Farmer Mack Nugget: Where would you hide your turkey?

Today (and yesterday) was one of those days! At the end of the day today I accidentally dropped a bag of money all over the floor by my math manipulative shelves. As I knelt down on the floor to pick up the coins, I realized how quiet it was with my head in the corner of the room picking up pennies. Suddenly this monotonous chore was a relaxing excuse to sit in the corner of my room. I just wanted to curl up in a ball in that exact spot. It has been one of those days.

But here is a positive take away from this hectic week. We have a retired teacher who returns to our school monthly as the "Book Fairy." She wears these ridciulously, gawdy prom dresses that she got on sale at the department store and reads a new story to each class once a month. Then we get to keep the book she reads for our classroom library! So far we have three books in our "Book Fairy" basket in the library. The children LOVE reading these special stories on their own time. We even blog back and forth with the Book Fairy in between visits. 

 Anyways, last week she read Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey. In case you haven't read it, this is the tale of a group of children who go on a school field trip to the turkey farm, and end up rescuing the turkeys by sneaking them away from Farmer Mack Nugget under their shirts. It is a very funny story and the children get a kick out of how fat the students get with a turkey under their shirt. So for writing we wrote our own turkey rescue tales. Each child got a clip art turkey and wrote where they would hide their turkey. Their writing was very cute!

This turned out to be just the calming activity we needed yesterday so we could all recover from some major and unexpected interruptions in our schedule. My children are very familiar with the word "flexible," and how to apply it to situations. Add it to the vocabulary wall!  Writing often calms me down. Perhaps why I am writing this blog post right now as I sit on my couch at home.  I hope to pass this sense of calm onto my students on days where they have a lot to process. Writing and drawing can be such a therapeutic act!

This is my favorite because this child was not writing at all at the beginning of the year. Look at that growth in concept of word and all that spacing! She would hide her turkey in the bath tub.

I would hide my turkey in the closet so my mom couldn't find and roast him. HA!

I love how this student thought to turn her turkey over so it could lay down in bed!