Five for Friday May 6

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday. Thank you for hosting, Kacey! It was a dreary week.  Hopefully, that sun is out there ready to shine!

My friend Dan (Rocking Dan Teaching Man) made our entire week this week.  He sent us the OFFICIAL, REAL, TRUE heart used in his music video "How to Make a  Heart." All the way from Australia!  We had to look that up and see just how special that was!  Well, the kids were just thrilled  to pieces.  

Here is the certificate.  AND the heart!  We feel extremely famous right about  now...  It's authentic, don't ya know! 

If you haven't seen the song, here it is. It's so awesome for How To books!



AND Rocking Dan has a brand new song, The Friends of 20. It's lots of fun.  My kids are loving The Friends of 10 right now, too!  HERE is a link to Dan's Youtube channel. The kids have so much fun with this videos and learn so much.

Not really - but I was trying to think of what to call this.

Maybe "Magical Secrets."

My sweet friend Kristin, at A Teeny Tiny Teacher, wrote a post a while ago (I read every. single. one.) that has stuck with me, and I couldn't wait to try.  But it had to be the perfect, authentic time.  The perfect moment came this week, and it was as wonderful as I thought it would be.

In the morning, one of my little girls had a secret to tell me.  We don't usually tell "secrets" (cause "Secrets don't make friends."  My kids know that...) but it was an exciting special story. (She was having a new baby brother.)   Well, once she told me, someone else had something they needed to tell- whether it was getting a new puppy or going to get ice cream with grandma after school.  I sat in front of the room while the kids did morning work, and they came up one at a time to whisper to me.

This is where Kristin's idea comes in.   I had made a list of each student, and one special trait that I love so much about each student. "I  love how you are the best cleaner ever."  "I love how you are such a math whiz."  "I love how you are the first one to help anyone who needs help."  "I love how your smile fills everyone's bucket."  "I love how dependable you are if I ever need anyone to do an errand for me."  "You are such a great thinker. "

It took about 5 minutes or so before lunch to call each of my sweeties up to my chair on the rug and tell them their  special secret before they lined up for lunch. 

Every one of them got a HUGE smile, quietly walked to line up, and did not say a peep about their special secret.  They knew it was a special gift just for them, and it just  made each of them puff up a little bit more.  It was perfect.

Happy Mother's Day!  Here were our gifts!  I made the candy bars for each mom, and then each child wrote a "My Sweet Mom" book.  

This idea and free download is from Lovely Little Snippets - and I love it with all my heart. They turned out so precious!
Stefanie was so sweet, sweet, sweet to share this!  Thank you, Stefanie!

 

Here is the front and back up close.



Each child wrote a story about his or her "sweet"' mom.

My mom goes to the gym. When she goes there I miss her.

 I love my mommy because she does do good stuff.

 I like my mom because she makes me eggs.

 I can't live without you mommy because you are so special.

 I love my mom because she goes for a walk with me.

 She makes a ham. And she makes a turkey.  She's a good cook.

These adorable MoM's are from Kinzie's Kreations .  This year I got small size M&M's and copied these so they fit. 

The finished products looked like this:

I am going to have the kids wrap them together in ribbon with their book.

Kinzie shared this sweet printable from Over the Big Moon to go with this treat. How much do you love that?!

  

Kindergarten Lifestyle shared these wonderful I Can Cards for your block center. My kids LOVE them. They get them out for free choice all the time.  Sometimes, the pictures just give them ideas to work from.  

You can do as much with this as you want.  You could take a picture of the building and have the children write about what they built or use the building as a setting for a story.  You could have the children describe how they built their building and tell what they used to build it and why.  You could make a classroom book of the buildings, even putting the picture card on one side of the book and the photograph of the children's finished product on the other side.  My classes always love looking at our classroom books.  

OR- you can have them out  by the blocks at free choice for ideas.  Simple as that!



Thank you for stopping by! Have a perfect weekend.