Five for Friday - 11-13-15

Hello! It's Friday, and that means I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to share five random things about my week.

Here goes!

My sweet cat, Raleigh, is still suffering from anemia. I am giving her meds, every other day, as the vet prescribed, but I really don't see her improving. This makes me very sad, because I don't want her to suffer. Here she is before she started losing weight. We'll go back to the vet in a week to reevaluate her situation. 

It's not even officially winter, but I am already tired of the short days and chilly weather. I've been surfing Trip Advisor in search of the perfect spring break trip. High on my list are St. Maarten and Anguilla. Anguilla is a ferry ride away from St. Maarten, so I can get two passport stamps in one trip! My goal is to get to every Caribbean island.

Missing salt air and sand! Taken in Barbados

One of the traditions I have in my room is to play Rebecca Black's Friday Song. As you can see from the picture, they kind of like it. :-)

We are STILL working on our how-to books. It takes my sweet kiddos some time to get logged in and all set up to work on the laptops. However, I believe it's worth the time, because they are going to have that skill under their belts when they go to third grade (a tested grade). 

I had to edit the editable template (again -- see this post for the long and gory details of creating it). The way I look at it is this: I learned a valuable lesson in creating the editable template... AND I learned to quadruple the time allotted for getting logged in and typing the books! 

This year, I initiated a homework journal for my students. Twice a month, they have an optional assignment to write to me about a topic that I choose. Sometimes, I invite them to tell me what's on their minds. The purpose of the journal is to strengthen our relationship and to encourage writing. I stayed after today to write to the nine (half my class) students who wrote to me. This week's prompt was to tell me about a family tradition of theirs. 

It takes a bit of time to answer each one. They have a friendly letter template in the front as a guide to how to set up their response. Some follow it, and some don't. That's fine. I want them writing for fun. Below is a response from the previous prompt -- write to me about anything you want. Bless this child's heart! The first question is so cute. The last two comments made my heart smile.

Happy Friday!