1. We had two birthdays to celebrate this week. Both of them actually happened during spring break. For birthdays, we create a birthday book for the birthday child. I got this idea and the pages from Christine Bainbridge. She has some great stuff so definitely check her out! The kids absolutely love getting their birthday book.
2. We learned (really just reviewed) about patterns in math. We do patterns during calendar time every day so it was most of a review. But I did manage to slip some terminology into the lessons as some new knowledge!
3. I seriously need to blog about the art lessons we have. I have been SUPER lucky during both of my years of teaching with having parents/guardians take over the art lessons for me. My art parent this year creates a lot of awesome lesson plans for the kids. She does all the prep work too! I am so thankful for her! Right now, we are learning about shapes for art. The kids created cardinals using organic and geometric shapes in the style of artist Charley Harper. Very cute!
4. We wrapped up our unit, "Keep Trying", this week. We use OCR for ELA so that kids have to take story tests after each story we've read to test comprehension. The personal response is usually the hardest part for most the kids to answer. This response was a great one so I just had to share. :)
5. I created some AWESOME anchor charts this week! I haven't spent any effort recently with creating pretty and colorful anchor charts. However, this week, I just suddenly felt the motivation to do so. I think I went a little crazy. But hey, there are pretty right?
The anchor charts actually go with the spring poem paper I posted as a freebie yesterday. I had promised to write a post to go into the lesson in some more detail so don't forget to read the next post to find out more (and see more anchor charts)! :)
Don't forget to link up if you haven't already! :)
Oh my goodness - this is a post full of ideas! I like the birthday book idea - I've been looking around for an idea to make birthdays just a little more special.
ReplyDeleteAnd parents taking over art lessons - how? The birds are just too cute.
And I like the response writing.
Thanks for sharing, Sara
Thanks for stopping by my blog!
DeleteOne of my classroom volunteer positions is Art Docent. The Art Docent is in charge of creating lessons that go along with a specific theme. I have art every other week. I provide my Art Docent with the themes and the schedule for which days we will have art lessons and my Art Docent plans and teaches the lessons. My Art Docent this year happens to have a background in Art so she is definitely more knowledgeable about the different aspects of art. She has been doing artist studies with my students. My Art Docent last year was a retired middle school art teacher. So I have been very lucky so far.
Of course, if needed, I do offer to teach and the parents would rather just help out instead. But so far I've had volunteers who have been very willing to come up with and prepare for the lessons themselves. :)
Hope that helps! :)