Five for Friday~Pen pals, Pets and PLANTS

Hey, ya’ll! How are ya? It’s time for another Five for Friday with Kacey at Doodlebugs Teaching! It’s been a looooong week. Life happened; we’ve been busy with a capital B! I think this might actually be the very first night since last Friday we’ve had nothing to do, so this weekend is welcomed with open arms!

I came home ready to tackle a post and got tackled instead, by my old computer that got stuck on stupid and my new one that I’m having trouble downloading new programs to. Tag teamed by technology! I’ve gotten some of the bits and pieces up and running, but need to get Microsoft Office installed to get cracka lackin’ on some ideas floating around in my head. I’m sure after I walk away from it for awhile, I’ll get it going and get busy creating. Wish me luck…cause ya girl is feeling just a bit uh-nnoyed!

Anywho…..here’s a peek at this past week!


April ushers in testing season for our upper grade friends. When you’re not the grade level testing, it can be pretty darn tough to work as quiet as a church mouse. To help our 3rd grade buddies out, we welcomed them to join us for some “get up and wiggle” time.

I’m not sure who had more fun, the kids or Mrs. Patterson and I, but it was a hoot having them visit! We used to work together. Having her back on the 1st grade hallway brought back lots of happy memories. The 3rd graders were grateful to be able to move about and my firsties couldn’t believe the “big kids” were stickin’ around to play and work with them! We had just gotten letters from our pen pals and were preparing to write them back, so having some extra hands on deck for ideas and editing was a total score!!! Win-win!!


From writing letters to pen pals and hosting fun friends….we wrapped up our week with smart art to finish off our author study of Ezra Jack Keats. We read several different stories by him online at his official website and from our library. If you click the link, it’ll take you to 4 animated stories read aloud and other resources.  The kiddos were SUPER attentive and did a really good job of making comparisons between each of the stories to Whistle for Willie. Can you see him shaping up?



After reading a different story each day, students became very familiar with Keats’ style and created collages of their favorite part of the story. There’s Willie running to Peter! Do you see him hiding under the carton?


It’s beginning to look a LOT like spring! Pets, plants, pen pals….oh my! This little chart took us 3 daysish to create. We read the book Grow Flower, Grow! After reading it, we discussed the 3 things that plants need to grow and added them to the chart. The next day, I shared the pen with friends to have them label the parts of the plant. On the 3rd day, we created a booklet from Mailbox magazine and then…..


….our plant POPPED right off the page! I LOVE prepping surprises for my kiddos to find when they enter the room! Their oohs and ahhhhs spike the level of excitement and interest in what we’re going to do next. When they came back from specials today, I thought I was gonna have to throw my body over the table to keep them from attacking our real life examples of parts of a plant! Can you say best teacher ever? LOL! *Wink*….well, at least that’s what they thought once they knew they’d get to eat them! =)

Have a great weekend! Now that I’ve got one of these two crazy computers functioning for a few…I’m working on finishing morning work for April. Sorry for the delay….it may just end up working out in your favor though! Stay tuned…