What - my five for Friday is actually going live on Friday? I know, shocker huh? :) 1. Last week we read a Bad Case of Stripes as our story of the week. I couldn't resist Clutter Free Classroom's Writing Activity that goes with the book. The kiddos striped themselves and wrote about their favorite foods using their senses. They turned out awesome and they were very into it! I love black olives! 2. For our word study this week we looked at Shades of Meaning, aka closely related synonyms. We talked about how words can be synonyms but not mean exactly the same thing - some are "weaker" and some are "stronger". I got an awesome pack on TPT - Charades of Meaning by Teaching & Tapas. It had lots of fun games and activities. We also made shades of meaning kites. They wrote their names on the kites and then I gave them 4 synonyms that were closely related and they had to put them in order of "strength". I love how they turned out and they are really starting to get this objective! (Which is awesome since it was definitely one of those objectives that I had to do research on at the beginning of the year to figure out what it meant!) 3. I don't have a picture but I met my first bloggy/internet friend. Stephanie from First Grade Fabulous Fish and I met up for dinner. We had a blast chatting - our poor waitress felt bad interrupting us to take our orders haha! Stephanie is super sweet, be sure to check her blog out! 4. We've had book fair going on at school. I just LOVE books! I feel like I could never have enough! My mom packs up my books for me every track out and always says I do NOT need anymore haha. I had some sweet kiddos get me some things from my wish list. I'm working on a reading group guide for this one. Stay tuned! Can't wait to read this one on Monday to the kiddos! We are BIG Mo Willems fans! 5. I'm going to give away a copy of my new unit, Ungrouping Unlimited with a little pin it to win it fun. All you have to do is pin one of the images below and then leave a link to your pin in the comments. I'll pick a random winner on Sunday. Have a great weekend!