Better Late Than Never

So I've dropped the ball...actually is there a saying that's worse than dropping the ball. If so, I've done that! It's been a good 3 months since I've written a blog post and updated you all with what's been happening in our classroom and I'm SO sorry! I was flipping through my pictures on my phone and realized wow...I have great stuff to share but haven't taken the time to do it. So here it is. 

I'm going to start with October. Always a fun and jam packed month. Our school did some AMAZING bulletin boards for this month I just had to share! 

On Halloween we read the story How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin, then estimated how many seeds we believed were in our pumpkin. That night I went home, dried the seeds in the oven (3 different times) to make sure each pumpkin's number of seeds was accurate.

 Halloween day we sorted the seeds into various groups. The book gave us a good idea of how to properly sort them to be the most efficient. We ended up having a LOT of seeds to count. If you have helpers, now would be the time to include them. Boy was this a lot to manage. 

We ended up having the most seeds in the smallest pumpkin (just like the book). This is because the number of lines in a pumpkin  = more seeds.  The smallest pumpkin had the most lines, thus the most seeds. This was still challenging for my kids to realize, but most of them got it. 

We had lots of fun and did a few other Halloween activities for reading and writing, but unfortunately those pictures have not made it to January. I promise to be better from here on out and will send updates soon! 

First Week of School

First off, I want to say that I have the CUTEST darn class ever. They are just the sweetest bunch of kids and are SO funny! We've all loved every day of the week so far, and I'm so excited for my year with them. Oh, I didn't even mention. I have TWINS! :) Yes, two adorable, sweet, unique twins that I absolutely adore.

The first day went well, I only had one person show up that wasn't on my roster, and 2 that withdrew so I'm at a total of 16 now, which is a great number. We did lots of routines, songs, brain breaks, and books. We learned about ways to be helpful, made our safe keeper sticks, a class book, started our self portraits, and learned about mathematicians and scientists. All in all it was a smooth and fun day!

Safe Keeper Sticks - Click Here for More Information On This

The rest of the week has been going just as smoothly. One of my students that was on my roster didn't show up until Thursday, so that shook things up a bit, but our class welcomed her with open arms and are happy to have a new addition to the class family.

To help build community and a sense of belonging in our class, we created our School Family Book that we keep in our class library. I read this as part of our morning meeting activity on the 2nd day of school. It was a fun way to get to know each other better.

We also did All About Me bags which were GREAT! I learned so much about my kids and loved some of the creative things they brought in to show the class.

Sharing our "All About Me Bags"

We read the book The Way I Act then created a chart of ways to be helpful getting ideas from the book and from things they know are helpful in school/class.

We took pictures of the kids acting the things out, which they loved. We made that into a Ways to Be Helpful Board which will stay up all year long to remind the kids, and we'll add ideas as we see things though out the years.

Probably my favorite thing we do all year is our beginning of the year self portraits. It adds so much warmth, creativity, color, and uniqueness to the class. I love seeing their self portraits and this years class did an amazing job of really using the mirrors as they drew and painted.

To start this process I model how to draw a self portrait and what to look for when using the mirror. I then have the kids sketch themselves with mirrors using only a pencil.

On Day 2, I model tracing over my pencil markings with a black marker. I also demonstrate how to use water colors to achieve different colors, etc. I do this on my own self portrait and on a blank piece of paper. I let them go to town on theirs emphasizing it should be their own skin and hair color - not blue, green or purple….even though I still had two kids do a red and blue face..lol!

On day 3, we cut out things that we like from magazines and glue them to the backgrounds of our self portraits. After that, we laminate and we're done! We will share these on Friday! :) Didn't they turn out AWESOME? I just love them! Not only do they make the classroom, but they are SO telling of their developmental stages.

We're learning about mathematicians and what they do, the tools they use, representing knowledge, vocabulary, etc. On day 2 of we had a "mathematician tool exploration". I set up centers allowing the kids to explore, play, and use the manipulatives we will be working with all year. Doing this greatly eliminates unnecessary or inappropriate play with these later on in the year, and gets them excited to work with the materials. They did really well with this, with almost no teacher interventions. They're such a curious, calm, and sweet class!

                     

           

In addition, we learned about scientist…what they do, who they are, what they think and say. We explored the scientific method with the "Leak Proof Bag" Experiment from Steve Spangler. 

