Election Day and a New School Year

This year there have been a lot of changes this year for me. My fiance Eric and I officially set our wedding date! We're getting married July 26, 2014. I was asked to be the maid of honor for my best friend Lindsay's wedding in May. I finally have my very own classroom. I have 7 students this year... yes I know it's a SMALL class. My old co-teacher is now the 2nd grade teacher. I am still teaching at the year-round private school in Washington. Manetta and I also are sharing an assistant, Mr. David. I haven't posted anything this year, because I've had a hard time finding free time. Our internet is spotty again this year. Our school hasn't moved to our new building yet so I have a very cluttered classroom right now. I'm quite embarrassed >.< Manetta's classroom is half the size of mine so a lot of her stuff is being stored in my room too. I will be very excited when I get my bigger room with cupboards and more shelves. Today was election day so my students voted on who they thought would be a better president. Yesterday after reading Grace for President and Duck for President we had a great discussion about the responsibilities of a president and discussed which character would be the best fit.

Today with our voting booths set up by the ballot box the students voted for a president. Suprisingly after all the discussion of how the boys wanted Duck and the girls wanted Grace, Grace won! This year I have implemented Math Workshop and my own version of Daily 5 into my classroom. Both are working wonderfully. I'll post later with what I used to get started and show you my rotation board.

"Summer Camp"

Okay I admit I've been M.I.A quite a bit. A lot has happened though, on June 8th was my class' promotion ceremony. They did a wonderful job when they presented their key to 1st grade advice tips. It was kind of a different experience for me though because it's not a have a good summer or I'll see you around the school next year at the end. Since our school is year round most of my students attend "summer camp." During the summer we get to choose the curriculum. So I have been creating a unit on Washington's National Parks and in math we focus on one particular topic each week that we covered in the 1st/2nd grade curriculum throughout the year. For example, this week we are focusing on addition and subtraction without regrouping and next week we will do regrouping. It's set up as centers some days and other days I have created different group and differentiated the worksheets for specific skill levels. I seem to like how this is working and am excited to try it next school year. In science we have been experimenting with plants and next week we will begin to learn about dinosaurs. We planted our beans after they sprouted inside their Ziploc baggies. We also have started a Diary of a plant where the students get to be a little creative and funny. One book we read this week was Plantzilla . It was my first time reading the book and boy did the students love it. I also just discovered there's a sequel so I will have to get my hands on that. On Monday, we went to see our pen pals at Kirkland's Merrill Gardens and boy were both parties excited to see each other. The activity coordinator there even gave my kiddos some Huckleberry ice cream. YUM! I admit to be a bit jealous of my other teacher friends who are on summer vacation at the moment. But I am happy none of my students will get the summer learning loss other students get. I've been working like crazy to make and find games for each math topic every week. The students seem to love them though so it makes the work worthwhile. On a personal note, I've decided to attend to start jogging. It's not going so well but I've never been able to run so I don't expect it will be easy. I'm starting with a couch to 5k program. I'm currently on week 1. My ultimate goal is hopefully to be able to run the Alki Beach 5K in August... since it's like 10 minutes from my apartment. This would also help me get back on track with my weight loss.

Official school year is wrapping up

I officially have about 98 days of school left in our school year. We just had our 180th day of school last week. Seattle has had gorgeous weather this week, with plenty of sunshine and temperatures in the mid to high 70's. My classroom got quite toasty today with our giant 2 story window.... 82 degrees Fahrenheit! So I moved my writing lesson to a hallway downstairs. The kids of course love going on "field trips" around the building so this didn't bother them at all. So with their spelling dictionaries, pencils, erasers and clipboards they were ready to write. Today I read the book Meanwhile to discuss transition words further. The kids loved the story. It is set up like a comic book so it was very appealing to my boys.

I actually got a bit of a sunburn yesterday out at recess. We now have to make sure to stop teaching about 10 minutes early to apply sunscreen before both recesses. I forgot how much time the rub-in kind takes to apply. Previously, we were using a spray on sunscreen which worked amazing.

