Five for Friday October 24

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

 

We had so much fun reading Humbug Witch this week!  It's a sweet little book with LOTS of adjectives if you're looking for good descriptive words.  I posted a few free Listening Activities that I like to use with my class, if you'd like to use them.  Just click on the pictures! 

The kids are working on sight words like a BOSS!  We use any magnetic space we can find  to build words.

Then, they write them...

We made our own Hex-bugs to help us remember Hexagons this week. Last year, I cut out lots and lots of different size hexagons and had the kids decorate those.  This year, I made one colorful hexagon on this paper and they decorated that.  I printed them on cardstock.  The kids had so much fun.  It was handy that bugs have 6 legs and hexagons have 6 sides!   If you would like a copy of the paper, just click HERE.

Last Saturday, some of us from school went on a Wine Tour.  We had SO much fun.  About an hour from where I live, near Ithaca, NY, we have some fabulous, fun wineries. We went to six of them. My sweet, sweet husband drove us all there.  What a trooper.  He's a great one! 

(The bottom middle picture looks like we needed to be cut off, BUT we were just imitating our friend Leslie's attempts at selfie poses.  She's a riot when she tries...)

My husband heard this TED Talk the other day by Sir Ken Robinson, and showed it to me. It's old, so maybe you have seen it, but I hadn't.  I loved it.  It's titled "How Schools Kill Creativity."

                           

The talk is about 20 minutes, and worth every one of them, but if you don't have that kind of time, here are my favorite parts:

3:38- Drawing God

8:35-10 - Hierachy of subjects and the purpose of education (to produce University Professors...)

and my FAVORITE is at 15 minutes in (if you only have a couple minutes, watch this!) This is the  story of Jillian Lynne's experience in school. She went on to be the producer of the musical, Cats.   I won't give it away, because it's a story worth hearing, and one I will always remember.  But I will tell you that the line I will remember forever as a teacher is, "She's not sick.  She's a dancer."

Sometimes I am heartbroken seeing the way kids are expected to sit and do "paperwork" for so long. I can tell at five years old the children who have a real interest in mechanics and taking things apart, or art, or science.  I have a little guy this year who takes EVERYTHING apart that he can get his hands on.  He is so interested in how everything works, but I find I am spending most of the day calling him back to what we are doing (and putting back together what he's taken apart...). He has a hard time with letter recognition and writing, and gets frustrated easily, but could work with gears and little manipulatives all day long. I just wish I had more time to let him explore and foster his interests- and then, that those interests could be continued throughout the years. Instead, I'm afraid he will get so frustrated with some of the academics of school and not feel successful.   I think I like this video so much because it's just refreshing to watch someone who "gets it."  

Have a WONDERFUL weekend!  Thanks for stopping by!



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!