Fa la la la la, la la la la.....=)

Here is to some holiday cheer. I love teaching first grade, especially during the holidays. I just love how innocent and excited they are about everything. One of our Virginia Standards of Learning is to learn about traditions. We  take the SOL and study different Countries traditions. Last week we studied Mexico and Germany. We made cute poinsettia's for Mexico and read, The Legend of the Poinsettia. If you would like to listen to it here is a link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2l60CwEjsM

For Germany we made Christmas tree's and went to the Nutcracker. They LOVED watching the nutcracker.

They were so cute. My girls especially were all on the edge of their seats in aw. Thanks again to Luke Neurauter who braved the bus with us and helped us stay together. And a shout out to the Chase family for joining us for the show.

Today we had Polar Express Day which I started as a tradition that I have every year the week before Holiday Break. We wear our pajamas, drink hot chocolate and watch the movie.

Hi all!

Hi all, I am very excited to announce that our room arrangement has been a great success so far! The kids are loving it! Here are a few pics for you to look at and feel free to pop in if you want. 

Also last week we had fun with a couple of visualizing lessons. On this book... They all laid down with their eyes closed while I read them the very detailed book. Anytime they had a mental image they put their thumb up in the air.

The next day we read this book...and every so often during the book I would stop and they would sketch their mental image at the time. We talked about our mental images being different because our schema is different and that they are always changing.

Well I am going to leave you with this picture of my little cutie, who is now pulling up on EVERYTHING and he is ALL over the place. 

Happy Sunday!

Then and Now

Last week we made BUTTER. The children absolutely loved it! We talked about how in the "old days", people had to make their own butter. We poured our heavy whipping cream and a little salt in a jar for each set of partners and then had them shake, shake, shake. They were hilarious.

We are going on a VERB Hunt!

Last week we went on a verb hunt. The kids LOVED it. We took our clip boards and our pencils and went walking around the school for verbs. We filled out this little paper and then we came back to the class and put them all together.

Election day

So to prepare for the day off and election day we had a class vote on where to read, Duck for President. We all left the room and each kid brought there popsicle stick in the classroom and put their stick in the cup they wanted. Duck for President is also our vocab book of the week! Here are a few pics!

I also added our I pod touch's to the classroom today. It went very well. 

It's been too long!

Hi folks, So sorry it has been so long since my last posting. You are all amazing for putting up with my slowness...lol anyhow I am loving my new iPhone (early Christmas present) I do not have to download any pictures to my computer anymore, they are already on my computer when I get on to post. YAH that save me time! I love time-savers 

I hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween! Our Fall Party went remarkably. I big THANKS to our wonderful room mom, Viki Neurauter for planning it. She is AMAZING! The kids created these cutsie, Jar o lanterns. I forgot to take a picture of our finished product but here is a pic I found online. You get the idea.

After they painted their jar's, the kiddo's played pumpkin BINGO (everyone was a winner!).

After they played BINGO they created these adorable, low fat, low sugar and adorable spider cupcakes.










Thank you so much to all of my wonderful moms. You are all so amazing and I LOVE the help you give me in the room. You are apart of making this year go so well! I will be back later to post about our pumpkin math.

OREO's YUMMMMM!!!

On Friday we did our Oreo project, a little past the deadline. =( We still had fun though! The kids really enjoyed it. After we were done we averaged our numbers and our class stacked an average of 14!

Map Skills

Today we practice our map skills! We went on a little scavenger hunt using a map of our K playground. They used their map to get to all five clues and if they figured out what the clue's were they recieved a little treat. My wonderful teammate made this last year and let me tell you the kids LOVED it. Here are a few pictures of them on their hunt.

Look what we have been up to!

First, I want to apologize for taking so long to write this post. Secondly, I want to tell you all how much I am enjoying all of your wonderful children. This year is going very well. Here is a few pics to show you what we have been up to.

Odd and Even Town 

This project was so much fun. Our math program introduced odd and even numbers last week. Perfect opportunity for this oh so fun project! The students loved it and it really helped some of the students with the concept. 

