Five for Friday - Happy 4th!!!!

Happy 4th of July everyone!!!! I am so excited because my nieces got here last night and we are about to have an amazing week. You will have to check back next Friday to hear all about!!!

As always, thank you so much to Kacey @ Doodle Bug Teaching for hosting this wonderful linky!

These three babies have been hanging out with me on the sofa the past few weeks! I have been able to get out and about this week and they are not too happy that they have been home alone!

Just in case you missed it Wednesday, this is what I had waiting on my sweet girls when they got in last night!

My Sweet Girls!!!!!!! Headed out for 4th of July fun!!!

I added this Daily 5 check sheet as a freebie to my TPT store - just click on the picture! 

I have a Daily 5 (+1) bundle to match {here}!

 A few months ago I received a DENny award from Discovery Education (the RJ Stangherlin Award – Best Individual DEN Blogger). Needless to say I was so happy with just being honored and having a new button to add to my sidebar!! Since then so much has been going on I really had not thought about it at all!

 Well the other day I got a surprise in the mail...an actual trophy! I was so surprised and so excited!!!!

I hope you all have a wonderful and safe 4th of July!!!

Five For Friday - only 8 more Fridays!!

Sea Life - Updated!

We are really getting into our Sea Life unit. We have had so many great discussions about all the sea life that we are having to extend our unit a few more days. This week we have been working on fiction verses non-fiction, fact and opinion, and informative writing with our sea life critters. I found a great resource from Deanna Jump (here) and have modified and mixed and matched it with some other ideas.

Eric Carle Inspired Tissue Paper Seahorse

We compared Eric Carle's fiction book, Mr. Seahorse, to Seahorses by Sylvia James - a nonfiction book. They were in awe that the fiction book told us facts about the seahorse and other fish just like the nonfiction book. We also watched a clip from the show "Kenny the Shark" and they realized that cartoons teach us things too. (Orcas eat sharks.) 

Updated Ocean Posters: We just have to add jellyfish and we will be done. I have loved teaching this unit and am kind of sad to see it end!

  Sea Stars with Grits for the Suckers

(forgive the jeans and FLIP FLOPS!!! So glad the weather is warmer!) 

Orca Whales & Sharks

 Here are the whales and sharks we made from Deanna Jumps' unit - Ocean Animals. We also made a Popplet about sharks and a board in Discovery Education (see #4) for whales after filling in a "fact map" from the Ocean Animals unit (picture below). We will make shark boards today. 

 Shark Popplet

Orca Whale Fact Writing Map

Orca Boards

Scrawlar

Have you heard of Scrawlar? I had not until someone in my DEN STAR group on Edmodo told us about it. This WEB (cloud) BASED (remember we cannot have apps) processor works as a white board and word processor on an iPad. As a teacher you simply set up an account, add your students name and password and then give the kids your login code. We used this during whole group reading to practice writing our cvc words and our sight words. If you use iPads in your room, I highly recommend checking out Scrawlar!

iPad Update: Board Builder by Discovery Education
It is official, we are hooked on building boards from DE! Tuesday we had some super sweet 3rd graders from Mrs. Peturis' class come help show us how to use board builder (me included). We now have made a board every afternoon - we just can't get enough!!

She was extremely proud!

Another new piece of furniture!!!

After getting the new sectional sofa, there was a lot more space in front of my "cross wall" so I went in search of a sofa table. Last weekend the Hubby and I went looking at all the great antique stores down HWY 59. We ended up at one of favorite stores, Alice in Wonderland Antiques (Facebook) and found an beautiful repurposed table. It is so unique! 

At Christmas I also found this amazing WWII trunk! I love it and just had to snap a picture this morning while I was taking pictures of the table!

Five for Friday of the Longest Week EVER!

I am linking back up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday. Last Friday was a very quick post for two reasons: 1. After getting iPads Thursday afternoon, that is all I could think about 2. I took off half a day to go home to (Opelika, Al) to see mine and my hubby's families! 

Dauphin Island Sea Lab Field Trip

This is one of my favorite field trips. We started our trip at the Touch Lab in Discovery Hall. We had an excellent teacher! She taught us about the sea life that you find in the Gulf of Mexico and pointed out different unique features of some of the sea life. Then we got to explore the real (use to be alive) sea animals!!

