Five For Friday December 5, 2014

Doodlebugs is taking a brief vacation from Five for Friday, but I decided to share my 5 things from the week anyway, because it helps me believe that I am not neglecting my blog - lol!

 We started our week back to school after Thanksgiving with a black out!  Our power was off until almost lunch time.  Let's just say it made things very interesting, but we made it work.

I also received a gift from one of my students on Monday.  My students and parents this year have been so amazingly generous!  I am truly blessed!

Luke received several awards from Cub Scouts this month.  He was super proud and excited about them!

With his buddy.

We had lots of fun practicing our math facts with this minion match game.

 

 Smiles during math?  Love it!

This is one of the games that is included in my Minion Multiplication Mania.  The full product has 5 multiplication games that are perfect for review in small groups, with partners, or as math centers.

Last but not least, I wanted to share a bit from our Daily 5 routine.  I have never really loved my Word Work portion, but I have modified it a bit this year and I am LOVING it so far.  I will share more in future posts, but for now, here are a few pics of our new word work routines.

 

And, the part of Daily 5 that I have always loved...

 

I love seeing them wrapped up in a good book!

Hope you have a great weekend!

Five For Friday November 21, 2014

 

Time again to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday!

In math we are hard at work on elapsed time.  We have been practicing telling time with a partner.

 

Having flash card relays... boys against girls seems to be the favorite!

 

We also practiced elapsed time with a partner this week. One partner made up a a problem. The second partner solved it, and the first partner checked it.  

We have also been reviewing multiplication with this fun Thanksgiving themed game from A Plus Kids.

The game works very similarly to Uno, except the students also practice their math facts.  I love that it focuses on unknown factors for an additional challenge! The kids love that they are playing a game instead of "working".  I love when you can sneak in learning when they beg to do it!

 

 

We will also being using the Christmas You-Know version in a few weeks.

In reading we have been reading a variety of versions of the story Stone Soup.

We have been working on written responses and comparing and contrasting the different versions.

We are really getting good at using details from the text!

Next week we will celebrate our hard work by cooking our own version of Stone Soup.  One of my students from last year visited and asked if we were going to be making it again this year.  When I told him we were, he asked if he could stop by after school for left overs.

During our writing time, we have been hard at work on writing Fairy Tale Adaptations.

We have been learning the difference between a telling sentence and a showing sentence.

They are getting to be such good writers!  I can't wait to see their published pieces!

 

If you haven't entered already, be sure to enter to win a Base Ten Place Value Frame here.

Head on over to Doodle Bugs Teaching to share your week in review. Not sure how to link up?  Read my blog post here for some tips and pointers.  Have a great weekend!

Five For Friday Sept 12, 2014

A few weeks into school and I am finally starting to feel like we are in the groove!  Time to link up for Five for Friday with Doodle Bugs Teaching.

This week started with a surprise for my kiddos.  They had been begging for a class pet, so I surprised them.  My class had persuaded me two years ago to get a class pet.  It became a whole unit of study and they loved the frogs we got.  Unfortunately, I moved classrooms last year, and the class I went into did not have a sink which meant it would be difficult to keep the tank cleaned.  The frogs came home with me.  Then, this summer I found these tiny tanks and we have class frogs once again!

We had to get a little math in there, so I had them choose names for the frogs and squeezed in some data work.

As you can see, their names are now Luke and Lisa.  I think it is funny that they named one of the frogs after my son!  LOL!  He was flattered!

We got to experience a little more science as we jumped into a unit on matter with a fun little experiment with water, plastic baggies, and pencils.  All of the students predicted that the water would spill out of the bag if they poked a pencil through it.  Boy were they surprised with the results!

They wondered what would happen if they poked more pencils in the bag...

We have also been learning about multiplication and division.  The students love working on the white boards.  I love that they all do the work!  

I felt like I won a prize when I found these issues of Storyworks in my mailbox today.  I have been wanting to try it for awhile, but I just couldn't justify the cost.  Luckily, I got a Donors Choose project funded and these were part of the project.  I can't wait to try them.  Have you used them before?

Speaking of winning a prize, don't forget to enter my contest to win a $25 TpT gift certificate and 70 product donations!  Contest ends soon!