Five For Friday: Busy Week: & Giveaway!

Today I am home with my two sick kids linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday! My one and three year old were up all night with sore throats and fevers. At our double doctor appointment this morning, they both tested positive for Strep! The one year old also has a sinus infection and staff infection causing a rash all over his body. Seriously??? This is what we get for the first full week of school/daycare! The doctor said it was the first case of the season for her. Yikes. So since it's nap time for the kids, I have a few minutes to link up for this fun linky.

First up this week is a proud mommy moment. We signed a birthday card for Grandma and check out what my three year old did on her own! This was the first time she wrote her name all by herself and I was so proud of her. I mean "Isabella" is pretty tough to write for a three year old!

In Writing this week we worked on a super fun intro lesson to opinion writing. As a treat I brought in little packs of Skittles, Sour Patch Kids, and Chocolate Bars. The students were able to pick a type of candy to work with during the lesson. In front of them they had a blank opinion plan and a sticky note. While tasting the candy in front of them, they had to decide on their favorite color Skittle or Sour Patch Kid. If they had chocolate (my poor friends with braces) they chose their favorite type of chocolate bar. On the post it note, the students had to write two reasons to support why they liked the "yellow Skittle" or whichever they chose. Next, they took their plan and post it to a group of students who picked the same color of the candy, so all the "Red Skittles" met together. They discussed why they liked the Red Skittle the best. Some students said it reminded them of strawberries and strawberries reminded them of summer time, the red was sweet like sugar, or just red was their favorite color.  Each group worked to complete a plan together. From here, the students wrote a first draft using their opinion plan. I was so impressed with the quality of conversations in the groups, the brainstorming, and the writing. I know this was a very surface level opinion writing lesson, but it certainly grabbed their attention, allowed them to have fun while working, and showed me they were all able to choose, plan, and draft an essay! Things can only go up from here!

I am getting ready for Open House next week and I came across this great sign to add to my Power Point presentation. Sometimes parents don't realize how important it is to make sure their child reads every night. I think this will be a perfect hand out to explain the concept of reading every night.

My friend, Gary, AKA Scrappy Guy, has just reached (over) 100 Followers, and he is having an awesome Friday Funday, including a Remember When Linky! Make sure to go check it out, and check out my post from back in April, when I made it to 100 followers! Welcome to the blogging community Gary, we are happy to have you as one of our friends! :)

Last, but not least is one of my favorite ideas of the week. If you know us from last year, you know we wrote about using Mentor Sentences to teach grammar. Well at the awesome TpT BTS Sale, I purchased Mentor Sentences for the whole year. I started them this week and just in time for my BBB, Jivey, to come out with FOLDABLES to go with each week of Mentor Sentences, she is calling this new product, a Interactive Language Arts Notebook Unit. I am new to foldables this year, but absolutely LOVING them. My students LOVE cutting, gluing, and coloring. They don't even care that they have to do work in order to be able to complete the "fun stuff" in the lesson. It's actually like a light at the end of the tunnel. So Jivey came up with this new product to focus on one skill a week that is taught in the Mentor Sentence bundle. This week because it was September 11th, we read The Man Who Walked Between the Towers. First of all, that was an amazing book and brought on our September 11th talk, but the discussion this week during the Mentor Sentence time was awesome. I was so proud of what my students already knew and how they were learning from others. This week we focused on compound sentences and conjunctions. We were supposed to do the foldable for the The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, today, but I am out with sick kids. Yesterday, we did a different foldable made for Fireflies (hence the Jar with fireflies in it), but was quick and worked on compound sentences as well. I can tell my students and I are going to love working with this packet throughout the year. 

I know this was a long post, but I had an amazing week full of fun learning and wanted to share it all!




Have a fabulous weekend friends!