Five for Friday: Life Cycles

How crazy is this? It's May and I have 4 "Five for Fridays" left until school is out! I don't know about you, but it's time! The weather is screaming "Go to the lake!"

Here is to the first of the "final four". Thanks as always for hosting Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching!

We've been learning about frog and butterfly life cycles this week.

I broke up the abundance of nonfiction texts we read with this adorable new book:

In a nutshell, this little frog doesn't want to be a frog. He wants to be a rabbit, owl - something else! But in the end, he learns that being a frog is a not so bad after all.

And what better week to introduce using a number line for solving addition problems? Mr. Ribbits taught us how to make one BIG jump for the first number and then little hops for adding on to find the sum.

This took some time... but so cute! On the cover is a butterfly's life cycle. And on the inside...

...we wrote about it!

We are Fluttering to First Grade! These will be the last pieces of art to adorn our wall before kindergarten graduation.

These were designed after looking at The Butterfly Alphabet. On each page of this alphabet book there is a photograph of a butterfly wing with a letter on it!

Here is a poster with some examples of the amazing photographs.

 

Perfect timing for our butterflies to make their grand entrance! My kids were enamored!

Aren't butterflies utterly amazing!?! What a wonderful creator!

We discussed how we are like butterflies... God's love and forgiveness transforms us! We are new creations in Christ!

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here! ~ 2 Corinthians 5:17

Today's journal page

Just as the top of my desk was starting to see the light of day... End of the year staff meeting happened.

Papers, forms, inventory records, supply request forms, evals.... more paper....

Anyone relate?

(Sorry desk! Better luck in June.)

It's easy to get overwhelmed with end of the year stuff, but don't forget to take a moment to stop and reflect over all the wonderful learning that has happened over the past 8 months! 

Celebrate with your students! Celebrate them! They are uniquely wonderful!

 I easily get stressed, but I'm making a conscious effort to choose joy this May! How about you?

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. ~ Romans 15:13

Five for Friday!

It's time to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for 5 randoms from this week.

I thought it would never come!!! But it came! It's fi-i-i-i-nally SPRING! (So this is what it feels like to be happy again!)

We went from below zero temperatures in our weather journals last week to this....

Echos my sentiments exactly.

We leaped into our plant unit this week. We learning about the parts of a plant and the things it needs to grow.

First we read The Tiny Seed by Eric Carl. Gotta have the classics.

The Needs of a Plant YouTube video. (In kindergarten, you always watch music videos twice - the first time you bob your head and the second time you DANCE!)

 Before labeling our own artistic creations, we labeled our anchor chart.

Our hallway looks like a beautiful garden!

Now we are waiting..... and waiting... ever so patiently for our bean seeds to grow. C'mon little seeds. You can do it!

Get your FREE printable HERE from The Chalkboard Garden's TpT store!

Does anyone LOVE watercolors as much as I do? While other teachers are like "We better plan use our watercolors before the end of the year." .... I'm like..." I hope these last until the end of the year!"

Watercolors are my favorite art medium to use in the classroom.
 

This was our Bible enrichment project after our story about Jesus and Nicodemus. Jesus transforms our lives!

My hubby is in luck! My culinary passions have been revived!

Last night I attended the annual Taste of Home Cooking School. I had my fingers crossed hoping to win the demo plate of these cookies. BACON & WALNUT CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES. I know!

No matter! I will make them this weekend - with extra bacon!

Enjoy your weekend!

Book Study: Worksheets Don't Grow Dendrites Chapters 1 & 2

I am stoked about joining this book study to learn how to better engage my students through reading Worksheets Don't Grow Dendrites by Marcia L. Tate.

I set the stage... highlighter, coffee, cupcake...check, check, check!

Thanks Elizabeth for Kickin' it off at Kickin' it in Kindergarten!

I've always been a huge advocate for hands-on learning (especially since my first 2 years of teaching were in PreK and worksheets are NOT an option). It's great to be reaffirmed that so much of what I do daily in my classroom is research based! Yet, after reading the first two chapters I have a growing list of other strategy ideas I can start implementing!

