April has been so busy!! Besides all the state testing and preparation for it, there were all sorts of other things going on at school. One of them for my students was a special “Famous Texan” project. It was so much fun! Each of the kids researched a different famous person from Texas that they chose from a list that included people like Stephen Austin to George W. Bush.

After weeks of research, they put together slideshow presentations and then presented them to the class, with the option for extra credit if they dressed like their Texan. I loved that a few of them actually did it! We had Beyoncé, Lady Bird Johnson, George Strait, Sam Houston, and Nolan Ryan. I especially loved how a couple of them even matched their outfit to the picture they had on their opening slide. So fun!

We have also birthday celebrations thrown in, and have been learning and doing fun things in science as well. I have had them creating food chains, first as a whole class, and then as small groups.

I also had them create their own for part of an assignment. As I was grading them, I could not stop laughing at this student’s answer. He wrote fungi as “fun guy” and bear as “beer” – which made for a very funny food chain. (Maybe he is a “fun guy” because of the “beer”?). Just a reminder that spelling matters 😉😂.

When we moved onto food webs, we started with a somewhat simple one, and then we worked together as a class to create an ocean food web that blew their minds. Just look at all those energy arrows 😳😂.

I followed it up the next day with having them do a large, but not close to as giant Tundra Food Web in small groups. They had so much fun.

In all of this, we also finished our very last STAAR test, and so after our “STAAR Camp” review day, we used our little flashlights to have a flashlight dance party in the classroom. Definitely a great way to finish off at school.

At home, my yard is overflowing with flowers. In fact, my lilies just bloomed, and they are gorgeous.

And over the past week, we have had blackberries to harvest!! Yum!!

And I have baby tomatoes – definitely a wonderful way to finish out the month of April.