Sound Parade and a Big Annoucement... :)

I'll get to my big announcement in a minute.  
No, I am not with child.  Just be patient, you'll find out soon. :)

For the past few week or so, we've been studying sound.  My kiddos have had a lot of fun and become quite the little Smarties when it comes to sound, vibrations, pitch, volume, and echo.  Most of the activities we used came from our Aims science curriculum and were supplemented with Nicole Shelby's awesome sound mini unit!  I loved her whole unit and my kids really understood the vocabulary behind sound because of her awesome sound etch-a-sketch activity.  I just wish we had time to do all the great activities she included, but since I've been out so much lately due to Common Core meetings and a few personal family matters, I've had to be practical and leave more manageable activities for my subs.  



Yesterday was our big sound parade! All the second graders were encouraged to bring in an instrument they made at home and we marched around the whole school playing them.  

 A few of the the instruments brought in.  One of the requirements was to use common household materials, I love seeing their creativity! One student made a drum set out of boxes that had his face on it. :)

 We really had a great time! I only had my iPhone with me and it doesn't take the best pictures, so sadly I don't have that many. :(

It really was a fun activity, and is a memory my kiddos will hopefully remember for a long, long time. I do have a couple freebies to share from our sound parade, however, I am waiting on my Scrappin' Doodles license first! :)

My friends have been quite restless and chatty lately.  So I've been digging into my bag of tricks as much as possible to get them up and moving. I just want to say bless the heart of the teacher who dreamed up the idea of Scoot/Move About many moons ago.  

I foresee us doing a lot of Scoot in the last few weeks of school.  We were all kinds of crazy sauce before the parade and I needed to get some type of math instruction in.  Since we are benchmark assessing on math fact fluency soon, I downloaded this free addition/subtraction scoot from TpT.  It was perfect because some of the problems had missing numbers and were the perfect challenge to really stretch this activity.  


Okay, now that I've kept you waiting, I can make my big announcement!  Some of you know that I taught third grade for four years before I was moved to second for budgetary reasons.  As the year has gone on, I've really missed teaching older kids.  I miss the independence and how deep you can really go with topics.  My principal approached me a few days ago with a solution, and it was made official yesterday, so I can now proudly say:

I'm teaching fourth grade next year!

I met with my new team yesterday and I'm so excited.  They are a great group of innovative ladies and I'm thrilled to be working with them.  I student taught in fourth grade and down right loved the age group, so I'm over the moon about this change.  It's just the good news my family needed, there's been a little black cloud hanging over us for a while and things are starting to finally look up! :)

Which means I'll probably be changing my bloggy name, any suggestions? I was thinking of  Tales of a Fourth Grade Teacher, but I have since found out that there is someone out there with a similar name. I'm considering a non grade level themed name so I never have to change, my last name does mean fish in another language and I could probably something with "school of fish."  Do ya'll have any suggestions for me? 

Have a great weekend friends, tomorrow I'll be back with a giveaway! :)