Five for Friday Linky

Doodle Bugs Teaching Linky Party

How in the world is it April 10th already?!  I just can not believe how the time is flying by... and the talks about next year are amping up!

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So, speaking of April 10th... this was the view from my classroom window around 8am this morning.    Full on blizzard mode.  Gotta love spring in Minnesota!  It was 32 degrees when I arrived at school, and by the time I left it was sunny, the snow had melted away, and it was 60 degrees.  I hate when mother nature toys with my emotions! ;)

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Like many of you we started off this week by celebrating Easter Sunday.  I love to make holidays special for everyone involved and we have a lot of traditions that have carried on from my childhood.    A trail of eggs is one of my kids favorites (and mine too!)... it can be interesting when you wake up to help a crying toddler though!  This year the "Easter Bunny" was a little extra busy with graduate school and other things, so I was thrilled to see how much everyone enjoyed the special day.  Here is my youngest about to put the hurt on a some "Peeps on a stick" that his auntie sent him!  Love it! :)

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 Following our relaxing 3 day weekend was a long day of professional development.  I'll spare you the details... you've all been there.  We were encouraged to take selfies and live Tweet about the day (quite honestly that could've gone a little awry!), so of course I couldn't resist taking this snapshot of my kindergarten colleagues and tagging them in a Tweet ;)  Not gonna lie, I was a little jealous of their roomy balcony seats vs. my "packed in like sardines" seats.  One of them is also a blogger- you should definitely check her out over at Teacher Norman!  

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We have started our caterpillars unit!  This year we are trying Painted Ladies instead of Monarchs.  When I left last Thursday they had just arrived and were tiny little things.  When we came back on Tuesday I was shocked to see how big they had gotten and that one was already in it's j formation!  When I left today we had two in their chrysalis and three more j's.  This is quite the comparison from my experience with Monarchs last year.  On Monday I will be transferring them to their butterfly cage and we will patiently wait for them to reveal themselves!  You can check out a video of our little friends here

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Last but certainly not least, I ended the week with Miss Sassy Pants ;)  Have you ever heard of the book "The Day the Crayons Quit"? If you haven't then you definitely are missing out, it is an adorable book.  Her 1st grade classes performed a rendition of it today... can you guess which color she was?  Beige!  She was rather pleased with the beige outfit that I managed to pull together for her (which was a feat in itself... not much beige in our house lol).  I wasn't able to attend, but her school puts everything on their website which is super helpful!  They even live streamed her spring concert, which made grandma back in NY a very happy camper ;)

I wish you all a wonderful week ahead.  If you're like most teachers I know this time of year can be very challenging for many different reasons.  One of those reasons is staffing assignments for next year.  In our district we always find out at the end of April what our placements are for the following year (or if we are getting the dreaded pink slip).  It is a much less stressful process when you're tenured, but for reasons that I won't go into right now there will be a tremendous amount of movement in my district.  We find out next Friday... I'm anxious and excited to find out who will be on my team next year!