First Day of THE TEST...and a Freebie :)

I don't want to talk about it.

At
All.

Well, maybe a little.  All I'm legally allowed to say is that I'm super proud of about 95% of my kiddos for looking like they knew what they were doing.

It warms my heart...at least until tomorrow.

Nah, I'm sure they will Rock IT!  Tomorrow is the MATH TEST.  We've been practicing CUBES to death.  I think they can do it.

No, I know that they can.

Cubes?  I'm sure you have seen this idea before.  It is in my testing strategies labbook bundle.  Here's a picture of the foldable in that bundle.  (The whole bundle is on sale right now for the rest of today in my TPT store for only $2.40)

When finished with THE TEST today, we had our hour-long PE.  Thank the Good Lord.  We needed it.

After PE, we had lunch and then spent the rest of the day goofing off working on our ABC Countdown books.

I'm sure you have heard of an "ABC Countdown" for the last 26 days of school, right?  Littles (K-2) love this.  Us Biggies (3-5) miss it a little.  OK, biggies is not a word.  You know how I tend to do that...ignore.

Anyway, we (my teaching buds) and I brainstormed how to do some sort of countdown without all the fluff and excitement that gets brought on in the younger grades.  I'm not knocking "Bring your Bear to School Day (Letter B)", but it's just not something we want to encourage deal with in 4th grade.  Plus:
We are still in TESTING mode and we can't even begin to show them that we (teachers) are human yet.

We
Just
Can't.

So, BTB (Best Teacher Bud) came up with the idea of them writing about things in their journal.  PERFECT! 

Except, my journals are almost full...so I had my students create an ABC journal. (This is the freebie...just click on the picture to download for free.)

 I ran these pages two to a sheet front and back to create their booklets. Each page is for a new letter.  I created 8 different pages so that they had a variety of frames for their illustrations.  We are currently on letter J for "Jump Rope for Heart".  So, my students wrote about the Jump Rope for Heart day we celebrated back in February.  

Made for a very peaceful afternoon.

Mostly.

Then, we went out for extra recess.

Yay!