A Little Bit of Family Time

My free time has been nonexistent the past 2 weeks.  As you all know, my husband just came home from his deployment last Saturday.  He was gone 6 long months!!!  We are so very blessed to have him back with us.

We wanted to have some much needed family time, so this weekend we took my daughter to a really fun farm.  Dean's Farm is located in Wilson, NC and there is soooo much for little ones to do.  My daughter picked a pumpkin at the pumpkin patch, fed animals at the little animal petting area, rode a bumpy hayride, and of course played on the playground.  She had too much fun.  It was a kicking and screaming fit to get her to leave.

To finish up our sweet reunion, dad and I are about to head to the new Olive Garden for the family and friends event tonight.  Geez, I am hungry just thinking about the food.

Real quick, I wanted to share a simple printable for your students to complete for Halloween.  My students did this last week.  It was great to see them check over their answers.  It challenged them a bit with adding 3 numbers together.  Click on the picture to get it for free.

Have a wonderful weekend with your loved ones!

Easy as P-I-E

Woohoo!  Blogging 2 days in a row!  Trying to squeeze in all of the things we have been doing.  I always try to take pictures, but things tend to come up and I lose my train of thought.  I will get better at updating this more frequently.  The rush of a new school year is finally settling down (I hope!).

My students created these cute PIE plates to remember P-I-E (persuade, inform, entertain).  I had different books that the students looked through and then they had to decide the purpose of the book.  Persuade seemed a bit confusing for them.  I had the bright idea since it was Chuck-E-Cheese night for our school to have the students write a quick note in their journals to persuade their parents that they really needed to go to Chuck-E-Cheese.  And.it.worked!  Now, they completely understand persuasive writing, at least for now.  We will have to revisit this again later, pretty sure.

I don't have a template for these.  My students did these all by hand using paper plates, crayons, and markers.  It was Pinterest inspired by this {PIN}.  I know it is so much cuter, but I was limited on time.  Hopefully, I'll try the Pinterest one in the future.

Off to finish laundry...Hubby will be home from his deployment next weekend, so I gotta get this place ready for his return!

The Battle of Frogs vs. Toads

We've been reading frog books all week and I am all "frogged" out!  Our basal story this week was "Days with Frog and Toad".  I wanted to bring in some other fiction and nonfiction stories to help us compare and contrast frogs and toads since it is not such an easy concept to understand.  They really liked buddy reading the stories together is discussing all things frog.

We watched a short clip from www.DiscoveryEducation.com that gave a visual and auditory representation of the differences and similarities between frogs and toads.  I would put the link up here, but you have to have a membership to access it.  I highly recommend checking out DiscoveryEducation.com for many subject areas.  It is A-W-E-S-O-M-E!

Next, we made a T-Chart/Anchor Chart about things we learned.  It is similar to the one found {HERE}.  I love the virtual vine as well!

Students were given a Thinking Map (Double Bubble) Template to compare and contrast frogs and toads using the information from our anchor chart.  You can pick up the template we used for free.  Click on the pic!

I had the students pick which one was their favorite, a frog or a toad.  They had to write a sentence that told which amphibian was their favorite and write at least 3 sentences explaining why by inclduing facts that they learned throughout our study.  Some students are just learning how to write a complete sentence and when to use capital letters and punctuation.  The student work below is an example of a student who is in the developmental stage of writing.

This picture is just too cute for words!

That's it for today.  Enjoy your weekend.  It will be Monday before we know it!