Five for Friday

I know I'm late to this linky party but I had to include my weekend in my Five for Friday!

I just love fall! I took this beauty the first day of fall. I love everything about fall; the weather, decorations, holidays, and themes at school! I turned the corner, saw this view and turned right back around to grab my phone to snap this picture. Enjoy!

 

  

This week we focused on letter writing, mostly friendly letters. My favorite letters were to Mr. Mutt and to Farmer Brown (the kids loved this one).  All these ideas and crafts came from Erica Bohrer's Letter Writing Unit. What is so amazing about this product?? She links all the writing activities to a picture book which is perfect for my little peaches. It grabbed their attention, gave them amazing ideas and had them enjoying the writing process. I'm so glad I found this unit! I can now get them ready to write their thank you notes to our Donors Choose donors.

 

 Every year I get my kiddos out for a field trip towards the end of September. My little town does an Agriculture Day for all the local schools. We spend the day going to six stations along with a snack break. The whole day is flawlessly organized and the kids are all smiles by the time we leave. Even though they know a lot about agriculture because many of them live on ranches they still love collecting, eating and learning something new. Anyways, we won first place in a mural competition and got some lovin' from a calf (half their hand was in her mouth).

 

Like  I said earlier I LOVE fall! So my sister and I planned a mini trip to a Northern Cali favorite Apple Hill. That's right, nothing but apple EVERYTHING at ranches north of us. They have yummy food, drinks, cool fall weather and crafts, I could spend all day up there! We ate our way through two ranches and then headed home.We all had a fun time and I can't wait to go back up again later this season!

 

 I give my peaches jobs and can I say, they take them very seriously. When I said clean up the room all but one of my little peaches could be found roaming around the room picking things up and pushing things in. I turned to tell one little peach to start cleaning up and she shows me this..

 I was in shock and awe of her hard work she did on making this area of my classroom organized and clean. Can she come to my house and do this??? I was very appreciative of her help!

That wraps it up for last week, cheers to a new one and for October!

Five For Friday

Week five is done and this week has been nothing but sick peaches. I'm freaking out just a bit since they have been saying a new virus is going around here in California. Two of my peaches were out sick this week and two other peaches were feeling sick today. So I am crossing my fingers, toes, eyes... EVERYTHING that this passes and I stay healthy!!

I just love surprising people, but I'm not all for being surprised. You can ask my husband that, I like to know what's going on at all times. Anyways, I surprised my kiddos with books from their favorite series Piggie and Gerald. All week long they have been reading/retelling these books. I love the face of my little peach in blue. They were so excited and I just had to capture their reaction!

Monday was Back to School Night and all but 1 of my parents showed up. Anyways, we went over some important documents for the school and the schedule for the week (P.E., Science, Music days). Each year my co-worker heads all the document talk and I jump in when needed. This year I wanted to give my peaches parents some additional resources. I found Literacy at Home, In the Car Activities and 3 Key Ideas for Parents about the Common Core. All these resources were free and if you'd like to download them just click on the resource above. All are awesome resources and I enjoyed sharing them with my families. I also gave them a picture of their peach from the first day of school.

 

Our mobile library aka Bookmobile comes every Wednesday. Our librarian told us about this new way to listen to books and brought these Playaway Bookpacks in on Wednesday. I wanted to use it for our listening center and my peaches LOVE it! They always want to be the first at this center and with the only five books  they love it and will listen to these stories repeatedly. It's like a little iPod that has the stories on it. I hope they keep making these because my poor peaches do not know how to work a CD player but give them this little techy player and they are good to go! Can't wait to get another one next Wednesday!

We have been writing up a storm in my room. Last week in in second grade we read the story Julius and I got this cute writing activity from Cari-Wiser-Wise Words. She is simply amazing! If you are using Houghton Mifflin you've got to buy her products! They are all Common Core aligned and all have a nice writing piece and other fun supportive worksheets. It has definitely turned my little second graders into writers. My first graders were working on cause and effect with the book Charles Tiger. We also did a fun little Lost and Found! activity I found on Pinterest. We also did superhero writing about a superpower they would want to have and a cute picture to go with it too! All of my peaches are such amazing writers and illustrators. I feel so lucky to be teaching such a creative bunch!