The "school year" is ending in my classroom as we wrap up all of our mandatory curriculum. This Friday will be promotion day for my kiddos. I made cute Promotion Day certificates using a handy Microsoft made template since some of my students will not be enrolling for the new second grade next  year. I will be sad for them and their families to go, but I know they will do amazing in any public school second grade. I had to completely change the wording though. The black rectangles are my school's name. If you want the template just comment with your email address and I  can email it to you.

Next Monday we start the summer camp portion of the school year. For those of you who don't know. I teach at a year-round school. So like other schools we finish up our curriculum in the beginning one June and then can sort of teach what we want to an extent. Manetta made up this summer's science curriculum. About every two weeks we are talking about a different subject. Subjects include: sharks, plants, dinosaurs and nutrition. I will also be coordinating writing to go with it. Math will be a focused review of topics from the curriculum we just finished up. Next week I will start my review of time. I found a great I have, who has for telling time at http://shenanigansinsecond.blogspot.com/search/label/Time 

My newest favorite blogcenter><a href="http://www.shenanigansinsecond.blogspot.com/"><img border="0" src="http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/1782/blogbuttonii.png" width="125"/></a></ center>

Back to Work after Memorial Day

 It was great having a 3-day weekend. My fiance, Eric and I went backpacking at North Cascades National Park over the weekend for his birthday. We went down a portion of Thunder Creek trail. The trail was a beautiful hike along the Thunder Creek. We camped at McCallister on Sunday night after hiking a little over 6.2 miles to the camp site.






 
Monday morning we then had to hike out the same route. My legs feel like Jello today. Then to totally erase all calories earned from hiking, Eric and I met up with his cousin/my coworker Tracy and her fiance Brett to eat dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. Eric and I split Fettucine and each got a slice of cheesecake. >.< YUM! My stomach was really full afterwards.


I was so happy to see my kiddos this morning. They were all so excited to see me and their friends. I found an adorable summer writing project. The students are going to write their favorite thing to do during the summer and explain why. Then they will color and cut out their sunglasses and glue them down. Lastly, they will draw a self portrait of themselves in wearing the sunglasses. I totally plan to tack these up to the green bulletin board! I found the idea on one of my new blogs I'm following! Elementary My Dear: Back to Bloggy Business!

Another site I stumbled across is http://www.thecurriculumcorner.com/ They made all the common core standards for K-5 into I CAN statements for all subjects. There's a checklist for students and a checklist for teachers. I might decorate them a bit but I totally love this free resource! There are also a bunch of other really great resources.

 In math, I nervously started a lesson on using parentheses in number sentences today... I can gladly say they totally ran with the concept.  I even threw in a x2 multiplication problem in with one.

Place Value Adventures

This week went by pretty quickly. Manetta was out sick on Tuesday and boy did the kids notice. On a different note though, I can honestly say my first graders have officially mastered place value and all the 1st and 2nd grade standards that go with it. We took our assessments today and everyone of them aced the test! I'm so proud of them. I had so much fun making all the different things to teach place value. I made a huge packet with tic tac toe for place value and an I have, Who Has?  and many other worksheets. I also created a place value scoot because my students love math centers and Scoot.

I found a few board games on TPT. Practicing place value game, this one is meant for third graders but I downloaded to challenge a few of my kids. I hope to post my place value files later today. This weekend is Memorial Day weekend and both my students and I are excited for the extended weekend. My fiance, Eric and I are going away for the weekend but as to where is still a mystery. Two of my students left early for vacation and another one moved to India in April, so today I had five students! I've begun to start collecting more data on how my students are doing in math but I'm going to need to consult Eric to help teach me how to use Excel a bit more.

