Five for Friday

I think I have linked up with Doodle Bugs Teaching maybe once or twice for this very fun party, Five for Friday. I'm so excited to be linking up today. I actually remembered to take a few pictures from my week. Plus I'm off school today so I had time to blog. Chris has a conference for work in St. Simon's Island in Georgia so I used a couple of personal days and tagged along with him. As soon as I get this post written I'm headed to the pool overlooking the ocean.

So here are my pictures from the week:

1. Last night was open house at school. It was a long day but I enjoyed getting to know some of my families better. I have my kids for 2 years so it is nice to get to know the families really well. I had about 6 families come by. One of my sweet little girls brought me this bag of seeds. She was taking the seeds out a bell pepper and wanted to bring me the seeds. So she did. That's what I love about kindergarten. You get very thoughtful and random gifts.  

2. Last year I bought some of these zipper document folders from Big Lots. I thought I would use them to store centers or activities in and I never did. But I bough more at Big Lots this summer. So as I was working on organizing some things last week I pulled these out. I'm using them to store: stuff to copy, to laminate, today's work, writing center materials, word work materials, and then I used 2 to store everything my sub would need. I'm loving them except I can't seem to peel the label off them. If I could I would make a prettier label. But they are very functional even if they aren't pretty. This one is my word work activities. Right now I have mixed my play centers and my learning centers. It worked well. I worked with a group on word work and an assistant worked with a group for writing. In word work we did some letter matching and in writing they worked on their names. Then I have a group at the reading corner, computer, home center, blocks, imagination station and sensory table. I paired them up because 2 is about all I can handle working together. Currently they are going to one station a day. I hope to get them going to 2 after this week. I also need to change some partners up. 

3. We made our first graph this week. We have been learning about colors so I used this activity I had gotten in Fran Kramer's Pete the Cat unit. They colored  shoe their favorite color. My favorite color is purple. I'm not surprised several of my girls picked that color too. 

4. More Pete the Cat fun. We've been working on recognizing, counting and writing our numbers 1-10 for the past 2 weeks. I introduced them to roll and cover games. They played by themselves for this first round. They did well and we're engaged so I think it was a success. This game is from Little Miss Kindergarten. (I looked and looked for the freebie on her blog but I couldn't find it)

 5. I'm not above bribing kids. The last time I was in kindergarten, I read a post over at Deedee Wills blog about quick treats and every since them I've used them a ton. I usually use some kind of seasonal candy or m and ms. But with all my food allergies I have in my room, I'm using skittles. It amazes me how thrilled kids are with one skittle.

So that's my Five for Friday! Leave a comment and let me know how your week went. We're diving into our math and reading series next week and have our first field trip. I am going to try to be back with a Peek at my week but we will see. Head over the Doodle Bugs Teaching.
I'm headed to the pool with my kindle (and maybe the book Conscious Discipline)