Five for Friday (January 17)

 

1. Phew! It has been a week! Things teaching have been great, but things family have been CRAZY! Last week my mom got the stomach bug and, long story short, ended up in the hospital for 3 days. She's recovering now, but still not 100%. This experience has taught me that nurses are one of the unsung heroes for our civilization! The crap they deal with (sometimes literally) is just overwhelmingly insane! If you know a nurse, please give them a hug for me!

 

 

2. We read Snowmen at Night last week. Such a fun book! We practiced retelling, discussed fiction/non-fiction, and looked for rhyming words.

 

 

On Friday, we made snowman out of  1 part Elmer's glue and 1 part shaving cream. When it dried, the snowmen were puffy and kind of felt like Styrofoam. This week at writing station, my students wrote what their snowman could do at night and used scraps of paper to decorate their snowmen. Aren't they cute?! I differentiated by providing 2 different writing papers for higher and lower students.

 

3. This 9 weeks, we teach persuasive writing to our kindergartners. We started this unit by talking about facts and opinions. I used this cute pack from TPT to do fact and opinion sort.

 

 

After that, we took an opinion poll. My kids voted on the best food. We did this another day with the best pet. On the 3rd day, they were begging me to do it again!

 

 

After voting, I introduced the almighty opinion word...BECAUSE!!!! We talked about how important it is to give a reason for our opinion and practiced verbally giving reasons. Taking time to talk about opinions was a HUGE help instead of just jumping into writing them. Finally my opinionated little munchkins went to writing and did a super job!

 

4. Is anyone else ALWAYS looking for apps, especially apps that are kinder-friendly?? I tested out a new (to me) app this week and HAVE GOT to share it with you!! Puppet Pals lets kids make their own story by picking characters and settings, and then recording their narration...just like a virtual puppet show. It's super simple to use and I can't wait to use it with my kindergartners! The free version comes with fairy tale puppets and settings, but the pay version has a lot of different genres.

 

 

5. I took the day off today and came to my parents house. It worked out well so that I could be here with my mom after her hospital stay, but really I was already coming here to help them move (or at least pack). I got my tape gun in one hand and my cardboard box in the other! Hopefully I'll be more productive than theses guys...

Have a GREAT weekend!!!