Like I mentioned above we got our Piggie and Gerald books. So to start the thank you letter process I had my kiddos draw Piggie and Gerald on the front of their thank you card. This week we're going to learn how to write a friendly letter through Erica Bohrer's Letter Writing Unit! She connects picture books with her unit which will give my kiddos the engagement they need for writing. We'll also delve into apples, wish me luck!

Link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching below!

Dear 2015 Me

Linking up with Crystalfrom Kreative in Kindergarten for a fun little linky called Dear Future Me. It’s a fun little reminder of what the year has to hold at the beginning. So often I forget how much my little peaches can handle during the beginning of the year. I hope to look back at this post for years to come. Check it out below!

 

 

Wordless Wednesday

Heads down

books out...

and the reaction!

  

We love our new books!

I’ve been keeping a BIG secret from my little peaches since Friday. I was going to show them on Monday but one of my peaches was absent so I waited until yesterday. Their reaction and faces were priceless! As you can see we’ve been very busy reading our new books!

What’s the biggest surprise you’ve given your students?

What other lower grade book series do your students love?

Link up with Miss DeCarbo at Sugar and Spice for Wordless Wednesday, easiest link up EVER! I love it!

Five for Friday

It has been a very unusal week for us. My peaches just couldn't keep it together. The bickering and tattle tailing was off the charts. We didn't get too much curriculum done due to special events and I blame it all on the full moon this past Monday. I'm hoping that next week will be WAY better!

Can I just say that I had the most awesome weekend last week! My sister had a birthday and my family, sister's boyfriends, my hubby and I went to Bodega Bay which is literally 35 minutes from my house. We stayed in a cute little trailer, by cute I mean it only slept 4 and there were 8 of us. I must say, three couples in a small space led to little beauty rest. Anyways, we spent Saturday exploring the bay and the little town of Bodega. That night my parents were so sweet and cooked us all dinner while we all napped (this camping thing is some hard work). All of it was delicious and for dessert we had s'mores. We spent Sunday packing up and cleaning the trailer. Then everyone came to our house and the women had a cleaning session while the men vegged out and watched football. All in all it was much needed family time and a nice break from all the hot weather we've been getting. 

Me, my sister and mom

me and my hubby

Me and my sissy

My dad

My room after all the cleaning (wish I had a before picture)

 Last Friday, I decided to start writer's workshop with my peaches and boy did they enjoy it. I took the suggestions from Sarah Jones from TGIF! I turned off the lights, played some calming music and they got right to work telling me about what they like to do at recess (all of course after brainstorming ideas together, modeling and going over my expectations for them as writers). This is the first year where I didn't have to convince one of them to write they all were willing participants (hooray!).

 

This week I tried to wear more professional clothing, I'm really a t-shirt/jeans/running shorts/mickey mouse tops kind of girl! I went shopping over the weekend with my mom and sister and found this cute top from Target (on CLEARANCE!) I loved it. It was perfect for this week since it doesn't seem like it's going to get cold here in Cali anytime soon.

Can I just say puppies make life so much sweeter! Last week my fifth grade student's dog had puppies they are Akbash mixed with some other kind of BIG dog but they are the sweetest, helpless, most adorable puppies EVER! We got to hold them when they were two weeks old and then again this week and they are just now opening their eyes. I've fallen in love with them and want to take every single one of them home with me! Alas my landlord doesn't want us to have dogs and these dogs get HUGE, like miniature horse HUGE! But all this puppy holding has confirmed that I want a puppy in the near future, fingers crossed!

"This is a good day, just like yesterday, yes yesterday was a good day too." I am so thankful for the community I live in. I put my Donors Choose project out there and in a week it was fully funded from people in my area. Ever since I checked out my first Piggie and Gerald book "Should I Share My Ice Cream?" there has been nothing but smiles, laughter and giggles in my classroom during read aloud time. Each student connects to the stories and can't help but laugh at the adventures of this elephant/pig duo. I find that soon after I'm done reading the students are already reciting the dialouge and taking the books to read on their own. I wanted to create this joy everyday in the classroom so I put together a list of all the Piggie and Gerald books I could find and asked for help. I didn't think much of it after I put it up. I put some statuses on Facebook but nothing came of it. I feel so grateful to the two people who donated to our classroom. They didn't know me or my school but saw the yearning for learning through my post. I'm excited to write them thank you notes to express our gratitude for helping out our little school.