Five for Friday - January 27th

After a long hiatus I am back to link up for Five for Friday to highlight some of the work we did this week!

ONE: Morning Tubs 

While I think morning work is valuable, I also love the idea of using morning tubs rather than morning work for my firsties.  Three days a week my kiddos come in and can choose from 8 different tub activities I have set up.  This is one of my favorite times of the day as it allows me to see my kiddos cooperating with different classmates.  I also love to see their creativity shine through in the various activities.  

My kiddos come in at 9 am and we go to special by 9:25 so they have a good 20 minutes after unpacking to make a tub selection and play around.  I only have two rules during this time... 1. you can't do the same tub two days in a row and 2. you can't change tubs after you've made a selection.  

While not a rule for morning tubs, I've encouraged my students to work with different classmates and they've given this a good effort each week.  Typically I keep the same tubs for two weeks or six days which cuts down on my prep each week.  

Teacher Confession: I've kept the nonfiction book tub for several weeks and I have to say it is always a popular choice.  Kids love reading nonfiction and I love seeing them share what they're reading with their classmates!

TWO: Presidential Speech

Another teacher confession... this was actually from last week on Inauguration Day.  To go along with our Scholastic News edition about our new president I had my kiddos pretend to be the president.  They were asked to think about and write about different ways they could help the country is they were president.  Then we had a Presidential news conference where each kiddo was able to give a "speech" about what they wanted to do for the country.  

After their speech the "media", aka the other kids in class, was able to ask a few questions of the new president.  The kids LOVED this and they asked some thoughtful questions.  They also came up with some great ways to help our country.  It was a fun way to incorporate the inauguration of the new president.

THREE: Super E

This week we finished learning about super e.  I love calling silent e super e.  It's totally motivating to each kid and over the last few weeks we've been involved "Superhero Training" related to super e.  Each week we used super e to make a different vowel say its name and we did many activities throughout the weeks to "train" out minds to understand and correctly use super e.  

After successfully going through their "training", each kiddo received a certificate and a Super E Superhero badge.  They were overjoyed about the badges!!

FOUR: Winter Themed Math Games

Each day our math block consists on guided math and I love this time but sometimes it can overwhelming as it takes a ton of prep.  To cut down on some of the prep I've created these math games that don't require a ton of prep and can be used for several days as the spinners allow for different number sentences to be built.  While I love task cards I don't love the prep nor do I like when the kids finish the cards because they can't be reused.  These spinner games can be used several times before the kids get bored with them because each spin can create a different math question.  That's not to say i don't use task cards because I do but one of my main sources of games each week are these spinner games!

 

FIVE: Solids and Liquids
This week we started a unit on matter and the kids did an awesome job sorting several solids based on color and shape.  Next week we'll be testing objects to see if we can roll or stack the same objects.   

Have a great weekend.. Don't forget to check out Doodle Bugs Teaching for more Five for Friday posts!