Five for Friday Linky Party...May 17th

Well, it was another crazy busy week and it was our LAST full week of the school year.  Next week we have a workshop day on Friday, the next week is Memorial Day and then we only have 2 more days the following week!  I am excited...but I am really going to miss this class.  They are really sweet kids who have grown so much!

This week I learned that I am not destined to be able to take a personal day.  I usually never take them.  BUT...this year, I tried to take a personal day for my son's 5th grade music program in April and school got cancelled because of snow.  Today I tried to take a personal day for my son's 5th grade Track and Field Day and it got cancelled because of rain.   He's at the age now where he gets embarrassed when he sees me (his mom) in the halls or in the lunchroom.  So...I think maybe he made a deal with Mother Nature.  LOL!

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for the Five for Friday Linky Party.  We've had so much going on this week...it's hard to narrow things down to five.

1.  Our butterflies started to hatch yesterday and today.  The kids were excited!!!

 

We read several books and talked about why there was blood in our butterfly house.  One of the books said that when they emerge you can see their head and body and then the wings. I swear....I stood there forever and saw NOTHING.  The minute I turned by head, they were out!  How does that happen?!? 

We did this fun sheet.

You can grab your freebie here....Butterfly Sheet.   The kids asked me who drew the pictures.  I told them Nikki from Melonheadz Illustrating drew the pictures.  They asked me tons of questions about her.  They wanted to know how she drew all the lines and how she did such a great job!  I told them that she is just that amazing!  I am addicted to her clip art!

 

2.  We finished our Author's Tea books.  It was a long process and I am glad we are done.  We will practice now until May 31st.  I hope they we gain the confidence we need to read our stories in front of our parents.  In order to get them thinking about what kind of stories they wanted to write, we reviewed all the different types of stories that we wrote throughout the year.  We talked about personal narratives, how-to books, non-fiction, fiction and all about books.

 

We used these fun coasters that I got from The Dollar Tree and from the Dollar Spot at Target to review how to write how-to stories.  We wrote the steps using the words, first, next, then, last and finally. 

 

After reviewing all the different types of stories, we decided what kind of a story that we wanted to write.  We wrote our rough drafts and then I saw with them and edited them with them.  I determined how many pages their books would have and gave them the pages stapled in a book. 

 You can grab your paper here....Author's Tea big lines paper.

 

 

 Author's Tea Medium lines paper

 

Author's Tea Small lines paper

 

We wrote our stories in our books.

After writing stories in our books we did our cover page.

 



Author's Tea Cover page

 

I broke out all the new/used colored pencils that we had in our cupboards.  They were in heaven!  We drew pictures and colored the pages to match our words.

 

Finished stories

 

Colored pencils...all ready to use.

 

 

3.  A lesson on Hollywood...Author's Tea continued.  After finishing our books this week we talked about how we worked so hard to complete our books.  We talked about how our parents were going to come and watch us read our stories.  We sent out invitations to our parents saying that we were rolling out the red carpets and we were little celebrities.  We invited them to watch us read our stories on May 31st.  I told my kids that they were pretty special and that people that are stars get stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  Being that our room is going to be decorated in the Hollywood theme, we researched what getting a Hollywood Star meant.

 

We Googled it and learned that the stars have the stars name on them.  It also has a picture on it representing what they got the star for.

 

 

 

 We  then cut out our own stars, wrote our names on it and glued a book (because we are authors) with our picture in the middle of it.  These will be laying on our floor when our parents come to Author's Tea.

3.  I love to shop. Up until a few weeks ago my favorite place to shop at was The Buckle.  After reading some other blogs, I learned about lots of cool Boutiques.  I never knew these existed.  HELLO?!?  Why have I never heard of Mint Julep, Hazel and Olive, The Red Door Boutique, The Blue Door Boutique and Mainstream Boutique before?  I feel like a whole new world of shopping has been opened up for me.  This week it was really nice out.  I was wearing a dress that I got from a boutique.  It was a spring dress and was by NO MEANS short.  I didn't even have to do the hand between the knee and the dress test to see if it was too short.  It went to my knees.  I was excited to wear it.  When I was getting ready to leave the house my hubby asked if I was going to put any pants on.  I gave him a look and asked what he meant.  Once again he asked if I forgot to put pants on.  I told him it was a dress.  By then I was looking for a pair of leggings to wear under it and I was in a crabby mood all day.  We broke a record for the hottest day in May.  Yep....I was sweating because of the leggings.  At that point I decided that I was going to go look for a cute summery, maxi dress that I have seen at the cute boutiques that I listed.  I found this one...

 

 I love it!!!! 

I also ordered this one from The Mint Julep Boutique

There is NO WAY he can say they are too short!  I am going to wear the blue one to Author's Tea.  I really hope it doesn't look too bridesmaidish.

4.  I am finding lots of deals at The Dollar Tree and at Target in the Dollar Spot.

 I saw this idea on someone else's blog and can't remember who.  If you saw it too, let me know so I can give them credit for their idea.  I use this 3 sectioned dish and three letter words to have kids segment words.  They drop a ball that lights up into the sections for each sound they hear.  I also found a four sectioned container at Wal-Mart that I will be using with 4 letter words.

 I was excited about this find at Target. It is a shower curtain and it was in the clearance section.  I still have kids that have a tough time putting spaces between their words.  I tell them to put a finger down, or to use a Popsicle stick or spacer to help them and some still don't get it.  So, I am going to have this in a center next year.  I wrote sentences on index cards.  They have to put the words in order.  The red lines are the spaces.  They are visible...they are there.  Hopefully this will help my kids remember that they have to put spaces between their words when they write.

 

5.  My newest addiction are these....

Every day when I am in the lunchroom with my kids, I see them eating these sandwiches.  I always think they look so good with the thick peanut butter and jelly oozing out of them.  I decided to pick up a box and I LOVE them!  I will be taking these on our field trips, picnics, etc. 

 

Sorry for such a long post.  I hope you are having a great weekend!

Sara