Table Leaders, Book Bags, and Other Things I LOVE!

Happy Friday!! On our local Christian radio station they always play this song on Friday mornings that simply says "It's Friday, Friday! It's Friday!" :) Some probably would find it annoying, but I look forward to it each and every Friday morning!

Let me just warn you that tonights blog is probably going to be a casserole style serving: lots of things all mixed in together and none of them might feel like they go together until you taste it! Well here's a taste of some of the things I'm loving right now.

One of the values at our school is creating leaders. Last year I implemented table leaders into my classroom as a way to encourage and build leadership in my students. I was thinking today about how much I LOVE having table leaders!

 Here's how it works: Each group of tables has their own "Who's the Leader?" owl. (You could do any animal or sign that works with your classroom theme, just put a magnet on the back of it!)

The owl starts on the first desk and on that day the student gets to be the table leader. The table leader is the one that passes out all of the papers and materials for the day. For example, when I pass out papers, I hand four papers to the table leader and they pass them out to their table. Or if we need math manipulatives, the table leader gets the manipulatives for the whole table, passes them out, and puts them back when they are finished.

At the end of the day the table leader then "flies" the owl over to the next student's table (we go in a counter clock wise motion):

I have the rule that students can't play with the owl on their desk or fly it until the end of the day. If they do play with it or move it before the end of the day, they lose the owl and don't get to be the table leader the rest of the day. Trust me, you only have to take the owl away once and you don't have any more problems with students playing with it!

Also if a student is absent the person who would be the table leader next, gets to be the table leader for the day!

Here's why I love table leaders:

-the students manage all of the papers and materials

-it maximizes our time as teachers and allows for smoother transitions

-the daily rotations allows for frequent leadership opportunities and rotation is student managed, which means its an easy system to maintain

-kids LOVE being leaders and can't wait to get to be table leader!

Another thing I'm loving this year is our book bags that we use for Daily 5:

I used to use book boxes, but they got destroyed so easily and were difficult to store. This year I asked each student to bring in a reusable bag at the beginning of the year. They keep their good fit books right in their bags and the bags stay on the back of their chair until they go to Read to Self. This is a keeper, for sure!

Here's why I love the reusable book bags:

-they are inexpensive and durable

-they are off the floor, which keeps everything better organized and students can can easy access to their books

-when students bring in their own reusable bags, they have ownership of their bags and I have found that they are taking better care of them as a result

If you want to provide bags for your students, Wal-Mart sells their reusable cloth bags for only $0.50 each!!

I've also been loving the visual craftivities we've been making the last couple of weeks as we are learning about the short vowel sounds. Both of these are thanks to pinterest!

We've been working on using stretchy the snake to stretch out our words both in reading and in writing. We ended our short e unit by stretching out short e words on some hen's eggs after reading The Little Red Hen, This hen activity came from the Fairy Dust Teaching blog and the original post can be found {here}. I adapted it by making eggs on the computer with 3 lines on it for students to stretch and write short e words.

We ended our short o unit by stretching out short o words on the end of each leg on an octopus.  This octopus activity came from the Sharpened Pencil blog and the original post can be found {here}. I again adapted it by making rectangles on the computer with 3 lines on it for students to stretch and write short o words. My amazing grade level partner had the idea of drawing on O for the mouth since the gesture that we teach our kids for the short o sound is to make their mouth like an o and say the short /o/ as they move their pointer finger around their mouth in a circle. What a fun way to reinforce the short vowel sounds. My kiddos have already referenced them as they are reading: "o like in the octopus we made." LOVE!

I can't help but end a post about things I love, without telling you about how much I love my husband! I am so so blessed. We went apple picking together tonight and I am just so thankful to be married to my best friend! We had a blast picking apples! It was the last day of pick your own apples at our local orchard and despite the drizzle and mud from the rain earlier in the day, we just laughed, chatted, and came home with a ton of apples! Ok, maybe not a ton, but more like 40 pounds! Ah! We washed each of the apples and made apple crisp and have plans of making many more yummy apple things this weekend! Can anyone say apple pancakes for breakfast!? We saw the most gorgeous rainbow tonight across the orchard. I couldn't capture the full thing and this picture doesn't do it justice, but we could see it from beginning to end as it arched over the apple orchard:

Isn't it sometimes the little things in life that are the most sweet to experience together?! My hubby loves the Lord, loves me, and loves others so well. He's a man that embodies tender strength and is such a servant leader. Gosh, I just could go on and on about my hubby!  Did I mention that we are about to celebrate our first anniversary soon!

Amazing Photography by Mandy Sroka Photography (check her out!)

Well friends, I hope that you have had a fantastic week and enjoy your weekend! Did I mention I love weekends too? :) And if you get a chance, I'd love to hear about some of the things you are loving right now!