Five for Funday~Valentine's and some Freebies!

Why is it the short weeks sometimes feel like the longest?  We only had school 4 days this past week, but boy was I wore out by Friday. Sooo, I am linking up totally late, with Kaceyat Doodle Bugs Teaching for her Five for Friday on Funday.

This week was a full one.  I will be the first to admit, I totally dropped the ball on incorporating fun art projects into Valentine’s Day this year.  With all of our weather delay’s lately I have been playing catch up on our core subjects and it just kind of snuck up on me.  I pretty much just ran out of time.  However, I think if you ask the kiddos they still had a great time this week.  Enough about that…on to our week!

We have finished up our “L blends” and have started full force into learning our “R blends”.  The kiddos just love making our anchor charts together and it helps to really build their phonics, phonemic awareness and vocabulary skills all while having fun. 

We also started working on nouns this week.   We talked all about what nouns were and brainstormed words for each different type. Then we watched a video.  I love incorporating music whenever possible, I think it really helps the students to retain the information better.  I went old school and we watched School House Rocks, “You know they’re Nouns”.

I loved the School House Rock Videos when I was a kid, yes I am old.  It was waaay back before Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, GASP!  The only cartoons were for four hours on Saturday mornings and they always showed the School House Rock videos in between the shows.  Well they have stood the test of time, because my kiddos love all their videos.

After the video I passed out post it notes and each student had to write a word and draw a picture for “a person”, “a place” and “a thing”.  Then we added them to our interactive anchor chart.     

It came out great and best of all the kiddos really “get it”!

In math this week we practiced our place value.  We have talked about it before and use it in our calendar time. But I still had a few kiddos who just weren’t quite comfortable with it.  

So I broke out the pool noodles.  I made these this summer after seeing a great post from Mr. Greg at The Kindergarten Smorgasbord.  If you want to see my  tutorial on making your own click here.  

Any who, we all sat in a circle and away we went.  We practiced building numbers from 1-100 using our noodles.  After I was sure they could handle it each student came up and made a number all on their own.  The best part was I could choose an easier number for those kiddos who were not as advanced and I could choose more difficult ones for those students who could handle it.  They loved it and by using this hands on technique I think they all really understand it now.  We will be using  them in an independent center during math stations a few more times to reinforce this concept.

We had some fun for science this week with a Candy Heart Experiment.  I saw this on Pinterest, click here for the original pin.  I will admit however, I was expecting more.  The kiddos thought it was fun, but I had higher expectations.  I usually try these things out at home first, but I was short on time and just took the supplies in and went with it.  

You need 4 cups, one each with water, salt water, vinegar and bleach and candy hearts.  Pretty simple.  I got large candy hearts thinking we would get a bigger reaction, but it didn’t turn out that way.  Maybe they were too big and it would have been better with the small ones.  I am going to test it out next time first.   I made up this observation sheet you can download for FREE here if you want to give it a try next year.  A big shout out to Creative Clips and Kimberly Geswein for the clipart and fonts.

The first thing we did was talk about what we thought would happen when we put the hearts into the cup.  We would record our prediction on our recording sheet then put them in and watched…waiting for something to happen…nothing really happened immediately with any of the solutions. Unless you count a small amount of bubbles floating up when we put them into the vinegar and bleach. So I made the executive decision that we would make our final observations after PE.

When the kiddos came back then we had something to record.  In the water they had started to disintegrate and the water was colored. Same with the salt water, plus two of them were floating.  In the vinegar they were about the same, maybe slightly more vivid color in the cup. The kiddos thought the bleach was the best reaction.  One heart was totally gone and the other two were teeny tiny.  Overall it was a fun time!

We had a great Valentine Day Celebration this week.  Here are a few of my favorite Valentine Read-a-louds.

Thursday I had passed out bags and hearts and we decorated them to put all of our valentines in.  That is what you do when you are searching through your cupboards for something to use at the last minute…lol.  I live 30 minutes from town and work another 15 minutes out in the country so running to the store for supplies was out of the question.  The bags were all unique and anytime they get to have free use of glue and markers is good to go!

For our party on Friday afternoon we had stations.  I find this is the best way to conduct a party, for me at least.  They have a great time and it usually stays fairly calm.  We had four stations that they rotated to.  The first was decorating cupcakes.  We had frosting, sprinkles and several different kinds of candy to top it off.  Then they got to eat their creation and wash it down with a juice pouch.

Our second station was making homemade valentine cards for our loved ones.  I put out different papers, scissors, markers, colored pencils and glue.  They had a ball and made some great creations.

Talk about easy prep.

Station number 3 was Pin It!  They love this type of activity and it really helps to build those fine motor skills.  This cute pattern is a great FREEBIE you can find here from  Sara Connell at FirstGrade Funtastic.

This group was the cutest.  They all got their patterns and made a little circle to work on them.  It made me smile!

Station number 4 was a Graphing activity.  I put together a little baggie of treats for each student.  They had to sort, count and graph their goodies on their recording sheet.  Once it was complete they could eat their goodies.  If you want a copy of this recording sheet FREEBIE click here.  Thanks to Creative Clips and Kimberly Geswein for the great clipart and fonts.

Be sure to check out DoodleBugs Teaching to see all the other great posts.   Hope you all enjoyed your Valentine’s Day and have a wonderful week ahead.  

Five for Fraturday, Saturday Slim Down & A Surprise!

I am doubling down today…well not exactly, then I'd be playing blackjack which I am not…I am joing 2 linky parties and I have a little surprise to share too!

