Snowy Day and a Giveaway! (just for starters!)

So, the phone DID ring at 5:30 this morning. Aargh! In November or even early December I would have rolled back over with a faint smile on my face as I drifted back to sleep...not so much today.

I'm not a huge "prep for the test" kind of dude, so I really haven't deviated from my normal teaching methods at all so far this year. I do, however, think that if we are going to force our kids to take the tests we should equip them with some skills for doing so. In addition to all the cool things I wanted to do this week(Animal and Plant Cells, starting Wonder), I was also planning to introduce the 12 Powerful Words to the kids.

Not to mention, this snow day means that I need to spend the next hour or so adjusting my carefully laid plans for the week...sigh.

I did manage to get a little something done for 4th Grade Frolics' March Monday Made It though!

My kids earn "read beads" when they finish reading a book. I require them to read a minimum of 25 novels in the school year. The books have to be from a variety of genres. I got the idea from The Book Whisperer. The kids are well on their way to meeting their goals, so we're looking ahead to Spring and proudly displaying our beads in the hallway, with a handy key at the bottom so people can see which genre matches which color.

Sometimes the world works in mysterious ways. I woke up this morning annoyed, opened up my computer and found a couple of nice surprises! One, my blog had reached 28 followers! Two, I was a winner in another blogger's giveaway!

So, in celebration of busting through the 25 follower benchmark, I present to you the "The Dodecahedron (x2 +4) Leads the Way" Giveaway! Sticking with the numbers meet words theme of The Phantom Tollbooth, I'm giving away 250 Scholastic Book Club points. If you don't use the book clubs in your classroom, you should! I've literally built three classroom libraries using them.

  a Rafflecopter giveaway

I was so excited to be a runner-up winner in Upper Grades are Awesome's recent giveaway! 

I'm excited to try out her Fortune Cookie Question Cards for Non-fiction 

and her American Revolution Lapbook!

Now, off to reschedule my school week, watch a marathon of Scrubs on Netflix and wait for my wife (who still had to go to work today!) to get home!