Senses Man is such a cool way to introduce the five senses.  It hangs on our classroom door to remember to use our five senses when investigating.  We also did "What is a Scientist". I found this great idea on
 Pinterest (my new obsession). =)                                             

How to Blow A Bubble, I found this cute idea on another blog. I wish I could remember which one to give credit. This took us a little while to get through all of our drafts. But look how fun this project is. We started out by chewing on some bubble gum and then went through the writing process. Oh my job is so much fun! As you can see I have NO wall space outside my door way. I do the best I can to display work. The work itself makes it look cute enough. =)

I cannot forget the oh so fun apple day. I LOVE apple day! We painted some festive wreaths, using apples as our paintbrushes. We made apple mouths and candy apples, YUM! We did some stain glass apples which always look fabulous on the windows (Thanks you for the great idea Mrs. Bainbridge). Lastly, we investigated apples, weighting on a balance scale using bear manipulative's, measuring them, discovering if they sink or float, and lots more.

And on a personal note, my baby boy had his sixth month appointment yesterday. Growing so fast, he measured at 22 inches and weighed in at 18 lbs and 10 ounces (both in the 60 percentile).

Well I have to go for now. Hopefully (cross your fingers), it will not take me this long next time to post pictures. 

Read to someone and Work on Writing are going VERY well. We will be starting guided reading groups this Monday! I am very excited to get into more of a routine.

See the bear in the desk on the bottom left? This is our bathroom bear. Instead of interupting me during Daily 5, the students put this on their desk and go. It works out great and it limits just 1 to be out of the room! I love it!

Citizen"SHIP"

One of our VA SOL's is citizenship, so this week we were learning how to be good citizens! My wonderful teammate came up with this great idea. We had a ship in our room and you had to be invited in to the ship. Well the only way you are invited in to the ship is if you have good citizenship. Love this idea, and so did the kids. They had so much fun and as you can see by Friday everyone was invited in to the ship. Our class is AWESOME and  all of them were being great citizens all week!

First Grade Fun--Off to a GREAT start!!!

Last week was our third week of school and we are off to a fabulous start. I am very excited with the progress we have made so far. Read to Self is going great. Our stamina building is slowly going up. We are now at 15 minutes!!! The kids are super excited and so am I. They even stayed on task when I was taking pictures.  Take a look at how great they are doing!

In math we are also learning how or math workshop BUILD. We have learned "I" which is independent reading. We practice that when we read to self. We have practiced, "U" which is using manipulative's, several times. We have really focused on not playing with the manipulative's and using them to learn. Last week we practiced the "B" which stands for buddy games. To supplement to our break-aparts of 5 in math. We played the game called, "Shake 5 and Spill". The kids loved it. They shook their cups and gently dumped the counters to see how many reds and how many yellows were left.

Thank you to oceansoffirstgradefun.blogspot.com for the wonderful game!

Our Friday experiment also went well. We glued, discussed, and completed the following sheet in our scientific journals.

 Thank you to whattheteacherwants.blogspot.com for the wonderful experiment form.

They LOVED this experiment. Take a look below to see how engaged they were in this activity!

I hope everyone had a wonderful three day weekend!! My favorite part was college football! So glad the season has finally started. Take a look at my little cutie below, he was all decked out in MIZZOU gear!

Have a FABULOUS week!!!

Scientific Investigation and Good Fit Books!

Last week as a part of our scientific investigation SOL, we experimented with volcano's. On Friday morning we made from a recipe a volcano and our wonderful cafeteria staff cooked it for us. That afternoon, we made it explode! The kids LOVED it!!! For the recipe, send me and email. =)

We also learned about good fit books. I learned this idea from the wonderful teacher I did my student teaching with. We discussed why our shoes would not fit everyone and then compared it to books. I then had the smallest girl in my room and the biggest boy in my room "try" each others shoes on. =) The kids loved the lesson and really seemed to grasp the concept!

Schedule Cards!!!

I am in process of setting up my classroom. I have gotten a lot of inspiration from many blogs, but have not found some schedule cards I liked so.....I created my own. I have a "rock star" theme this year so I thought these would go great. =) Click the picture to download. Enjoy!