I've found some other freebie to use for teaching place value. I'm excited to use these this summer:

• Dinosaur 2 digit place value game
• Mystery Place Value
• 2 Digit Mystery Place Value
• 2 Digit Place Value Match Up Cards

I can't use these for my kiddos, but someone with 3rd-5th graders could:

•  5,6,7 digit mystery place value

It's Been One Busy Week

Boy has it been a busy week! My students have been rehearsing for their Japanese play about a giant turnip. They were so excited. We started our unit on place value. I find that thanks to doing place value during calendar they have pretty much mastered this skill at the first grade level so I have started to introduce them to 2nd and 3rd grade place value skills. I pretty much totally revamped the the book's suggested place value lessons and I have made my own unit out of things I've made and a few things I've found.

Acrostic Poems, Capacity and Weight

Last week I was flying solo in our classroom with the help of an aid. It was kind of nice. Don't get me wrong I love working with my co-teacher, she's awesome but it was nice to know "I've still got it!" We had a shortened week with school on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. We published our 5 W poems and they are now up on display. This week is a full week again. Yesterday was a fun day we made gallon men in math and tested how many macaroni noodles could fit in different sized cylinders. In social studies, we went on a walk around Kirkland to look at different businesses. The students had to decide if they provided a good or service and if so what. They got a little confused at the library though. They then had to pick one out of the 11 we visited and will have to make a page about that business for our Kirkland Directory we're making. Last but not least, we also created our very own acrostic poems. First the students made one about spring and then they had to create one using their names. Some of the poems were quite clever!

Today we started to practice weighing items. We started using a food scale and a spring scale with a sandwich baggie to try to find out how many pennies equal an ounce. We found out it's between 11 and 13 depending on the scale. The students seemed to really like this.

ITBS Testing Continues

So the ITBS testing is still going on. We are almost done! Tomorrow will be our last day. I felt bad for the kiddos today though because this morning we had 2 portions and then we have to do the computation portion this afternoon. My students have been doing pretty well behaviorally and I'm pretty proud of them. This is their first standardized test. Yesterday we took the kids on a picnic to David E. Brink park just down the street from our school. It was a nice lunch break away from the test. We did have a little visitor who bravely came very close to our table cloth!I thought the little duck was going to attack me for my sandwich, because she got so close. T

My students also discovered that they could roll down the hill at the park and this preceded to entertain them for about ten minutes. Ahhh the power of self entertainment.

Standardized Testing

Today was our first day of ITBS testing in the first grade. I arrived extra early to make sure all the students had two new sharped #2 pencils on their desks. This was my students' first time taking a standardized test. I could feel their jitters in the air when they first walked in. I am curious to see the results when they come back.

I think giving the standardized test and seeing how they are doing as I walk around is perhaps the hardest part. I want to scream yell, "We learned that! They are just asking you that in a different way than I do!" We did the first math portion and the language portion today. Overall the kids did really well and I am proud of them. They were most excited about having 3 snacks today. It also probably helped that the 3rd snack was provided by someone else's parent. Tomorrow is day 2 of THE TEST! I

Sidewalk Measuring

Today was another rousing day! In math we went outside to practice measuring in DM, CM, IN and FT.

I assigned the students into pairs and they were each assigned two different squares, one from the sidewalk and one from the patio area. The front of the building has various sizes of cement squares and then a large sidewalk which runs along State St. Oh course the students though measuring in feet was easy. At first a few were stumped on how to add the inches since their rulers weren't quite long enough, but after some investigation and reflection they remembered how to use their finger to make the last point they stopped and THEN MOVE THE RULER! I enjoyed watching the students do this assignment and it was great to get out an enjoy the abnormally nice sunshine we've had this week. It's actually supposed to be almost 70 degrees on Sunday!

 A couple students amazed me with their mental math skills when they realized for inches it was repeated addition with plus 12 most of the time. 

Metersticks

Today we began our measurement unit today. We started by discussing what measuring tools we've used so far...standard rulers for inches and centimeters. We have also practiced a bit of non-standard measurement. Today we measured with first graders. We decided to see how many first graders it would take to go from each end of our classroom.

