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!!!

Five for Friday (October 25)

When I started my blog, I looked up some tips for being a good blogger. One tip said don't apologize when you don't blog for a while. I've always been one for good etiquette, so I'm not going to mention my month of blogging silence   =)  I'm just gonna move on to Five for Friday hosted by Doodle Bugs!

 

 

"But I'm not done!" Does anyone else hear this when it's time to clean up from stations?? I was going crazy trying to keep straight who was finished with an assignment and who wasn't. And the solution was just sitting there...it would have been staring me right in the face if only it had eyes. CUBBIES!

 

If a child doesn't finish something, they put it in their cubby. It doesn't get shoved into the abyss of their desk bag. It doesn't clutter up my desk. It's the one-stop shop of where students go to make sure they've finished everything. LOVE IT!

 

Another thing they keep in their cubby is their poetry journal for our brand new poetry station! One of my main objectives in a poetry station is to practice handwriting. Students write part of the poem (because the whole poem plus kindergarten handwriting does NOT equal fitting onto one page!).  After they write the poem, they order it in a pocket chart.

 

 

This is our first week, and I'm proud of their work! BTW, their poetry journals are definitely long pieces of handwriting paper stapled together. Fancy, huh??   =)

 

 

One of my goals this year was to provide some station activities to go along with Saxon Phonics. I think Saxon is good at what it does, but...well...let's face it. It's boring! I'm trying to put a little pizzazz into it by making station games to review letters in the same order Saxon introduces them. My newest packet includes the letters P, N, M, and S. Here's one activity that the kiddos really liked! It's a file folder game where students sort pictures based on beginning sounds. This is in my TPT store and is a flash freebie until I go back and change the price. I hope you can use it!

Click the Pic for P, M, N, and S letter activities!

Speaking of Saxon, we learned about the letter P a few weeks ago. For homework, students had to draw and label 4 words that began with P. This one just cracked me up!

 

 

 

In other random news, this is what greeted me when I got home. A happy hubby and a happy puppy! It's the dream!

 

 

Have a GREAT weekend!!!!!!