Five for Friday--I'M BAAACK!!

Well, friends, in my last post I promised to be better about blogging.  It hasn't happened and I'm sorry!  Life is just nuts sometimes, isn't it?? Well, I've finally found myself with a Saturday morning with no place to be so here I am!  I love having a few hours in the morning to blog and catch up on everyone else's blogs.  I really miss it and wish I could find more time in each day!  Here's a little peek at what I've been up to over the last few weeks!

 

We've been using activities from the amazing Caitlin Clabby from Kindergarten Smiles a lot this month.  This activity is from her October Word Work pack.  So much good stuff!!  If you have never visited Caitlin's blog, you need to go there NOW.  She's amazing.

 

Part of why I've been neglecting this blog is because of this fabulous new evaluation system in Ohio {insert sarcasm here}.  I've had my pre-conference for my observation, my observation and then my post conference within the last week.  Add two nights of parent-teacher conferences in there and the fact that grade cards were due the week before and there goes ALL my time to blog!  Our district gave us these binders to collect our evidence.  I really need to find time to work on it.  Right now, I stuff papers in the pockets, but haven't organized it at all!

 

I got this little gem of a letter hand delivered the other day from one of my students from last year.  So sweet!  And so exciting to see other teachers in my building using great TpT resources!  This can be found HERE from A Cupcake for the Teacher.  Don't you love getting little love notes from former students??

 

 

Here's one of my cuties (don't you love that shirt??) using the letter tracing cards that I made.  I made my own set because we use Wilson Fundations as our phonics program and I really wanted to have the pictures match our keywords for each letter.  Not always easy when they use "Ed" for /e/ and "fun" for /f/ so I made my own set.  I know that those pictures wouldn't be helpful in classrooms that don't use Fundations, so I made a version of those cards with more common pictures for those letters.  You can find them HERE in my TpT store.  It's a new product so it's on sale today!  I use these with my kiddos who are struggling to learn letter names and sounds.  This is recommended in the book, The Next Step in Guided Reading by Jan Richardson to help build that letter sound knowledge.

 

We made these awesome pilgrims this week and wrote about things that we are thankful for.  This made a great hallway display for parent-teacher conferences.  The craftivity and writing template is from Caitlin again and is found in her November Unit.  Like I said before, she's amazing.  Go check it out!

 

And here's a bonus pic just because I want to share!

My little girl is growing up!  They had a Middle School dance last weekend and here's my girl (on the left) with her BFF at the dance.  Hubby and I were chaperones and he actually teared up a little bit when she walked in with her friends.  She's not little anymore!!

 

Well there it is, folks!  That's what's up with me!  Now I'm going to go link up with Doodlebugs and check out what everyone else has been up to.  You should, too!