Mother's Day, Legos and News About a Friend

So every year I'm always running around at the last minute trying to figure out something unique to do for the 24+ mamas I have in my classroom.  Thank God for the awesome teachers out here in the bloggerverse!  I got tons of great ideas from Reagan's "Oh Momma Mother's Day" unit on Teachers Pay Teachers and Sarah's adorable "Mommy, You're My Everything" book.  They saved the day for me!  I was given 24 photo albums by a retiring teacher last year so I used some of the writing ideas from Sarah's booklet and added a few of our own and had the kiddos illustrate each page for their moms.  You know, the usual...My mom makes the best ________.  My mom loves it when I ___________.  I had to resize some of the ideas I found to make them fit on the pages of the photo albums.

That's me with this cutie's mom and our tech buddy, Mrs. Kania.

This little friend was trying to write "in the car"...but it totally looks like "in the can".
I couldn't bring myself to fix it...too funny!  :)

We then made Reagan's Lemon and Olive Oil Body Scrub.

And designed our own gift bags to put everything in so that it all made it home safe and sound.

Only one Mother's Day gift was left behind at the end of the day (seriously...how does that happen?  It was sitting right next to her stuff and everything!  We worked on them all day!) Oh well...it will be a little late, I guess!

Then, because I bribed them so I could finish all of our Diagnostic and AIMS testing this week I brought out the Legos.  (I actually said, "Friends, if you could just keep yourself busy with a game or drawing...whatever you want and you can do it quietly, I'll have a reward for you on Friday."  Yep...I did.)  As part of our Social Studies curriculum and because our school has adopted a bit of a STEM philosophy, we asked for sets of Legos to supplement our community units.  Let me tell you...they LOVED it!  It got a little loud, but I never heard so much collaboration and sharing as I did.  So, I let them build and create for most of the morning.

I'll post their creations sometime this next week.

Okay...onto news about a friend!  My teaching buddy, Allison has opened up her own shop on Teachers Pay Teachers!  She's so excited and since she doesn't have a blog, I told her I'd give her a little shout out!  She has a cute number sequencing activity with a beachy theme that would be perfect for a quick end of the year check.  She also posted her Summer Fun Beach Math Centers.  Cute stuff!

Happy Mother's Day to all of you mommas out there!