Five for Friday- October 23!

I am linking up with Kacey from Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday!
Thank you so much for hosting!

We had a great week!  Here are five of my favorites!

 

As I was taking down the kids' art projects from our back wall, I noticed how they had faded in just a little over a week. I decided that I would try to make some shadow words for a quick little literacy center.  The trick was having the kids NOT touch the letters on the paper for a week while the paper faded around the letters.  The kids were fabulous. The fun part about this was that the kids were a part of the making of this lesson every step of the way!  We built the words, put them on the paper in front of the window, and waited together.

This is how the papers turned out. 

 I am sure this idea could be done much more creatively somehow. Maybe this summer in the real sunshine I will make some different shadow matching, but I was just experimenting- and the kids really felt like they "owned" this.   I laminated the papers.  The children built the words back on top of the papers, then recorded them on the recording sheet.

Just click on the recording sheet if you would like one.  It is simple, but serves the purpose...  more practice writing sightwords! I made it two sided so the children wrote twelve words.

Here are a couple anchor charts we made for the room in our Writer's Workshop mini lessons. I think the kids' favorite discovery was that drawing a "V" over  eyeballs makes the person look really mad!  They loved that simple little tip!  I expect to see lots of books with MAD characters coming my way... They loved adding the details to this chart.

This idea was from The Happy Teacher who shared LOTS of great anchor charts from her friend who found them on Pinterest- so SOMEONE clever originally thought of this chart! I just don't know who did.  I decided to use post its for labels instead of labeling on the chart. 

We are learning about hexagons, so I decided we would make some hex-bugs!  I cut out lots of different size hexagons, tons of legs, and put out all sorts of decorations like feathers and stickers.  The children could design their hex-bug any way they wanted.  Each bug had to have 6 legs like a real bug- which was also helpful for them to remember that hexagons have six sides.  They loved the little trick to remember "hexagon" and "six" both have an "x" in it.  Didn't we all remember "hexagon" like that?!

Another fun math game we played this week I named our "Tens Game." (Clever name, I know...) It was previously known as the "Quarter Game" in second grade when we counted by 25s around the circle.  Since we are learning to count by 10s, the class sat in a big circle on the rug.  I started with the leader and went around the circle touching each little head as we counted 10, 20, 30, 40... to 100.  The child who was 100 went in the middle of the circle.  Then we kept on going with the next child, 10, 20, 30, 40... around the circle to 100 again. That child joined the other in the middle.  We did this until there was ONE child left. Yes- ONE left. So- as you can see, this is a great way to count by 10s to 100 LOTS of times.  To change it up, sometimes I said, "Only girls count." "Only boys count." "Only red-heads count." (I have four! ;)  "Whisper count." "Count like a monster." ... you get it.  It is a fun game and great to reinforce counting by tens!

Our other fun circle game this week was our Halloween Memory Game. I love playing this!  The first child tells what he or she is going to be for Halloween. We repeat it.  The next child tells what he/she will be, we have to say both the first and second.  The third child tells, we have to remember all three.  I point to each child each time we go around and repeat what they are going to be.  We made it all the way around with all the children! They remembered each person's costume.  I am going to try this on Monday and see if we can still remember what each person is going to be.  This is a great for memory practice!  (Maybe I should play this with myself before I go in the grocery store. The minute I walk in those doors without a list, my mind goes BLANK...  What is that about?!  All the stress of trying to remember the three things I need, I guess!)

Yesterday I posted about our magic pumpkin! My husband came in and carved it with the class. It is such an easy, exciting memory for the kids.  The night before, we cut out the bottom of the pumpkin, cleaned it out, stuffed it FULL of wrapped candy, and secured the bottom back on with toothpicks.

It looked just like any other normal pumpkin ready to be carved.  What a fabulous surprise when Jeff carved down through and took off that top to reveal... CANDY!  Nobody even cared about what face we put on it after that! ;)

My last little note is that I made a Facebook page- finally!  I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE you to "like" it!   (That sounds SOOO needy! :)  

         Thank you!

Have a WONDERFUL weekend!

Five For Friday- October 11th

First of all, I just found this quote and loved it, so I had to share it.

Happy Friday! I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for  Five For Friday! 

Here are some fun things we did this week!



