Five for Friday: June 17

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday.

Beach days, shopping, tutoring, and more! This has been a really great week to really start summer vacation.

This is my first full week of summer vacation! YAY!

I spent some quality reading time at the beach this week. I am not usually a beach person; I really dislike the feeling of sand and I am not a huge fan of being out in the sun, but I am trying to get out a bit more.

It turned out to be a good beach day (for me), as it wasn't too sunny. I was able to get through the first few chapters of the Morning Meeting Book. Our school is moving towards a responsive classroom system for next year, so I figured I would get a head start on the reading this summer. Still not too sure how I feel about getting rid of my color chart for behavior management, but I guess we'll see how it goes...

I love going to Michael's. I love seeing all of the new stuff and getting inspired by all of the awesome crafting supplies. I worked there for 10 years, so I love going in to see the people who still work there that I have known since high school and college.

This week, I came across this:

If you are on Instagram, you have probably seen these Heidi Swapp lightboxes all over the place. They seem to be the big teacher trend this summer! I tried to resist, but at 40% off with an extra 15% off for the teacher discount... I gave in!

I am so excited about this purchase! I even talked my pod-mate into getting one! She came up with the brilliant idea of having Dot (our classroom elf) use it when she comes to visit us in December. I can see Dot having a lot of fun with it. :)

This purchase actually inspired me to work on an unplanned Monday Made it for next week. Stay tuned to see how I organize the lightbox inserts!

This is the first summer that I have offered tutoring services. I just started with a child who will be going into first grade next year. She knows all of her letters and sounds, but is having a hard time with blending.

(I wasn't going to spend our time taking pictures, so you will need to pretend that they are at a picnic table by the pool and not from my classroom.) :)

After assessing her strengths and areas where she needs extra help, we started with some word-building activities.

I had her pick a puzzle that she wanted to build, then we said the letter sounds as we added the letters, and blended the word when we finished.

She needed a lot of short activities to help keep her focused, so we also tried blending with these linking cards.

I am working on getting some new activities ready for when we work together again next week. I am thinking we are going to add some sight word practice in as well.

I am really pleased with what I have accomplished since school let out last week. A few months ago, I started writing differentiated nonfiction units about animals to use with my kiddos who needed enrichment in reading.

(naturally I had to start with flamingos!)

They had a lot of fun this year picking the animals they wanted to learn about.

Then I was thinking that I want them to have the opportunity to work on topics other than animals, so I started to write some units about seasonal topics.

I was able to finish the fall bundle this week. It includes the topics: apples, pumpkins, corn, sunflowers, and bats.

Now that I finished the fall bundle, I am ready to jump into winter! :)

This has been a very busy week for Maggie too!

One of the perks of being a teacher's cat is an unlimited supply of laminating scraps! This silly cat LOVES to play with laminating scraps while I am cutting things out.

Unfortunately for me, that was not the end of Maggie's adventures. I may sound like a proud kitty mama here, but my Maggie is very clever! Normally, this is not a problem. However, this week she really upped her game.

She has always been able to get into the bathroom and kitchen cupboards. If I can't find her under the covers on the bed, in her house, or on the sofa, I know that she is in a cupboard. The one cupboard that was always safe was the one in my dresser where I keep my sweaters. I can't say that anymore!

Maggie now knows how to open the sweater cupboard! It's official: nowhere in my apartment is safe from the beast!

Well, that's it for this Five for Friday. Thanks for stopping by!