Five For Friday and a FREEBIE!

I've been out of the loop for awhile.  I have to explain myself!  Here is what I've been up to:

1.  School got out last Friday and I worked my tail off making sure that my classroom was closed out, that my report cards were completed, and that my cumulative files were filled out.  Boy, was that tiring!

Here is my room all cleaned and ready for the Boys and Girls Club to use for summer school!

2.  Then on Saturday, my baby girl's preschool had their annual graduation. We were unprepared for the craziness! Here she is with all of her congratulatory leis she got from friends. 

3.  Then my cousin came to visit from San Diego. We snorkeled, paddle boarded, and kayaked at Club Lanai, went to the Lanai Animal Rescue Center, had dinner at the Four Seasons Lodge at Koele, heard Paula Fuga (an amazing Hawaiian singer), had a bonfire potluck at the local farm, and swam in the Keiki pond at the tide pools. It was an amazing, but busy 4 days! 

3. Then one of my best friends here on the island is moving back to California, so we had a beach party with a bunch of people and then a smaller champagne brunch with only the new teachers. There were 6 of us hired this year and we call ourselves "The Newbies". We are going to miss Andrea!

We even had a piñata, but filled it full of little goodies for Andrea to remember us by!

4. After all the festivities, I have been beat! It's been hot here, so I let the kids run through the sprinkler as I laid on the couch and watched the entire 1st and 2nd seasons of Scandal. Hey, no judgements. I needed this!

5. And now for your freebie! My school does not have a social studies curriculum, even though the State of Hawaii has some pretty specific social studies standards.  I was racking my brain trying to figure out how to teach this one:

SS2.4.1 Describe the different ways people gain authority and the limits of such authority.

I looked on Teachers Pay Teachers and just couldn't find anything.  Then I talked with my good friend Corinna from Surfin' Through Second and she had the idea to talk about jobs.  Bingo!  I can do that!  I ended up defining the word Authority for the class and talking about it.  Then I read a book about different jobs (A-Z Community Jobs, or something like that).  After each job we talked about the kind of authority that person holds.  For example, as a teacher I have the authority to choose which kinds of lessons my classroom does, but I do not have the authority to decide which kinds of lessons the other teachers do.  After the convo and the book, the kids wrote about which job they want when they grow up and wrote about the kind of authority that job held.  Their responses were pretty funny!  Apparently, there will be a handful of zookeepers on Lanai in the future :)

Click on the picture below to download the written response, in case you have a standard like this, too.

Now that you see how busy I have been over these past couple of weeks, will you please forgive me for neglecting this little blog?  Pretty please!!  How has your May been going?

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Five For Friday linky party.