halloween happenings.

i love halloween. i love the brisk air. i love the smell of fall. i love boots and cardis. i love dressing up. i love carnivals. i triple love pumpkins. (triple love = lots of love) however, i do not love people that steal pumpkins. seriously how lame do you have to be to steal pumpkins? i suppose i should get over it, but it's been 3 days and i'm still greatly annoyed. maybe by next october i'll be over it. nahhhh...who am i kidding?!?! i'll pray about it.

room crashing: pink zebra-licious.

pink. glitter. bright colors. more pink. zebra print. how can you go wrong with that combination? i mean, the more glitter the better. if it was appropriate to cake on the glitter eyeshadow and parade down the street, i would be first in line. let's be honest. this next room has all the components of pink zebra-licious perfection. i room-crashed my sister-in-law. she teaches third grade in a room with ridiculously tall windows. wall space is limited, so utilizing every bit of wall space and dousing it with cuteness is a must. 

her writing/whiteboard wall. i heart the glitter clothespins. neon glitter + mod podge. that simple.

in the world of painted stools, this one would be a looker. and the black and neon  chevron rug? cute cute cute.

 rhinestones are a girls best friend. 

 she painted and scrapbook papered this otherwise meant for tools chest. 

 the jewelry rack turn card chart is especially hip in its zebra attire.

and who doesn't need a lightbulb moment every now and again? this whole week has been one gigantic lightbulb moment for me :)

a blur.

life is a blur. a blur of pumpkins, family time, and fall. i love this time of year. i have always been a big fan of summer. funny how things change as i've gotten older. i am now proud to say that fall has stolen my heart. hands down best time of year. my slight obsession with pumpkins is inherited (much love to my mother dearest), but my affinity for pumpkin patches is something i have acquired independently. so far this year we have hit 3. 
school life is a blur as well. so many ideas and so little time. creating projects and having all 34 kids complete said projects takes tiiiimmmeee. holy geez. but we are hangin' in there. chuggin' along if you will. 
we have been struggling learning integers. i probably should clarify...some are struggling. luckily, we are fortunate enough to offer before and after-school tutoring, so there are definitely more and more light bulbs going off!

i used a manipulative to introduce positive and negative integer addition. worked like a charm. 

 

we have been learning via angry verbs and making connections. i stole the angry verbs idea off pinterest and made it my own. (seriously what don't i do with pinterest?) i honestly have no clue what the draw is concerning angry birds. dare i say i've never even played?! but considering the number of angry birds shirts and backpacks we have floating around room 33, the kids apparently have a clue in a major way. 

 buddies. i love buddy time. our latest greatest buddy art was a result of pinterest, and i am in love. bring on the halloween funness!

bye bye bye.

this is an actual conversion that happened earlier this week. kids: 'mrs. albonetti, can't we listen to a cee lo green song?' me: 'do you even know who is singing this song?' kids: 'no.' me: 'then zip it and listen. you need to hear real music.'
i am teaching a generation who doesn't know a NSYNC song when they hear one. bye bye bye. are you kidding me?! how is it possible you have lived on this earth for 11 years and never heard bye bye bye? isn't that un-american or something? you better believe nsync has been on blast for the past 3 days. (during independent work time...haha i promise i do teach) i will teach those students about classic american boy bands if its the last thing i do. cee lo green over nsync. i think not.
other than that...we have been hard at work.
i finished my focus wall. finally.

 it was love at first sight when i saw these letters from here. they now live there.

 speaking of taking forever to finish. we finished hatchet. finally! after reading the novel, we watched the movie a cry in the wild. compared and contrasted the two via an individual venn diagram & then i put the kids to work in groups to create a much larger scale venn diagram and let them use the greatest invention in all the world. chalk. they were enamored with the chalk. they cheered for the colors they got. bickered over who got to write first. an all around hit. go figure.

 after comparing and contrasting we dove right back into our skill of summarization. i used the follow the yellow brick road strategy from here. the students followed their own yellow brick road with post its. we then took the post its and used them to create a summary for the back of their book cover projects.

 did i say working hard? i meant hardly working. well, that is those students who stayed out of trouble and turned in all their homework. it pays to work at school right down the block from a rite aid and a park. double thumbs up for enrichment days.

 our finished book cover projects. i had the students use oil pastels and we practiced color blending techniques. super fun. i was pleasantly surprised with the end results...the students did really well!

 gotta love integers. especially when you have to add/subtract/multiply&divide them.

cheers to another work week coming to a close. tgif. well close enough.