Peek at our Week- Turkeys!

Click to check out other visual plans!

 

Two nights of conferences, tutoring, followed by two morning meetings..... we are BUSY this week!

Just stopping in SUPER quickly to share my plans with you this short week!

 

We are adding and subtracting using many strategies to build our mental math skills.

One of the strategies my 2nd graders that is really stretching their thinking is to make a "friendly" number (10) to add or subtract. I'm hoping that by creating this mat and using 2 different colored counters we will be better able to visualize "borrowing" from one addend to make 10. I'll let you know how this turns out!

Getting by... with a little help from my friends!

Check out these AMAZING units we'll be using this extremely busy week!

Peek at our Week... our Around the Campfire Writing Event!

The past week we were all about Laura Numeroff!

Let me tell you, the difference between Kindergarten and 2nd grade is so intriguing.

After using this unit last year with my K babies, it was just amazing to see the difference in depth of knowledge and the insightful discussions we had in 2nd.

I LOVE SECOND GRADE! :)

 

Here are my plans from last week, complete with our math journals for free! 

 

Also included this week is another notes sheet. We expanded our weather studies from clouds to tornadoes this week using two National Geographic clips and creating a tornado in a bottle.

Our tornado in a bottle consisted of a cleaned plastic bottle filled 3/4 of the way full with water and a jar of dark blue glitter dumped inside. Super simple and the "tornado" was so visible with the dark blue glitter. The kids absolutely LOVED it!

 

By far THE most exciting part of our week was our Around the Campfire Writing Event. 

 

We have worked for 2 weeks through our family tradition narratives and I can't even begin to tell you how excited the kids were for this day to come!

We dressed the part and our classroom was ready to welcome campers and their families to the event.

I have to admit, I was a little nervous about all of our décor lasting until the end of the day (our event was the last part of our day!) but it was beautiful! I actually took these pictures right before the event.

 

Our entrance was complete with bear tracks leading the way!

 



 

I WISH I could share with you the entire video from our event, but here's the next best thing!

The kids sat in a circle around the fire and came up one at a time to sit in front of the tent and read their family tradition narrative. The families and staff members who attended our event sat around the fire and in chairs. 

 

Here is our hallway view!

 

After the event, I presented each family member and writer with a mini-s'mores goody bag with my freebie label attached.

(click below for the freebie)

 After our event we of course had to sign our thank you cards to the family and staff who attended our event.

What better way to have 18 kiddos sign 15 thank you cards?! We created an assembly line. :)

 A few days after our event we had a surprise "knock and drop" on our door.

We heard a knock, but when we came to the door we found this basket of goodies!

One of our parents who attended the event dropped off this sweet note with this adorable gift basket.

 Gummy bears, goldfish, and life savers were delivered to tie into our theme and the note!

The excitement that this event generated in our building, our classroom, and with families was truly wonderful.

 You can check out the detailed lesson plans and printables (aligned and differentiated to fit K,1,and 2 needs) to create your own event by clicking here or on any of the pictures above.

 

Each morning we have a WEGN school wide video meeting.

Our student leadership teams run the meetings and we always start our day with a little dance party that accompanies the meeting. Thursday's meeting included the full length version of Tob Mac's "Speak Life" and my kids had a blast belting out the song and dancing together!

 The kids showed me some love this week during Work on Writing!

...and apparently I took a trip to "Marz" #busylifeofateacher

I'm not quite sure where the alien theme came from.. but three of my kiddos wrote a space story this week. 

Finally! We made it to Friday! Our forever coveted Warm Fuzzy store is open!

Any day of the week the kids can trade in their Warm Fuzzy tickets, but they can only trade in their Warm Fuzzies on Friday mornings.

Again, the difference between Kinders and 2nd graders is amazing. I have so many kiddos who are saving their warm fuzzies for something BIG.

I have a few kids who are so close to reaching 30 already!

I'm be back tomorrow with a peek at our week next week and a few more freebies!