Five for Friday/Freebies!

Today, I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday!

 

 We've been learning about the different states of matter in science, and even after several examples and experiments, my some of my littles were still not quite grasping the concepts.  So I did what I usually do and made up a song!  We sang it daily and they each got their own copy so they could sing it at home. 

They LOVED it and they were able to better retain the information.  :)

 

 

 

Our shared reading story this week was "The Dot" by Peter H. Reynolds.  Don't you just love this story??  I know I do, and my first graders do too!  It's great for predicting, inferring, and especially comparing & contrasting.  It's also great for discussing how characters change.  We've been hitting those reading standards left and right this week.

I always want my students to connect to the story, so this week we completed this reader's response log.  They did such an awesome job at being creative and thinking outside the box!

 

 

 

This year, I'm doing writer's workshop very differently than I did last year (you can read about that here if you'd like!  I will make a post about how we do it now soon).  My class this year needs a lot more structure than my class last year.  This isn't a bad thing; we've just had to change up how we do a few things! :)

 

 

We finished up our "Ouch" stories this week.  They turned out great!  My little writers really put a lot of effort into writing, revising, and editing these stories.  I had parent helpers publish the stories for them. 

 

Today, we started "How-to" writing.

 

 

We began by discussing what "How-to" writing is.  The first step was thinking of some things we could do very well.  We made this "Things we ROCK at!" chart.

 

 

Then, they went back to their seat and made their own list.

 

 

We stopped there for this week.  Next week, we will start drawing and writing each step.

 

 

 

 

 Lately, my kiddos have been really impressing me during math tubs.  Working together, flying through the skills... so I decided it was time for a bit of a challenge.  One of our math tubs this week was Buggy Math: How Many Legs?  Let me tell you, this math tub definitely sharpened up some higher order thinking skills!  I got some little bugs from the dollar store and the students had to tell how many legs were on different numbers of bugs.

 I didn't get a picture of the back side, but they then had to add two bugs together before they told how many legs there were.

This little one above had written 5 bugs = 29 legs.  She realized she miscounted and said, "OH!  Because if you counted by 5s you wouldn't count 29.  It's 30!"  Wow, hello recognizing multiples of 5!

 

 

 

 

 

Last - but not least! - we've been working on our Mother's Day gifts.  They always turn out so cute.  :)  If you would be interested in this project you can click on the cover page below. 

 

Thanks for stopping by!  Have a fabulous weekend, friends!