Time to Catch Up!

We've had so much going on the last week.. I feel like we've been neglecting our blog!  Soooo this is your warning, this post is going to be a LONG one!

It's crunch time and we're starting to feel the pressure.  It's hard to believe we're in the final stretch and there's still SO much left to cover. I know we say this every year but seriously, where did this year go?

Last week we talked about hosting, An Afternoon of Poetry.  Our classes worked on our poetry unit for two weeks.  We didn't want their hard work to go unrecognized so we decided to invite the parents in for a poetry reading.  We called it, "An Afternoon of Poetry." Grab our invitation here!

At the start of our unit everyone made a Book of Poetry.  I'm not sure what happened to the pictures we took of them but somehow they are lost!  What we did was have the students fold a piece of construction paper in half to create a folder/book and decorate the cover.  After we completed each poem the kids slid them into their book.

The day before our poetry event each child selected their best piece of poetry to read out loud.  We did a few run throughs of the program the day before to make sure everyone was comfortable going up to the document camera to read their poem.

The day of the big event I set up a refreshment table.. I went a little overboard on the juices!  It's just so hard to judge how much you need.  Trust me, you'd rather have too much than too little!  We had rainbow cupcakes, rice crispy treats, and goldfish butterflies!

A Pinterest find!

It was such a fun, laid back afternoon.  We got lots of wonderful feedback...  The parents and kids loved it... which obviously means the teachers loved it!

We've also been covering timelines.  We were trying to think of some fun ways to teach a topic that can be dare I say.. boring.  I think you'll like what we came up with!

We started with a few simple timelines that can be found in our Timeline unit on TpT.  Here's one of them... a timeline flap book!

We also did a paper plate turn style timeline of Disney Parks.  We read a biography of Walt Disney so the kids had some background knowledge on the man who created the magic.  We also visited Disney's website to learn more about each park.  Most of them had visited Disney World before so they were pretty pumped to be doing this assignment.

One of my favorite wall displays is our timeline of pictures.  We start this in September and add all of our favorite school pictures as the year progresses.

We've also been knee deep in measurement.  We start our unit with, "Rulers are tools, not toys,"  otherwise we have helicopters, weapons, and who only knows the other things they might think of to do with them!  I bought Amy Lemons', I Can Measure! unit.  We've been having so much fun with all the activities.  Here's a look at the Measurement Garden.

This activity inspired me to make a Measurement I Spy.  You can grab it here for free!

We've also done a lot of practice measuring... I'm sure you have tons of these worksheets.  

Finally, informational text.  It's a biggie!  We started printing pocket size books from A-Z Learning and have been using them for everything, not just informational reading.  They are so cute and educational.  We needed a few grades so I whipped up this little half sheet assessment.

I foresee many more of these in the future! I can't get enough of these little books.