Contractions and Valentines

The weekend felt like it was about a minute long. It was so pretty here.  I don’t feel like I got a lot accomplished but looking back at the list it seems like I should have an Olympic gold medal!  Friday and Sat we had spend the night company which we loved!  Carter also had a “little” project that he started and finished this weekend.  I will be featuring the “project” on What I Want Wednesday. Yay!  I went to Savannah, TN  with my mom and sis, then carter and I grilled for our company, and I made home maid Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry icing. …they were just okay.  I am ready to have a stand mixer (hint hint… wedding gift anyone?) with a paddle attachment. Then Sunday, I cleaned up the mess, did a little but of school work, worked at school for about and hour and a half (NOT NEARly enough time!) practiced sb for two hours, went to Cullman with some of the greatest girls ever, came home and made Valentines for my cuties. {whew}

I am going to leave you with some pictures from our contraction surgery.  The students got to be drs with patients (word pairs) and they got to “cut” the patients and “stitch” them up with the apostrophe.  THEY LOVED IT!  They took it so seriously.  I posted the sign below on the door, and our reading coach came in and one of my students said.. HEY did you not read the sign?!  hahaha. They reminded each other to be sure to put the stitch in or the patient would bleed to death!  GREAT activity… I saw the original idea somewhere in blog land.. please let me know if it was yours… I will give you credit.

          

Then today was Valentine’s Day….probably deserves a post of its own but… I’m too tired. Just gonna post some pictures of the crafts I made, activities, and 100% pure joy of being a kid!

First was a “store” that I set up.   Students got to earn money throughout the morning by doing various things. Then during math/valentine’s day centers they got to spend their money on the items in the pictures.  {note: most students had a $1… If you do this, lower the price of icing and make them pay 50 cents for the cookie..other wise be prepared to dish out lots of penny items! ONE AT A TIME!}

 

 

tooo cute with their finished products.

These are the valentines I gave my students: the bird is from www.thelongthread.com. The straw is something that use in small group reading for tracking and the kids love them, so I decided to get them one they could take home.  I just added the original saying:

      

Some more pictures from the mess day of fun:

after four hours at the softball field… I loved going home and getting happies from my parents, grandparents, and sister and then coming home to already purchased Chick-fil-A and these wonderful gems:

 

I am one happy and blessed little girl!

Remember…”Love is the GREATEST of All things!”

Laura

Realia from Last Week

So I am pretty sure that realia is a made up word since when you type it the red squiggly lines show up underneath it!  But if you went to The University of North Alabama and had Dr. Goodnite for Social Studies (undergrad and grad) then you KNOW what realia is.  It’s a word that she made up that means artifacts or examples and if you save her notes from undergrad then you won’t have to take them over in grad school because it’s the EXACT same class!  I digress…. so this past week has been so productive.  I have had several absent and I have missed them but it is amazing how much more you can get done with four absent. Together with Abby’s penguin 5 five day planner and Deanna Jump’s Penguin unit on TpT my kids were in penguin heaven! Please don’t judge the drawings haha!

    

and my absolute FAVORITE activity was the one from Abby and DeepSpaceSparkle.  I only had 13 students one day and I thought if I am gonna do it TODAY IS THE DAY! and we DID IT!  We painted…. not water paints, but real paint with real paint brushes.  I was a BRAVE girl!  I wish that I would have taken pictures of the kids with their bowls of paint and all of the different paintbrushes.  Better yet I wish that I could capture the kids behavior during this activity, put it in a jar and bring it out when the weather starts to make them go APES! I never heard, I can’t do it…mines ugly…can I start over… all things that I hear when we draw or use markers.  EVERY single student loved their art and I loved it too!  It was sooooo satisfying to see how happy the kids were.  They were sighting facts about penguins and their habitats while we were painting and it was one of “those moments” when you know that teaching is what you were made for!

 

Two more activities: time and Abby’s contraction kids.

The clock is a paper plate with yard sale dots and arrows from Word. * pre measure the arrows…. I did not so that’s why they look kinda off.  I was EXTREMELY specific on modeling where the dots should go.  We did 12 and 6 first and then 3 and 9 and then filled in between.  Students had to label the hour and minute hand.  The square piece of paper says My clock says it is _______________.  Later in the week the pieces of paper came off and were replaced with a letter and students had to record the times in a center. Good fun practice!  We did hour and half hour even though the ones in the picture are all hours.

CONTRACTIONS!

I loved Babbling Abby’s contraction kids but I added my on little spin to it.  My kids love to play a game we call Mix and Match.  I am sure that you do a variation of it in your classroom.  I print off cards for each kid so in this instance one child will have a card that has: is not and a child that has : isn’t.  I’ve also done it with –er and –est words.  I play music and the kids mix their cards by trading with each other. The rules are NO running and you have to trade even if you have already traded “a million” times. After the music stops the pairs find each other. We did it about five times and the last time the pairs got to sit beside each other and USE MARKERS whooo… to decorate their kids.  Then they glued the pair together and we hung them up!  Great involvement activity.

Y’all keep checking back this week.  Lots of printables for time and Unit three review for Reading Street.

Have a Happy Week! Laura