My first Monday Made-it!

Woo-hoo!!! I've only been reading about Monday Made It's for I don't know.... a long time now!  Today I'm linking up with Tara and her awesome blog, 4th grade frolics  When I first found out I was teaching fourth grade a year ago, I found 4th grade frolics and was blown away with all of her great ideas! I wrote down so many fun "must do's" from her blog and still check it regularly to see what she's up to.  It's also fun to see what another 4th grade teacher is up to since both of our states have pretty similar standardized tests....

So here I am, trying a Monday- Made it for myself!  This weekend we had a pretty lazy weekend and I spent a lot of time planning some new things for my kiddos like our weather task cards and a super exciting literacy bundle for The World According to Humphrey, which is our book for the One Book, One School this year.  (You can see my current post on One Book here.)

For  Humphrey,  I knew I wanted to focus more on vocabulary and character traits with my kiddos than just comprehension so I've been working on this bundle.  For each chapter, I chose several vocab words to focus on.  Each chapter will come with a vocab poster, vocabulary in context poster, an activity page with two vocab activities (one is always ABC order because my kids need a lot of practice...) and one other activity like fill in the blank, synonym/antoyms, definitions, writing in context, a crossword puzzle, or word find.  Then, each chapter has a page to describe the traits of three characters from the chapter followed by 10 comprehension questions. Whew...

Today was our first day with chapter one and the kids enjoyed it, yay!  I LOVE seeing them all snuggled up with our class sets of blankets and pillows with our reading lamps on in the front of the room. The kids even think of themselves as a family when we do this- it just melts my heart! ("Queen Francis you're the mom, Joel is the dad and he's bringing home the bacon, and we're all your kids!) HAH, I love them! They really enjoyed our last chapter book together, Sarah, Plain and Tall, so I'm hopeful they will enjoy this book too.  It helps that everyone in the school is reading this book so the all students are have been bitten by the hamster buzz!  Our class "Humphrey" even gets to go home with a different friend each evening to write in his journal and read together.  I hope tonight's pal is keeping him warm since it's already (feels like) -7 outside!  Our county has already called us a 2 hour delay, but many say we will get out tomorrow like neighboring counties.  Our kids (and everyone else around here) are just not used to this extreme weather!

One thing I did make (and finish!) was this math scoot activity for my math kiddos.  Each card has either a giraffe or moose clip art from Scrappin Doodles (LOVE their stuff!) The kids know that I love, love, love giraffes (my classroom has a giant growing collection of them) and we are the Elks, which are kinda like moose right?  At least, they look kinda similar.  Maybe I can convince my kids that these guys really are elk (or is it elks?) :) Anyway, these cards are word problems related to Valentine's Day and include long division, multi-digit multiplication, subtraction and addition.  A few cards even include multi-step.  You can check them out in my TPT store.

Well, that's all I've got for tonight folks.  I'm going to make some dark chocolate hot chocolate, grab a few cookies, and continue to stalk read about things going on in your all's classrooms. Stay warm and have a great rest of the week!

xoxo,

BTW,  I just figured out to make a signature, EEK, I love this blogging stuff when I figure it out! :)