Next we went across the street to the Estuarium.

The Estuarium (sort of like an aquarium) highlights the four coastal habitats in Alabama. There we got to see turtles, fish, octopus, crabs, and much much more! 

They even got to play with hermit crabs and a horseshoe crab!

 There is even a sting ray and shark touch pool!

 After lunch we got to explore the beach at the edge of the maritime forest. 

Doesn't that look like the best beach fort ever?!!!

 It was a little cloudy but it wasn't too cold (FINALLY!) and the rain pushed inland and we had the BEST DAY EVER!! 

Sea Life Oceans - A Work in Progress

Our field trip to Dauphin Island kicked off our unit on sea life. As part of our unit the kids are making ocean posters. After learning about different sea life, we make the animal and add it to the oceans. Next week we will be wrapping up our unit by doing some informative writing (standard 2) using templates I purchased from Deanna Jump (here). I love this entire packet and even better, I got it during the 3 Million Teachers Strong sale! We are also going to make her whales and sharks. I will post those next Friday!

Here is a look at my ocean that shows the animals we will be adding.

Jing and Screencast.com

These two amazing tools are powered by TechSmith and have made blogging, designing products for my classroom and Teachers Pay Teachers, and making how to videos so much easier! A few years ago I discovered Jing when making end of the year picture videos (photo stories) for my kids. I wanted to separate all the different activities with a "title page" so I would design them in Word, print them in color, and then scan them back into the computer. Well that would be too bad if I could use the same ones year after year but of course that was not the case. I had a page with the school year to change each year and then there was always a new activity that we had pictures from to add to the project. Deep down in my heart I just KNEW there had to be a way to convert a .doc file into a .jpeg without all the printing and scanning - color ink cost a lot and at the time I did not have a scanner of my own. So finally, after hundreds of Google searches, I came across Jing. Jing is a FREE, fast, and simple way to take screenshots of your computer and save them as a .jpeg file. 

Here is a screen shot of me working on the blog:

You can also video your screen. This is something I had not done until yesterday and that is how I found out about Screencast.com. When you make a video with Jing, the file is a .swf file. Some of you that are a lot more techy than I may have seen this before but I had not. I also could not find a way to open the file on my Mac. After reading the FAQ in Jing Screencast is also powered by TechSmith and it is a FREE and easy way to share videos and pictures online. These do not have to be videos and images you captured with Jing - they can be anything. 

My link to screencast here! 

Both programs are definitely worth a try!! Let me know if you try them and what you think.

iPad Update:
This week we have spent time adding website short cuts to our home screen and learning how to sign in to different accounts.
We have used two apps that the county put on the iPads for us:
Poplet  & QR Reader
My kiddos love poplet! We have used it to write words during whole and small group reading since we don't have another way to "write" on the iPad. They have also used it to take pictures of themselves, each other, and the room and then write or type (I was surprised by how many picked typing over writing.) about their pictures.
The QR Reader has been a great tool. We have used it to get to websites, watch our space videos, and check our class work. I see this being a very popular tool for me and the kids! I hope to have them make their own code soon!

Some websites we have added to our home screen are:
Discovery Education - you know I LOVE this but most importantly so do the kids!!!
Tumble Books - another kid favorite, it reads books to them!

In the future we plan to add links to Big Universe (ebooks and much more) and maybe ABC Mouse (did you know you can set up free accounts for your classroom students). I am on the hunt for non apps to use on the iPad so any suggestions would be great!

For number five I always try to tell you guys something about me instead of school! However, with all the new things we are being given this year I MUST spend part of a day at school this weekend. So this time my #5 is both personal and professional. I try not to do this but when my corner starts feeling claustrophobic (see below), it is time for a spring cleaning (there are about 12 piles of things to sort and file)! Unfortunately our Spring Break isn't until April 14h and I cannot handle this mess any longer. I also need to spend time tweaking my lesson plans now that we have iPads so if you have any great ideas that I can do with my kids, keeping in mind we can't have apps on our iPads, please, please, PLEASE share!!!

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend! Thank you to Doodle Bugs Teaching for hosting Five for Friday! Now it is your turn to link up and share!