Fun Five for Friday!

Happy Friday, Ya'll!

I am actually joining two different linky parties today. All week I have joined the gals at Freebilicious for a summer fun party and then I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for my usual Five for Friday.

I spent a day in my classroom this week trying to make it feel a little more like home. I am waiting to post more pictures until I am finished but I wanted to share a little bit of my writing center. I love the way it is coming along! I didn't want to pay for an expensive banner, so I just made my own!

Ya'll. School starts for me one month from TODAY. Let that sink in. One month from today, I'll have a whole new bunch of nuggets in my classroom. Cue the tears and back to school bad dreams at night.

What have you been watching this summer? I watched season 3 of Orange is the New Black back in June but that seems like a lifetime ago. One thing I love about summer is getting to catch up on shows that I have missed out because I fall asleep at 7:30 on school nights. True story. Any way, I am really enjoying the new summer show, The Astronaut Wives Club. It is like Desperate Housewives and Mad Men had a baby. It's wonderful!

For my Fun Friday with Freebielicious, I am going to tell you about two different activities that we enjoying doing in our classroom. The first is Go Noodle. If you are not Go Noodling in your classroom, you seriously need to check it out. It is full of fun brain break videos, and they saved my life this winter with their indoor recess mixes. You class picks a "Champion" and then they earn minutes with the videos they do. My kids favorite part is when their Champion grows in the lab. It is free to use so you should check it out! It is a life saver when your students are getting antsy! 

My last one is a bit of a trick more than an activity. This isn't anything amazing and it probably won't work with every class but I can tell you it worked wonders with my class this past year and I plan on using it again this year. When I would notice a child that is working really hard, standing in line quietly, holding a door for someone, or anything else that I wanted to praise them for, I would walk over and say, "Oh my goodness, look what a great friend Annabelle is being! She helped her Harry pick up his mess without being asked! Way to go, Annabelle! Here is a smellie!" (Cue the "ooohhhs and ahhhs" from the whole class.) I would walk over and smear the smellie on the back on Annabelle's hand. She would smell it and announce to the entire class, "It's green apple!" Then I would see all sorts of little friends helping their friends for the rest of the day. It's a beautiful thing. And I am happy to give out smellies all day long if it keeps them being nice to each other. 

So, what is a smellie?

Flavored. 

Chapstick. 

That's right. The Lip Smackers that we all loved collecting as 24 10 year olds can be turned into an amazing behavior management system. If the student gets a smellie for walking down the hall quietly and then turns around and talks to his neighbor, I just walk over with a baby wipe and take the smellie off. That might seem really mean, but I can tell you, I only had to wipe off one smellie last year. It works. I pick them up here and there but Target usually has the best ones. A class favorite last year was the Dr. Pepper flavored one. 

I hope you all have an amazing weekend! We are headed home to see our families and celebrate a birthday!