The Winner, Tips, and Funnies!

It's Friiiiiiiday..... Friday, Friday, Friday! Today is Friday day.  Friday day!

Do any of you remember that song? I think it came from a musical. Anyway, it is indeed Friday and I have four and a half more school days to go... well, after today... SO I'm joining in the fun of Doodle Bugs Teaching's Five for Friday Linky party to share what's going on! Thanks Kacey!! Oh, and yes, this is a Funny Kid Friday week, too.

Coming up below... hee hee.

1.  First things first... drum roll, please.... our winner of the HUE Animation Studio is Carol Davis!  Carol is a STEM teacher for third thru fifth graders and she writes about winning:

"I am so excited about this! I thought about many things that I could do with the Hue! I think having kids use it as a follow up to a design challenge, maybe even to show their devices work, will just be amazing! The creativity kids will use, not too mention the intense collaboration it will take to complete, is just going to be so fun to be part of. I teach third to fifth graders in a magnet school and I can see my kids of all ability levels really benefiting from making the videos as part of our STEM class."

Pretty neat! I look forward to hearing what Carol is up to next year with the HUE... and we will hear because Carol blogs at Teachers Are Terrific!

Way to go, Carol! 

If you some how missed the hype about the HUE Animation Studio that went with this giveaway, you'll want to swing back to these posts and check out our animated videos!

2.  Do you remember cootie catchers from when you were a kid? I do. Also called fortune tellers, I had my future husband predicted many, many times... wrongly, of course, as Jonathan's name never showed up! With school getting out for us next week Friday I went looking for FUN skill practice activities and I found these free math themed cootie catchers at 123 Homeschool 4 Me.  They are designed for practice with addition, subtraction, and number recognition. Every kid in our school seems to be into cootie catchers right now, so I shared the link with my colleagues– with a little teacher inventiveness, these can be differentiated for practice with higher math skills. You can find this little Freebie by clicking on the image below.

You can also google to find lots of other cootie catchers for practicing a variety of skills. And if you're like me and it's been some time since you made a cootie catcher, not to worry because the downloads come with directions... or you can ask a third grader!


3.  I made this card for our music teacher who injured herself at school. I asked the kids to tell me any "remedies" they knew. We had to discuss that a "remedy" is something that helps a person feel better, as it was a new word to many. Good old common core vocabulary building...

Here are shots of our final product. Super BooBoo Buddy started out as a bandaid. You can really see all the knowledge kids have of sickness and injury– from medicine called "namonia," to tubes, to distracting your brain. I think my favorite was "Stay calm– no wildness." Good advice for whatever ails you. It brought a smile to my colleague's face for sure.

4.  Have you seen this KooKoo Kangaroo video yet? I am using it in our last week of school as my parting message to my kiddos. It is a totally silly– in the KooKoo Kangaroo sort of way– and totally upbeat, but it's making me teary :(

5.  Okay, so the kids are on a roll this week giving me Funny Kid Stories. They're making sure I have a supply to last me over the summer, I guess.

My kids were lined up to come in from recess and they didn't know I was standing just inside the door about to pick them up. I heard, "Well, Mrs. Wright isn't here so I can say it all I want– D-O-M, D-O-M, D-O-M, D-O-M..."

Anyone fluent in kindergartenese knows that D-O-M is the kindergarten spelling of the "D word–" DUMB. "Dumb" is really only a "bad word" when it is labeling a person as such, but kinders think it is bad all the time, and most teachers let that stand.

I wiped the grin off my face before the one flaunting naughtiness could see, then stepped out and said, "Why is someone spelling Dom, Dom, Dom? We don't have a Dom in our class." They all just looked at me. "I sure hope nobody was trying to spell dumb, dumb, dumb!" I gave "the teacher look" to the guilty-looking guilty party and we continued on our way.

Hope nobody ever says you are D-O-M!!

ONE MORE WEEK FOR ME!!  Hope to see you again soon. Scoot on back to Kacey's Five for Friday and get this week's scoop!