Laminator Give-Away, Roller Coaster Class, & I am a FAILURE

Although I have been sick, I am still alive.  Sorry I abandoned my blog for the first 3 1/2 weeks of school.  My class has had me on a roller coaster ride.  I have caught a cold and a stomach virus so far.  I LOVE my class.  I have the sweetest children ever.  Unfortunately, I also have the most talkative group ever.  I love to hear them all tell stories, just not all 26 of them at the same time.  I have rearranged my desks at least once a week.  I think I have finally found an arrangement that is going to work.  We have a great day, we have a bad day (they talk non-stop), we have a great day, we have a bad day.  We actually had 2 days last week that everyone was on green.  That might have something to do with the fact that I worked their fingers to the bone those days in workbooks.  We didn't glue or cut on those days.  If I let them do something fun, they go crazy.  We are working on that though.  

I am a complete failure at Daily 5.  We worked so hard on Read to Self the first week of school.  We had our stamina up to 12 minutes.  The second week of school started and my quiet kids became loud.  The walls started closing in on us.  There are 27 of us in a 600 square foot room.  We have not done Read to Self again since the first week.  

We haven't had time.  (We have done several craftivites.)

Like some of this ELMER stuff.  

And I also have the Interrupting Chicken craft ready for Friday.

We also made these cool stop lights for writing paragraphs.  I cut out circles and let them write their sentences on the circles.  They then glued them onto a black piece of construction paper.  I have cut strips to do the paragraph like Mrs. Prince next week.  

We don't have room to  spread out.  

Each day we say we are going to get to Read to Self, but we run out of time.  I am just a failure.  We are going to keep trying to make time for it, but I think we are just too crowded.  When I rearranged my room to spread out the desk I had to use my meeting area. Maybe next year when I have a smaller class or bigger room we can attempt Daily 5 again.  

We have used the glue and the scissors and my kids think I am the coolest teacher because sometimes I write on the Mimio in cursive and I let them use the Mimio pen.  Apparently, some of the 1st grade teachers are more OCD than I am and never let the kids use the pen.  They made them use a dry-erase marker and just write on the white board under (or would it be over) the projected image.  (GASP)

We are having fun!!!!  I am ok with being a failure with Daily 5 as long as my kids are learning and still think I am cool.

I was contacted by MyBinding.com this week.  They are sending me a laminator to try out and also donating one for a give-away.  I can't wait to start printing some things to laminate and show you all how awesome this laminator is.  Watch for the give-away coming soon.