Five for Friday~A Whole Lotta Random

Hi, Friends! How are ya? I’m dropping in to share a whole lotta randomness from this past week. I’ve got to blog quickly because my daughter is giving me the side eye for missing part of yet another Avengers movie! We’re watching Captain America and I think…..I think, now I can finally put all the pieces to all of the avengers back stories together….I think. I KNOW she can! Can you say obsessed?

One of the most exciting things about this week was releasing our butterflies! 5 of our 6 little friends made it safely from caterpillar to butterfly in our care. Unfortunately, we had to have a conversation about life and death because one of them did not make it. The kids handled it really well and celebrated by releasing the little ones that survived. As each one left the net, they squealed with excitement!

After releasing our new little painted ladies, it was time to begin a new round of station activities! {I’ll be back to share a little more about those later!} 

Do you use poetry journals in your classroom? One way, we use poetry throughout the year is by keeping a poetry journal at word work. We use lots of different poetry resources for sight words, phonics, and seasonal themes. Poems change about every 2 weeks-ish. How do I keep track of who has added a poem to their journal and who hasn’t? See the little number in the top corner? Those are students’ classroom numbers. Every time a new poem is put into stations, I number them. Students are only allowed to get the one with their number on it. Soooooooo, the numbers that are left…..{naughty, naughty} tell me exactly who has not added a new poem to their journal!

Most of my students enjoy working with their poetry journal because when they do, they also get to share it from the author’s chair as part of our transition for the next mini-lesson! Only 2 students are allowed at any 1 activity in stations so it doesn't take long at all.

Our first attempt at planting was an epic FAIL! We grew butterflies, like bosses….BUT bean plants….not so much! As we continued with non-standard measurement, we incorporated a little writing in math with our own versions of Jack and the Beanstalk. Students wrote to retell the story and make comparisons to different things that the beanstalk could grow to be bigger than. We squeezed in one more attempt at growing our own little beanstalks while students wrote their stories. Can you please bow your head now and say a quick word of prayer for our plants? We NEED all the help we can get! 

Whew! Thanks! =)

We also explored choosing appropriate units of measurement with a little measurement stations activity. This is what we doodled to use as our recording sheet. Yep! We doodle a lot! {LOVE!}  After listening and following directions to create our recording sheets, student groups were given 10 minutes at each station to choose a classroom item to measure and record the number of units used, the name of the unit and illustrate. 4 tables, 4 units of measurement, 4 windows on our foldable. Students ONLY opened the window for the specific station they were visiting in order to record their work. For example, while at Table 4, they measured using pencils as their unit and only flap 4 was open to write and draw inside of. 

Telling students how much time they have is a great motivator to keep it movin’ without a lot of lag time. Displaying the timer helps them to see the time winding down and monitor their own progress without hounding them too much. Self management…yep, I can get with that!

What’s that they're measuring, you say? Oh, just one of the best transition tools on the planet! That’s our rain stick. Not being one to actually measure much in real life, I ordered it thinking it would be much smaller. Boy was I surprised!! Care to guess how many unifix cubes it took to measure its length? Yeah, they could’ve used a bigger unit of measurement, but where would the fun in that be? Stay tuned….

….more measurement mania to come!

“OVER THE MOON” EXCITED…

…about being the Featured Teacher Author in the  Teachers Pay Teachers newsletter today!  Having the opportunity to collaborate and learn with so many awesome teachers across the globe is a blessing in itself. Being featured and getting attention for my store was icing on the cake!  It’s been a great day! I am so thankful and just tremendously blessed!  All of the traffic, excitement, and congrats have really got my wheels turning…..now I’ve just got to calm them down long enough to create all the random awesomeness floating around in my head!

My two featured items are pictured below and you can click the pic to check them out if you’d like!

      

April has been a very busy month (aren’t they all) for us in the classroom.  It is National Poetry Month and the Month of the Military child.  I teach in a community that is primarily military so we couldn’t let this opportunity pass us by to recognize our littlest soldiers!  Everything about being a child in a military family is just a little bit different, sometimes difficult….but always special!  We’ve had fun creating original poems.  One of the poem types we chose to play around with was an acrostic.

After introducing the concept with the letters that spell out my name.  {Yeah…I let them tell me what they REALLY think of me!} Heheeehhehe…come to find out, they REALLY do like me! I was even likened to a character in a Dr. Seuss book!  I guess that verifies that I’m pretty animated!  I’ve got the greatest class of kiddos on the planet!  Wouldn’t trade ‘em for anything; they’re the best!

You can click the pic to grab a copy for the special military kiddos close to your heart.  There are two additional versions that will come up on the GoogleDoc: one with a saluting boy and another with a saluting girl.  I like to doodle, so we used the version above to write and illustrate.  Each kiddo drew themselves under the helmet!  They turned out absolutely adorable! Did I take pics?  N-O! For my kiddos that are not or chose not to do the military child poem….I allowed them to do an acrostic poem using the letters of their name.  Sometimes, thinking about deployed parents or how they feel about it can be a little much….

While the acrostic poems brought out our sentimental sides, we had pure fun learning that some poems follow very strict rules and that not all poems rhyme.  I say we had fun! Man, we worked out little bottoms off to follow these rules and come up with different cinquains….I’m still hoping that I even pronounced that one correctly, lol!

We used Cara Caroll’s poetry freebie to model and think aloud during small group to create these original pieces of poetry.  It was a great review of parts of speech and left us with a little brain pain from thinking so hard.  We did the one above together and created self-titled poems with a little help from friends in small group.  Check out what some of my little poets came up with!

                      

Pretty good, if I must say so myself! Some of our buds down the hall made the most adorable clouds with lists! We plan to wrap our poetry study up with some tongue twisting alliteration this week.  I can hardly believe it, but it actually IS almost May!  Our last full month of school!

To celebrate the end of the year, we’ll be continuing our A-Z Countdown to 2nd Grade.  My goal is to share what we did each day with you, so we can spend these last few days getting to know each other a little better! For B Day…we hung out on beach towels with our favorite book!  C Day brought out the caring side of us all as we purposely used kind words to compliment our friends.

Tomorrow will be D day….we will Drop Everything And Read for a while!  What do you do to celebrate reaching this milestone?  Enjoy what’s left of your weekend!  I’m off to get groceries for the week and throw the baseball around with my little sonshine!  Have a magical Monday!