Crazy Contractions!

We went back to school today and honestly we had a BLAST!  I felt so refreshed from the break.  I turned my computer off on the 21st and didn't turn it back on until yesterday!  


The hubby and I went to Colorado to visit his family and friends for Christmas.  Along the way we even hit up two hot springs.  We LOVE hot springs and go as often as we possibly can!!!  We stayed at the Glenwood Hot Springs Lodge  nestled in the heart of the Rockies.  But I must admit I prefer this hippie dippy place over a 4 star chlorinated pool any day!  At Mystic Hot Springs in Monroe, Utah you can have an official hippie vacation complete with a stay in a spray painted hippie bus!  Check it out.

At school today we practiced contractions and had so much fun doing so!

First things first.  I copied this anchor chart word for word from the cutest blogger ever, I am sure you all know her, Babbling Abby!  The kiddo's took turns highlighting the letters that are replaced with the apostrophe.  Make sure you go to her blog here and see all of her fabulous ideas for contractions and so much more!  Thanks Abby!


Next, we practiced writing our contractions using this worksheet that I made.  

WARNING: THIS WORKSHEET HAS ZERO CUTE CLIP ART!  EEEEEK!

Note: I have my students read the words out loud while tracing them and say "plus" while writing a plus sign and say "equals" while writing an equal sign.

Then, my kiddos did surgery on their words to make them into contractions like  Lauren from The Weekly Hive did here.  I recently started blog stalking her super helpful blog.  She is so creative so make sure you check it out!  Thanks Lauren for the great ideas!

{you can download the contraction packet here for free!}


I am trying not to spend any of my own money on my class room.  So instead of using band aids my class used masking tape for the apostrophes.  Luckily for my kiddos our sweet office lady, who is also our principals wife (fun huh!), let us have a box of face masks!!   


P.S. An Aide from the high school side walked by our classroom and thought someone in our class had a bad virus or something.  She was confused about why everyone had masks on.  LOL




Finally, drum roll please........

This is the surprise my class will see in the morning.

Here's what you do!

 On two little pieces of paper write the two words that you are going to combine to make a contraction.

Fold up the words and stuff them into the balloon.  

Blow the balloon up and tie it.  Then write the contraction on the outside.  


Tomorrow each one of my little darlings will get a chance to pop their balloon and read the words inside!  I have a feeling they are going to LOVE it!