Weekly Rewind & We Have a Winner!

I think we're really starting to find our groove!  I think we're beyond the testing phase, I think they've figured me out and I'm now able to work on figuring out their individual needs and I KNOW they are a whole bunch of sweethearts. I'm even willing to ignore the fact that one little one asked me if T.V's were invented when I was little.  In his defense, I had just whipped out the record player and watched their eyes turn as big as saucers when they saw the MASSIVELY huge record {that they kept referring to as a CD} with "Free to Be You and Me" on the cover...

Anybody remember this oldie!?

A little recap of our week...

Daily 5 is going wonderfully.  We're up to 13 minutes with Read to Self and we're up to 15 minutes for Word Work.  We've opened up our book nooks...

Cozy places around our room to do Read to Self

...and the kids are loving making words with pipe cleaners and clay!  I'm absolutely amazed at how quickly they picked up on how to use IPICK when shopping for books to place in their independent reading bookshelves.  Such BIG kids!

Are you familiar with the FOSS kits for teaching science?  I hear mixed reviews - but I'm somebody who LOVES them!  Right now we're hot and heavy into solids/liquids and we played around on the FOSS website this week on our Mimio...

Click on the picture to head over to the games section of the FOSS website!

We've launched our writer's workshop and the kiddos are working hard to build their writing muscles!  This is always tricky at the beginning of the year - but I'm usually amazed at how quickly they build their stamina!

One way that I encourage quiet writing time {or "hot pencil" time as we refer to it} is by hanging a large wooden pencil onto the middle of our white board to serve as a visual reminder.  Ours looks something like this:

I can't remember where I got mine - but if you click on the picture it will take you to the website for this pencil!

I also play "quiet thinking music".  A favorite CD of our is:

LOVE!!!!

In math we're hot and heavy into math Workplaces.  We've created our own picture problems, graphed, counted money, sorted bugs, created numbers sentences using ten frames...you name it, we've done it.  A class favorite this week was a Bridges Math game "Which Numeral Will Win 1-4"

In Social Studies we've been learning about families.  Our focus this week was exploring the past, present and future.  A great book that is part of our curriculum:

It explores this little guy's life when he was "younger"{past}, now that he's a bit older {present} and what he wants to be when he grows up {future}.  We worked on these today too...

Click {HERE} to pick up your own!

Crazy to think that's just a snippet of our week...we moved mountains!!!!!!

And the winner of the trimmer/cutter giveaway through MyBinding.com is...

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Congrats, Debbie - I'll be emailing you shortly!!!!!

Happy weekend all!  It's a whole lotta football for this family.  One boy Saturday the other Sunday!