Five for Friday June 6th

I am linking up with Doodlebugs Teaching for Five for Friday!

We had so much fun with this How to Draw a Castle freebie from How to Draw Funny Cartoons. 

My girls love their princesses and my boys love their army guys who protect castles- so it was fun for everyone.  I had them draw the castle for one independent center, and then we wrote a little story to go with it later in the day.

I liked this one.  I'm right there with you, Izzy!

The kids liked that writing activity so much, that I found some more ideas at Activity Village.

We had sort of a farm theme going.  The kids could draw and write about whichever animal they wanted. 

We had our Kindergarten Orientation on Friday.  This is the morning where the children coming to Kindergarten next year get to come and see the classrooms for a while, while the parents get some information about school.  This is also the morning that I realize how FAR my little ones have come in a year.  We have different table activities out (Tangrams, puzzles, the ship and castle, coloring, Legos), read some fun stories, and sing some fun songs. They ALWAYS love Tooty Ta, Bubble Gum, My Mother is a Baker- basically anything Dr. Jean is a favorite.  I also have my class make a book of some of their favorite things about Kindergarten that the new class will love.

 This is exactly what the music room looks like, with the rug and chairs.

 This is exactly what my hair looks like... actually, I paid him extra to make it long and flowing.

 This is fun even if you don't have Kindergarten Orientation, for the beginning of the year with your new class.  Plus, my kids now feel VERY important since I wrote that the book was written by "First Grade Friends."  

This is what I decided to make for Father's Day this year. (I posted about it HERE.) I wanted to keep with the candy theme like Mother's Day, so I thought of this one...

I had the kids write a book about their dad and used this as the cover.  They got to pick which color Pop Rocks they wanted for dad.  I took their picture holding the bubble letter "MY" and printed and cut it out.  They each colored the letters to match their Pop Rock package. I taped the Pop Rocks on with double sided tape. 

Today I posted all about bubble fun at Pre-K & K Sharing. It's so much fun to learn with bubbles when the weather is so beautiful.  Stop over if you get a chance and see what fun we had!

I love The Important Book.  I love to use it for learning about details and for opinion writing.

If you haven't seen it, here is a sample page. It describes something, and then focuses on what the really important thing is about that object.

This picture was a moment that sort of put all the worry about reading levels and using a period at the end of a sentence in perspective, and made me think of a page I would write in The Important Book. 

The important thing about my students is that they have sweet, kind hearts.  My students can read. They can write.  They know how to sort, add, subtract, compose and decompose numbers.  They can count to 100 by tens and ones.  They can (insert any CCSS). But the important thing about my students is that they have sweet, kind hearts.  

I am REALLY going to miss this group.  The children go until June 24, and the teachers until June 27th, so I a couple more busy weeks to go!  

Have a wonderful weekend! Thanks for stopping by!