Five for Friday (Feb. 28th Linky Party)

Thanks to Doodle Bugs Teaching for hosting this weekly linky party. I am always so excited to read about everyone's activities from the week. So here are mine....

We had our annual talent show at our school. It is absolutely my favorite day of the year....even beating the last day =) It is a time that the kids get to shine doing something they enjoy. This group did the famous "What does the fox say" song. It was so cute!

We got our room ready for our Dr. Seuss unit by making these cat in the hat mobiles. Hopefully, the snowmen we had hanging will go bury their heads and allow spring to come out. This winter seems like it is going on forever and the forecast is calling for a delivery of another foot of snow here in Ohio on Monday morning. AHHHHHH!

In our reading program right now, we are learning about Animals. I had my kinders doing some research on an animal that they would like to learn more about. I gathered a bunch of books from the library and then they used the materials to make a brainstorming web about their animal. They wrote the name in the center and then attributes in the surrounding circles.

So excited for this sale! I was able to purchase the items on my wish list at a nice discount! My teacher shop is all on sale as well and I just added my Shamrock Literacy and Math Differentiated pack. Check it out and get a discount before the clock strikes midnight!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Kim-Dominak

I just signed up for a half marathon in May. I am tickled to be running this one because it runs through Ohio State and I am a HUGE Buckeye Fan...my Alma Mater!

Have a great weekend!!

Shimmy on down for some Shamrock fun!

I am so excited! I just finished my Shamrock pack and it rocks! Lots of literacy and math interactive games with differentiation. My kids will enjoy playing with each other and I am going to love them learning at the same time =)

Literacy

Math

My first linky party! Yeah!

I am trying my first linky party so this is a bit exciting! Here are five things from my past week.....

We just can't get rid of this snowy weather. Besides having Monday off for President's Day, we also got a snow day on Tuesday. Although I love being home with my own kids and sledding, I feel like I am in speed mode in the classroom when I return!

When we return from the weekend, I always have the kids journal about their adventures at home. It is always so much fun to hear about their personal stories. PLUS, I love to see their writing develop as we get more in depth with our writing skills.

I also wanted to focus on the Presidents this week in honor of the holiday. I made a Patriotic and Presidency pack that we utilized in learning about Washington, Lincoln, and American symbols.  The kids really seemed to enjoy the activities in the factual stories and lifestyles from long ago.  I created write the room activities, KWL charts, rebus readers, writing exercises and some fun games. I love my little friend that wrote "I would change rules. Tell people no more taxes. I would be a good president." You can find it in my TpT store.

We have been very busy in our reading program as we learn about the weather. Very appropriate at this point with all of the varieties we get in Ohio. On Tuesday, we had a foot of snow. Today it will hit fifty degrees. The kiddos have really been working hard with text evidence when reading. After reading our leveled readers in small groups, the kids break up and read with other friends from different levels, we then regroup and they answer questions based on their own book. I ask for an illustration along with their writing.

I will say that the kids are enjoying all of the indoor recess days as they are allowed to get out their rubber band looms.  I can't believe the sensation these things have become this year!

Have a great weekend!

The kids will love our new Unit as we learn about transportation! Quite honestly, I am happy to start this as I'm ready to fly anywhere to get away from the long winter =) I added some new activities for letters and high frequency words but our biggest addition is learning prepositions. This will be quite a task so I hope these activities help. Have a great weekend!!

Patriotism and Presidency!

I was hoping to get this finished sooner but I kept wanting to add more things to it. I finally just cut myself off! I plan on doing Valentine activities combined with Olympics this week and then will do all of these activities next week in honor of President's Day. I always do these with my kiddos to make sure they work well and the kids I pulled loved the activities! I hope you do too! It will be on sale tomorrow in my TpT shop until Friday!!

Oodles of Writing!

We do lots and I mean LOTS of writing in our classroom everyday. We learned about our teeth this week for dental health month. I read several stories and then the kids wrote about ways they keep their teeth strong!

I am really proud of their writing as they continue to make great strides. In our reading program, we discussed the similarities and differences between the seasons. They then chose the season they liked best and wrote about it too.

You can always bet that we write about our weekend adventures when we start the week on Monday. I always remind the parents to discuss this with their kiddo before coming to school because they always seem to forget =) Now that we are over halfway through the year, I do ask them to write about 2-3 things. You will see that some are putting dividers in their writing to show their thoughts. We are working on writing fluid thoughts =)

Have a great weekend!

Kim

Unit 7 Week 3 Extension Activities for Wonders is DONE! Woot Woot!

You are going to like learning about habitats, future tense verbs, KWL, and cause/effect sentences in this pack. There is a lot to cover with plenty of activities that will engage your kiddos! Check it out!

Freebies!

I had a request to make some writing templates that could be used for writing purposes in the classroom given any topic. I posted a few freebies in my TpT shop to help with the writing process. One is a writing template to remind the kids to use their capital letters, spacing, and punctuation. The next one is a story comprehension check that requires the kiddos to tell about the characters, setting, and events in the story. The last one wants the writer to expand on the topics of beginning, middle, and end of a story. I hope you find them useful as do your kids!