TREASURE BOXES

Treasure Boxes are a quick and easy literacy activity that you already have and don't even know it!  Just gather "treasures" from your classroom into a box- and you are ready to go. (See where the name comes from?! :)  This is a SPECIAL treat for the kids that I only use every so often, and they love it. I love it.  We all love it.  Here are my two treasure boxes just to show you the randomness/simpleness.

This week, I used it for hearing sounds in words.  My top groups

s t r e t c h e d the words out already and wrote lots of sounds they heard.  My beginner groups were able to tell me the beginning sound of the treasure- and many times the ending sound.  Here are some samples from my top groups.  I had my beginners just tell me the sounds they heard this time, not write them. 

The order on front was turtle, baby, snake, pizza, egg.  The back was banana, chip, noodle, fish, frog.

They were ready to hear about the "ch" and "sh" sounds, as well as the "oo" in noodle. They love learning these new grown-up things.  It is a great exposure to new sounds in a small group.

These treasures are great for syllable practice, too. 

Sometimes for morning work, I have five treasures on the table, and the children have to write what they hear in those words on their paper, using their stretchy snake strategy!

You can also use your treasure box to have the children write  a sentence about one of the items you lay out.

Later in the year, I like to lay out five or six items, and  have the children write about and describe one of the items I have out. I have the children share their descriptions with class so we can all  guess which item was chosen from the description. I like to share their writing on the Elmo, so I can praise it up and point out all the wonderful letter formations, spaces, details...  This is a great activity that requires the children to add detail to their writing and write more than a few words- and it helps the children realize how important writing is for sharing information. 

This weekend,  we are shuffling off to Buffalo to stay over night and to watch my Emily swim in her first swim meet of her last season of college swimming! Go Niagara Purple Eagles!  I had to put that one in there!  

SUPERMAN!

This is Jeff's masterpiece for his school district's town's scarecrow contest.  I wanted him to name it "Superintendent Man."  He didn't love that as much as I did. He was disappointed that Superman had to sit on a hay bale, but we could NOT get him to stand-let alone fly anywhere.  He is taking a break before saving the day.

A BAD CASE OF STRIPES

I found this idea from I (heart) Crafty Things. I loved it!  We read A Bad Case of Stripes, and talked about how special and wonderful it is that we are all different.  We learned the word "unique."  We talked about how even though we all like different things, grow at different times, are able to do some things sooner or later than our friends, or look different on the outside,  we are all alike because we want to have friends, we want friends to be kind to us, we want people to fill our buckets.  We are all alike because in our classroom we are kind friends and we try to fill other people's buckets. 

We read ABC I Like Me.

During small group time, I had each child write, "I like me!" on his/her striped pictures.  We talked about starting with a capital letter, leaving spaces between words, neat printing, and that fabulous exclamation point!  They did a great job!

After this activity, we did our little M&M's character ed activity.  First the children get to choose their favorite color m&m and eat it.  The next time, they have to close their eyes and pick an unknown color and eat it.  THEN, they have to tell me what color they ate. 

After they decided they can't tell the color- we talk about how that outside color doesn't matter, but we are all the same on the inside, like those M&M's - no matter what we look like on the outside- red hair, brown hair, blue eyes, tall, short... (Don't you just want to sing, "Red and yellow, black and white, we are precious in His sight?" right now? :) I do!)

We model how it is NO FUN to cheat because it ruins the game. It is easy to tell the color when you open your eyes and cheat... They sort of need to be reminded of that.  After that, I didn't have anyone even try to cheat.  I learned that once the jig is up- you don't even try to pull it off.

Without further ado...# 5...  If you haven't gotten a chance to see my TPT FREEBIE Posts- you can click on the pictures below to check out some  LOTS of awesome freebies for Halloween!

(These were for my cat cookies or for your Halloween cats!)

OH Wait- a couple more quick "ados"  (is that a word?! no. Pretty sure. no.) Anyway, I just started a FACEBOOK PAGE!!  YES I DID! 

I was so nervous- not quite sure why I was so nervous, but to give you some idea, I made it in July and just got the nerve to publish it.  I KNOW.  WHY?!  Anyway, if you would like to stop by and like it, I would love you for it.  It is Kindergarten: Holding Hands and Sticking Together.   Thank you. :) 

Have a WONDERFUL weekend!