Five for Friday on Sunday!

I had every intentions of posting this on Friday but I was exhausted when I got home. This whole working five days in a row is rough. It was only our second full five day week since before Christmas. I didn't even want to go out for date night. I just wanted Chris to bring something home. So we ate sushi ans watched the Olympics. Then yesterday we went hiking, ran errands, got the house straightened and my sis and her family came over to eat dinner. So no time for blogging there with CK and Soph here. So I'm sitting on the sofa nursing my injuries from yesterday's hike blogging now.

1. This is from last Sunday. Chris and I went to Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies with my parents and Soph. We had a blast. Soph loves her Chris. She is getting better at really looking at the animals rather than rushing through and speeding from one tank to the next. Chris worked at the aquarium for a long time so he can tell her what all the animals are!

2. In one of my reading groups this week I let them use the iPad to do a little sight word practice. I saw this idea on Pinterest. They picked a sight word, took a picture of it and then used the Show Me app. They imported the picture, traced the word and used the word in a sentence. I had them write the sentence first. Then they were ready to record it. They had fun and it was good sight word practice. 

3. My mom, sister, 2 niece and I went walking this week. This is our selfie we took. I'm pretty bad at taking selfies. The weather was gorgeous this week. I needed the sunshine. It was nice to be able to get out and do some walking. 

4. I started tutoring this week. I tutor on Tuesday and Thursday for kids in my class that need a little more help. I enjoy working with small groups. I think I'm going to end up with 2 boys on Tuesday and 2 girls on Thursday. We worked mostly on sight words using games and the iPad. 

5. I am so lucky! I got the opportunity to order some things from creative teaching press a few weeks ago for review. I have all my materials and I'm working on a few new things. The first of which is to redo my calendar board. I have had the same calendar since my second year teaching. It was time for a change. This is what I have so far. 

So that's my five picture summary of the week. I realized I didn't take many pictures this past week. I'm going to have to do better next week. Be sure to head over to the party at Doodle Bugs Teaching and see what everyone else was up to this 

Visual Plans for the week - Winter Olympics, Valentine's Day and other topics

It has been a long time since I've linked up with Mrs. Wills Kindergarten and her peek at week linky party. It takes me so long to create these visual plans and I really wasn't sure anyone was reading them. But I'm going to try again. I have a weird hodge podge of plans this week. We were out last week for 3 days due to snow. So all Valentine's Day plans were put off. We've only been to school one full week since we've been back from Christmas break. I feel like I'm falling further and further behind so instead of pushing my plans from last week to this week. I mashed them together with a new week in our reading series. So my theme is a little off. We're going to be doing a variety of things and working on a lot of stuff. I hope my kids are up for it. Better yet I hope I'm up for it. I am planning some fun things to talk about the Winter Olympics. I hope to be back later this week to share more. Anyway, here are my plans.

To be able to click on the links you need to download the plans from this link here. It will take to the google docs file.
I would write more but I have dark chocolate brownie, vanilla ice cream, the Winter Olympics and my hubby waiting for me. Be sure to head over to Mrs. Wills Kindergarten to check out the party. 
I would love to hear what you do when snow days get in the way of your plans and how you handle it.

Five for Friday

This post is brought to you by snow day #13. That leaves us with 2 more snow days before . . . Well I'm really not sure what will happen if we go over these days. I think it has only happened once since I've been working in this county. And I think the days were forgiven. Not really sure. But I do know that I am over snow. According to our 10 day forecast there are sunny and 60 degree days in our future. I am so excited!

I do have some pictures to show from our week even though we were only at school 2 days. So I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for her Five for Friday party. 

1. I tried out something new during read to self. I made some slides to use on my promethean board to allow the kids a place to record things the found while reading. You can get the freebie here. 

2. My new water bottle I ordered.  I melted the lid of my old bottle in the dishwasher. I got on Amazon to order a lid and just decided to Order a whole new bottle. It's so pretty. I do pretty well with drinking my water when I use a straw and my water bottle.

3.I just recently got all of Deanna Jump's Chit Chat Messages. I imported the PDF into a promethean flipcharts and then moved the slide I wanted into my morning meeting chart. This is the only one I got to use this week because of the short week. But the kids did well with it. It was a good wY to review our letter of the week.

4. I am loving letting my kids take pictures of their centers when they are done. It keeps them accountable and it gives me pictures of what we are working on. These are a couple of our centers. The sight words are in the sensory table with rice and beans. They match them up to make words. One of our math centers is measuring monsters with a heart ruler. I think both these activities came from Deanna Jump's love Tweet love centers.

5. Last is my obligatory niece picture. Monday I had to go to the doctor and we made it a family affair. My sister, mom and nieces all went too and we stopped at Target. So it was CK's first trip to Target. She slept through the whole thing.

So that is a summary of my short week. Be sure to head over to Doodle bugs Teaching and check out the party.

