Olympics, Baseball, and Gnats!

Happy Saturday everyone! It's seriously been one of THOSE weeks. My kids were just OFF this week. Were anyone else's kids off this week?? I think we had one or two good days this week, but as a whole, it was not their best week.

 AND to top it off, our coffee pot stopped working on Wednesday morning...and we fixed it by banking on it really hard - and I FINALLY got it to start brewing the LAST pot it'll ever brew...then B came over and pushed a button and it stopped!! ahhhh!!!   So, we started banging AGAIN, and if finally started working again. THEN, when I got to work, my coffee FELL off the counter...onto the floor. I literally fell to my knees and started to "cry" lol. My bestie/teammate came over and started to cry with me because she just knew what I had gone through to get that cup.

So my husband went on a mission to find a coffee pot. I think he went to SIX different stores before he found one that didn't have a glass pot (glass pots and tiny kids do NOT match go well together.) Here's the one that he came home with.

My goal was not to come home with a fancy one....we don't need one with bells and whistles...I thought this was pretty good. I've always said, the less bells and whistles, the fewer things that can go wrong, right?! lol I've had that $20 coffee pot since before I even MET my husband....over 10 years. I was always so proud at how long my cheapo coffee pot has lasted. So here's hoping this one lasts just as long!

Anyway, back to the task at hand. lol.

Here's a few things we've been up to this week...

I was really excited to teach them about the Olympics that are coming up, and we had gotten a Scholastic News that was about The Olympics, so I thought it was perfect! THEN after reading it, I saw it lent itself perfectly to character traits and to a writing activity. AND I just happened to have seen that one of my favorite ladies (Kelley and Teacher Idea Factory) had come out with some new Olympic packs...I grabbed those up right quickly and got to work on them (totally changed my lesson plans! haha)

I just LOVE how their writing came out! They came up with some really good ways to be "Gold Medal Students" and now if someone doesn't "make good choices" someone always says, "You're not being a gold medal student!" haha!

Click HERE to check out her packs.

AND, since we were sequencing and talking about character traits AND it's Black History Month, I used a story out of our basal (SHOCKER!) about Jackie Robinson.  We sequenced his life in our reader's notebooks, and used that as our "plan" to write out his life in a paragraph. 

They came out SUPER cute! I taught them how to do the stitches on a baseball and made a quick tracer for the bat. I made a cute little writing sheet for them to write on, and voila! 

Click HERE to get the freebie recording sheet.

AND this week was one of the hardest phonics skills that we do...silent consonants. We did a LOT of the activities from my Know it All Gnat pack (which has been updated, so if you own it, make sure you go back to download it again!). 

(Isn't that little gnat so cute?! He was the first clip art that my husband made for me! I just love him!)

In small groups we did the missing letters activity, which is one of my favorite activities in my packs....but for this skill it's hard, so I like doing it my small groups. 

Anyway, here's hoping this weekend is kind to me...and you! Enjoy it, my friends!