As one student explained, "It took 7 first graders and a little teacher." One of our students was absent this morning, so Ms. Manetta filled in as a first grader.
The students had a blast doing this. We then used metersticks to measure various distances across our classroom and I taught the students how to use their finger to mark where they last stopped and to then lay the meter stick out again to keep measuring. This is a new concept for them and they did fantastic!

An Exciting Day in the First Grade Today

Today was a fantastic day in our classroom! We started off our day with our reading groups and then the excitement began with math. For math today, I planned a fraction egg scavenger hunt. Each student had to find two easter eggs out on the playground. After finding two eggs the students then had to return to the picnic table to wait for the rest of the class. Once all the students found two eggs they then had to take their "treats" out of the eggs and set their halves on the table. They then had to match their fraction to someone elses' half that had the correct picture drawn on it. I think it went really well.

After our scavenger hunt we came back up to our classroom to try out a Fraction Scoot Game. This was our first time doing a Scoot activity before and I was so proud of my students. They handed the transitions very well and actually are becoming little fraction masters. I think they are all going to kick our fraction test's butt tomorrow! My TPT store is slowly getting more traffic too so I'm pretty excited. I just added a new product! 2-digit subtraction Monster Scoot!

 Another exciting moment of our day was when the Mayor of Kirkland arrived. She pleasantly suprised Ms. Manetta and me by being very friendly and down to Earth. She even sat on the floor with the kids. She joked with us and told funny stories. She even taught me a couple things. For example, I didn't know Mayor's have javels. It was exciting for me to see the students making text to world connections. Last week we read two books on mayors. One of which was My Grandma is the Mayor. We learned that the mayor really does get to use giant scissors to cut ribbons and she gets to be in parades.

Fraction Pizza and Snow

This morning, I saw my first snow flurries in the Northwest. I forgot how much I missed the snow from Michigan. It only snowed a little bit, but of course people have no idea how to drive when it snows out here. It didn't even stick and people still managed to cause accidents on the way to work.

The excitement of it being Friday could be felt in full force today. We had literacy centers for reading today taught by Manetta. The students love when we switch up what we do. Then the excitement continued to build when they realized we also had math centers today. For math centers today, we had Fraction War, a math box from our Everyday Math, my Follow the Cupcake Fraction game and Fraction Pizza.  I'm going to edit my lessons for Fraction Pizza so it's only sixths and not eighths. With eighths it was too many pizza slices for my 1st graders. The pizzas that are finished turned out well. Above is my example with my center directions in case the students forgot what to do.

We put our finishing touches on our rough drafts and finished writing our questions for the mayor. I have to proof read the questions this weekend and then retype the ones the students will actually ask Mayor McBride.

We had buddy reading today and the students were able to bring a book of their choice to read to the kindergarteners. The Super K friends brought Fly Guy books.

Creating a Blog Button and Other Blog Design Stuff

I successfully greated my very own blog link button. Boo Ya. I am so totally doing my happy dance after fiddling with this for 40 minutes I got it to work. I owe it all to this website http://www.musingsofahousewife.com/2009/05/how-to-create-a-button-code.html She has two very helpful tutorials on how to create the button and how to create the link. Now it's just time to test the link and see if I can make it a widget. :)

I also have this great blog template and headline from Leelou Blogs. They offer free templates or they make custom ones.

I also started to use picmonkey.com to edit and crop my photos.

Police Visit and ITBS practice

One more day until Friday! Today was a pretty exciting day in our classroom. During math today, a female police officer came to visit Super K and our class. She was probably one of the best police liaisons I've ever met. She was very patient and humorous. She let the students crawl all over her police car for atleast 15 minutes. She let the students turn on the lights and yell into the radio. I'm sure the neighbors loved that especially at 10am. She wanted to show them the taser and at first they were terrified. The other teachers and I were suprised when we saw the students were so scared and thought she was going to shoot them with it. Eventually we convinced them to let her show them. She showed them her taser and how it makes a little light show when you hold it up in the air. It was kind of cool. I learned that when they are shot outward, they are one time use and cost about $75 to replace.

