Five for Friday {November 7}

I'm a day late, but I'm linking up with Kacey for Five for Friday!

1. November means these adorable directed drawing scarecrows which I LOVE.  

CLICK HERE to read last year's scarecrow post for more information on these cuties!

2. We have been working hard during writer's workshop!  This week, we celebrated 16 minutes of stamina two days in a row!  The kids are doing a great job taking my specific feedback and putting it into their writing.  

This little guy is working on organizing his work and remembering to add details, details, details!

 This sweetie is stretching herself to go beyond just labeling her drawings.  She is ready for sentences and did such a great job this week!

I just LOVE watching budding writers!!

 3. Last week we made this awesome story map for our Reading Street story, Armadillo's Orange.

4. We began Math Work Stations this week.  Finally!  I just kept putting it off this year because other things filled the time and it seemed overwhelming to start.  BUT, since we run them exactly like our Literacy Work Stations, the students knew exactly what to do and they ran so smoothly this week!

These Fall Counting Mats are free in my TPT store.  Click HERE to check them out!

5.  I implemented "Learning Partners" by mistake a few weeks ago ;), and it has been awesome!  I randomly paired students up for an activity, and the pairings ended up being so perfectly matched that I decided to keep these pairings and call them Learning Partners!  Anytime we have a partner activity to do, the students find their Learning Partner and off they go!  So easy and makes our transitions so much calmer and quicker.  A happy accident!

I overslept by an hour yesterday morning.  I know you can relate....isn't it a terrible feeling to realize you've woken up late??!?  Thankfully, for me, waking up an hour later than normal still means I'm up at 5:50. #earlyriserperks

I saw this quote and it made me laugh.  So, so true! Ha!

Any other early risers out there????

Have a wonderful weekend, friends!!!

Three for Friday (on Saturday)

Hi there, friends!

I'm popping in today with a three for Friday!  On Saturday.  Seriously, what is that??!?  I hardly had my camera out at all this week, so I only have four things to share.  And I had plans last night, so I'm posting on Saturday instead.  I knew you all would forgive me because the last few weeks of school are not for the faint of heart and teachers are just BUSY in May.  There is no way around it!

1. I hosted our Girls Only Lunch on Tuesday.  I only have six girls this year, so I was really looking forward to this day of pampering and loving on these sweeties. 

We had a picnic at our carpet area complete with girly cupcakes.

 I invited each of the girls' moms to join us and they were all able to make it!  It was so much fun.  After lunch, all the moms painted their daughters' fingernails and toenails.

I picked up some nail polish and each girl got to choose a color to take home with them.

 Melt me.  These girls.  We had the best time.  There were so many smiles and giggles.  Definitely a highlight of my year.  Hopefully a highlight of theirs too!

Now I get to look forward to my Boys Only Lunch with all 18 of my busy boys.  I might be asking for prayers on that day!  Ha!

2. I changed out my math stations this week and the kids had a lot of fun with the new activities!

Addition, addition, addition is our focus right now!  We are practicing like crazy!

 I whipped this activity up quickly and it was a hit!  We use these bugs for all sorts of things -- especially in the Spring.

CLICK HERE to grab this page from Google Drive!

 Race to 100!  Just change up the graphics on the page and the kids think it's a brand new game!

Again, we're working hard on addition, so the kids used two dice and added them together.  

You can grab a copy of this game by heading back to THIS POST from last year.

 Lima bean math is a classic and always a great activity for addition practice.

3. My sweetie had her Kindergarten screening on Thursday.  She is so ready for Kindergarten, and I am thrilled for her because I know how much she'll love it!!  

That's it for me today!  I hope that you are having a wonderful weekend!

Current math stations

We began math stations last week.  Finally!  My teaching partner has had them up and going for a couple of weeks already, but I just didn't feel like my crew was quite ready to dive in yet.  We first got literacy stations rolling, and last week I decided that I had prepared them as much as I could.  We had to dive in and problem-solve as we went.

I have a pretty good size class this year at 25 kiddos, so three of my math station groups have 6 kids and 1 has 7 (4 groups in all).  They're large, but I have an aide in my classroom during this time so we roam and help out where we are needed.  The activities are meant to be completed independently, and it went great last week!  We'll keep these same activities through this week (math stations take place on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for us), and then I'll switch them out.

SO....here's what we're working on now.

1. "Apples on the Tree" (link to this pack by Growing Kinders HERE)

Pull out extra large dice and kids will stay entertained for hours! Ha!  I double sided this sheet and my students easily stayed engaged for the entire math station block (30 minutes).

2. Fall ten-frame counting mats (download freebie HERE)

I whipped up a recording strip to go along with this to make sure that the students built every number -- accountability!!  I also had them use gator grabbers to add in a fine-motor piece.  The kids went CRAZY over those cute grabbers!  I might leave this one in for another round because my students really loved it.

