I was able to calm him and the other children down and get him cleaned up, but not until after I saw him remove a thick, long, mucousy string of blood from his nose. I swear I almost lost my lunch right on the spot!

Speaking of lunch - we now eat in the cafetorium (the old gym which was our auditorium but is now our cafeteria - isn't that name silly?!). We are expected to keep everyone completely silent as we eat and get completely finished in 15 minutes. It was put forth that perhaps the teacher should read aloud as the kiddos eat in order to keep them quiet. Hmmm...and when exactly would I have time to eat my lunch then? We eat lunch with our class and the only break I get is from 9:25 - 10:05. Sorry, if this teacher doesn't eat, she's going to be either passing out in the afternoon or snapping kids' heads off! My solution is to bring my cd player down with a book on tape. Although, I am firmly in the camp of  "How about we let the kids be kids and talk a little while they eat?" They get to talk and eat at home and at restaurants - let's teach them how to manage their time and moderate their volume. Guess the socialization aspect of eating doesn't apply at school!

I also decided to give an informal assessment. We created our own Wild Things! I let each child choose two different pieces of construction paper. They had scissors, glue, crayons and pencils (all at once! talk about living on the wild side!) I showed them how to fold a paper and draw a half circle to get a full circle. And I told them since I had never met a Wild Thing, it was completely up to them as to what they made. I gave them 25 minutes from start through clean-up.I now know who is artistic, who still can't use scissors, who my slowpokes are, who has trouble following directions, who needs lessons in glue usage, who can't stand to stop until they're finished etc. I put them up in our hallway as I was leaving tonight - I think they all turned out super cute and have so much personality - I love crafts like this without templates! Here are a few of my faves:

 This is the whole group of monsters - gotta think of some fun title to put above it - Open House is next week! Note the 3 at the far right that elected to glue their monster to their other piece of paper!

This one is cute in a way-too-many-eyes way - maybe it's the pink & purple?

Remember, they had absolutely no guidance! I think this one is very demonesque - especially with those horns and the tail!

 

This little guy took the red cap off the tip of the new glue and stuck it on his monster - how creative~!

We also got out the play dough - I know, brave me doing play dough on day 2! I confess though, we didn't get through a whole rotation as the clean up procedure was not acceptable. Tomorrow we will try again! I have letter stampers form Lakeshore that we use:

This little guy was practicing "the".

And this is "When all of the letters fell out of the coconut tree!" - love that she made that connection to the pink play dough!

We also had a hermit crab derby where I gathered everyone around the carpet and rewarded them for their hard work learning procedures by letting them watch the hermit crabs crawl on the carpet. For 5 and 6 year olds this has all the excitement of the most intense sporting event in history. Each crab leg that emerged was greeted with squeals and glee. Only two of the crabs deigned to actually walk around on carpet, but all of the kids loved watching the process so much that it will now be an effective motivator for getting the whole class working and following procedures -"If you get your work done on time, I'll let the hermit crabs out!"

 Also, here is my Made It Monday (linking up with Tara over at 4th Grade Frolics!)- a day late and not so very dramatic (that one is coming, promise!), but I absolutely love it:

 Yep, those are the thumbprints of every child in my class (plus me!). How stinking cute did that turn out?! We got to talk about how everyone has different fingerprints, and that it's a sign of our uniqueness and we need everyone to make our class fly!

I am also linking up with Blog Hoppin' again today for Technology Tip Tuesday!

My tech tip is something I just tried out yesterday, but have seen and heard about before. It's how to get those pixelated faces on pictures, like this:

This is perfect for sharing pictures of your classroom without sharing pictures of students!

Go to Picasa in Google+. 

 Upload a picture directly from your computer into Picasa.(this is a picture of my youngest).

 Select the photo you want to edit, click "Actions" and then "Edit in Creative Kit"

 This first screen is where you can crop, rotate and fix the exposure, but you can mess around with that on your own :)

Click the "Decorate" tab and scroll down to "Focal Pixelate"

  Click directly in the middle of the face and then use the scroll bars on the left to change the size of your circle (focal size) as well as how large or small the pixels are. Once the face is pixelated to your liking just click the blue "Save to my album" tab on the top right!

Easy peasy right? So sad that it took me this long to learn it lol! Alright, I'm off to the trenches again -have a terrific Tuesday everyone!