SPRING BREAK IS HERE!

Glory hallelujah! 

... and what a great last day we had to welcome the break!

We have specials classes right away everyday - literally minutes after the kids have walked in the door, inhaled their breakfast, and said the pledge with the school. This morning was their culminating P.E. class gymnastic routine performance that they have been working on all month. They were SO STINKIN CUTE! The kiddos had been put into groups of 4-5 and had had to come up with their own music, routine, and theme. Definitely brought me back to my gynmastic/cheerleading days!

Yesterday, we had our fabulous Career Day, so today I had the kids connect to it and write a paragraph about what they want to do when they grow up - good time to put to test their paragraph skills we have been working on thanks to Stephanie at Teaching in Room 6. More on that in a later post! Perhaps I'll get to that over the break! 
Anyhoo, (flashback phrase from my high school years) we also wrote thank you notes to the presenters and created these absolutely FAB flowers with them that I found over at Hillside School Library. I did not get a picture of ours but here is theirs to show you an example.

Aren't they just the cutest?!
We also wrapped up our persuasive advertisement technique discussion and I challenged the kiddos to find and tally as many techniques they find while watching TV over break. They were excited - which made my teacher heart happy! I will post the handout I created on TPT as soon as I find time since it's at school! After break we will be diving head first into our own persuasive writing! One of my most favorite writing genres!
Our school collects box tops pretty religiously, giving prizes and awards to different classrooms or to the whole school each month based on meeting a specific goal (example: our Dean of students had to dress up as a Leperachaun for March and our principal, a gentleman, had to dress up as a ballerina!). Well, our class won "MOST box tops as a class" for February and so we finally enjoyed our "prize"  which was an afternoon trip to a local kidszone in town. They had FREE arcade games, carnival games, foosball, air hockey, etc. along with a massive, monstrous, AWESOME BLOW UP SLIDE! It really was a great bonding opportunity for the class and me. Playing with kids is one of the greatest way to share with them - I know it isn't always the most "educational" but it gives you the ability to relate with them on a different level and if you get involved with their play - they will love you for it! I had a great time, especially with my boys, competing on the slide for "highest jump" "longest slide without falling down face planting" "most spins" "furthest jump" "most complicated move" and my favorite, "most awkward fall!"

So ... bouncy slide = lots of fun. HOWEVER, if you weren't wearing long sleeves, it gives pretty crazy carpet/rubber burns on your elbows! They were burning and stinging on the bus ride home. As soon as we got back, we all were holding wet paper towels on our elbows! ha!
To wrap up our "beginning of break day" I had created little Spring Break treats for the kids ...

All in all, today was a fun memory to make with the kids and send them off on break with fresh in their minds!
To all of you who are on break - enjoy! To all of you who rubbed it in my face were on it already ... HA! My time has come! ;)

UPDATE: The next day my elbows looked like THIS! Ugh.