Five for Friday: February 17

Hi friends!

Are you excited for the long weekend as I am?

Here is a quick recap of some of the things that have been happening in our classroom!

1. DINOSAUR INQUIRY

Our kids love dinosaurs and but they weren’t really wondering anything that we could research about them. We finally got a few questions we could roll with and here is our documentation. We focused on two questions, “How fast do dinosaurs run?” and “How did the dinosaurs go extinct?” For the dinosaur speeds we compared them to some speeds we are familiar with (e.g. a walking human, a car) and compared them (e.g. which dinosaur is faster?). One boy even did a writing about it writing “The Apatosaurus is the slowest dinosaur.”

For, “How did the dinosaurs go extinct?” we read a few excerpts from dinosaur books we had on hand and then we watched the video “Where Did the Dinosaurs Go?” by Pinkfong! Kid’s Songs & Stories on YouTube. Then we recounted how the dinosaurs went extinct together and the kids worked over several days to put together the steps and the matching pictures. They did such a great job!

2. DIGRAPH PUZZLES

We’re still hard at work learning digraphs so here is another digraph centre I put out. The kids find the matching puzzle pieces, clip the pieces together and trace or write the word beside the corresponding picture. These puzzles and recording sheets are in my Digaphs: Centres & Printables for CH, SH, TH, WH & PH pack. The recording sheets were added recently, so if you already own it, re-download the file by clicking here or on the image below to get the newly added pages!

3. KID O MAGNATABS

Our division ordered these from the money we got from attending the Math Symposium in the fall. They finally came in (they were backordered) and my kids are loving them! The wands are magnetic and when they trace over the letters/numbers the magnetic balls pop up to the top. They think it’s “magic”! It is a great way to get even the reluctant writers practicing letter and number formation!

We got them from a catalogue given to us at the symposium but they are also available on Amazon and from Scholar’s Choice!

4. SKIP-COUNTING PUZZLES

We are starting to talk about skip-counting and so I made these skip-counting puzzles! There is a puzzle for counting by 10’s, 5’s and 2’s. The 10’s have ten-frames, the 5’s have hands and the 2’s have sandals. I wanted each card to have a pictorial representation of the number so that the kids could visually see we were counting a group of numbers.

You can grab these puzzles for free from TPT by clicking here or on the image below:

5. CVC BUILD & MAGNIFY

My kiddos need major practice with stretching and hearing sounds so I made these CVC practice cards. The kids were asked to stretch, hear and find the sounds for each box and then use the magnifying glass to magnify the word written at the top right corner (I typed it in an itty bitty font size) to check. I reminded them to self-correct if they had the wrong letters too! The kids love using the magnifying glass to look at the little word and check their answers.

I wrote letters on these heart manipulatives for this week but I will be swapping them out with new cards and probably just use magnetic letters for my next bin. You can write the letters on bottle caps too!

You can grab these cards by clicking here or on the image below:

Alright, that’s it for me this week! I hope you liked the freebie 🙂

I’m linking up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching for her Five for Friday linky. You can check out more Five for Friday posts by clicking on the image below: