Five for Friday!

I am super excited for my very first Linky: Five for Friday! Especially because this Friday couldn't have come fast enough... Can we just agree that it should be Thanksgiving break already?!?

1. On Monday we had our first videoconference of the year! We video-chatted with Laura at the Columbus Zoo about animal classification - an AWESOME capstone to our animal unit! She walked us through different animal groups, and showed us examples at the zoo of each one. Then she capped it off with an animal cracker for each kid! They loved it!

2. Not to be outdone by Monday, on Tuesday we had our first FIELD TRIP! We headed to the Detroit Parade Company to hear all about the different floats that appear in the Thanksgiving Parade, as well as how they are built. It was a great tour and the kids are psyched to see the Thanksgiving Day parade!

The Blue Cross Blue Shield float walks through all the different paths of life

Costumes!

Each figurine is made up of foam and papier mache. The kids loved seeing the whole process!

Three Bears float!

Some of the "big heads" being worn in Thursday's parade!

3. My third graders finished up a unit on Michigan geography. Now, I'm not usually one for group presentations as capstones to units, but I was thrilled with how they did this one! I gave them a list of prompts about Michigan geography that they had to answer on a posterboard... and was very pleasantly surprised with the results! It was definitely an exercise in working together, and they did an awesome job of making sure those posters were hallway-ready!

Pretty great, right?

4. On Wednesday we had 3rd grade numeracy training! I had a great time learning some new games and practicing how to model addition and subtraction with place value cards and disks. One of the coolest games we learned was Multiplication Tetris. We each had a 15 x 15 grid, and rolled the dice twice to get the area of a box- for example, I rolled 2 and 5 on my first rolls. I had to draw in a 2x5 or 5x2 box in my grid. We continued drawing boxes, trying to fit them in with the least amount of space left over possible, until we rolled a factor pair we couldn't fit in. The player with the least spaces left over, was the winner! What a great way to show the relationship between multiplication and area!

5. After numeracy training, I was SUPER excited to order my supplies for the fall (I know... the deadline is tomorrow- I juuuust eked it out! Whoops!). Well, of course I had to order a small group set of place value disks and cards. I am so excited to use those for the borrowing and carrying unit coming up in second grade.

I'm also super psyched for these cool dice! I found these dice in dice at School Specialty for $12 (I know, they're probably cheaper elsewhere, but I can only order with my supply money at School Specialty and Staples...boo.) The kids will LOVE using these dice for games where they normally have to roll two dice - what a cool new twist! 

Thanks for following along for my very first linky... Hope you enjoyed! Have a FABULOUS Friday!