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.