Five for Frunday (again)

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching again this week for....

1. Stay Home Day - Last Friday my sweet girl got sick on the way home from school - not fun! By Sunday she had a lot of ear pain - after a quick trip to the doctor we discovered she had an inner ear infection. Monday morning she asked if she could stay home - she has never asked this, she LOVES going to school. I figured she must really not be feeling well so we stayed home and snuggled.

2. Sale: I have SO many things on my wish-list and I always have a hard time deciding what to buy. This time around I picked up several clip art sets, some frames, borders, color by number skill practice, and this super cute adjective activity from Third Grade Bookworm. Our writing needs all the help it can get. Yikes.

3. Mother's Day Poems: We read I love you the Purplest by Barbara M. Joosse
                                                       
and then we followed the lesson plan on WritingFix. After we discussed color words, word choice and creating a picture with out words, we got started writing a poem. On my teaching friend, Tracy's advice, I gave them a loose pattern to follow. The kids wrote and then I conferenced with them.  Each student came up and painted with watercolors on special water color paper (also Tracy's idea) After their painting was finished, they wrote the poem with pencil on their masterpiece, then traced over with a fine point Sharpie. The kids loved the whole activity and I'm sure the moms are going to love them too! *I am so sad. I took pictures of the finished poems on my phone and they are not there anymore... not sure how or why but I am not happy!! I will ask a few friends to bring it back for a special photo shoot :)

4. Field Day: Friday was suppose to be our field day - Mother Nature had another plan. The kids were so disappointed and the teachers weren't exactly ready to teach! We made the best of it - had a "learning" morning and then a fun afternoon. Math games and a movie (we NEVER get to watch real movies so this was big treat)! Here are the kids wearing their team shirts - courtesy of my awesome room mom!

5. Countdown to Disney: every day when I pick my son up from preschool he asks if we are going to Disney... he can't grasp "we are going in one month" so, last night when I couldn't sleep, I made is a little countdown calendar. I saw so many cute ones on Pinterest, but I didn't have the energy!

See my Disney Pinterest Board here

Inspiration Monday: Poetry Edition

I am linking up with Fun in 1st Grade to share my inspiration for today!

Since we are hitting poetry hard core this month, I thought I would share two of my favorite poetry pins.

The first one comes from Mary over at Pitner's Potpourri. I love the way she "coded" the poem to point out dfferent features. Click on the picture to go to her blog post about it.

Please don't pin this from my blog,
Head on over to here's and pin from the original source. Thanks!

The second pin comes from Using My Teacher Voice. She has lots of ideas for using this website and it looks fabulous. In fact, I am on my way over there right now.

Click the photo above to head to Sarah's blog post!

If you you are interested, I would love to have you follow my poetry board (or all my boards) over on Pinterest.

P.S. if you are looking for a super fun poetry book, check out Mirror, Mirror by Singer. She writes the same poem but in reverse order to show character point-of-view. Amazingly cool.

So, what's inspiring you today? I'd love to read all about it!

So many things to share.. Let's start with Personification!

I have about a million (hyperbole) things I want to post about. I have been taking pictures and meaning to write posts but then, they never get written... Today, I write about figurative language. Specifically, personification! We have been learning about and practicing similies and metephores. The kids have been doing a great job. I used the most adorable simile freebie from The Peanut Gallery (if you teach grades 3 - 6 and have not been to her blog, run there now! Mrs. S. rocks!) and the kids had a blast.

Here is my favorite example. It was created by a little artist in my class!

When we moved into personification I introduced the idea by showing this page in my notebook file.

Click the picture above to get the Notebook File from Google Drive

Then, I put up the lyrics to Zac Brown Band's Martin on the screen. If you have never heard this beautiful song before, please listen to it below.


After listening to and reading the lyrics, I had my students make predictions about who or what "Martin" was. Then, I advanced to the next slide and showed them a picture as the big reveal :) On the next screen we went back to the lyrics and underlined the text evidence and explained what the author (Zac Brown) meant.

A little preteaching note. The lyrics have the word naked in them. OMG the laughter and giggling that ensued was hillarious. My awesome teammate Tracy, who came up with this super cool lesson, told the kids about that word before hand. She had her class brainstorm what kind of things could be described as naked other than people. Her class came up with chicken wings/tenders so she used that as a spring board to prepare them for the word. Kids. Sigh.

I am linking up with Mrs. O for some fabulous poetry tips/ideas. Head on over there to get some more ideas~

If you grab this file please leave me a comment below, I would love to hear from you!!