Happy Valentine's Day!

100th Day Recap

Today is snow day #12 fir this school year. We did finally make it to the 100th day on Tuesday. I really wasn't as prepared as I like to be. Mainly because I wasn't convinced we were going to go to school on Tuesday and we've been out so much. But we had a good day. We spent the afternoon celebrating with a rotation of 4 activities.

1. Building something with 100 cups.

Once they realized they needed to work together they did a great job!

2. Making a design out of 100 pattern blocks.

3. Race to 100 

4. A hat - they used 10 strips of construction paper and bingo daubers to make 100 dots for the hats. I saw this on Pinterest.

I had wanted to make a necklace out of fruit loops but it didn't happen. A rotation of activities is my favorite way I've done the 100th day. It was easy to manage and they all got to do activities. I'll have my kids again for first grade so I'm already thinking about what I want to do then.

I'm thinking we won't go back to school this week. We have about 6 inches of snow. I was really not wanting anymore snow but I'm not feeling well so it is nice to have these days to rest up. 

Do you have snow where you live? 

Read to Self and the Interactive White board

This past week I really started my kids on read to self. They are starting to take off as readers and this time of year is the perfect time for me to introduce something that becomes a staple in our routine. You have to remember I have my kids for 2 years. So we start read to self in Kindergarten but in first grade it is something we do everyday without fail. So this week, they had their book bags which had books from the leveled library that came with our reading series and the sight word readers they made themselves. They were getting all excited to tell me the popcorn words they found while we were reading. So I had to come up with something to get them to not yell them out but still encourage their reading. I hate to get on to them when they are so excited about being able to read a word. So I told them to be on the look for the words and then when we gathered on the carpet they could share a word they found. I just used an open flipchart on the board but it got me thinking.
I use my promethean board for everything. If you have followed my blog for a while, you know that I make flipcharts each week to go along with our reading series. I also use a calendar one everyday. So after asking some questions on my facebook page, I created this freebie. It is a pdf file that has several questions for your students to focus on during self selected reading time or really any reading time. This is just to try it out and see how it works. It has one for sight words (popcorn words as I call them), words that you stretch out, words that have g in them, words with short a and words with short i. These are the skills we're working on in my classroom. From my experiences with a promethean board, you can import the pdf into a flipchart or you can open up active inspire and use the desktop feature so your students can write directly on the page. I know nothing about smart boards but I've been told you can import pdfs into smartboard files as well. If you grab this freebie and use, I would love to hear some feedback. This is something I'm excited about but I'd love to hear how it works for others.

Click here to download the freebie from google docs. 

The weatherman is calling for snow Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I was really hoping for a five day week again. We are suppose to celebrate the 100th day on Tuesday and then go on a field trip on Wednesday. We'll see what really happens with the weather. I'm so ready for spring break! I set up new centers on Friday so I can't wait to show you what they are later this week!

Five for Friday!

So this week we actually went all 5 days. We haven't been a full week since before Christmas. I also remembered to take some pictures this week! I love it when I take pictures and I have things to blog about. I guess I'm a weirdo because I liked being at school all 5 days. What I didn't like was how out of it my kids were. They really struggled to get back in the swing of things and a couple of them it felt like starting over with. But by the end of the week we started to get back in the groove. Here's hoping for another 5 day week next week. (They are calling for snow Monday, Tuesday and Weds.)

So here are 5 pictures from my week!

1. I started Read to Self the week before but we were only in school for a day and an hour. So this week we've really been working at it. We've worked up to 10 minutes so far. I'm hoping for 15 minutes. For their book bags I have leveled readers from our reading series and the sight word books from Maria Manore/Kinder Kraze. If you haven't checked out her sight word readers you need to head right there after you read this post. Here's the link.

 

2. I finally have small group reading up and going this week. It feels so good to be able to finally have a handle on small groups. It also is so nice to have some help during this time. My kids are finally working independently during centers so my assistant and I are able to both meet with groups.

3. I got my iPad from Donor's Choose right when school started back from Christmas break but with all the snow days I haven't had a lot of time to work with the kids on it. During group time this week we used the magnetic abc app and doodle buddy app to practice their sight words. Then they got to use it during free center time on Friday. This girl is playing on the Super Why App and loved it!

4. I tried out an idea I saw on Mrs. Wills kindergarten blog about kids using the iPhone to take pictures of their work during center time. It is a great way for me to see what the kids have done and they enjoy it. It gives them extra incentive to do the right thing. This one of their pictures.

5. This isn't really from this week but today! I just got my package from Creative Teaching Press. They sent me all these goodies to review so be looking for a post on these awesome products soon.

I have one more bonus pictures of my sweet nieces. My sister sent me these earlier this week. Such a sweet picture!

Be sure to head over to Doodle Bugs Teaching and check the party out!