Five for Friday (on a Saturday!) {Feb 15}

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching again this week but I regret to say that I missed the fact that yesterday was Friday! Between the busy day at school with the kiddos' Valentine's Day party, Valentine's Day dinner with the hubby, and the fact that I am definitely sick... I lost complete track of time and the day of the week. But better late than never right?

This week has been nutso! I'm sure everyone is in that boat. But here's my crazy week:

For our Weather unit, we have been learning about the different seasons and the different types of weather you see in each season. For our craft this week we made a Weather Mobile. It was much more labor intensive than I had realized, but I LOVE them and the kids really liked making them.

I cut out an umbrella (two pieces that were glued together) and they colored it. The four pieces are: a raindrop, a snowflake, a cloud, and a sun. The raindrop is covered in pieces of foil. The kids liked gluing something that was an unusual texture to them. However, it takes a lot longer for glue to dry on foil, so be aware of that if you tackle this mobile as well. We made the snowflakes out of coffee filters because it is quicker and easier to cut out. Plus, it made it such a nice round shape instead of a boxy shape like regular paper. Another benefit is its less weight for the little card stock umbrella to hold. :)

The next piece is the cloud and it is simply covered in cotton balls. And then the sparkly sun is covered in gold glitter. This was messy, but no one ever said Kindergarten was a clean place...

I love how they turned out and I would say it was worth the time and effort put in. I did have a parent volunteer to help, so I feel like I had an advantage, but getting the 19 kids in the class done was a little rough. We plan on attaching weather poems to the mobile next since we are learning about poems in ELA. Pictures coming soon!

This week being Valentine's Day, the kids were assigned to make a box of sorts to collect their valentines in for the party. Of course, being Kindergarteners, parents did a lot of the work at home. Most kids came in with a shoebox wrapped in decorative wrapping paper and stickers all over. They were so cute. I loved the see the students' personalities shine through these boxes. I did not take a picture of all of them and I'm regretting that now because I'll never see the boxes again, but I will share with you the ones that the kids were talking about all week long. Clearly, parents did most of the work, but you can tell the kids had a say!

The ninja box.

The adorable minion box. This one was made out of a cereal box.

And the crazy Frozen box. This was made out of cereal boxes and tissue boxes and comes complete with the dolls and accessories.

We had another castle box was that was adorable, but I didn't get a picture of it! And the Kindergarten class next door had a unicorn that I just wanted to steal and take home. SO CUTE!

We had a meeting this week through the university and I had to make my first day's worth of sub plans. No big deal! Hooray!

The meeting was great because we got to talk about graduation stuff and make plans for parties and get togethers. I will likely not walk at graduation because, quite frankly, it is really expensive. I am also at a remote campus which means my campus is in a different town. If I wanted to walk at graduation, I would also have to drive almost 2 hours south on the Florida Turnpike, which means I have to pay lots of tolls. Also a bummer is that the College of Education will be graduating with the College of Nursing, both of which have the largest number of graduates in the whole university. Sounds like bad planning to me, so I'm just going to save my money and stay home. I also don't want to leave anyone out by only having the five tickets, so we'll just party at home!

In the meeting however, we also discussed some different classroom management strategies that we are using in our classes and I got some really great ideas! I'm excited to start using them to see if they work for my class and me.

The day I had the meeting was also my husband's 28th birthday! Hooray! We went to Red Lobster with my brother, some friends, and my sister-in-law. It was delicious and we had a LOT of fun. Happy birthday, sweetie!

On Valentine's Day (yesterday), we did a lot of fun things before the Valentine's Day party. I read the book Love Monster by Rachel Bright which is such a sweet book that the kids really loved. If you haven't read it, I suggest going by your closest book store and checking it out. We read it twice for two reasons: 1) I'm teaching the kids that it is necessary to read things through twice before answering questions or writing about a text and 2) The kids loved the book so much they wanted to hear it again.

Like any good book, this one has a great website. This is the first book in what looks like an upcoming series, so the website doesn't have a huge amount of things to offer but it is definitely one to check out. In their downloadable section I found an activity packet which I downloaded.

For our project, I used the Monster Finger Puppet page and the kids made their own finger puppets. I then partnered them together randomly by pulling two sticks out with their names on them and had them create a Love Monster puppet show. This was a really exciting activity for them and they really enjoyed sharing with the whole class.

Sorry this one us blurry. Those monsters just wouldn't stop "dancing!"

And finally, Valentine's Day was just a wonderful experience. We had a great party! Parents brought in lunch for the kids. One parent brought in chicken nuggets from Chic-fil-a! Great choice! We played Valentine's Day Bingo and made little hats. But the most popular activity during the party was the Rice Crispie Treat Decorating. My supervising teacher made home made Rice Crispie Treats shaped like hearts and the kids decorated them!

We have a child with severe allergies in the class, so we had to be careful with ingredients. The rice crispie treats were safe for her, but not a lot of candy or sweets options are available to her. Valentine's Day was tough. But we made it through it! I really wanted to make some of the cute ideas I found on Pinterest for Valentine's Day but I just couldn't leave her out, so I made a little coloring book for them. I used graphics from My Cute Graphics and Creative Clips and taped a package of Smarties on them! She can have Smarties! They really liked the books and I had a blast making them, so it was a success!

My only regret is that I waited till the last minute and didn't get to upload it as a freebie for you guys! Maybe next year I will be able to. Keep an eye out, readers!

Happy Valentine's Day from Amanda and Daisy! Have a WONDERFUL 3 day weekend, teachers!