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.