Five for Friday!

Does anyone else remember the little theme song that went with ABCs TGIF back in the 90s?  "Gonna have some fun, show you how it's done - TGIF!"  Is it bad that I still often sing that to myself on Fridays?  Because I definitely do.  It's peppy!

But seriously.  I'm so thankful the weekend is here.  I love my little ones, but wow-oh-wow were they full of extra energy this week!  I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to celebrate the fact that I survived with five of my favorite things from this past week.

1.  Thanksgiving is EVERYWHERE!  I love holidays in Kindergarten because we do so many craftivities and decorate our classroom and hallways.  Here are some of our favorite masterpieces:

These sweet Native Americans were inspired by A Cupcake for the Teacher and oh how I love doing these with my students each year!  I tweaked the writing prompt this year for my Kindergarteners because while darling, the craft does require quite a bit of listening to create.  I knew if they had to write much more I might lose them, so I compromised a bit!  Next year I may omit the small picture of the pilgrims and Native Americans in the writing paper because it looks like by the time we got to that we forgot all about or Three Star Coloring....

I'm kicking myself because I didn't take any pictures of the pilgrims that go along with this craftivity, but I can assure you they are just as cute!  I loved reading what my little ones were thankful for!  Of course I had to display the student's work that said she was thankful for her teacher (melt my heart!) but I loved that one of my little guys wrote that he is thankful for numbers!  

 

Our next Thanksgiving craftivity was inspired by Just a Primary Girl and this year was the first time I tried this one out.  I adjusted the writing prompt again and had so much fun helping my students brainstorm some of the best parts of Thanksgiving!   A few of my kiddos cracked me up when they said their favorite part of Thanksgiving was taking naps!

2.  Our Christmas cards arrived!  

Ah, love being married...and merry!  I figure we only really have one Christmas to share our wedding photos AND send holiday greetings, so we made sure to find a cute play on words for our card this year.

3.  Jerry. Seinfeld.  

This SO happened Thursday night!  My husband, parents, and brother all headed out for a fun night to see our favorite comedian perform live.  No kidding, my cheeks hurt for hours afterwards from laughing so hard the entire time!  Laughing really is my favorite and I figured I burned enough calories giggling to compensate for the glass of wine I enjoyed on our night out.

4.  I'm finally getting over the horrible cold I've had for the past week!  Despite how we scrub and disinfect our classroom, germs still seem to creep in every now and then.  I won't post pictures of my recovery process, but I will promise that lots of Emergen-C and Clearquil did the trick for me!

5.   We are SO close!

I have a feeling a lot of teachers will be posting about this and it's so true - just make it to Thanksgiving break!  We go Monday and Tuesday next week, so I'm working on my plans to do lots of mini-Thanksgiving projects, a Fingerfood Feast, and, of course, GoNoodle breaks. :)

Happy Friday, everyone! 

Want to join in on the fun?  Link up here!  Don't forget to visit other blogs in the party!

Fractions are SWEET! (and a mini-freebie!)

This week we started studying fractions, and whoo-hoo are my babies loving it!  I'm so proud of them! We started with the basics of 1/2 and 1/4 fractions.  To help them physically see fractions in everyday objects, I treated each student to a graham cracker.  I gave the students a piece of construction paper that was creased in half and labeled on each side and challenged them to figure out how to put the exact same amount of graham cracker on each side.  I loved that some students broke their crackers the "short way" while some others broke theirs the "long way"!  We were able to discuss that both were correct forms of halves and that was because they both showed one piece out of two equal pieces.

Next, each student was given a piece of construction paper that was divided into fourths.  I asked the students to figure out how to divide their crackers so they had four equal pieces.  By now, we were really rolling!  Some of my budding mathematicians even made the connections that 2/4 was the same as 1/2! 

The next day, we reviewed what we knew about halves and fourths and then discussed thirds, fifths and sixths.  I explained to the students that any number could be the denominator as long as all the pieces were equal, but these are some of the most common fractions.  These would also be the fractions we would use in our Ice Cream Fraction Craftivity!

To make it fair and still ensure all students were understanding what different fractions were, I wrote the numbers 2-6 on scrap pieces of paper and put them in a bucket.  The students drew out a number and that became their denominator for their Ice Cream Fraction Craftivity.  

We then decided on the flavors of ice cream they could choose:

Pink - Strawberry

Green - Mint Chocolate Chip

Orange - Orange

Purple - Berry

Brown - Chocolate

White - Vanilla

Then I put them to work to make their fractions out of ice cream scoops (each scoop was an equal piece of the whole ice cream cone).  The kiddos were very thoughtful in their ice cream flavor selection and were mindful of what they wanted their fraction cones to look like. (I wonder if if they would be this thoughtful about all their classwork if I tied the lessons to desserts...)  After carefully cutting and assembling, each student wrote what his or her ice cream cone was made up of in terms of fractions.

Aren't these just so sweet??  (Haha, see what I did there? Sweet art work...sweet treat!)  We had so much fun working on these today and I know my little ones are understanding fractions quite well after our hands-on activities.

Want to make your own Ice Cream Fraction Craftivity?  Click here or the image below for your own copy of the recording sheet!
(font by Learning Tree/Kimberly Santana)

-Liz