The Week in Rewind, A Peek At My Week, and Fall is Here!

This past week seemed so fast and furious.  The weekend went by even faster.  It’s 6:00 on Sunday night and in a few hours I’ll be starting another week with my littles.  Why does it take so long to get to Friday, but Monday gets here so darn quick?!  I spent my weekend decorating for Halloween.  Yes.  It’s early.  But I LOVE Halloween and decorating isn’t hurting anybody so that’s just what I did. If you wanna see it all, you can take a little Halloween house tour on my other blog HERE.

I have another full week planned…parent/teacher conferences included…and I’m excited to take you back through our week {in rewind} while it’s still fresh on my mind.

The theme of the week was COLORS!!!  Specifically, color words.  I think these words are SO important to identify and spell because we see them so much in text.  We will be reviewing color words ALL year long, but I love spending a week at the beginning of the year totally focusing on color words.  All of our literacy activities came from my True Colors packet and Abby’s Color Me Kindergarten unit.  The kids did such an AWESOME job using their resources to help them identify color words in their work!!!!  Aaaahhhh!!  Makes this teacher heart so very happy!!!

Our poem of the week was all about colors, too…

I ended up finding the same poem {with the exception of a few words} in my favorite poetry resource….

We added this to our poetry journals as well as our print out with illustrations.  My kids are seriously LOVING poetry.

Speaking of colors, our predictable chart this week was all about our favorites.  I loved that this week’s chart helped us review and practice identifying “my” and “is”.  I was also able to introduce quotation marks and review that concept throughout the week as well.  I like to use the word “said” in our charts whenever I get the chance because that’s such a tricky words for the kids to remember to identify and spell.  I’ll take any chance I can get to work with it!  We were also able to practice identifying our friends’ names.

Of course, we turned this chart into a big book for our library.  I had the kids vote on titles as they do every week and this week’s title submissions made me laugh out loud.

This was a great time to review the concept of main idea.  Baby steps.

Speaking of baby steps, our Writer’s Workshop is going really well.  I forget how dependent they are at the beginning of the year!!  I remember last year’s babies and what AMAZING writer’s they were at the end of the year and it’s hard for me to remember that there was a time they weren’t able to stretch out their sounds or get thoughts on paper.  We had a little mini-lesson about writing topics this week and it couldn’t have come at a better time.  We made this little “heart chart” together and I went back in and colored it after school.  This resource is now hanging on our walls and will be for the remainder of the year.

 

Our shape of the week was the triangle and I seriously look forward to Fridays just so we can make these Shape Monsters {from Cheryl at Primary Graffiti}.  These are just SO stinkin’ cute!  And a great hands-on way to reinforce the attributes of each shape!  And just like my kids, there are no two alike!!  LOVE that!

Since the focus of the week was all about colors, we did a fun little Walking Water science experiment in class.  We used words like OBSERVE and HYPOTHESIS and my kids were so quiet you could’ve heard a pin drop.  This is one of those experiments that’s best done at the beginning of the day so the kids can see observable differences by the end of the day.  If you’re interested in doing this experiment in class, you can check it out HERE on Pinterest

 

You can download this little science journal sheet, too.  Just click on the pic!

Now I’m getting ready for a new week.  I’ll be sitting down to watch the Emmy’s as I cut out all these goodies from my Apple Antics packet!  Can you tell what our theme is?!?!?

Speaking of theme, here are my visual plans for the week!!  Jam packed.  Full of fun.  And learning.  And more learning.  I can’t wait! 

As usual, you will need to download the PDF to access the clickable links {if you’re interested in learning more about the activities I’m using this week!}  Wanna see more visual plans?!  Head on over to Deedee’s blog!!  And link up with your own, too!

Hope you all have a GREAT week!  I’m off to watch the Emmy’s while I finished prepping for the week ahead!