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!