Two-for-One Post (P.S. They've Hatched!)

Oops! I totally forgot to post last week, so today you get two posts in one! 

But FIRST, our chicks have hatched!!! Lord knows how we got any work done this week...the kiddies were all kinds of excited. I don't blame them, look how fluffy...

These are the ones that have hatched and dried. They are now in a plexiglass box with a warming lamp.

These little ones just hatched last night and are still in the incubator. Once they dry, they will join their fluffy buddies.

I just HAD to hold the tiniest little one. It was so hard not to sneak little Paulo Poultry into my pocket and take him home #Ilovehim

Here's a video of the clumsy little chicks:

...Another video of the chickies that just hatched:

We get to keep them in the classroom for another week. So the poultry party isn't over just yet! 

Okay, moving on to some activities from LAST week. My Oral Language Centre allowed the students to use the SMARTboard for the first time (as a centre activity). I saved pictures from the story Harry the Dirty Dog, and enlarged them on a SMARTboard file without the words. Unfamiliar with the story, the kids got to tell their own version of the story using information from the pictures. At the end of the week, they watched a video of the adorable Betty White reading the actual story, which I just downloaded from YouTube and saved to the SMARTboard file.

(Click the pic for your FREE copy of my SMARTboard file)

All week, we talked about what we needed to do to get ready for Grade 2. One of those things were to polish up our writing skills. While many areas of our writing have greatly improved throughout the school year, I was finding that many of us were getting "lazy" with our letter formations. So back to basics we went!

Throughout the week, I wrote a sentence--throwing in some incorrect letter formations--in blue marker, and we worked together to rewrite the sentence correctly. I had noticed a few of my students letting their words "float" above the bottom line. So we talked about our letters being anchors. We don't want our letters to float away, we want to "drop an anchor" right to the bottom line for every letter. We practiced our new knowledge at the Writing Centre:

I wrote simple incorrect sentences on sentence strips, laminated both incorrect sentences and blank sentence strips, and the kiddies got to rewrite the incorrect sentences using whiteboard markers (I don't know about your class, but give my kids whiteboard markers and they're as happy as a turkey after Thanksgiving!)

Mrs. Montgomery gave me the idea of rainbow tracing for last week's Word Work Centre. The kiddies could pick any word they wanted from our Word Wall, write it in one of the boxes, and trace over it with rainbow colours. This was a simple way to implement differentiated instruction into our Literacy Centres, because the kids could choose words at their own level:

(The above activity is included in the Word Work pack)

Word Work for THIS week helped us practice stretching our letter sounds. Using Bananagrams, the kiddies spelled out the corresponding word for each picture. I had 6 different pages available which were laminated on a different colour of construction paper. At the end of the week, I added small pieces of construction paper (one colour for each "Making Words" page) with the correct spelling of each word so the kiddies could self-correct their words. 

(Click the pic for your FREE copy of all of my worksheets)

Of course, we can't forget about Mother's Day crafts! I was out of town for a conference for 1.5 days this week--pause for picture...

(Me, Mr. Zebra, and Mme. Childs)

--and I left this adorable card for my kiddies to make for mom:

They all turned out amazingly, but of course I thought about taking a picture of all of their Mother's Day gifts AFTER I had already wrapped them. #teacherfail

We also made little teacup pockets. I found the poem on Pinterest. For the teacup, I just drew a teacup on a folded piece of paper, traced it on the opposite side, cut it out, and glued the edges to make a pocket:

We put one peppermint teabag in the pocket. Simple and smells delicious!

Last but not least, a shout-out to the best mom I know...MINE!!!

Left to right TOP: dad, mom, me, Scott (fiance) 

BOTTOM: Marley, Steph (sister), Mark (soon-to-be-brother-in-law)

Thanks for being my biggest supporter even when I drive you nuts :)

I love you!!! 

Happy Mother's Day to all, enjoy your weekend!