It has been a crazy week.  We don’t ever get snow, no chance even, but we have horrible fog.  We had at least a 2 hour delay every day this week except Friday.  2 days buses were even canceled, so I only had 11 out of 20 kiddos.  One day the 2 hour delay turned into a 3 hour delay, just a total mess!

Needless, to say I am glad this week is over because my lesson plans were a total wreck!  Everyday, I was rearranging and moving things around to accommodate our strange schedule and my lack of students.  As a result we did not get everything done that I wanted to this week. But we did get in some great review and learned a few new things.

On with the fun. First I am linking up with Kacey at Doodle bugs for her Five for Friday on Saturday, per my usual tardiness with this linky…lol. I am always spent by Friday evening and don’t get anything accomplished once I get home.

Since I have failed to link lately I am going to be sharing 5 things from the last several weeks. I must warn you it is a little long and overloaded with pics.

So how was your holiday break?  Does it seem like a distant memory already…haha! We had a great time.  We had many family gatherings with way too much good food. We then headed to the beach to camp out for 5 days.  

Yes that is ice on the windows and top of the truck.  That is exactly why I was ready for the beach! I call it camping, but that isn’t exactly right.  It is more like trailering.  All I have to do is press a button to turn on the generator and tada, we have all the comforts of home. TV, Video games for the boys, Keurig machine for me. But, we do open the door and step into the sand and the view is incredible. We always camp with several other friends and family members so it is a blast.

Even when we are not at the race track the boys are racing….

We also spent two weekends at the race track.  It is great family fun and I love watching my boys.  It is a little nerve wracking at times, I will admit.  My babies, I know they really aren't anymore, are going 60+ miles an hour around a track bumping other cars.  But they love it. It gets pretty exciting, especially when they are winning.  Which we have fortunately been doing a lot of lately.

We started back to school on the 8^th, yes a Thursday.  Our admin thought it would ease the kiddos back into the school routine easier.  So we only had 2 days of school.  Not a lot of time.  We did finish up our study of digraphs by doing a circle map of PH.

You can find our other digraph circle maps here and here. We then completed our ph soundbrochure.  These are from Simply Kinder and they are terrific.  They give a great review of what we have covered and my favorite thing is they each have a section for home.  Something easy the kiddos can do with their parents to keep everyone involved. They love them and think they are special since it is a “brochure”…lol. It cracks me up sometimes that they get excited about the simplest things. 

Despite our crazy week this week we did dive into blends.  I start with the “L” blends.  This week we studied BL and CL.

For our short week we did a fantastic job in writer’s workshop.  We wrote about what we did on our vacation…of course.  They are growing so much as writers and I am supper proud of my kiddos.

These two didn’t know any of their letters when school started and now they are stretching out their words. So excited for them.  In case you don’t read kindergarten…(left side) "We are playing soccer outside." (right side) "My and Luna’s birthday."

This sweetie just melts my heart with what she wrote.  “I and my brother are playing soccer.  Me and my brother we love each other.”

This little guy did a fantastic job sounding out his words, and he was super busy during vacation.  “I went to Anthony’s house. I went to Chuck-e-Cheese.  I saw Anthony at John’s Incredible Pizza. I went to the buffet. I saw Ricardo. I went home. I ate a donut.” Sounds like a great vaca to me.

We also read one of my favorite winter books. Sneezy the snowman.  We then wrote about the story elements. 

 Next we drew and wrote about the effects of making bad choices.  They did a great job sequencing what happened in the story, what the bad choices were and the consequences.

They look great hanging in our quilt display, too!

Finally we completed a spin, graph and build a snowman.  I love incorporating math with our ELA units. 

Our snowmen made such a cute wall display in our room!

These activities for Sneezy can all be found from the fabulous Deanna Jump here. 

This week we read my favorite book for learning about Martin Luther King Jr.,  Martin’s Big Words.  We also discussed vocabulary from our story to get a better understanding.

We even made these adorable Martin’s from Katie Knight’s American Hero’s pack.  They came out adorable. Sorry for the lack of pics.  They needed quite a bit of guidance with this one so I didn’t have time to snap more of the fun.

Well, you have made it this far, whew!  So I figured I would share my surprise before moving on to my 2^nd linky. 

 Friday I got some big news.  I was chosen as Teacher of the Year for my school/district.  I was totally surprised and humbled. I work with a great bunch of teachers and feel totally honored to have been bestowed this award. I was pretty excited I have to say!

Now for my next linky.  I am joining Gina over at Teaching with a Touch of Pixie Dust for her Slim Down Saturday!

I am 10 days into my resolution and this is how it is going.

I am down another 2 pounds this week for a total of 5, woo hoo!  Inch by Inch I’ll get there.  At least that’s what I keep telling myself when I am eyeing those donuts in the teacher's lounge. I have NOT had any by the way.  

My positives for the week are I cut my caffeine down to 1 cup of coffee a day.  If you know me this is quite an accomplishment.  The coffee it self doesn’t have a ton of calories, but what I put in it to drink it sure does…lol. I am choosing instead green tea and I am really enjoing it.  I also managed to increase my water intake.

I did have an epic fail in the exercise department.  As in, I did none, at all, not even a little.  I know that I have to in order to get the results I ultimately want.  I do enjoy working out, I just have to make it a priority. I know once I get back in the habit it will be much easier. SO that is at the top of the list…again this week!

For this next week I am really trying to stick with all whole foods.  Which means really cooking every night.  A few times this past week I was so tired I resorted to a lean cuisine in the microwave.  I know that was better than hitting the fast food drive through, but I know I can do better.

This was my inspiration this week…

Well congrats if you made it through this marathon post.  I love reading all your comments.  So let me know how your week went.  Be sure to check out the two linkys above and have a great week!