Guess what? We went outside for recess four days this week!! AND while driving to work after four days off from snow, I saw that Rita's was open for the season! It pretty much made my sleepy Daylight Savings Time Monday. :) It's hard to believe last week at this time, temperatures were in the single digits and six inches of snow were on the ground. It might be safe to say that spring has sprung.
Speaking of spring, I opted out of the Horton hallway display and, since we are studying baby animals, on the spur of the moment, created this instead:
It is modified from a Pinterest idea, but there was just a picture on the image link, no creator or directions. I first read a little book on the life cycle of a chick to the kids, and we created sentences on a piece of chart paper using our sight words.
1. They drew an oval on a piece of paper and cut it out. Then I helped punch a small hole in the center, and they "cracked open" the egg by peeling the paper outwards.
2. We glued pompoms to the center of a piece of blue paper. Next time I would like to add a beak and eyes, but I'm not sure how to do it unless I make the chicks from paper. Any ideas??? I told this kids this would be like a "peek" inside the egg.
3. They glued the egg over top of the pom poms. I glued their writing onto a strip of green paper and we shredded the top of the green paper with scissors to look like grass. I then stapled the writing paper to the egg paper.
They did a fabulous job and the hallway looks great! Their favorite part of the whole activity was tearing a circle in the middle of the paper to show the cracking egg. :) (My favorite part was punching and hanging all the letters...not.)
As I said, we have been studying animals, and I needed to have them do an activity using a fantasy book for one of my masters classes. So, Giggle Giggle Quack was a perfect fit.
I made a quick template and had them draw and write about what they would say if they were Duck. They had some creative ideas, including taking the animals to a movie theater, bowling, Pizza Hut, and McDonalds. Click on the picture to download the template...
A big project I worked on this week was creating a writing center in our classroom! It's still a work in progress, but it's coming together nicely! This area has been "closed" to the students this week as I add to it. I think this is helping build their anticipation! They love their personal writing journals, and I have lots of budding writers in my class, so I'm excited to capture this and provide some structure and more materials for them to use. I forgot to snap a picture before I left, so more on the finished version next week.
My high group is loving their new shamrock game. They are asking me to add different ways to make the numbers, like addition facts and tally marks. Luckily (no pun intended) Dollar Tree still had shamrocks, so I'm going to add a few more!
Daily 5 update: Introduced "Read to a Partner" this week. They did pretty well, especially with sitting "elbow, elbow, knee, knee." One of my most difficult students absolutely loves Read to a Partner! This week I was just having them practice sitting properly and reading the words, pictures, or retelling to each other and especially practicing taking turns with each other. Next week I will introduce how one partner checks for understanding. I love watching my students settle in with a good book. We've taken it VERRRYYY slowly but they're getting into a good routine. I have a few questions about how to "mesh" this with my current 3 group rotation setup, however. I want to transition them over, but not all at once. Any thoughts?
All in all, it was a great, productive week. It's good to be back into a regular routine! Check out the other Five for Friday posts at Doodle Bugs Teaching.
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