Five for Friday Linky Party!

So happy it is Friday! We didn't have school on Monday due to the holiday weekend but for some reason, the shorter weeks seem longer. It may be that I am trying to squeeze as much as I can in these last weeks of the school year too =) I didn't get to post last week because I had my nieces with me and my boys so it was busy at my house. We colored eggs and went to go see "Rio 2". So, I am posting pics today of activities we have done in the last two weeks.

We have been studying plants in our room and have read some great stories, both fiction and non-fiction, to help further our understanding of the needs and parts. I also love Dr. Jean's song "Flower, Stem, Leaves, and Roots" to add some fun to our knowledge =)

                                                            

I am just tickled with the progress of our writing! The kids have used our Writer's Workshop area to do some great work. 

Who doesn't love "Pete the Cat"? My kids adore him and got a kick out of his Easter Adventures book. I then had them sequence the story with writing about events that happened in the beginning, middle, and end. They did a great job!

Math is getting a little trickier now as we head into the end of the year. I made a Spring math game where the kids had to find the number on the egg while matching it to the corresponding ten frame, math equation, and tally mark. You can find this and many more fun activities in my TpT shop =)

The big highlight for me this week was that I finished creating the extension activities for our Wonders series! Such a relief! It has been a work in progress all year long but activities that were very useful for my Kinders. I have to go back and make the beginning Smart Start section and revamp earlier Units as I continued to add more once I re-evaluated the needs of my students as we went through the lessons being taught.  Even if you are not in this reading series, you should check out the Units as it covers each and every Common Core Standard for reading and writing.

 I'm in the taper week before my half-marathon and thrilled that it will be here in a week. Planning on enjoying some time with my boys =) Have a great weekend!!

T.G.I.F. with Five for Friday!

It always seems like such a long week when returning from break. I don't know if it's because you are well rested or because it is reteaching routines to the little kinders.  One week off and we are back to the questions of how much longer until lunch and recess. LOL! Anyhow, this is our week in pictures for our weekly linky party with Doodle Bugs.....

We had a WONDERFUL vacation in Orlando. It was so sad coming back but we created a lot of fun memories with the kids. It got off to a bit of a rocky start as I got the stomach flu just hours before boarding the plane and my husband got it the next day but then everyone was good the rest of the break. Phew!

The kiddos were excited to walk into the room and find our new writing station. I liked how DeeDee Wills created her writing area with clothespins so I expanded on it with my own. I used the pins for our thematic words for Spring but stapled on our high frequency words from our reading program. I also put up our checklist reminders that I put on our writing papers that tells the kids to start with capitals, two finger spacing and punctuation. I also placed fun papers and writing materials back there. It has been a hit all week! We also brightened our room up with some suns we made to go along with our theme =)

I love this time of year as we expand on our writing ideas. I have been using brainstorming webs that I have created to help the kiddos generate their ideas as a prewriting skill. Our writing trait this week in our reading series was writing with sequential numbers. The kids took the items they brainstormed about things they see in the sky and used them to write their sentences and illustrations.

It worked out well that we were talking about our environment in our series this week to incorporate the Earth and Sun. Our 'Time' magazines also focused on keeping green so we made our own Earths out of construction paper and wrote about ways we could help our environment.

I posted last time about the literacy and math stations I made for Spring. We started using them this week and the kids had a great time with them.  We focused on the blends: cl, fl, dr, and sp. The kids had to read the cards, place them under the correct blend and then write them out. They always love those hands on activities. 

I also made the second to last pack of extension activities for our reading program for those of you that follow me. I have differentiated quite a bit for opposites, writing, phoneme substitutions, long vowels and pronouns. I am so excited that I have one more to go. I've almost made it to the finish line. LOL!

Have a wonderful week!