Five for Friday!: January 13th

EEK! So excited for a long weekend =)! I only wish I could be on the beach too!

We have been doing a lot of math games to work on our number concepts. Kids were given many manipulatives to help them show the number 10. I loved seeing their creativity come out! 

We began our penguin unit this past week and made some to hang from the ceiling. I am always shocked how empty the room looks with nothing there. We took the santas down upon returning from break and had to quickly make these cuties. Kids made snowballs and wrote a few of our high frequency words on them. We made an anchor chart with all of the things penguins can, are, and have after reading some informational texts. They really do a nice job recalling facts from the books.

I am using quite a bit from both of my packs while we meander through the Arctic. Please check them out in my shop. I have provided the links and a FREEBIE!

DIfferentiated Text It! Passages related to Arctic Animals

Try a free sample: Text It! Free Sample

 Penguin Life Cycle Activities

 It is amazing to see the growth when kids come back in January from break. Seriously, I feel like they have turned a big corner in those short weeks on break as if a light clicked on in some. I am thrilled with our writing progress and am anxious to see how far they will get by the end of the school year! Each of my students does use a writer's helper that I made just for them to check that their letters and numbers are going the correct way. It also guides them in making sure they are remembering to use their capitalization, spacing, and punctuation. I am a bit of a stickler when it comes to all of these components....especially in the second half of the year! If you would like a copy, you can grab it for FREE in my shop. Enjoy!

Writer's Helper

When we returned to school, I had my birthday and decided to make it fun for everyone. I let the kids wear pajamas to begin our arctic study, I made large snowflake cut out cookies, we studied our penguins, and watched "Happy Feet" during indoor recess with popcorn/drinks. It was a super fun day! I also got a long run in and enjoyed dinner with my family. Everything I hold dear to my heart!

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 I just had to show the next two pictures ....You know you live in a house full of boys when you go to take a bath and find army guys in a stance along the edge and your husband installs a urinal in the bathroom =)

 These are some of my favorite things....I love to work out and we set up a nice little gym in the basement until we get around to finishing it. I always do this as soon as I get up and relax in a bath before waking the kids up. I light my candles and currently watching "Gilmore Girls" on Netflix. I'm not sure how I missed the boat on that series but I LOVE IT! We also got a snow day this week which is always a plus and our Amazon Prime Pantry box showed up. It was like Christmas. If you have Amazon Prime, you must check out the service. It is great for getting our items for lunches and breakfast. We also utilize the music component. Amazon Prime...BEST THING EVER! LOL!

Have a fantastic weekend!

Five for Friday: It has been too long!

Every.Single.Day....LOL!

I have revised this post four times now because I add items to my drafts but then never have enough time to finish them. Seriously, this has been going on for four weeks but I am sitting down to finish it now. It has been crazy with the Indians in the World Series, Halloween, elections, colds, assessments, conference nights (three of them!), hubby traveling... BUT this is getting done. Woot woot!

We finished our units on spiders and bats before Halloween but I wanted to share how cute these little things came out after reading "Stellaluna" to the class. We compared events in the story from what happened in the beginning, middle, and end. 

Fast forward over Halloween to the present in prepping for Thanksgiving already. We learn and review many concepts in kindergarten but I love doing auditory skills with the kids. It requires a lot of understanding and concentration. I pulled this picture up on our interwrite board and then we review the words 'beside' and 'between'. I call on kids to go up to the board to show their level of understanding. For instance,  "color the body of the turkey between the pilgrim and the indian brown". It is great in reviewing as well as refining those listening skills for test preparation =) Plus, they love using the dry erase markers on the front board as if they are the teacher!

We read so many books in learning about the presidency and elections. Two of my favorites were "Duck for President" and "Grace for President" (which ironically is about a girl becoming president). We compared and contrasted both stories and set up a mini voting booth in the classroom. The kids made their own voting cards with pictures from picture day as their ID and then presented that before voting for Duck or Grace. They each received a voting sticker before we tallied the final votes. It was a lot of fun!

I have major mom working guilt ....all of the time. I really have difficulty during these conference weeks when I have to work late. I try to squeeze in every minute with the boys. They love breakfast foods that I really don't have a lot of time to do in the morning so I made some time for pancakes, bacon, and waffles for all of them! Kyle celebrates WIG Wednesdays in his class. It serves as an acronym for reaching their goals. 

This is what it looks like in getting ready for one conference night. Tons of prep!

You know what keeps me sane? Running and working out! My miles have gotten to 7-8 before school but it helps with my stress level. I ordered these cute running pants to help celebrate our 'Believeland'. So very proud of our Indians and Cavs teams this year!

I finally finished this CVC pack now that my kinders are getting better at blending sounds. I differentiated it so that it can help the high, on track, and struggling readers. We have used it quite a bit and the kids really like it. Each letter of the alphabet is on a pumpkin seed. The picture goes in the box in the upper right and then the kids use the letter seeds to complete the words. I'm working on one for December too! Check it out!

CVC Differentiated Activities

Have a great weekend!

Five for Friday: Baking with the 5 Senses! Yum!

Ahh....I saw some of my kinders doing this during free choice time this week. I love it!

We studied Johnny Appleseed this week and discussed parts of his life. The kids made their own people and added the pot Johnny wore in the story. They added their own names before writing three facts on the apples about Johnny's life.

This was our last week studying apples before we begin pumpkins next week. We took all of the apples we had collected and made apple biscuits! Each kiddo got a Pillsbury biscuit that they made as a crater to hold all of their diced apples. After putting the apples on, we added some brown sugar, cinnamon and a slice of butter to add some flavor. They were yummy! I even had some friends licking their plates! =)

 We began our five senses in Science which tied in nicely with our apple baking. We made our own little anchor chart on our people to add each sense with something that would go along with it.  They came out great!

I finally finished my color pack. I like the kids in my class to always complete my items I create in case I need to tweak them. You will find 10 colors and each one contains: a color sign, word web, word search, color practice with writing, stamping, counting syllables, and much more! Check it out in the link at the bottom. It's on sale =)

Learn Your Colors!

We just finished the high frequency word 'see' this week which brought us up to my first differentiated high frequency book. The kids cut out the letters to complete the repetitive sentences while following the directions to make the illustrations. This worked out as a great tool for those that were not baking with me. They enjoyed being able to 'READ' their own books!

Interactive & Differentiated High Frequency Book

Have a fantastic weekend!