Five for Friday: Writing, Wonka, & Penguins

Lol! This is so true! I use every second of my day without taking a lunch since I have to take my kids to the sitter in the morning and pick him up after school. I'm on a fixed schedule =)

We finished up our Martin Luther King, Jr. study with writing about our own dreams. This was a great opportunity to review speech and thought bubbles in our writing as well. I loved the one that said he wished it was summer again. Yeah...me too =)

Our district started our second annual One District, One Book (ODOB). This year we are studying "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". Kids went on a scavenger hunt to find our basket of books and one lucky kiddo found a gold ticket in her book so she won a purple top hat. They were very excited!

We studied penguins inside and out this week. We made an anchor chart, talked about the parts of the penguin, made a life cycle flip book, and much more. You can check out all of the goodies in my penguin pack that I just posted. Lots of interactive and differentiated fun for everyone. 

Penguin life cycle: Interactive and Differentiated

I love to hear my kinders read! Here is my friends reading her flip book to me!

On of my favorite things on a Monday is to hear about what everyone did over the weekend. It is a great way to ease ourselves back into the work week. I am so happy with how well their writing is getting!

How come the short weeks seem so long? LOL! I've been fighting a cold but still trying to get my runs in as I'm signing up with a group of friends for a local Half Marathon. It's the day after we get out of school for summer. A great way to celebrate!

 I'm ready for Spring Break and warmer weather. How about you?

Have a great weekend!

Five for Friday: Executive Functioning, arctic animals, & a FREEBIE!

 

Woohoo! So excited for the long weekend!!!

 

We read "Snow Dance" and made our own pics of catching snowflakes on our tongues. We discussed perspective and how you see things at different angles and distances. I was impressed with how well they did. I only had a couple that added eyes but they actually looked like nostrils. LOL! We then turned it into a math activity as well adding the number of snowflakes in the air plus the ones on our tongue. They created their own addition problems based on their pictures.

 

We couldn't finish the week without studying MLK, Jr. I made an interactive book for the kids to do that highlighted his life events.  They really enjoyed them =)

 

One of my birthday gifts I received was a year subscription to iFit. On my new treadmill, there is a screen and it has Google maps. The iFit app allows me to choose routes that they have designed all over the world. During these cold winter month in Ohio, I love being able to see the palm trees of Honolulu. I have also ran in Mexico, Amsterdam, and Hilton Head this week.  So cool!

 

We have been reading an "Arctic Animals" poem all week so I started creating some text evidence packs that are differentiated to learn about some of the animals. Here is a FREEBIE to teach your kiddos about the walrus.  There are three different levels with a labeling activity as well.

FREEBIE! Arctic Animal Text Evidence pack

 

I have been participating in a couple of book studies over the past few months. This book, "Causes and Cures in the Classroom" was through my building principal. I just gave a presentation to our staff this week and thought I would share some of the highlights. It really focused on executive functioning and could apply to so many of the kids in my room. It is a quick and easy read with lots of explanations and suggestions.

I couldn't forget to add this picture. I don't know about your classrooms but ours was in serious need of some cleaning. I told the kids that we were still covering our standards of sorting and classification.  It felt good to get rid of some stuff. Nothing wrong with some spring cleaning in the middle of winter. LOL!

                                                         Have a great weekend!

Five for Friday: We're baaaaaacccckk!

I felt like this happened to me ALL week. LOL!! 

Getting back into the swing is so hard on everyone =)

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a nice, long, and relaxing break. We jumped in with both feet this week and got ourselves back on track. Here were some of our highlights.....

 

Over the break, I made this little number up to reinforce those high frequency words we have done thus far in our Wonders Reading program. I added a snowflake under each word so that I could see them using their one to one correspondence. I also wanted to check comprehension so I added those at the bottom. I thought we could all use a little FREEBIE to ease us back into the school year so feel free to grab it in my shop =) 

 

Tap it, Read it, & Answer! 

 

I loved having the time to spend with my boys. I also had my nieces over the one day so we did a Polar Express theme to set us up for Christmas. I grabbed some items from the store and let the kids made a train out of graham crackers and frosting. They came out really cute =)

I told you that my treadmill broke and the new one finally arrived. It seriously took three weeks but better late than never. Baby bear.....meet Papa Bear...You can see there is quite the size difference. LOL! My husband wants to replace the board in the old one to give away to someone but I want to cut the belt off to show how much use it got (it's cracked all of the way across). I LOVE the new one. It has iFIT so I can use google maps to make my runs. This morning, I mapped out Hilton Head and ran a familiar route that I do when we vacation in the summer. Really neat =)

 

I usually do Jan Brett in January to go along with the Winter theme. We read "The Hat" this week and made a fun craft to go along with it. 

We were busy taking down all of the holiday items and prepping the room for Winter. It is my absolute least favorite season. I do like the big comfy clothes and fires though =) We decorated our room with these snowman mobiles. I also was able to grab a few different trapezoid tables to replace the circle ones in hopes of minimizing all of the chatting going on during our work time. Fingers crossed!

Have a great weekend!