Five for Friday, February 8th

Just for fun, I'm linking up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs First Grade Rocks for Five for Friday.  I'm supposed to tell you five random things about my week and myself, so here goes...

I adapted this lantern from

www.firstgradeblueskies.blogspot.com

as a reading activity, in which we read Gung Hay Fat Choy, 

and compared the Chinese New Year with the U.S. New Year.

A few activities we worked on this week

1.  Instead of being in full Valentine mode, my class in in full Chinese New Year mode.  It's tomorrow, ya'll, and you know with a Chinese daughter, we do it up right at my house.  Well, one of our second grade standards in social studies is recognizing cultural contributions from around the world in the U. S. regions and the local community.  There's certainly no Chinatown in a city as small as ours, but I think the easiest way to teach this standard is by celebrating world holidays, talking about their cultures and ours, the parts of our culture adapted from others, and learning other versions of folktales, than the ones we know in the U.S.


2.  That said, this week is overly full!  It's Chinese New Year, the beginning of Mardi Gras, when I always teach about the French influence on the New Orleans area, and Valentine's Day.  Also, right around the corner is St. Patrick's Day, when I teach about Ireland and the Irish influence on our country.  That sounds like the same random thing, but here's the difference:  St. Patrick's Day is my birthday, and my family really is Irish!
 

small picture...huge box

3.  I'm obsessed with nail polish.  I've just lost count of how many bottles I have, but here's a picture of most, so you can see what I mean.  I know we have over 100 bottles.  I also L.O.V.E. trying new nail art and nail polish techniques.  I gotta tell ya' that marble-looking manicure I have pinned here is NOT easy.  Out of ten fingers, I got ONE I thought was perfect, one acceptable, and the rest a nightmare!  Also, I realized that the tape all around is a total waste of tape, so if you perfect the technique, let me know, but just save your tape and use some remover around the finished job!  Yes, I realize this amount of nail polish is not normal, and yes, I bought five more bottles today.  Yes, I might have a nail polish problem...LOL...I do have two daughters, though!


4.  I hosted the first (ever) dance at our school Friday night.  A co-teacher and I are the student council advisers; and the kids came up with the idea of a fourth and fifth grade dance as a fundraiser.  After getting it approved by our principal, I found out it was the first time our school had ever had a dance.  We had a BLAST planning, decorating, and boogieing down!  Even the clean-up was kinda fun, and, ya'll, I don't even clean my own house!  My fifth grader, I have to say, was the prettiest girl there, but I might be biased!

5.  I'm on a diet, for the second year in a row, and finally bought my first size XL pair of pants, shirt, sweater, and skirts this week!  I'm not sure how many people would be excited to be wearing an extra large, but I am ecstatic...I can shop in "regular" stores and buy "regular person" clothes.  This is big, because designers don't want their clothes on overweight women, I guess, and my mom and I have joked for years that if you're fat, you must be supposed to be six feet tall and have horrible taste, too.  Things have changed, and society has become more forgiving, with better clothing available for the average woman (whose size is 16, by the way), but I was still pretty dang excited to buy some really pretty things in a really nice boutique, without just having to walk by wishing!

Have a great weekend!

Brooke