Five for Friday May 15

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday. Thank you for hosting, Kacey! 

Here is an update to my Trouper post a while ago.  

My class absolutely fell in love with Trouper and his story.  Each of my students wrote a letter to Miss Dot thanking her for all that she had done for Trouper and asking her questions they had.

Sweet, sweet Miss Dot wrote a hand written letter back to each of my students.  They were THRILLED!  

First of all, they could not get past the raccoon footprints all over the envelope that meant that Trouper, himself, had seen their letters and helped get this package together.

They read and reread the letters, then shared them with their friends. 

Next, my sweet mother (who introduced us to Trouper in the first place) had a surprise for the kids! She had the restaurant down the street (Gigi's Place) make raccoon cookies!  They were a HUGE HIT!

 

If you're looking for a fun lesson this time of year, Trouper is it!   I also posted other books I love to use to talk about being kind to animals. We made some posters to hang up around the school to remind everyone to be kind to animals.

I love Whimsy Workshop's Directed Drawing and Writing Prompts!  The packet has such a variety of activities that I use some for morning work and some for our writing lessons.  The children just love them because they feel successful and proud!  Susanna has some prompts that are just for practicing drawing. Some with speech bubbles to fill in ( a favorite!). And others with different amounts of space for writing.  This is  great because for morning work, the speech bubbles or one to two sentences of writing is perfect.  For our writing time, I used more lines for writing. 

I put some of the sea creature activities together to make a packet for writing last week.  Each day we read books about the sea animal that we were going to draw and write about first, so the children had some great ides to include in their writing.  Some books were nonfiction and others were fiction.

I may have mentioned this book before, but I am mentioning it again because if you don't have it, you will want to get it.  My kids ask for it EVERY DAY!  In fact, I was out for screening one day, and the kids begged the substitute to read it.  She said she never pays full price for a book, but went right home and ordered it. My friend Leslie who teaches across the hall from me asked her daughter to get it for her for her birthday! It's a good one!

 It's just magical for the kids.  And what a great way to let them see the power of written words!

Here are some pictures from the book.

Here is a video of B.J. Novak reading some of the book so you can get an idea-

My sweet friend Holly teaches second grade next to me.  She had her students choose their favorite body part and write about why it was their favorite.  I loved the idea and wanted to share it with you.  They came out so great!  It was amazing because they were all different. Even if a couple students chose the same part, their reason for choosing it was different.  

                                                 

Finally... this is reminiscent of my brush with sadness when my Celebrity Match was Boris Becker and then Michael Keaton....  That was so sad it was actually hilarious. 

So, this time I thought I'd torture myself with the internet telling me what my name should be. 

My neck is named Caroline which is OH SO CLOSE- but my head is... Zack.

Ashley is cute. I decided to stop  with that one and stop trying pictures.

HAPPY HAPPY WEEKEND!

Five for Friday- March 28th

I am linking up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday! Thank you, Kacey!

 It actually seems like spring this week.  (Well, the last part of this week, at least- the beginning was in the teens.  BRRR. )

I finally finished my Bird Nest Prezi.  I have wanted to make this for a while, because I love teaching the children about birds.  I put together all of my favorite pictures and links.  I like using Prezis, because any time I have a few minutes, I can refer to it, and we can learn a little something.  The kids LOVED seeing what birds used to make their nests- and learning about the different types of nests. 

If you would like a copy of my Prezi, just click on the picture below. It's FREE at my TPT store this week.

We made bird nest kits, and wrote about what we would use to make our nest if we were birds.



 HERE is my post alllll about Birds and Bird Nests- with LOTS of TPT Freebies!

I had the children each bring in a favorite thing this week to write about.  They could write a story telling about their favorite thing or a fiction story with their favorite thing as the main character.  I took a picture of each child with his/her favorite thing for the cover. 

This one just made me smile.

 ("My hat is the greatest thing ever. I like my hat.")

