Our Week at a Glance!

Here is a look at what went on this week in our classroom:

1.  The kids had a fun time practicing their spelling words in shaving cream!  The other good thing about it was that it made the room smell good too!  :-)

2.  We practiced our sight words by having a snowball fight!  The kids loved this one and they were able to tell me their sight words for this week quickly.  Each student wrote down a sight word on a piece of paper and crumbled it up.  I told them to throw the paper in the room and then they had to go pick one up.  When I came to them they had 3 seconds to tell me what the sight word was on their paper.  Then they crumbled it up and we continued playing.

3.  Find Someone Who-This was something we played when we first came back from Christmas Break (we didn't do this one this week).  I made up a page of the Kagan Strategy of Find Someone Who.  For example, one box says find someone who can show you how we line up.  So they had to find someone in the classroom who could show them that and then have that student sign his/her name in the box.  It was a quick and fun way for us to review our rules after our Christmas Break.

    

4.  We worked a lot on our nonsense words playing the nonsense words connect four games on TPT.

Have a great weekend!

Outdoor Fun, Painted Shoes, and Games Galore!

Hey there!

I just got back from a little day trip with my family. 

My daughter made it to state vocal competition and sang at Baker University. That was only an hour from City Market in Kansas City which may be one of my new favorite places. My husband and I had been wanting to take the kids there, so today seemed like the perfect day.

So I'm linking up with some very random things for Five for Friday...a little school and a little real life. That's how it is this time of year as I count down the last 15 days of school!

(Yes, I am secretly counting down the days. And no,that does not make me a bad teacher. Just want to clarify after I recently read some nonsense about that.)

 

1

This week we used one of our I Have...Who Has...? games in small group. My kids love to play and wanted to teach our new friend who started with us on Monday. 

  

And because you may be needing some games or even a little HOTSHOTS to finish out the year, I decided we're having a TPT sale! Head on over to snag some things at 20% off now through Tuesday. 

2 

My daughter is playing softball...first time since 2nd grade. She's doing pretty good and has been alternating between catcher and 2nd base. 

 

My son and I watch from the concessions stand.

3

Speaking of my daughter...she's pretty artistic. In art class, she made herself a pair of Captain America: Civil War shoes--one Iron Man and one Captain America. Then she decided to make some for me! Love these!

 4

In an attempt to put new art supplies away in our teacher work room, I have began a major clean out process.

I can't even begin to describe it, but I think I will need to take some before and after photos...

Anyway, I found this grid paper. LOTS of grid paper. The high school math teachers were pretty excited about it and called dibs as soon as I sent out the picture. Ha! 

5

 Our brilliant first grade teacher took her kiddos outside to practice spelling this week. Now why didn't I think of that?

Maybe this week...

6

Ahem...too many photos? Who is this person who has taken over the blog post? 

Our kids are loving the newly painted four square box? areas? games? What do you call these things? 

7

Last one, I promise. 

My hubby is a car guy... He can fix any vehicles, but he definitely prefers Chevys and we have quite a few "project" cars which I call toys. Anyway, each time I've been to the City Market, I see this tag art and think I need to get it for him.

 Today was the day! 

If you like it, the company, KC Tag Art has a lot of choices and I think even does custom work. Check them out!

Okay, that's a wrap!

Parent Teacher Conferences

This week will be our first parent teacher conferences for the year.  Last year, I found some neat ideas to add to conferences.  The first one that I liked, I found at What the Teacher Wants.  It is a kid's personal grade card.  I found it very interesting to see how each kid felt they were doing in a variety of areas.  Here is what it looks like:

 

The second thing that I found that I liked was just something to give out to the parents at the conferences.  It gives a lot of websites that the kids can go to and work on various academic areas.  I found this very helpful especially since we are living in a technology world.  I found this at Mandy's Tips for Teachers:

 

 

It also includes websites to help with math, spelling and grammar.  It is a great resource.

 

How do you do your conferences and have you added anything that you found helpful to your parent teacher conferences?  I would love to hear about them. 

 

Hope you have a great weekend!

 

 

 

Schedule Spotlight Series - #4 PHONICS

Hello! We have linked up again with Kelli for her Schedule Spotlight Series. This linky is so great because it is helping me get new ideas on how to arrange my day better.  This week's topic is Phonics.

 

For the past years, I have always taught phonics sometime in the morning with the reading.  We have the Treasures Reading Program and I have adapted it a little to try and keep those little ones attention.  It takes me about 10-15 minutes to complete the phonics lesson. 

 

I have made up little characters (they are just printed off on paper).  For example, for the short o I use Mr. Olive the Ostrich.  This is just a picture of a Ostrich on it.  Before I introduce our visitor, I will give the students clues of what they like and what their favorite things are.  For example, I would tell them that this visitor likes to swim in a pond.  His favorite animal is a dog.  He sleeps on a cot.  He loves odd numbers.

 

After giving them several clues, the students try to guess the sound that our visitor makes.  After they guess, I introduce the visitor to them (even though it is just a piece a paper, they always seem to get so excited-like it is a real visitor LOL!).  We then discuss the different ways to spell the sound and I write it on the board. 

 

Once the visitor has been introduced and we have discussed all the ways to spell this sound.  I tell them that the visitor has brought his/her favorite song with them.  This song comes from the CD's Funky Phonics.  I tell them that they will hear a lot of our visitors favorite sound in the song.  We then listen one time to the song and then on the second time they can sing the song. 

 

 

During our transition times, I will often play the song again for them and by the end they are supposed to have followed all my directions.  This just helps them to learn the song better and practice the sound that we are working on for the week.

 

Later on in the mornings, we break up into reading pathways groups.  We are lucky because we have Title teachers that come and help us during this time.  It is a 30 minute period where we have groups of about 5-6 students and we do our pathways reading program.  Each title teacher takes a group as well as myself. 

 

The pathways program is a phonics program that uses more hands on materials and visuals to help the kids learn various phonics sounds.  It helps them to learn the rules for the sounds and also provides them with practice of sounding out and spelling words. 

 

Last year, we started doing Daily 5 and being the first year, I felt like I didn't spend as much time on our visitors as I have in the past.  The kids really like it and I plan to try and take the time to do more of it again this coming year. 

 

Make sure you head over to Castles and Crayons and link up so I can see what you are doing for phonics.  

 

 

http://castlesandcrayons.blogspot.com/2013/07/schedule-spotlight-series-4-phonics.html