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.

100th day and catching up

Happy 100th day of school! It's been a little while since I've posted. Today in our classroom Ms. Manetta and myself and a few of our students dressed up as if we were 100 years old. I thought our ensembles turned out pretty good. I wore an aqua track suit and some tan Keds I found at Value Village. I completed my outfit with a two-tone wig and big white earrings.

One student even drew wrinkles on her face and another did the grandma-ish makeup and brought a cane. For math we had 100 day centers. For one center we predicted how many different things we could do in 100 seconds. The actions varied from hopping to winking. The students were so tired after hopping and then standing and sitting. Another center including measuring items that were 100 cm long. The last center involved making estimates.

We also made 100th day glasses. I'm quite fond of my glasses I made.

Last Friday, we celebrated Groundhog's Day in our classroom. We definitely got some interesting questions about the groundhog after reading several fiction books. One question was, "How big is his house?" I truly have no idea how big it is... We made a cute 3-d art project with the groundhog stick puppet and a puffy cloud.
       Some other changes in our classroom are that Ms. Manetta wants to try doing literacy centers once a week during our normal reading block. I think it sounds like a great way to work on specific skills. We also started posting our goals for all the students to see and we made a what do I need board where students can look to see what they need for each lesson.