He went on to say how his mom made it, and he loved the tassles.

I brought in my favorite thing- my dog Floppy.  I got him when I was one.  I showed the kids this picture and how new he was, and explained that I loved him so much, took him everywhere, slept with him all the time, told him all my stories, and took him on vacations with me. 

Then- I showed them Floppy now.  They were sort of speechless.  (I suppose I do see him through "Velveteen Rabbit eyes..." and he does look really bad...)

We talk about how some of our most loved things get worn out- and to other people look old and raggedy, but to us become more and more special.  I tell them how each patch is from a special 5th grade dress or 3rd grade coat.  I love sharing this, because lots of the children's special animals are very worn and old looking, too, so they "get" it, and feel a little more proud of their well-loved stuffed animals. 

I also share two stories that I wrote about Floppy to show them examples of what we will be writing.

We  learned the song, My Favorite Things this week.  Yes- I made a Prezi to go with it...   If you would like a copy of it, it is free at my TPT store.  Just click HERE.

Here is my post about it from last year.  I have Youtube videos all around the edge of the Prezi of different people singing the song.  The kids always love listening to the different versions.  Every year I get at least one "keeper" comment.  This year- when they watched Vanessa Williams, Placido Domingo, and Tony Bennett singing, one little boy said, "I liked the part where George Washington sang."  (AKA Tony Bennett...) Last year someone said I sounded like Julie Andrews.  THIS year, one little darling said that Vanessa Williams had the same voice as me.  Yes.  I am that needy that those comments made my day.  Yes. I do realize that children often suck up to the teacher.  Still.  Knowing how I sing- and knowing that Vanessa and I, in fact, do NOT have the same voice, that little darling scored some points. 

Inside the Prezi are pictures to illustrate the words in the song.  You can just click through the arrows at the bottom of the Prezi to go through the pictures as fast or as slowly as you sing it. 

We usually learn this song and sing it with some other songs for the grandparents on Grandparents' Day in May. 

I am ready for some summer activities. But NOT camping in a tent.  I am not good at camping- except when Jeff put our tent in our living room when the kids were little.  Our living room was HUGE, and that was fabulous. We did camp in a tent with the kids, and I have happy memories doing it- but hotel rooms still win for me. This description of camping made me smile. 

This little guy was my writing challenge in the beginning of the year. (And the one who was afraid he may be flushed by that automatic flusher.) He used a fist grip until we switched to using golf pencils. That was his magic trick. 

I  loved this post and wanted to share it.  I could read it every day, just as a reminder. 

30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself by Marc and Angel

The post has a great write up about each thing, but here were some of my favorites, with just the message that I put with the picture.

 (Sometimes I have a hard time forgetting when someone is mean...)

Luckily, I don't really worry about competing against anyone else (or I just gave up- haha), and I feel so blessed with my life that I am not jealous. But these pictures were awesome.

Stop trying to compete against everyone else.

Stop being jealous of others.

(Oh my gosh, I LOVED that dog's face!)

There were SO many that I really, really loved.  Which ones are your favorites?

OK- here is my number five.  Just to make you all feel better about yourselves.  My friend Shelley, (from The Write Stuff Teaching) did this celebrity look alike app, and came up with these lovely matches- PROBABLY because she, herself, is lovely.  So I thought that looked like fun.  Right?! 

I did one online.  Picture #1...  My closest match was Tara Reid.  Next- Queen Latifah. OK. Not what I had expected, but then- the third one was... wait for it...

Really?  How LOW in the celebrity files did they have to scrape to match me up with BORIS BECKER?!

So then I figured it must have been a "bad" picture.  Let's try again.   Always the optimist.  The next one HAS to be better. 

Picture #2... FIRST match... Michael Keaton. 

I quit.  Maybe I should have taken the advice from #4 and STOPPED comparing myself to others.  duh.

Have a wonderful weekend! It really feels like SPRING!  YA-HOO!