Parties, Pinterest, Promises of Wine, & Paragraphs

Whew!  That's a lot to tackle, but here goes:

Today Claire had not one, but TWO birthday parties...her morning started off rough...she was a wee bit sluggish and quiet...she even considered staying home--but like a true trooper she hit them both and reconnected with all her school chums...it's sad, but my five year old has a more active social life than I do...

HOWEVER, today, Sabrina was coming for a visit (which may have brought on Claire's moodiness about going away from home...big sister, Brina is not often around...We had big plans, BIG plans, HUGE...we were going to craft and create...we spent the morning sharing Pinterest ideas back and forth before she even headed over...

We were also going to drink wine...two bottles to be exact.  I was ready--wine glasses were brought down from the top shelf--dust chiseled off of them..."What are those?" Payton asked...haha...yes, wine drinking, or ANY drinking seems to have faded away in my grown-up world.  But not tonight...

Needless to say...nearly midnight...and I have to confess...none of it happened.  No crafting, no creating.  And certainly no wine drinking.  What did we do?  Well...we LOOKED at Pinterest...does that count?  We snacked and ate...we watched...let's see...Herculeus, Up, Despicable Me, Matilda, an old school Mickey Mouse show...and some random hockey (that I tried my hardest to ignore)...we sat on the deck, and most of all...we talked.  Good times regardless...

Oh, and what else did I do?  I worked on a paragraph writing printable booklet....was not planning to--it just popped into my head and I ran with it:

There are four different topics: object, animal, food, and place.  Each one has the following pages to complete:

This one is to fill in about a specific object.  This is the prewriting...

Then the ideas on the sensory sheet need to get turned into sentences in a paragraph.  Because students usually have trouble beginning and ending, I gave them a little guidance...

And finally, there is an illustrating page:

Because I ended up making four topics, I was thinking about having my students do one a quarter--then I would keep them to compare student growth.  I will probably start out with the animal sheet, because students are usually not blocked when writing about an animal.  I think that I will save "place" for last, as it could get more in depth than some of the others.

So during the over-does of tv-viewing...I was really, being productive...Now the rest of my family...not so much...  :)