Today for writing we began to write our questions we plan to ask Mayor McBride on Monday. A couple of my students are coming up with some great questions. They are also putting the finishing touches on their rough drafts for their invention writings.

One of my students brought me and Manetta some delicious pasta. I love when she does this because her mom and grandmother are fantastic cooks. I believe her mom actually writes recipes for recipes.com It had Italian sausage and bacon in it.

We are almost finally done with our ITBS practice test and the students still find it fun...which is good. I hope they feel the same way when we start the real test.

Rain and Sunshine...make up your mind Washington!

 Manetta created the most adorable rain inspired project. She previously saw the umbrella on Pinterest and decided to take it a little further by adding the raincoat and boots. I suggested the puffed up arm and the puddle! They turned out adorable. This template can be found on her teacherspayteachers store. http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/April-Showers-Umbrella

Today we also started solving Fraction Number Stories and my students loved them. I actually started to make a board game with fraction story problems. Today in general was a pretty good day. For writing today we started to brainstorm ideas for inventions we would create someday. Some of the ideas were very interesting. Gliders, automatic filling water bottles, a hair styling robot and a cookie baking desk! Then in social studies we discussed our responsibilities as a citizen. This conversation was hysterical. They completely focused on the example of picking up litter and kept asking questions about it.

Tuesday?? But it feels like Thursday!

This week we are studying inventors in reading and the students will be writing about an invention they would like to create tomorrow. I am very excited to see what they come up with.

Today we played fraction war in math. The students absolutely loved it. We then practiced ordering our fractions from greatest to least the students found this to be a little tricky. I created a fraction bingo game yesterday and a fraction old maid game. I'm pretty excited to try the old maid game out with my students tomorrow. It's up on my teacher's pay teachers store now! I was pretty excited today I officially got two people to buy my products from my store! http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Lauren-Manns

Manetta is revamping our library categorizing this week to make it easier for the students to pick books at their level. A new addition to our classroom this week is our chair pockets. I saw the idea on pinterest and had been thinking about buying them for a while now. They are 77 cent two pocket aprons from Home Depot. The students are storing their chapter books, chapsticks and water bottles in them. At last all the little distractions are off the desks.

I left work early today to go to my first check up here in the great Northwest! I felt really bad leaving my kids even if it was only for an hour and a half. I know they are in good hands though with Ms. Manetta. I got a clean bill of health for the most part and the doctor was very friendly. Sadly like many women I have some extra pounds to lose... it's a work in progress.

Yippee for Monday!

As far as Mondays go, today went pretty smoothly. We continued to talk about equivalent fractions. I find a really neat website called E is for Explore on Friday. She has come up with some pretty neat lesson ideas. http://eisforexplore.blogspot.com/2012/04/fraction-war.html I downloaded her Fraction War Cards and am pretty excited to use them in math centers this week. I started creating my own fraction bingo today when I realized Lakeshore Learning wanted more money than I was willing to spend. We also started to discuss Common Good and Individual Rights in social studies today with the book Old Henry. The book discusses both topics and has a great rhyming scheme too! We finished up the lesson by writing letters back to Henry pretending to be the Mayor telling him the conditions on which he can return to the town.

Today was also one of my student's 6th birthday! The whole class was invited to her birthday party at Tech City Bowling Alley yesterday. Manetta and I both went. It was both our first time going to a student's birthday. It was pretty fun. It was at least two of our students' first time bowling. I was also delighted to hear that my student loved the birthday present I got her... wooden magnetic dolls like the ones in our classroom. This weekend I discovered the Dollar Tree in White Center it was way bigger than the one in Tukwila thankfully. I found some more goodies there including some stuff for next year!

