Five for Fraturday!

Ah!  Another week where I didn't get to post until Saturday!  Maybe next week will be my week to come back to the blogging world more regularly :)  Here I am though to link up to Doodle Bugs Five for Friday!

My old teammate from my old school sent me this picture this morning... made my week!  I had this little one 3 years ago and left the school 2 years ago and I still made it as her hero :)  This is why we teach :)

My kids are doing an awesome job with our start of our small moments unit!  They really are latching on to the idea of finding a tiny moment and then stretching it out!  This is the first year the kids haven't struggled with the concept... maybe because everyday I look like a goober emphasizing the ideas of STRETCHING it out :)  I will try to take some pictures of the kids progress next week so you can see how awesome they are at writing already :)

We also started our geometry unit this week.  The kids only have to know what a rectangle, circle, square and triangle are... and their attributes.  They already learned this in kindergarten so we have been powering through to trapezoids, hexagons and pentagons (which have provided some of them a bit of a challenge).  We also started talking about 3-D shapes.  I made this game for next week that I think is really cute :)

 It will be available in my TPT store by the end of the day :)

We had a full moon this week, which explains my kids behavior on Thursday.  I couldn't understand how they had been so perfect on Wednesday during math centers and Thursday it looked like we had never done math centers before!  Then I noticed the full moon and ahhh, it clicked.  Does any one else feel the curse of the full moon in their classroom?  Fortunately, by Friday they were back to their perfect little selves :)  I love my class this year!

Speaking of my class, I have a couple changes this week.  One of my little ones is moving :(  I am so sad about this because he is such a hard worker and I was really looking forward to seeing his growth this year!  Hopefully he will continue to achieve in his new school.  I also got a new student who doesn't speak any English.  I have had my ELL students before, but never one with no English.  I know that at this age, he will pick it up quickly and I have already seen this... any tips of the trade for helping him out as much as I can?

Enjoy your weekend!

Annie

Small Moments Writing Unit

I love fall Sundays... I love sitting and watching football and creating things for my classroom.  Today I have finished my small moments unit!  Yes!  Writers' Workshop is planned for 3 weeks!!

My kids have really settled nicely into the Writers' Workshop routine this year.  They actually love this writing time and are trying their best during the whole 45 minute block.  I can't wait to start Small Moments with them.  I find small moments a bit challenging because the kids have a hard time focusing on ONE small moment, but we will work hard on it!  Below are some screen shots of my small moments unit, which is now available in my TPT store for the Promethean Board.  

Everyday I have a quick mini lesson (which are broken down by day with teacher notes in the flipchart).  My mini lessons focus on adding details and how to write a good story.  Then my students write for about 30 minutes before we share at the end of the block.

How do you run writers' workshop?

Five for Friday 10/11

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Things are finally getting into a routine at school so hopefully I will have more time to blog, but for now here is my five for Friday!  I love linking up to Doodle Bugs for their weekly linky party!  It has been quite a week!

First, the past two weeks haven't been the easiest.  My grandmother, Nanny, fell last Tuesday and we have been on hospital watch since then, knowing that she wouldn't recover :(  She passed away to join her husband and daughter last Saturday night.  This week we were able to celebrate her life surrounded by friends and families.  I wanted to share this photo of her at my wedding last year.  How lucky I was to have her at our wedding, but I wish she had just smiled at the camera!  We tried so many times and she kept turning around to talk :)  She will truly be missed.

I am loving math this year... as I feel like I have mentioned before.  Below are a few pictures of my kiddos at math centers:

At this center, the are playing "guess the number"  This was a great activity to help them describe the numbers!

This activity had them cut out different formats of numbers and decide if they were odd an even.  I had a cheat sheet for them to refer to, but they did a great job!

Here is the game Abracadabra!  They need to roll two dice and add them together.  They then remove a marker off their board that is in the column of that sum.  The first person to make their board disappear wins!

This is a fun fall activity.  They simply roll the dice, add them together and the color in the fall item.

At the teacher table this week, we worked on tens and ones.  We made the numbers using cubes and then compared them.

They loved counting by fives by stacking the cups in order.  They liked to see how fast they could do it.

All of these math centers, plus two more weeks of centers are available in my TPT store.  It is my Number Sense Unit.

I took today off to recover from the week's events and happened to have time to finally put my sight word units up on TPT.  I have been using them in my classroom and they have been ready, but I hadn't finalized them for sharing.  You can check out my whole sight word unit at my store, but you can also see there are 18 smaller units.

Here are some screen shots of what you would be getting:

It's on sale for the weekend!  Head over and get it!  My math unit is also for sale!

Who watches Homeland?  That is the highlight of my week right now!  I love that show!  We  also just found Brooklyn nine-nine with Andy Samburg.  If you need a good laugh, check it out :)

Its been raining in Virginia for three days now... and it looks like it will go on for the rest of the weekend.  I do love rainy days, its relaxing and soothing I think.  Hopefully the sun will come out soon though!  Until then, I plan on enjoying the coziness of a rainy day!

Have a great Columbus Day weekend!

Annie