Five for Friday--March 8, 2013

Happy weekend to you all! :)  I'm linking up with Kasey at Doodle Bugs Teaching this week to share about my first grade adventures or...any other random things that were on my mind at the time of this posting! :)

It was a pretty eventful week!  As some of you may know, last Sunday was my birthday, and so the hubs had some fun planned for me! :)

Random Item #1...My birthday was Sunday, but on Saturday the hubs took me to see Wicked! :)  I thought my fringy wrap would be nice for the night, but it was darn tootin' cold here in Orlando! LOL!   On Sunday after church, he took me to Carrabbas! :)  It was delicious! :)  I had a great weekend!

Random Item #2...I've been telling you guys all about the Underground Railroad Unit I've been teaching to my students for my complex text read aloud time...well...we've been learning a TON and having a blast with that too! :)

I tied math to the unit by having the children create quilt patterns out of construction paper.  We decomposed shapes and then recomposed them on the quilt square...almost like a puzzle!  It was a great activity for them to work on for their geometry standards!  Underneath each square, the children wrote things that they learned about the Underground Railroad and Harriet Tubman.  The quilts came out great!  The students showed some wonderful depth of thought!  I will try to share a more detailed post on this activity in the future.  The research quilt could be used at ANY time of the year, it just lent itself to the Underground Railroad project so nicely that I used it now...but...really...you've GOT to try it with your kids!  It was a BLAST!!

Random Item #3...Every year, our grade level draws names for birthday celebrations.  This year, I requested  SWEEDISH FISH for my birthday! :)  My grade chair got my name and bought me a ginormous bag of them!  Oh how I love her! :)  There were SO many fish...I even got to share them with my students as a sweet reward! :)  I never have candy in the classroom--too afraid of bugs and such--so...they were SO EXCITED to help me finish them up before the bugs were any the wiser! :)

Random Item #4...Each week, there are several of us who participate in something called FUN FRIDAY.  We host special activities in our classrooms at the end of the day on Fridays for students who have had a good week in our classes.  This week, I decided to have my room be the 'Lemonade' room and I did my lemonade activity with two classes who didn't already get a chance to make the lemonade! :)  It was a total blast!  Thankfully, those two classes shared an intern, so, I got some much needed help with the lemonade-lollapalooza!  I should have had one more hand juicer, but...we made it with the one!  Lots of kids now think that 'cooking' needs to be one of the FUN FRIDAY options...oh dear! :)  

Random Item #5...I am working on a new morning work pack for my firsties.  I am pretty excited about how it's turning out so far.  I really hope that they like it.  I was looking for something simple that covered both math and language skills that the kids could do independently.  After trying three different packs, I decided to bite the bullet and make my own.  I should have enough of the old morning work to last me through the month of March, so I thought I'd begin preparing something for April.  Here's what I have so far...let me know what you think! :)

XOXO,
Tamara