Five for Friday August 30th

Phew! I just finished up my 3rd week of school and I am exhausted. That's the reason I've been MIA around here for a week or two, but I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for their weekly Five for Friday party! This hits all the highlights of things that went on this past week.

1. First things first... please tell me I wasn't the only one who died with excitement over the *NSYNC reunion at the VMA's?! I was such a huge fan of theirs back in the day. But really, they sang for like 1 minute. WAY too short! I need more! {PS: I busted out my "No Strings Attached" album the next morning}

2. I introduced interactive notebooks to the kids this week and they could. not. even. get. over. it. They are so excited when I tell them to get out their "special notebooks" and I even gave them their very own box of 24-count "big kid" crayons to use when we solve our math journal prompts {from Deedee Wills}! Here's a sample of what we do for our shape of the day: on one side, the kids fill up the page with different sized shapes, then we brainstorm objects in the real world that are the same shape. While they go to specials, I print the picture map out, then we glue it with our shapes attributes page on the back.

3. I posted this picture on Instagram (follow me @thekindergarden) last night... I got this from Teacher T-Shirts and wore it to school today! I love it so much! It's the cute font and colors that get me. There are tons of super cute shirts on their website, visit it here: http://teachertshirts.spreadshirt.com/

4. We've really been diving into shapes concepts and one thing my kinder kids always seem to struggle with is identifying shapes that are turned a different direction or made into a larger or smaller size. We did a little activity with a rhombus where each student had their own, and we practiced turning it different ways and identifying the attributes of the shape to see if anything had changed. Once they realized it was the same every time, the little light bulb clicked on! Then we did this Create-a-Shape activity sheet to wrap it all up. You can find a whole set of these in my Shapes Galore for the Common Core! unit. :)

5. We've been learning our first few sight words (following the Kindergarten HM Journeys list) and one of my students' favorite things to make is our sight word watches from The Moffatt Girls. They love these things! I'll hear them ask their friend, "What time is it?" and they'll look at their watches and answer, "LIKE!" Love it!

Click on the Five for Friday photo at the beginning of my post to check out all the other posts... and maybe even join in yourself! So happy for the 3-day weekend!!! Enjoy, my friends!