Five for Friday: October 14

Hi friends!

I’m linking up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching to share five things from our classroom this week!

1. MY BOOK OF THANKSGIVING WORDS

This week I introduced them to these thematic word booklets! Although I always have free choice (blank paper and half blank/half lined paper) available at the writing centre I like to add other thematic choices there as well from time to time.

On each page the kids colour, trace and print the word and then colour the picture.

You can grab this printing booklet by clicking here or on the image below:

2. ICY HANDS SENSORY BIN

My ECE partner created this fun sensory bin for the kids to explore! Our goal was to have the kids use their oral language to describe what they see or feel. They loved exploring the materials and noticing how the hands melted and changed through out the day. They were also excited when they discovered the spider inside the hand when the ice melted 🙂

3. WATER BEAD PATTERNING

My next door teaching partner lent this activity to me and it was a hit this week! The kids made patterns out of water beads. We put the waterbeds in a shallow pan and had the kids scoop them out with the spoons and into the container on the left to make patterns.

Here is an example made by one of the kids!

4. LABELING YOUR FAMILY

In our writing mini lessons the kids have been learning about drawing a person (Mat Man) and labeling. After the lesson we set out this family labeling paper (with my example, shown below) and encouraged them to draw and label their family to practice these skills!

You can find this sheet and the accompanying lessons in my first writing unit here.

5. PLASTICINE TARANTULAS

Some of the students were wondering about Tarantulas so we have been learning all about them! As one way to show their learning, we had the kids look closely at photographs/books and created these plasticine tarantulas!

This was our first time working with plasticine so we sat with them and guided them through the activity. We talked about stretching plasticine is a great way to strengthen our finger muscles (we have been talking a lot about how we need to strengthen our finger muscles to become better printers so that we can write down our ideas).

They came out great and there was so much math (patterning, number sense) that they were practicing as they created these. We also noticed that many of the kids were able to recall Tarantula facts like how they had 8 legs and 8 eyes and that the body was 2 parts.

That’s it for me this week! Want to check out more Five for Fridays? Click on the link below to check out the link up! 🙂