Five for Friday (Saturday Edition)

Ahh, November.  My favorite month may have come and gone, but I love what November brings.  Holidays, family time, fun classroom experiences...  Great stuff.

I'm linking up with Kacey from Doodlebugs Teaching for Five for Friday.  

The fact that it's Saturday pretty much sums up how this month went:  Busy, busy, busy.  

Did I say busy?  Field trips with my classroom and my daughter's classroom (my son is in my classroom, so I guess he had a field trip, too), a quick trip to Disney World (Best. Week. Ever.), Parent/Teacher Conferences, our school's Fall Festival (I'm PTO president this year, which is a full time job in and of itself), my daughter's Fall Festival, both babies having the sickies... Not to mention the day to day responsibilities of being a wife, mom, teacher, friend...  I loved October, but November is a welcome sight.

Anyway, let's get onto this week, shall we?

This week was all about spiders, bats, and owls!  I'm not big on the scary aspect of Halloween, but I think there are so many academic "scary things" that can be tied into the week to make it full of fun and learning.  

On Monday, we focused on spiders.  That topic could be an entire weeklong unit, but we crammed as much as we could into the day.  We used the fabulous Deanna Jump's Spider Unit for many of our activities.  We also used Krea Hill's All Tangled Up! activity pack for this awesome project we did Monday afternoon.

The kids were given yarn, tape, and a chair, and had to use what we learned about spider webs to create one of their own.  You can see that some turned out amazing!  

The rest of the week was devoted to bats and owls.  These activities are some of my favorites of the year.  We get so deep into science, and I LOVE IT!  Here is a glimpse at our hallway display.

We also dissected owl pellets yesterday.  I always get our pellets from the local raptor center, so they are free, which is awesome.  

The kids are so funny when we dissect owl pellets.  By the time we do them, they know it's owl barf, and I always have one or two who refuse to touch them.  However, this year, all of the kids at least attempted to go through their little chunk of owl regurgitation. :)

I posted this sweet picture on my Facebook and Instagram on Thursday after being particularly frustrated with our math series' math lesson.  To put it nicely, it was horrible.  There are so many more engaging ways to teach these concepts.  So, what did this little trouble maker (me) do?  We threw out the math lesson, grabbed some ten frames and Halloween erasers, and went to town teaching two fewer.  The kids did GREAT.  I think they really got it.  They weren't getting it with what our math series was doing.  

November means Thanksgiving!  Do you still need resources to make your classroom a fun, engaging environment during the holiday season?  Look no further than to my Thanksgiving unit!

Click the picture to check it out for yourself!

It's 20% off until Monday!  Enjoy!