3. "Create-a-Pattern" (link to this pack by Julie Lee HERE)

I have a student this year that doesn't celebrate Halloween and his mom asked that he not participate in anything Halloween-related in the classroom.  I understand that completely because that was me growing up - my family never celebrated Halloween either.  Now that I'm a mom and teacher, I love celebrating each holiday in fun and creative ways...and that includes Halloween.  BUT....I will happily respect this student and his parents' request to not participate.  So, I've had to keep most of my fun Halloween things packed away this year, and instead I am getting lots of use out of this fun monster pack.  We just finished a math chapter on patterns, so this fit perfectly.  The students had to match and label the patterns.

4. "Brown Bear Ten-Frames" (link to my Brown Bear pack HERE)

We had lots of fun starting our year out with Brown Bear and his gang this year.  This was a page that we had completed as a class several weeks ago, so the students were familiar with it and had fun doing it on their own this time.  I also added "Brown Bear Groups" to the backside to extend the activity and help it fill the time better. (I didn't get a pic of that side...sorry!)

Math station tip:  I always walk around during math stations with a highlighter in hand.  If I see a child that isn't sure how to form a number, I write it with my highlighter and ask them to trace it.  It's an easy way to offer them some quick support, and they are still getting the practice of writing it on their own...the right way.

YAY for a successful first round of math stations!!  It feels so good to slowly get all the parts and pieces of our routine in place.

This week's math stations

Here are my math stations for this week and next week.  Three from my "Three Cheers for BOOKS!" math and literacy pack (We have a major March is Reading Month focus in our classroom right now) and one favorite that I decided to keep around for one more rotation.

"Fill in the Bookworm Blanks"

Here, the students fill in the missing numbers to complete the addition sentences.

(P.S. -- how CUTE are these little DJ Inkers bookworms???)

This activity was a bit tricky for some, and a good challenge for others.  The kiddos that love math, loved the challenge.  Those that find math/addition tricky, struggled a bit and didn't enjoy it as much ;)  At least the bookworms are so cute.  I'm sure they appreciated that. :)

It was actually a great form of formative assessment, and I have put together a small group of students to work on this skill with my para-pro.

"What Comes Before the Book?"

Number order....again, a bit tricky for some.

Students choose a number and write the TWO numbers that come before it.  Most were able to get the hang of this activity quickly, but the whole TWO NUMBERS BEFORE thing was a challenge for some kids.  

If I talked them through it, everyone was able to get it without trouble.  I did make number lines available to some, for added support.

"I Can READ Number Words!"

Students match number words to groups of dots, then record the number words on their page.

 When they finished, I had them read the words to me.  Practice, practice, practice!  Any words that they weren't able to read, I wrote the number next to for them.

"Race to 100"

Who knew that this partner game would be such a hit?!?  Everyone LOVES it!

You can find it in my 100th Day pack.

These stations will bring us to Spring Break, which begins next week Wednesday!  Sooooo ready for that!  Now, if only it would stop snowing and warm up a bit!  Soooooo ready for that too!!

This week's math stations

 Weeeelllll, so I wasn't back tomorrow (Thursday), like I had hoped.  It was a busy week, and I was SO ready for the weekend.  Feeling a little jealous of all those teachers who started Spring Break yesterday!  We still have two and a half weeks before our break begins.  Hopefully all of the snow will melt by then and we'll be able to enjoy some mild, Spring-like temps.  My son was born during Spring Break 6 years ago, and it was a complete blizzard.  I'm very ready for the snow and COLD to be done!

Anywho...my math stations run on the same schedule as my lit stations, so they will continue through next week.

"Bean Flip"

I grabbed this page from Sara over at Kindergarten is a Hoot a long time ago and pull it out from time to time.  It's a fun little addition page.  My students love "rolling" the beans.  Then, they color the beans on their page and write the addition sentence.  Great practice for those math facts!

Remember when I posted about "Counting Snowballs"?  Remember how I was going to use it for math stations back in January?  Remember how I had planned to use white pom-poms for the snowballs?  Oh boy.  I am JUST NOW getting around to this activity.....and I didn't have the patience to dig through my bag of pom-poms for the white ones, so they are counting colorful snowballs in March!  Ha!

(And I even heard one little guy this past week say, "This is the best math station!"...and his friend agreed!  LOVE sweet Kindergarteners!  They are so forgiving and would count snowballs in May if I asked them to.)

"Race to 100"

This activity is a favorite for sure!  My kiddos LOVE this partner game.  The concept is super simple.  They each choose their own color.  They take turns rolling the dice and coloring in that many spaces.  The partner who lands on 100 wins!  It's included in my 100th Day of School pack.

"What's in my Bowl?" graphing game

I filled cheap Take 'n' Toss bowls with a variety of items (each is different).  The students grab a bowl and graph what is inside.  There are a few questions at the bottom of the page for analyzing their data.

Feel free to grab this page for yourself if you think you'd be able to use it!

Happy weekend!!!