Five For Friday for the First of May!

Wait a minute... am I actually doing a blog post on a day other than Sunday?! Alert the presses!

In all seriousness, just like probably every other teacher out there right now, I am SO ready for summer and I am SO exhausted. But, I thought, so much went on this week that I should do a Five for Friday!

If you haven't heard of Five for Friday, it is a weekly linky hosted by Doodle Bugs Teaching! It is simply 5 random things/thoughts/happenings of the week! Click the image above to go to the linky and see what other teacher bloggers are up to. It's a super fun linky!

Alright, here we go!

We finished up our unit on shapes a couple of weeks ago and started our unit on measurement here in Kinder-land. To wrap things up, we made shape trains! I got the idea from Pinterest, but then cut the shapes too big... so I had to improvise... which turned out even better than just plain ol' paper!

PINSPIRATION:

 From Little Page Turners blog.

MINE:

The sentence strips wound up looking like railroad tracks! How lucky!

Later in the week, we measured our train with cubes and made a graph of how many of each shape we used on them. We also had just started our transportation unit. This activity really hits a lot of skills and standards and now my classroom "proud wall" is super cute and colorful!

If you read my previous post about the product swap I recently did (you can check it out HERE), you already know that the AC in my portable broke this week. It was horribly hot in there.

Yeah... we were NOT staying in there.

I shuffled out my 20 kindergarteners into an empty portable. We brought clipboards, a box of "movie centers" (the centers I put in empty DVD cases), and our backpacks. It was actually pretty nice! They had tons of floor space to sprawl out and all things considered, we had a pretty nice day!

I have posted about it before, but I placed a lot of center materials into empty DVD cases and my students wound up calling them "movie centers." They came in SUPER DUPER handy when I had to gather materials to move to another room on a moment's notice. I've been using them for a few weeks now and they are amazing storage savers and a huge hit with my students! If you can get your hands on a few empty DVD cases, grab them, and try a few. You won't regret it. Here are some snapshots of a center in a case as well as a freebie to make your own covers for your center materials.

Has anyone else discovered the wonder that is adult coloring books? I LOVE to color and can usually get away with owning crayons and coloring books since I'm a Kindergarten teacher, but adult coloring books exist, people! And they are awesome! My husband got one for me a while back and I've been coloring like crazy! It is so fun! Check them out!

I got my friend Heather hooked, too. It is so relaxing and fun! 

I've been doing some updating on my older products and I'm really excited to share the results with you! I have updated several products to include better graphics, more content, and materials better geared towards current standards. Click the images below to go check them out!

And last but not least, I will be moving to a new grade level next year! I'm pretty excited, but I'm sad to leave Kindergarten. I will be moving to...............

I think the best news of all that goes with this is the fact that I will be getting a real classroom and out of that portable! So excited! My allergies are so bad right now in that portable... 

If you have a second grade blog I should know about, please comment with the link below! I need some summer research material!

Have a great weekend, everyone! And happy Friday!