At the beginning of the year, I feel like I spend a lot of time setting the ground work for productive discussion. I teach/model when to talk, how to answer a question, what it means to stay on topic, and how to be a good listener when someone else is talking. Routines and expectations are the framework for effective discussion.

Here is my favorite "trick" for giving students wait time...while holding the "blurters" at bay (a difficult balance in Kindergarten)...

I give a question and tell students to "whisper the answer" in their hand. They keep the answer "trapped" until I see that everyone has had time to process the question (their fists are in the air). When I open my fist, they copy me and "let out" the answers by saying them out loud.

A growth area for me is asking questions at various levels on Bloom's Taxonomy. It takes time to develop quality questions that stimulate higher-order thinking. One action step I plan to take is to develop a variety of questions (at various levels) for some of my read-alouds. I will type them up and tape them inside the book's cover so I have them ready!

It's obvious - ART is in SMART! I have always loved integrating art into daily learning.  My love for art is a reason I have an well stocked Art Center in my classroom. This is a FAVORITE center ALL YEAR LONG! During play time, I often have students take supplies to their table spot because all of the seats at the center are full. I rotate supplies and add word walls correlating with our themes. I also add dictionaries, themed vocabulary binders, and bar graph templates to encourage writing.

Here's two recent example of how we've integrated math and art.We created our own stick structures after reading 6 Sticks by Molly Coxe.

Then we counted how many sticks we used in our design and wrote the sentence:

 "____ sticks make a _____."

Volcano!

Symmetrical Hearts: We decorated a backdrop for our Valentine's program. Each child painted one of their hearts with a symmetrical design.

Not going to lie... it takes time to prep art projects! But the active learning that happens as a result is SO worth it!

Tell me, I forget. 

Show me, I rmemeber.

Involve me, I understand!

- Old Chinese Proverb

Five for Friday

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to wrap up this week!

What does it take to be a good leader? We answered this question as we read about two of our great presidents: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Leaders are caring, brave, honest, readers, and problem solvers. You should have seen the looks on their faces when I said THEY could be president one day!!

We made patriotic star patterns on George's three cornered hat.

I forgot to take a pic, but Lincoln's hat can flip up to reveal a "special note" saying: "Abraham Lincoln was our 16th president". He used to carry mail and important papers in his hat to keep them safe since his desk was always unorganized........I think I may need a hat!

We finally have snow!!! It's been a mild winter. (NOT complaining!) But you gotta have snow when it's your theme! We talked about how we are like snowflakes - God made each of us unique!
Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin is a must read! Wilson Bentley is enamored with snowflakes and is determined to share the beauty of their uniqueness with others - through photographs.
We then created our own one-of-a-kind snowflakes out of coffee filters.

Just like "Snowflake Bentley" used a microscope to magnify snowflakes.... we did a little magnifying of our own... CVC WORDS! Check out A Teachable Teacher's TpT store to grab a copy.

If you could only "feel" the paint on this picture. It's 3D snow paint! Mix shaving cream and Elmer's glue to create a foamy-feeling piece of art. My students had a blast creating their own version of "Olaf". When they dried, we measured them with cubes.

Do you ever review sight word flash cards and your class is..... picking their nose, lip syncing the words, or collecting random crumbs on the rug? (Please tell me I'm not the only one!?!) I primarily use hands-on activities and fun games to review sight words. But sometimes we just gotta fly through all of them to stay fluent!

I made a tiny adjustment to our sight word review.... and EVERYONE wanted to participate! Just add 2-3 pictures of a lion randomly in the flashcard pile. Every time you get to the lion, the class gets to let our their fiercest ROOOOAAAARRR!!! It was an amazing transformation! They wanted to say the sight words quickly! AND their eyes were on me since they didn't want to miss their chance at letting out their inner lion.

Sight Word ROAR!

I always look forward to conferences. I am so thankful for wonderful families who are committed to helping their child learn and grow. Time with them is so valuable!

There is always so much to cover at each conference. This Glow and Grow Report is helpful in summarizing the report card. We have one more day of conferences next week... so I will be finishing the rest this weekend.

Enjoy the weekend!