This past weekend, I also made my very first trip to Half-Priced Books. It was packed there since it was Sunday. I sadly didn't look around too much because I dumbly made a poor shoe choice earlier in the day. I chose to wear my brand new adorable black buckle boots with about a 3-inch heel. I can't walk in high heels for very long before my feet kill so I was miserable! I actually left Joann Fabrics without buying anything! That never happens!I tried to even solve the problem by buying some cheap flip flops from Joann's to wear around the store, but they don't sell them yet. :(

St. Patrick's Day in the Classroom

 This week was library week! Since the local public schools had no school today it was packed. Our usual spot was taken so we found a cozy table with giant chairs to sit at.
This week the students were required to select one chapter book and one non-fiction book.

A sneaky Leprechaun visted our classroom this afternoon. We attempted to set up a shoebox trap over our treasure chest. Our leprechaun left sunglasses on President Obama's picture up on our wall. He also left sunglasses on Mr. Octopus and the frog cd tower. He also made a mess on the ground when he managed to sneak past our trap to open up our treasure chest. He didn't find any gold but he sure left a trail across the classroom before leaving gold coins for the students. One thing I found interesting was that the students believed whole-heartedly that a leprechaun came to visit but none of them questioned why he would leave some gold behind.

We had chess club today to make up for our missed day on Thursday. The students were all sugared up from St. Patrick's Day cupcakes and the gold coins. Not really a good combination for listening. Sorry Mr. Greg! I hear leprechauns will be visiting some of their houses.

Fractions

Our internet has been down since Friday afternoon, it was quite annoying. I am glad to have it back and we can use the grade book again!In our classroom we've been learning fractions. My little first graders have been doing pretty awesome with them too! We've used pattern blocks to uncover portions of to make fractions. We've done fractions of a group. I made some cute fraction worksheets and a St. Patrick's day Fraction Match up game and we used them in our math centers today. The struggles a little bit with comparing fractions with different denominators, but as soon as I made a worksheet with some fraction strips on it they were golden! They were so excited to use the plastic fraction manipulatives yesterday, it was quite heart-warming. Something else exciting in our classroom is that Karate the third is still alive.

 I've been so busy laminating all the pieces to the games and parent teacher conferences were Monday and Tuesday. I'm glad they're over and it's the 3rd trimester. I did enjoy seeing all the parents though it's always nice to tell them how wonderful their children are. Super K has been busy with their conferences yesterday and today so we've been having to make sure we get packed up early. Since conferences are during school hours we have cover each others' classes.

On a different note, last night several of the teachers and I were invited to one of my student's houses for Italian cooking lessons. It was so much fun. We learned how to make Penne a la Carbonara! Ms. Debbie and her Italian speaking mother are such great cooking teachers. It was great to spend time with my colleagues and be learning something too. It also was great to have delicious food! :) View my store on

Teachers Pay Teachers and bulletin boards

Over the weekend I stopped in Target's dollar bin. Boy do I love that section.  I got two whiteboard addition boards, two sets of reading certificates, 2 hotwheel cars, goo-gone, sight word flashcards, plastic coins and paper money. I also made a little bit of a pricey trip to Lakeshore Learning Store. Half the goodies in that store I walk up to them and go, "Oooo I want these! Then I flip it over and see the price and then say never mind I might be able to make those." I did end up buying some fraction pieces just out of convenience. I did start to make my own though using the circle on one of my cricut cartridges. I have since then been slowly doing the manual labor of cutting out the coordinating pieces. It's a very slow process.

Today I stopped in Hancock Fabrics and bought some new lime green and a cool light blue print fabric to cover our two bulletin boards. I also took down the borders finally and put up new ones that was a excruciatingly slow because our bulletin boards were handmade so I the borders were stapled into the wood frame. Previously one of our bulletin boards was missing a piece of border because we were short on it and an easel was pushed in front of it anyways. Now that the easel is somewhere else though I had to fix it pronto. I finally finished it though! I will post pictures tomorrow.

