What a Wednesday

Hi friends!
So today was quite a day! I had 5 students out today. 5!! And my student teacher was out too!! Flu shot, here I come!
Can you imagine what it was like in my classroom today?? It was so calm and quiet. We do centers each day for an hour and I usually have parent volunteers but my parent volunteer was sick today, too! So it was just me and my students today. It was so nice. After our calm centers, we started our Language Arts block. Do you remember D? Well this is the worst part of the day for him. Language Arts time is the time he dreads the most so he decided he wouldn't come back to the classroom. I gotta figure something out for that kiddo. Anyway, during our language arts block, it happened... dun, dun, dun! The fire alarm!!!! This was my train of thought: What's that noise? Is that the bell? What time is it? Are those more bells? Crap! (I go outside to make sure that those were bells because my classroom is far from the bells) Crap! What's today? Did I miss the drill? Crap! Then, "Ok boys and girls we are going to STOP what you are are doing, stand up and get in line." Yeah, I scared them a little with my serious-get-in-line-now voice. So D was already outside of our classroom, he saw everyone else and jumped in line (with a little prompting). We head over to the field to line up and D starts running. Running laps around the field. Just running. Having the time of his life. The entire school is outside at this point and D is running laps. What could I do? I giggled a little. There was nothing else. We figured out quickly that he just needed to let out some energy. When he was tired, he returned to class. After the drill- oh wait, it was a drill because a 4th grader accidentally pulled the alarm- we returned to class, finished out language arts lesson and moved right into Social studies where we continued to talk about the Statue of Liberty. No pictures of that today. Bummer. We watched a great youtube clip of a tour of the Statue. It was awesome, the kids were really excited about it. So during this lesson, I got a little surprise...I's parents showed up! With cupcakes, and juice, and goody bags for I's birthday. Surprise! Ugh. I hate when that happens. I really do. An entire hour before lunch. Double Ugh. We were still in the middle of the lesson. So I made them be volunteers for a few before I said we could actually eat those cupcakes and have those juices. Then I look over and mom is cutting I's statue for her. REALLY? Come on, mom, let your kid do her work. Can you tell I was annoyed?? So finally, I said it was ok to have some cupcakes BUT I had to inspect the ingredients first because I have students severely allergic to nuts including things that are made on shared equipment of nuts. Luckily, these were safe. Next, I had to inspect the ingredients again for gluten because I have a student severely allergic to gluten. Not safe. This student now has to eat fruit snacks while everyone else gets cupcakes. See why I hate these surprises? Then it was lunch time. Finally. But I have lunch duty today so I have exactly 15 minutes to heat up my food, get homework ready to be copied, help R find his lost lunchbox, scarf down my food, and report for duty. Ugh. After lunch, the birthday girl went home so now I have 6 students out and Art class. Pure bliss.
Here are some shots of my students at centers today. They were math centers 2 focusing on graphing, 1 reviewing patterns and 1 fun, creative one.

hmmm... one of these pages doesn't look right... We graphed the candy corn in our bags

We graphed the dinosaurs on the table

This one is from yesterday but I put it here because I love to see them on task and working together.

 Ok friends, be back soon!