Five for Friday February 12

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

This ideas SEEMS like a Valentine idea- but it's really so much more.... You can use it anytime. I love it. 

Runde's Room shared this wonderful FREEBIE at her TpT store.  In it is a link to a site where you type text into a text box, and then when you enter it, it creates a heart shaped story.  She has the item listed for intermediate grades, but I used it for Valentine's Day, and had each child tell me what they loved about everyone in their family.  I typed it up and printed it for each of them to take home. 

I shared it with my intermediate teacher friends, too.  It would be great for a Mother's Day/Father's Day gift, Grandparents' Day, end of the year teacher gifts to kids...  

Here are some of my kids' Love Stories.

SPEAKING of hearts,  Rocking Dan Teaching Man wrote a How to Make a Paper Heart song from ideas from my post last week.  I just LOVE it!  My kids were thrilllllled.  Making paper hearts is also for any time of the year.  Hearts are some of my favorite things.  Enjoy!  And follow Dan's Youtube channel if you don't already.  He has such great teaching songs to use with your class. Thank you, Dan!



We talked about symmetry this week in math with our shapes.  We saw that rectangles and squares are the same on both sides when you fold them in half.  The discussion came up when we were folding our paper in half and cutting out hearts.

Teaching symmetry is another way to help students notice details and notices attributes not only in shapes, but in things the encounter in everyday life.

I love this drawing activity for symmetry, because #1. You can hear a pin drop in the classroom as they work, because they try so hard.  #2.  Symmetry becomes meaningful for the children. My friend Kathleen, from Kidpeople Classroom shared it at her blog, and I loved it!

First, I model an example of the drawing using an extra one of the children's pictures (or I could use mine, but I didn't have one).  I talk as I draw so the children see that I am thinking and figuring out what I need to draw and how to do it as I go.  This helped the children a lot when they went to do their own drawings with size (Sometimes they go very teeeeeny tiny) and with remembering to include all the different characteristics.  I pointed out eyebrows, the other half of the nose, bangs, necks,  how to draw lines for the hair, and shading with the side of the pencil.

I told them that this was not going to be an easy thing to do but to do their best- and they did it!  Nobody complained.  They tried and did a great job!

My friend Susanna has a wonderful Butterfly Freebie that's great for symmetry at her TpT store!

Mrs. Zs Busy Bees shared this wonderful Symmetry Poster at her TpT Store.

I found some great camo things at the Dollar Tree, so I made a Camo Write the Room.  I put the camo sightwords all over the room. The children can wear their vest and helmet, and use the binoculars to find the words.  I also bought a camo tablecloth (for $. 97 at Walmart).  I was thinking I may put that up on a wall and put the sight words on that another time just to switch it up.   If you would like a copy of the recording sheets, just click on the picture below. 

 

If you would like a copy of the camo sight words, click this picture below. I just printed them and cut them apart to put up around the room.  (They are simple, but they worked great!)

I also made this mat on a piece of cardboard. I know- can you believe the detail?!  I wrote sight words on the bottom of some army guys, and the children can match the army guys to their spots on the map, then record the words on their paper.  

You can also find camo pencils that would be so much fun to use for these centers. 

These great dinosaurs would also work well on my mat (since it is so simple  versitile...). You could write sight words or letters on these guys!

Helping a buddy in the trenches of writing...

One of my FAVORITE things to do is to introduce my class to the National Anthem.  I usually wait a while into the year, because I like to do a lot with the song and really have the kids learn what it says. We learn the Pledge of Allegiance right away in the year, but I usually wait to teach the National Anthem until November for Veteran's Day.  This year,  we just learned it, right before the Superbowl.
I posted ALL about how I teach it HERE- with LOTS of freebies to go with it!

I posted LOTS and LOTS of math ideas at PreK and K Sharing this week.  My new math book that I wrote with Dr. Jean JUST came out this week.  I am so excited.  The kids were thrilled because they were the stars of the book, in all the illustrations! I gave each of the children a book to keep yesterday- and we studied it page by page.    Stop over to see some of the ideas I love to use with my class.    The book is on sale at Crystal Springs books!

In fact, our book is on the front cover of the catalog!  It is so exciting for me.  Jean and I each put together 100 of our favorite math ideas, and then the editor selected from those ideas to include in the book.  So there are LOTS of great, practical ideas that we really use in the book.  Each idea also has lots of variations, so you can use it in lots of different ways.  

Finally, this was just a sweet moment from the week.  We had a few minutes before lunch, so I had the kids buddy up and practice tying shoes.  They were so serious, and so sweet- I just had to record it for a couple minutes. 

We are having a contest in PE class to see which class has everyone learn to tie shoes first.  We have won the last two years-  not that I'm competitive or anything....  but...  we do win an extra PE class if we win.

Basically, I would love the kids to learn to tie shoes, so I'm not always trying to figure out in my head WHY the laces are so wet?!  Ewww.  I don't even want to think about it. 

Meanwhile, we practice...

Have a wonderful weekend!  Thank you so much for stopping by!

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!