In class we are working on creating goals for when we write. The students filled out a self assessment and then choose one of six goals that they feel they need to work on. They then wrote their goal on a goal recording sheet and then we put a sticky note up on the poster so everyone can see it.  On my teachers pay teachers account I'll be selling my poster pieces and my worksheets I made.

Yesterday we took our students to visit Merrill Gardens Assisted Living for Seniors. We met four ladies there who read with our students. This particular lady, Barbara, was my favorite. She tutors in a local school and has a great sense of humor too! All the ladies agreed to be pen pals with our students. The students were so excited about our visit that they asked if they could go every week. We had to explain to them that it would not always be possible.

On Friday one of the dads came in and taught Super K and first grade how to do some hip hop/break dancing moves. I was participating until it got to the now fling your body in a circle around your one leg while standing on your arm. The kids absolutely loved it though. We decided to have the dad come back again sometime during our music block to teach the kids more.

Karate III now has survived several weeks in our classroom. I feel a little guilty because the kids don't know the original two died for some unknown reason and we have replaced him twice now with a similar fish. The students love him though and I don't want to tell them.

Teachers Pay Teachers and another day in the first grade

So I officially made a teachers pay teachers account yesterday. Since then I have made two freebie items. Plus 1 and Plus 2 Penguin flashcards and a worksheet to help students write their writing goals. No one had downloaded or rated them yet. I am hoping someone will soon because I want some feedback. I came up with a few other ideas and I'm excited to make them this weekend.

In school today we worked on Median and Mode in math and my little kiddos are median and mode calculating machines! I can proudly say they can all teach me how to find it. In writing today we started to write letters to Cinderella's step sisters. These came out pretty funny. I will post some tomorrow! In the particular version of Cinderella we read today it had a very wide range of new vocabulary words. I even learned a word or two. My students' favorite word was haughty. The rest of the afternoon they were walking around trying to use it in sentences.

For social studies today I introduced them to the idea of why we have a government:
1. To keep us safe
2. To help solve our problems
3. To provide us services
4. To make laws

Of course they requested that I make it into a song or dance... I did not have the creative juices to design yet another dance for the kids though so we turned it into a super short song. We have a government to keep us safe... to solve our problems...to provide us with some services and to make us laws! Imagine it with a sing-songy voice!

On a completely random note, my file drawer is officially full so I am now on a quest for a cheap tall filing cabinet.

Arm Spans and Tall Tales

Zumba officially started back up again for my students. They were so full of energy and excitement. Ms. Jill has been on leave for her pregnancy to rest, but this week she's came back to teach her fill-in Ms. Kristen what to do. We also made a trip down to the library since last Friday we cancelled our trip when we saw how windy it was. We challenged all the students to find 2 books that challenge them and one had to be a chapter book. Every student followed this direction beautifully. My class was pretty awesome today. All my students were on their best behavior all day and even my two little troublemakers didn't need any major reminders today. We started off our morning by beginning to read Dona Flor: A Tall Tale about a Giant Woman with a Great Big Heart. The story is quite lengthy and I couldn't get through more than half of it during my 20 minute reading groups, so we had to break it up into a two day lesson. I was suprised when I realized the students actually liked the story and wanted to read more.

One of my students who has been struggling in both reading and math...( the one who actually tells everyone he doesn't like school) had an awesome day today. I was so happy. He was right on for everything. During reading he was ready to read when the others in the group were talking still. He noticed when Manetta changed something during snack on our "what do I need? board" and he immediately got it out so he was ready to go. He also for the last two days has been glued to an A to Z mystery book. When I asked him if I got more would he read them, he almost jumped out of his seat. So I will definitely have to get some more to add to our classroom library. This is the first time I have seen him this excited about reading ever! I was kind of sad when I realized the whole set through Scholastic was still rather expensive.

In math today we reviewed measuring and discussed gathering data. We measured our arm spans in centimeters and inches and then we measured the length of our jumps. The students giggled in delight when they found out our Everyday Math tape measures did go up high enough to measure my arm span. I couldn't help but smile with them.

