Our Week in Review

Real quick, I just wanted to say “thank you” to the sweet folks over at Teacher Certification Degrees for including The First Grade Parade on their list of the Top 50 Early Childhood Education Blogs.  SO not deserving to be in that category with all the BEYOND amazing blogs they have listed.  It should be named the Top 1,000 Early Childhood Education Blogs because every.single. one of y’all are inspiring beyond belief.  My Google Reader is FILLED with hundreds of AMAZING early childhood education blogs and I’m forever grateful for the inspiration I’ve gotten from each one of you!

I also want to say “thank you” to the sweet girls who emailed me to let me know I was in their Top 10 blog list.  SO not deserving of that either, but thank you for making me smile :) There’s NO way in a million years I could possibly narrow down my blog list to a Top 10.  I love all of y’all :)  THANK YOU for inspiring me to be a better teacher!!! 

Now..onto my little week in review. 

This was a SHORT week.  Monday was a holiday and Tuesday was a professional development day, so no kids.  Wednesday and Thursday were full throttle as usual and I was only at school for a half day Friday because of my not-so-exciting visit to the dentist.  Apparently the EXTREME pain I’m experiencing is normal and he prescribed me some steroids to combat the swelling in my roots.  UGH.  The good news is that I haven’t been able to eat in 2 days, so all this tooth pain is doing wonders for my waistline :)  {I kid…sort of.}

We kept on goin’ strong with Daily 5 this week and built up our reading stamina considerably.  Not gonna lie though, I’m ready for the “practice” phase to be over.  We talked a ton about choosing *Good Fit* books and I introduced our little IPICK chart…

Google Docs isn’t working, so I’m trying something new.

Download the IPICK printables

We also made a few anchor charts for reading… “Why Readers Read” and “What Do Readers Read?”  Apparently I got NO pics of the “Why Readers Read” anchor chart, but trust me when I tell you it was nothing to write home about :)

Thank you, Abby, for giving me the idea to hang my anchor charts on my window!  LOVE!

We finished up our heart maps and the kids were IN.LOVE!!  Jess from Rambling About Reading left a comment saying that she keeps her kids’ heart maps in the front of their notebooks, so we decided to do *almost* the same thing!  LOVED the suggestion!  We stapled ours to the front of our draft books/writing folders.  The kids were SO excited!!

I’m trying to train my kids to use their heart maps when they need writing inspiration, so I keep my heart map by my easel and refer to it during every minilesson prior to writing.  I like to pretend…VERY dramatically…that I have NOTHING to write about.  The kids are quick to remind me that I can use my heart map for inspiration!  They’re all, “DUH, Mrs. Carroll!!!”  HA!

We had a great 3 days in math tubs.  This year I’m spreading my math tubs out over 5 days, so I have about 4 kids per group.  Since we were operating on a 3-day week, I set out 3 math tubs and switched it up to 7 kids per group.  Here are some of the fun things we did {still working on number sense}…

We used pattern block cards to create & extend patterns and practice one-to-one correspondence, rote counting, and sorting.

We practiced ordering numbers from least to greatest with this fun little dice activity my kids just loved.

Download Roll, Order, and Write


We also read through riddles and matched them up to their 10’s frame partner and matching number card.  They did SO well!!!

Download the Tens Frame Riddle Match

We’re also learning all about being scientists.  My kids are LOVING science this year and so am I!!  This is a little anchor chart I created BEFORE meeting with the kids.  We filled it out together after reading a book called, “Being a Scientist”.

Then we created our own little scientists and talked about what makes US a scientist.

Even though it was a short week, it was a busy one!  I’m happy to be relaxing this weekend at my house…my childhood home…with all my family.  Mr. Spouse has been looking forward to this weekend since I can remember.  He’s cheering on his Boilers today at Rice Stadium here in Houston.  That man BLEEDS black & gold! 

GO PURDUE!!

Happy Saturday!!!  Hope you’re spending the day RELAXING!!!!