Five For Friday

Whew, what. a. week.  I kid you not, this week has felt like I have been waiting an eternity for today to arrive!  Major props to all teachers to have to go through the prep and agony of sitting through standardized testing.  I am NOT the least bit envious, especially after doing two days of back to back small group administration!  I can't even begin to explain how happy I am that today is FINALLY Friday!

I meant to post this earlier this week and never got around to it...

Today makes 3 weeks straight that I have been able to post my Five for Friday!! Whoop, whoop! 

1.  Monday I began laying the ground work for teaching about the government!  We did our fun lesson about the Tired King, Louie.  If you are not familiar check out my post earlier this week about it!  The kids had a blast and when it came time to introduce the 3 branches of government, let me tell you, THEY GOT IT!!! Between the King Louie lesson and their new book (which they loved!) they are experts about the 3 branches of government and our government leaders!

2.  We continued to work our way through the Knuffle Bunny unit I bought from Hope King.  This week we focused on Character Traits that describe Trixie, writing stories about when we lost our favorite toy/stuffed animal/blankie, and finishing our glyphs from last week!! So much fun!!

3.  One of my new FAVORITE bloggers is hands down Tracy Teagler over at Creekside Tales.  If you haven't checked her out, her blog is a must!! She has so many awesome ideas, tons of freebies she shares with her followers, and just overall some great quality work!! I have bought several items from her and don't pass up any of her freebies.  A little while back Tracy posted about teaching No to Bullies, Yes to Buddies, she shared several activites she did with her kiddos and books used as read alouds.  I LOVE books, especially when they have a great lesson attached, so I immediately went to amazon and purchased the books!  We watched the Birds short film made by Pixar (like Tracy suggested) talked about how they treated others and then read a new favorite Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun!  We talked about how we are all Unique and how important it is to treat others, even when we aren't being treated the way we deserve to be treated.  The kids then completed one of the writing assignments she shared about bullying, shared ways they are unique, and made their unique bird!! I couldn't resist but to put all their birds on a "wire."  The kids loved the display and so have all of our friends that walk by our bulletin board daily! :)   Thanks, Tracy for sharing your great work!

4.  We are through week 3 of Charlotte's Web, my kids are HOOKED!  They loved as we read "never hurry, never worry" in a chapter this week!  I think there was a gasp of excitement from everyone of my kids because it is the quote on their bookmark! :)  They also get all excited when we come across our pre-reading vocabulary words!!  I'm so impressed with how well they have been using the words in context and identifying behaviors with the words... Their new favorite word is GULLIBLE!  :)

One of their literacy centers this week (and probably next because they are working hard with adding the detail) is to make plates full of Charlotte and Wilbur's diet!  They are making them 3-D and they are turning out SUPER cute! I can't wait so share some of their finished products!

5. As I was planning for next week with one of my best friends and co-worker Diana, we ironed out our writing plans for the next two weeks!  We are digging in deep with expository writing and really explaining the difference between expository and narrative writing.  In an attempt to scaffold the steps/lesson and make it as user friendly as possible for our kids we came up with a mini-book and outlines for the two types of expository writing.  This is my freebie for this week!  I am super excited because next week we will be making an "edible" Charlotte!  The kids will then be writing a How-To make an Edible Charlotte.  I did this two years ago and it really helped the kids realize how DETAILED they must be when it comes to writing a how-to!  Be on the lookout next week (probably on my Five for Friday) of our Edible Charlottes! :)

I hope you all have a FAST Friday and a WONDERFUL weekend!

Egg-Cellent Five for Friday

Today is the start of what I have no doubt will be an Egg-Cellent three day weekend!! However, it is before seven and I am wide awake!  I am ready for summer so that I can retrain my body to sleep past 8 am!!  As promised, here I am back for my Friday weekly update, luckily I just happen to have enough energy to do this on a Friday and not my usual Saturday or Sunday!  :)

So here I go with my Five for Friday!

1.This week and week we spent some time talking about the night sky.  We have learned about where the moon gets its light from, the different phases of the moon, and how long it takes the moon to rotate the Earth. This week as we reviewed the phases of the moon the kids made a quick model of four of the most known phases.  I got this idea from a cute unit I bought last year, The Sun, The Moon, The Stars, from Yvonne Dixion over at Sassy in Second.  Wednesday and Thursday we spent some time talking about constellations and even making our own!  

2. If you ask my kids who my FAVORITE author is they will either tell you Mo Willems (my all time fave for chidlren’s books) and Gail Gibbions (I mean really who doesn’t love her books for teaching non-fiction!).  My favorite Mo Willems books though are all about Piggie and Elephant!  

 

I could tell you about 20 reasons why I love Mo Willems, but that would make this post excessively long, so I will just share one of the reasons that my kids have become obsessed!  I’m sure if you haven’t read the Don’t Let the Pigeon book series that you’ve at least heard about it.  This was Mo Willems first book series and so when he writes about others the pigeon gets jealous and “sneaks” into the books.  The pigeon is usually hidden in at least one place.  In some books you have to REALLY search to find him, but he’s there! This week we spent some time working on different activities that go along with his series about Knuffle Bunny.  I actually bought Hope King’s KnuffleBunny unit impulsively last year when I saw it due to my obsession with Mo Willems.  I didn’t ever end up actually using it last year, but when I saw Hope post about it a couple weeks ago and her suggestion of using it for Easter time, I was sold!  I quickly pulled open the unit and went through it finding things that I could throw into centers that my kids would love! Needless to say they had a blast using one of their our favorite book series to work on their skills of cause and effect, creating dialogue in their writing, and some fun with a Knuffle Bunny Glyph!  Next week I will be adding a few more things from the unit and things I've added discussing character traits and comparisons between the different books! 

 This was probably one of their favorite writing activities ever!! One of the unique things about Knuffle Bunny is that the background illustrations are all black and white photos and the characters are all animated.  The kids tried to use his inspiration and create a scene of their own! :) If you haven't read Knuffle Bunny, it's a must! 

3. We made it through four more chapters of Charlotte's Web this week!  Let me tell you, this is the kids favorite time of the day!  I love that they are just as excited about it as I am, one of my kids said after we read one of the chapters the other day "Man, this book just keeps getting better and better!"  The suspense of what is going to happen next (even though most of them have seen the movie) is exciting!  We all know that the books are MUCH better than the movies anyway! 

4.  If you caught my post earlier this week, you learned that Sunday night part of my attic fell into my garage.  Yep, that was fun, NOT!  You also would have learned that I got my NEW MACBABY!!! One of the very first things I did after I backed up all of my files from old Macbaby thanks to the awesomeness of the time capsule was create something new and fun for centers.  For some reason, compound words are never explicitly taught in second, however a review, especially when there are compound words on our assessments, is always great for my centers.  So I made a little compound word FREEBIE to share with you all! There are two different ways you can do this, you can have them do it independently and have students complete the recording sheet so you can check to make sure they really understand or they can play memory or you can have them do it independently first and then play memory with a buddy.  All of the above are possible. I also have it in color and the cards in black in white.  Whatever is best for your liking!  Click below to grab it FREE from my TPT store! 

5.  I have decided to take part in the Egg-Cellent Sellers Sale!  Go check out my store to find what my favorite five sellers are! :) 

I hope you all have a great Easter weekend!!