I offically started my own store on Teacher'sPayTeachers.com

President's Day Week

We had Monday off of school this week and my students sure seemed to be still in vacation mode. We did a few fun projects this week. We made Abraham Lincoln beards and hand print cherry trees.

We also ended a unit in social studies with a BAM! Our last lesson was "What region do I live in?" we did the circles that you see for me on the map and we made a coloring book where we had to color where our state was on the map and then where our state and country were; then where our state, country and continent were. Last but not least they had to show all of those on the globe! They really seemed to like the assignment and did well on my end of unit assessment. 

Something else we were busy working on were comparisons of two little pig stories. We compared the James Marshall version of the Three Little Pigs to the book The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig by Eugene Trivizas. The students absolutely loved the Little Wolves. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.
The students created a venn diagram comparing the two stories and then wrote a short comparison essay.

Another highlight of the week was our math lesson "The Wubbles" it's a lesson in the Everyday Math Curriculum for Second Grade. The lesson teaches doubling and halving telling a story similar to the Gremlins movie. The wubbles are creatures that double every time they go to sleep. I created a little wubble by using a pom pom and gluing on two googly eyes.

We also retold the Goldilocks and the Three Bears story by illustrating different parts of the story and then we practiced sequencing them . This particular version was rather unique because Goldilocks jump roped everywhere. The students were very excited to have their part in illustrating a story which makes me excited for when we create our own books.

P.s. Here's our Bee Mine projects from Valentine's Day!

Monster Boxes and Research Reports

So yesterday we started to make our monster boxes. They came out very cute. I like the fact that for the most part each one looks very unique. Some students chose to have one eye while others chose two or three. Our monster boxes we got the idea off of someone's Pinterest board. We used egg cartons for the eyes and kleenex boxes for the bodies. We then made them our own by adding pipe cleaner arms and googly eyes on top of the egg cartons. I was quite proud of the students most of them followed all the directions without too many disasters. Out of our original 2-3 helpers we were supposed to have we only ended up getting one. Her help was much appreciated though! Our Valentine's Day decorations have started to come up around the room. I'm excited to do our Bee Mine bumblebees tomorrow too!

Today we wrapped up our animal research reports. Our final copies were written, our illustrations were drawn and our diagrams were labeled. The students even created cover pages for their books. We also wrapped up chapter 6 in math and had our post test. I'm very curious to see how they are doing. I decided to hold off on starting a new chapter for a day or two so I can focus more on subtraction with regrouping. I have about 3 kiddos how are still struggling with it. They seem to know how to do it sometimes and other times they completely forget how to!

Manetta asked our director if we could have a fish tank in our classroom and with a little bit of discussion the director agreed. We can't have goldfish because they're "too dirty" but we can have tropical fish. She went out and got the fish at lunch. The students were so excited. They were told yesterday to start brainstorming ideas for names. They named the male purple Beta fish, Karate! Interesting name I know!

We did one other fun thing today... we made masks for Mardi Gras! Tomorrow we'll display them with a picture!

Splatter Monsters and animal reports

Our animal research reports are finally coming along. Almost every student is done with their rough draft. Tomorrow we will start to edit and revise our papers. I'm still struggling to find a way to help my first graders edit their own papers, but at the same time I do not believe my class is ready for peer editing yet either.

Something fun we did today was to create splatter monsters. The students put puddles of dark water colors on paper and then used a straw to blow the paint. Once the paint dried we put googly eyes and faces on the monsters. The students even named their monsters. They seemed to really enjoy the art project. One student did end up with A LOT of spit on his artwork though... :(



Today we had our fourth chess club meeting with the director's son. At first I was unsure of how my students would feel about chess, but they seem to love it. I'm learning how to play too. Yesterday I was partnered up with one of my super smart little guys and boy was he a challenge to play. So far we've learned the rook, bishop and pawn.