It totally stumped them! It was the perfect example of the process, and really got my kids excited to come up their own scientific questions/experiments. We then did Science Tool Exploration. This took a bit longer than expected so I had to break it up between two days. They explored safety goggles, scales,  microscope, magnifying glass, stop watches, thermometers, rocks, and magnets. 

This week we REALLY focused on learning about the safe spot and how to properly use it. We started off by reading Schubert's Helpful Day from the Becky Bailey curriculum to discuss how to use our big voice and ways to be helpful if we notice a friend is in need.

We then practiced the routines, acted out what it looks like when someone needs to use the safe spot, and created this book. We will keep this in the safe spot along with Pete the Cat and His Magic Sunglasses.

I read this book to them to teach them to always look on the bright side and see the magic in everything (we also have blue sparkly sunglasses in the safe spot to go with the book).

This picture is amazing to me! It's so accurate! 

It was a long week but a successful one! Looking forward to seeing my kiddos again tomorrow! As always please leave any questions or comments below! :)

Room Reveal!

I absolutely LOVE seeing other teacher's classrooms, not only in my school but on Pinterest or throughout my county and boy does my school have some AMAZING classrooms! There is always something new to see that give me a zillion ideas, or simply something I steal from them. I love to see the different ways to decorate, organize, and layout rooms. I did some minor changes to the layout of my room, but did a lot of redecorating. I'm really happy with it so far. It's super bright, open, inviting, and playful. Hope I can give you some new ideas.

 Front of the Classroom (this changed around a lot!)

Math/Science Area

Math/Science Area - Science posters will go on the wall there (covering that ugly brown box) and their names will go on velcro to easily change them into different groups.

Math Centers Materials (Their Math Journals are organized by their math center groups)

 Computers/Safe Spot/Listening Center

 Close up of my Listening Center - Oh How I love it so!

Safe Place (I kept this the same as last year)

 Classroom Library

I organize the books by fiction (blue), nonfiction (green), and author study (purple)

Front Door (with word wall/writing center/Cubby Area)

 Our Interactive Word Wall (currently all Pre-Primer Dolch words are up on the board)

Our Writing Center

 Our Morning Procedures (I will take pictures of the kids as they do the activities to help understand our routines)

Our Class Commitments (I will take pictures of the kids acting these commitments out and add them)

New Literacy Centers Rotation

 Birthday Display, I'm going to take pictures of the kids holding a sign with the day of their birthday.

Star of the Week!

Bulletin Board (that's off center because the chart and TV block it) and Vocabulary Chart/Center Work

If you have any questions about anything you saw on display, the layout, a way I organized something please do not hesitate to comment below. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. I also have almost all of my labels you see here for download/purchase - some are free and some cost money (all reasonably priced and package opportunity available).

Summer's So Soon!

I cannot believe how quickly these past few weeks have been flying by. We officially have 5 days of school left! Yikes. Our days pretty much consist of testing, testing, and more testing with a little bit of recess slipped in there. May is always stressful. It's swarmed with retention meetings, FAIR, ITBS, end of the year math test, DRA, and sight words! All in all my kids are handling the not so normal schedule better than I expected. They get more excited for things they took for granted before like math centers but have A LOT of pent up energy.

I wanted my kids to get excited for 2nd grade and I created this bulletin board to keep their focus positive instead of on all this yucky testing.

We're going to make an end of the year memory "year book" then write letters to our favorite staff members and fellow classmates with our favorite memory with them or of them. Our Grade 1 End of the Year ceremony is this week and I've been working on their award certificates. I had to get a little creative for some of my kids but I found "Handy Helper" pretty much sums it.

You can download these here!

Today we did a math facts timed test. Since this was our first one, I gave them 2 minutes to complete 25 basic addition math facts. If they got 100% correct within the 2 minutes I had them play "Minute to Win it" cookie game my fellow teacher and friend, Danielle did with her 3rd graders.

I have never seen my children work so hard or so quietly on anything. EVER. Three of my 11 children got 100% correct, most of the others made minor mistakes. We will continue to do one math timed test a day with more "minute to win it" prizes until school is out! Tomorrow will be the "smarty suck up"! The kids must transfer 1 pack of smarties from one plate to the other using only a straw.

Other than that, I'm trying to keep our days as normal as possible for as long as possible. Lack of routine in my class = chaos and there's already enough of that with a routine, ha!