Five for Friday - May 15, 2015

I am up suuuper late (it's 4 A.M.) so this is pretty much Five for Fraturday but I haven't technically slept yet so Five for Friday it is! :) I remembered pretty late! I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching as usual! Any other night owls out there??

 So I finally posted something I've been working on that I have been SO excited about...

A whole year bundle of writing crafts that are NO PREP. None. Zilch. You just print. The answer to all of my how-does-she-have-time-to-do-all-those-crafts-that-make-the-cutest-bulletin-board prayers. :)

So I made a bunch of different ones. You can find the bundle here on TpT.

I am obsessed with them because they are NO PREP. Literally. You just print them and hand them to your kids.. THEY write, color, cut, and glue. Instant bulletin board.. or just for fun!

You can read about them and see some of the other ones on my most recent blog post: Writing Crafts that are no prep... Seriously!

You can also check out some of the packs of them I have directly on TpT here: Writing Crafts

They're SO much fun!

I have them for pretty much every topic & every type of writing (narrative, how to, opinion, mystery, etc.) because I refuse to ever again cut out (and make poor Mr. Giraffe cut out) 48 monster ears, 48 monster eyes, etc. to do one little craft ;) Okay maybe not but it's definitely nice to just be able to grab a craft for any topic that doesn't take any time to prep and hardly any time to do.

Soooo this happened.

I got A LOT of hair chopped off this week. A lot a lot! It feels really nice to get all that weight off, especially now that it's summer. Long overdue!

Working on reading fluency and keeping it fun can be a challenge so I've been trying to find new ways to make it fun. So I've been making Reading Fluency and Sequencing Puzzles for the different sounds. Here are some examples of the CVCe ones:

For the puzzles, students read the small passage and then work to sequence the events in the story. I love these because they present fluency in a fun puzzle-y way (there I go with that puzzle-y word again :)) and students have to understand what they're reading in order to do the puzzle.

They were a hit so I've made several packs of them:

Short Vowels Fluency and Sequencing Puzzles

CVCe Fluency and Sequencing Puzzles

Bossy R Fluency and Sequencing Puzzles 

2 Letter Blends Fluency and Sequencing Puzzles

3 Letter Blends Fluency and Sequencing Puzzles

and more so I made a big Reading Fluency Passages Puzzles Bundle too!

Here are some of the Bossy R ones...

I just love anything that gets kids reading and especially if it tricks them into thinking it's a game. Tricky, tricky. :)

I also have a lot of phonics based reading passages too! They're fun as well, but I think the puzzles give it a little bit more of a game feel! :)

EDIT: I also love putting the black and white versions of these puzzles into Phonics Fluency Notebooks! That's a great activity to practice a ton of reading and phonics skills in one. I recommend checking out the pictures and ideas in that post if you've ever considered making notebooks for reading. It also gives you more looks at these puzzles too if you're interested in using them.

This week has been all about 2 digit addition and subtraction (without regrouping)! Here's one of the fun centers from this week - Just Sum Monkeyin' Around! Basically you have monkey mats with sums on them and you give the right banana to the right monkey. Simple but fun! This is included in my First Grade Math Unit 13 if you want to grab it and a bunch of other differentiated worksheets and activities for 2 digit addition and subtraction concepts (also including 10 more 10 less, adding and subtracting multiples of 10, and adding and subtracting 2 digit and 1 digit numbers). 

Mother's Day was this week! I usually am not a fan of Mother's Day, although I've always wished my dad a Happy Mr. Mom's Day since like elementary school, but we got to spend Mother's Day with Mr. Giraffe's mom and have her over for dinner so that was really nice! We tried to take her out but she didn't want to fight the crowds so we cooked for her instead.

We grilled up some chicken and steak kabobs and it was really nice weather so we got to eat outside by the pool so it was fun! When I say we grilled, I mean Mr. Giraffe grilled. He was cute and made different kinds of kabobs to suit the different tastes. You can see the middle ones have peppers and onions for Mr. Giraffe and I because we eat peppers and onions on our peppers and onions :) Then, the left is meat and potatoes only for his meat-and-potatoes dad and then the right is mostly veggies for his mom. Super yummy! 

It's crazy it's May already, isn't it??

I hope everyone had a great week!! I'm looking forward to reading all of the other Five for Friday posts. I'd love to hear from you in the comments! :)

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