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!