Five for Friday! September 13th

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday!  

First full week Friday- check! It is my wonderful dad's birthday today. Happy Birthday, Dad!

Here are some favorites from my week! 

We just finished up our first COLOR week!  I blogged about red, yellow, blue, and green here yesterday.  Today we ended with purple.  We read some Harold and The Purple Crayon Stories from my treasury book, then, the children drew their own Harold stories with a purple crayon. 

 I made this paper for the children to use.  Just click on the picture if you would like a copy!

I used 11X17 size paper for their stories and had the children try to label some of their picture.  I had a few write the first letter of one thing down- so ... that's a start!
I have tried having blank books for the children to use, and I found they prefer this one page OR small ( 1/4 size paper) books at this point for this activity. 

It was a hectic half day, and I didn't even mix our red and blue water.  :(  But it is ready to go on Monday!  That is fine- I will combine it with our orange mixing. 

I have a folder of pictures for each color.  The children LOVE looking at all of the pictures. This is such a great vocabulary builder since we learn different kinds of flowers, birds, vegetables, fruits, and bugs! 

We also made a card to cheer on  my daughter's college swim team- the Niagara Purple Eagles!  (There is actually a "k" at the end of luck!)

 How could I not use this for "Number Two?"   Number two is definitely one of my favorites this week. It is not perfected, but I am sharing it anyway!  First of all, some of you know from past posts that I love teaching about punctuation marks. We have SO much fun with them.  Here is a little story to illustrate this truth...  I had a little boy two years ago whose parents told me was a "selective mute" basically.  He had only said a few words the entire pre-school year.  This year his brother started pre-school, and the dad told the teacher, "His brother didn't talk to anyone either, and then Mrs. Kisloski got him all riled up about punctuation marks and he couldn't stop talking."  So---  those things are sort of magical.  ;) 

On to this idea-  Wednesday, on Dr. Jean & Friends wonderful blog (I added the wonderful part!)she shared some ideas from her trip to California.  I absolutely loved this  song idea:

Writing Song (Dawna Hunter)
(Tune: "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes")
Top to bottom,
Left to right (Left to right)
Top to bottom
Left to right (Left to right)
My mind knows that writing goes
Top to bottom
Left to right (Left to right.)

I can't wait to use it.  SO I started thinking of other songs as I was drying my hair this morning and came up with one for knowing the names of punctuation marks.  You need to make the punctuation mark as you sing the name- for example when you say, "Question mark" you make the top part in the air during "question" and the dot as a punch, during "mark."  "Period" is a hand out like stop.  "Ex-cla-ma-tion" is the line down, and "point" is a punch.  "Comma" is a one hand comma, "Quotation marks" are  air quotes, and  "E-lips-sis" is hitting your hand with each syllable .

This little song goes to Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, too:

Question mark
Period,
Ex-cla-ma-tion  POINT!
Question mark
Period,
Ex-cla-ma-tion POINT!
Comma,
Quotation marks,
E-lips-sis,
Question mark,
Period,
Ex-cla-ma-tion POINT!

Here is my Punctuation Mark poem to explain what each mark does  (We haven't started this yet this year.):

 

Our first classroom birthday celebration:  Think- cupcake crumbs E.V.E.R.Y.W.H.E.R.E.  - and 4 spilled milks. OH and red faces with that scary red frosting that seems like it is made of Sharpie ink...  WHAT?!  It was almost funny. Almost.  Did Pete  Mrs. Kisloski cry?  GOODNESS NO! I kept on singing my song... "I love this FRIDAY, I love this FRIDAY!" 

We celebrate birthday's pretty simply in our class.  The special person brings in snack for the day.  We sing. And each child draws a special picture for the birthday person that I turn into a book.  I have the birthday person share some of his/her favorite things- animal, sport, color, anything else, to give the class ideas to draw.  They write the special person's name on top of the paper and their name on the bottom. I take a picture of the birthday person with all of our friends around him or her, and that becomes the cover.

 Here are some fun birthday songs to use in your class!

(This one might be good to use while you hand out snacks because it is more subdued.)

This number four made me think of a fun little "quick images" activity we have done- SO SIMPLE that I am sure you do it.  When we line up, I have all eyes on me and I bring my hand out from behind my back with some fingers up.  They tell me how many they see  as fast as they can.  I do one hand, or both.  They try so hard!  The last few images, as we get ready to actually move into the hall, I have them whisper the answer.   I tell them when I show zero, they have to be completely quiet.  Ta da. 

I will leave you with this one.  We read Have You Filled a Bucket Today? this week and have been brainstorming ways we can fill other people's buckets.  This was a good interactive writing activity. I didn't take a picture of our poster yet.  I will next week.



My big bucket in the middle of the picture below  is full of blue glass stones from the Dollar Store, to look like drops of water (kind deeds!).

