Five for Friday May 29

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

Wednesday was such a beautiful day- and HOT. So we took a few minutes to have some fun outside. Everyone chose a piece of sidewalk chalk. We lined up around the circle on the blacktop.

Then, we began to make our Crazy Class! I spread the kids out so they each had a space. Then, everyone drew a big head.

When I said, "Switch!" each child moved one to the right to continue making the person. The first switch was to add eyes. Next switch was a nose, then a mouth, then hair...

By the time we added all the body parts, a shirt, pants, shoes, hands, ears, earrings... we almost made it all the way around the circle!

Finally, we had a parade around the circle to admire our Crazy Class, and to see how the head we made finally turned out!

After we made our class, we had a little chalk spelling test in the sunshine with our sight words.

This whole little activity only took about 15 minutes. What a great break it was for all of us!

We continued studying Eric Carle books this week.   I use my Eric Carle Prezi ALL the time when I do our unit. The children loved reading From Head to Toe. I always read this book in the beginning of the year when we start off with our "I Can" statements.  

I thought this was a great quote to go along with all the "I can" statements we live with!

Our "I can" poster is one of the first things we make in the classroom. 

I liked this "I can" poster, too:

When my sister worked in a kindergarten classroom, she made an adorable class book that she shared with me. I love how she made the pictures  look Eric Carl-ish!

This time of year, I focused on all the wonderful things the children learned that they CAN do as the year progressed!

After the children wrote what they can do, we shared- and showed off our talents!

This is one of the writing prompts from my Eric Carle Writing Prompt packet. This time of year, I am doing so much teaching with literature.  One book has so many lessons! 

We also watched some videos to go with different books on my Eric Carle Prezi. 

Here is my packet of  writing prompts for eight different authors. 

Oh- one of my sweeties wrote that she could do a wall sit.  The other kids had never heard of a wall sit, so she showed them when we shared.  They all wanted to do it, too- of course.  So- we went into the hall and tried it out.  Some of the kids were kind of amazing right off the bat!

My husband has been challenging himself with different things- planks, wall sits... and he just did a 10 minute wall sit  AND a 10  minute plank.  He's very proud of that... and he should be- because I would be forever in that position and never standing upright again if I did that. I'm totally like that one leaning against the wall...  

I am trying to decide what to do this year for Father's Day.  Last year, I took each child's picture holding the bubble letter  "My" sign. Then, after they were cut out, they each colored in "My" with the color Pop Rocks they chose.  I used double sided tape to stick the Pop Rocks onto the paper underneath their picture.  I used this as a cover of a book they wrote about their father. 

Look at this DARLING directed drawing FREEBIE for Father's Day from Whimsy Workshop.  You may know that I LOVE her and her work. I cannot wait to do these with my class!

Finally, my sweet little class was on a mission this week.  Apparently OTHER classes (not ours, of course...) have been rough on the playground.  My class decided to save the day with some posters to hang around the school.  They made these on their own during free choice.  I love it.

Be nice to people because some kids are getting hurt and sad , so be nice please. 



And... I just loved this picture.  <3  

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!