Five for Friday

It is 5 for Friday time!  We are linking up with Doodlebug Teaching for her weekly linky.

Interactive Math Notebooks.  Oh my goodness!  I love these things.  I had heard about them for awhile, looked into them, meant to make some for myself, ran out of time, and finally bought some!!!  I absolutely LOVE Blair Turner’s units!  My kiddos have had a blast with them.  Click on her name to head over and check out her units on TPT. :)

We had meetings on Monday and found out (for the first time!!!) that we are going to be giving our kiddos a writing test.  They have to write an informational piece that we will be scoring as a district test.  Yikes!!! We have done writing before in conjunction with our tests, but it has never actually counted as anything.  Then to find out less than a month before the testing window starts...talk about stress filled teachers!  Sooooo we are doing lots of informational writing practice!  Katie is working on penguins and I am starting with spiders.  These pics are of an information gathering chart Katie’s kiddos made and also her class using an online Zoo Books resource. 

My clip chart, my happy clip chart!  I have said it before, and I will say it again, this group of kiddos is wonderful!  This is my clip chart 1/2 way through the day.  These little friends legitimately are this far along the clip chart 1/2 way through the day, most days!  This seriously just makes me smile.

Treasure Box.  Katie and I do our rewards a little bit different, but our kiddos both earn stars and can use them to buy things at the end of the week. This is one of my kiddos favorite times!  I always have sweet little helpers to want to be in charge of calling sticks for friends to come back and buy prizes.  They also get such a kick out of getting to make change for people!

Finally, a little personal fav of the week.  We left little brother home with Grammi and took the girls to the pumpkin patch.  They had so much fun picking out a pumpkin to carve with Daddy and were so proud of getting to help scoop out all the pumpkin “guts”!  It was absolutely precious getting to see just how excited they were when Daddy added the candle to their jack o lantern and turned off the lights.  I love, love, love getting to watch all the “firsts” with my kiddos!

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I'm Done With My Work....Now What???

I’m done with my work, now what???

I think we have all heard this a thousand (if not more) times!  I don’t know about you, but I get exhausted from constantly    repeating the list of options that are available after work is completed.  I could tell the same child, the same list, 20 times in a row and they would most likely STILL ask me what to do!

I have had a few years of tougher classes who had some problems with self control and work completion so I haven’t really had the opportunity to offer extra choices for the last few years.  However, this year’s crop of kiddos are AWESOME!  They are so self motivated to finish work and LOVE to move onto something else.  I seriously am in hog heaven with this group!  If they want to keep learning then I want to give them options!

While I was gone on maternity leave my wonderful sub also got tired of hearing kiddos ask what to do after work completion.  So she made a list of options and wrote it on the board. 

Great, right?  Yes, it was, but when I came back I decided to do something a little more fun with our I’m Done With My Work list.  I made one of these posters about 4 years ago with another great group of kiddos and decided to bring the idea back out with this group.

 My kiddos loved getting to model the options and are having so much fun seeing their picture or their friend’s pictures on the poster.  So far they are also using the poster as a reference instead of me!  Woo hoo!!! Here’s to hoping the novelty doesn’t wear off!  If it does at least I can point to a really cute poster instead of repeating myself over and over! :)

 (The cute frame at the top of the poster is from Teaching in a Small Town and the font is MTF Jumpin Jack if you are wanting to make yourself a poster and like the headers in this one!)  :)

[Glitterfy.com - *Glitter Words*]

Surprise TPT Sale!!!!!

TPT has hit 100K likes on Facebook and is having a surprise sale! Way to go TpT!

They are celebrating with a 10% off sale today and tomorrow only! Just use the code FB100K to get your 10% off!! We are also having our store on sale for 20% off during this surprise sale. Head on over if you have anything on your wish list!

We are linking up with a lot of other great sellers at Freebielicious. So click on the pic and head over to see what other great TPT sellers are joing the sale!!

Five for Friday

Whew!  It has been awhile!!! Life has gotten crazy for both of us.  I have started back to work after 6 lovely weeks of maternity leave and it is exhausting! :)  Thank goodness that my class if fabulous and soooooo enjoyable!
We are linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for her Five for Friday linky. Click the link below to check it out.

Here is a peek at some of the randomness of our week!!

 Spider Spelling

Our kiddos love anything that is attached to a craftivity and we love to have cute things to hang from the ceiling!  Here is one of our spiders with spelling words on the legs.  Quick and easy and the kiddos get a kick out of having their spiders hanging up!

 If you would like to snag a free copy for yourself just click on the picture below!

 Autobiographies

I left these for my sub to do with the kiddos when I was out on maternity leave.  They have been working away and I love how they turned out!  I have all but 2 kiddos finished and we have started to share them.  

If you would like to check out our autobiography unit on TPT you can head to our store!

Katie did some persuasive writing with her kiddos this week.  We have been talking for awhile about getting ourselves into gear to work on a persuasive writing unit, but haven't gotten to it yet.  Luckily, Amy Lemons, had a super cute idea for persuasive writing!  Here is the book Katie used with it and 2 of her examples.  If you want to check out what Amy Lemons is doing with her writing just click on her name and head over to check out all the cuteness!!!  She has the BEST ideas!!!

Inservice!  We had an inservice today and our principal brought Chick Fil A for breakfast!  Yum!!!  No picture of that because it went so fast we didn't have time! :)  We had a great speaker in the morning and work time in the afternoon.  Here is a picture of what we will be working on after lunch...

Yup, you got it, grading, grading, filling in bubble sheets, and hopefully a little bit of planning!!

At our training this morning we learned about 2 GREAT tools to use with kiddos.  Check these out if you get a chance.  Both Katie and I will be exploring them this weekend.  What we were shown at our training got us excited about the uses for our classrooms!

Click on either of the pics to check these great tools out!!

Also, if you have time head over and check out my friend Kristen's new blog!  She is an awesome teacher and has started a new blog.

[Glitterfy.com - *Glitter Words*]http://www.doodlebugsteaching.blogspot.com/