After we read the book, each child drew a picture to show how he/she could fill someone's bucket. I taped on a blue stone to take home as a reminder- to put beside the bed or some place special, so the children could  remember to do something kind for someone when they saw it.

We LOVE this song from The Learning Station!

I had to share this picture- because who could ever be a better bucket filler than Christ?!?!?!  This little sweetie tries so  hard to write his whole name- and I have told him I am fine with "Chris" since his name is so long. Apparently, he is expanding it one letter at a time- and this made me laugh out loud.  :)

My Primary Character Education Prezi is FREE this weekend! Stop over to my TPT store if you would like it!



 Have a wonderful weekend!



Five for Friday! August 23

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday!

Thank you for hosting this linky!

 My friend Susanna, at Whimsy Workshop just put together an adorable Fairy Tales Masks MEGA pack at her TPT store. Here are a couple pictures she included with her listing:
      

She bundled masks and scripts for acting out Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Goldilocks! I can't wait to use these!  The timing was perfect, because instead of working on what I "should" be doing to start school, I was so excited to make this Jack and the Beanstalk idea, that I made these first.  Now I can't find bean seeds, which is probably good, because we do a plant lesson in March/April - so I will probably not use them until then.  BUT they are all set to go, and I thought I would show you. 

I got my idea from my friend Bobbie, at Kindergarten Shenanigans .(She is a sweetheart and just started blogging- stop over and say "hi!")    She  posted this link from Lessons from a Teacher, and I just loved it!

I made a PDF of some different castles to use and printed them on cardstock. I just copied and pasted different castles- 6 of each on a page, and printed them. If you would like this PDF just let me know and I can easily send it to you- I cannot for the life of me figure out how to embed the PDF here...  :( 

I bought some dowels, cut out the different choices, and hotglued the castles onto the dowels.  After we plant our bean seeds, the children will choose their castle, add some cotton clouds to the bottom and watch Jack's beanstalk climb up to the castle.  I just thought these were adorable!

Fairy tales are so good for sequencing, retelling, character and setting discussions, acting... I love to use them because the children are usually familiar with them (although not so much anymore as they used to be!) and they are usually easy to break down into sequencing parts. (I was going to say 'easy to understand' but they are really pretty crazy when you actually think about them- and not the least big easy to understand! "OK- so this giant lives on top of a bean stalk that grew from these magic beans, and he has this goose ..."  WHAT?!  ;)

My friend Sandy, from Kinder-Gardening posted this sweetest post about what she does to celebrate the children's birthdays in her classroom.  What a sweetheart she is!  I just found these two pins that I am going to use for my classroom birthdays and thought you might like them if you haven't seen them!



Someone suggested this last one to play as the snacks were handed out because it is more subdued. :)

(My poor little #3 looks exhausted! )

I saw this precious idea on Dr. Jean's blog.  She got it from Ashley Swedell. Thank you, Ashley!

I actually bought sparkly silver sneakers for the kids to use. :) The plain black ones were cheaper, but-hey, you only learn how to tie shoes once! (Plus, nobody can walk off with them because it is practically impossible to lift that easel! ;) 

Her picture is better:

I am also using Donna's download from her post here from her blog Peace, Love, and Learning. (I laminated the sign and hung it above the shoes. I did fix my camera setting-but AFTER my picture. (Oh my.  How do I even make it through a day?!)   And I cut out the circles and made Pete necklaces from the badges.  Donna sings, "I love my tied shoes. I love my tied shoes. "  The kids will LOVE that.  We will celebrate BIG when someone learns to tie- believe me!  It's a biggie.

A few years my wonderful mother made little sneakers with shoe laces as pins for the kids. They were SO proud to get one of these! They could actually tie their pins! :)

Last year, I was lazy and gave these certificates- and a gold medal.  I just had to share this picture because...look at that face... and also he wore this gold medal for WEEKS.  <3  AND he told a friend in the class next door all that was required to earn one of these babies-  so the little next door sweetie showed me he could tie and walked out with a medal which he wore proudly, reminding me that he had won from me- every time I saw him!  (I didn't encourage spreading the word about these birthday party favor fabulous, golden  medals because I only had so many!  Now, knowing the power which they hold,  I have stocked up!

All this shoe-tying talk made me think of this :





I saw these this morning on Teaches With A Sense of Humor facebook page and they just made me smile. ( I can hear my 19 year old son groaning if he knew -and yes, Matt, it amused me...)

This one was extra dear to my heart because I remember when my daughter Emily was JUST learning to write her name, and wrote it on the wall in the corner of my dad's office... hmmmm... and we just didn't know who had done it...



And finally- my friend Terri, knowing my love of punctuation marks, sent me this:
8 New Punctuation Marks We Desperately Need.  Are you ready?!?! 

And I will leave you with MY FAVORITE...

 Have a WONDERFUL WEEKEND!