Weekly Wrap Up

It's Sunday and I'm barely getting around to post my Five for Friday pictures. It's been a busy week.

First up, there was no Five for Friday last week because I was on an airplane flying out to Illinois for my 15 year college reunion. Wow! Where has time gone!?!  It was so good to see old friends and catch up. I got home at 1:30am on Tuesday morning... turned around and went to work on Tuesday. I was dragging all week.

While I was gone my students made these cool owls for our tree inspired by this pin. They turned out so cute!

We've been learning all about owls and using the book Owl Moon for our read aloud this week. The kids have been very motivated by our bat and owl studies.

Friday afternoon we started our owl pellets. The kids thought it was really cool. They were pretty fascinated with this project. I love when they are super engaged.

My students are really struggling with social skills this year. I spend a lot of instructional time dealing with disagreements and hurt feelings. It's been a rough year in this department and it's only October. Our psychologist has started a social skills group with my kiddos. We're working on "I feel" statements and understanding it's okay to feel differently.  For now these skills are listed on the board where they are easy to see. But I need a permanent home for the skills we're currently working on.

Last up, our Halloween costumes! We went to a Halloween party this weekend and actually won the costume contest for Best Group costume as Clan DunBroch (from the movie Brave). Sewing all of these costumes (minus Queen Elinor the Bear) has consumed a lot of my extra time these days.  My girls are VERY excited about trick or treating on Thursday!

Monday Made It- QR Codes

I finally did it! I tried a QR code in my classroom that I made! I used this site to create my QR codes. Then I used these little frames from IKEA to display the codes. Each student has a frame with their 4 sight words for the week (there are two on the back side of the frame was well). I print out the QR codes and tape them in place so I can reuse it with new sight words each week.

Anything that involves technology is exciting to the kids! First they scan their QR code with the app i-nigma. I've tried several QR code readers, but this seems to be the easiest for the kids to use and navigate. I just wish that the font was larger when the text pops up.

 Then they record their sight word on their recording page in the corresponding number.

The last step is cutting apart their sheet with their signs. We photo copy the signs and the students need to match up the words and signs. 

This is great practice for my students and they love this new center!

Five for Saturday

I recognize it's supposed to be Five for Friday... but it didn't end up that way. When I finally sat down last night it was all over. I'm getting a cold... I feel it. I'm shocked I made it all the way until October to pick up my first cold.

Any how, here are a few random things from our week. I'm linking up with Doodle Bug's Five for Friday linky party.

We're in the middle of our Stellaluna book study. We've been busy learning about bats. The kids wrote a few facts about bats then created these bat silhouettes. I really like how they turned out. 

Inspired by this pin on Pinterest, we made beginning, middle and end Stellaluna bats. It was really hard for my students to write on the bat turned upside down!

My little guys were busy counting by groups of 10 to make 100 in order to make this illustration for the class. A bat can eat up to 600 insects in 1 hour! After seeing it, they understood just how many that was! (Sorry, I can't find the resource for this.)

Now that my little guy has mastered counting 1-30 it's time to get him to 50. This week I saw this post by First Grade Blue Skies and had to go out and find some of these cute Halloween erasers at the Target dollar spot. This Hallowteen activity was perfect for my students practicing counting to 50.

Not school related, but taking up a lot of my time recently has been making this Merida costume (from Brave) for my daughter for Halloween. I'm not sure how I pulled it off, but her costume is complete and it's only the middle of October!

Five for Friday- October 4th

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs for her Five for Friday weekly posts. Here's a look at five random things from the week:

 We started our Stellaluna book study this week. The kids are very excited to learn all about bats.

We are still working on place value and counting. The kids love it when I throw in a fun learning game. These place value dice were a huge hit.

Now that our schedule seems to have evened out, I have a little block of time to work on specific writing/grammar skills with my older kids. They enjoyed this little mini-unit on contractions. Contraction surgery was a hit.

I found this fun QR Code Contractions activity for the kids to practice their new skills. Pull out the iPad and they are all over it!

I took the day off today to join my daughter's kindergarten class on their apple picking fieldtrip. Hands down, the bus ride was her favorite part of the trip!