Parent Gifts

Parent Gifts!

During the last week before our break we made gifts for our parents. This has always been a struggle in the past because I have tried making so many gifts, but have never liked them enough to do them twice. However, this gift is my favorite. Last year I decided to make snowmen out of fence posts (credit to pinterest). I buy the wood in packs of 12 from Lowes and my brother in law cuts the end for me to make it look like a post that can go into the ground. I get the socks in big packs from Target (which is not a bad price since you only need one sock per kid). I buy buttons and ribbon from Michaels. Ribbon is very cheap around the holidays! The nose is just orange felt. The kids choose all of their colors and placement and I just hot glue it for them. They write their name and year on the back and they are done! It is very simple, yet SO cute and parents LOVE them because they can put them anywhere, leave them up ALL winter (which is almost all year in MN), and use them year after year! I loved watching the kids bring them home. They were thrilled to give their handy work to their parents.

Mattie relaxing

Colton Thomas

Lastly, on December 22nd I got a new nephew, Colton Thomas :-) It was a fun break getting to know the new little guy and an enjoyable Christmas. Can you tell my dog was enjoying her break?

Grinch Day!

Teachers dressed up for GRINCH DAY!

Pinned hearts on the Grinch for
acts of kindness!

GREEN candy canes!

Before winter break our first grade team had GRINCH DAY! We took "Grinchy" pictures, pinned hearts on the Grinch, visited our senior friends at the care center in our Grinch costumes (I wish I could share some of the cutest costumes!). Many of our little friends dressed up as Whos, Max, and The Grinch himself. Lastly we came back and ate GREEN candy canes while watching Dr. Suess's, "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" We had a blast!

TIES 2015

Wow! I have done an absolutely horrible job of keeping up with this blog, but I am going to do my best to now post at least once per week. 

So let's get on with it...

TIES Exceptional Teacher

Recently I was honored as a TIES exceptional teacher. I was very humbled by this honor and opportunity. I am currently attending a two day TIES conference. I have already learned so much in one day! I can't wait to go back tomorrow. 

The take aways from today:
1. Seesaw is a great tool to use for K-1. It is a bit easier than schoology and parent friendly. Oh yeah....it's FREE!
2. Connecting your classroom to the rest of the world through skype, google hangout, virtual field trips etc. needs to be happening!
3. Coding is coming and coming quick. Let your kids start coding and tell them the why!

Excited to share more take-aways from tomorrow!

Fun at #ties2015

Daily 5 - Math

It has been my goal to start using a Daily 5 math system since I SO enjoy doing Daily 5 reading. I took some time over Spring Break (yes…I know what you are thinking) but it was well worth it. I am on my way, with a lot of patience, to loving Daily 5 math. My strategies are a little "atypical" but I do allow the kids to CHOOSE their centers and I have 5 centers so I categorize that as Daily 5 math :-) I saw a neat idea on Pinterest (or a million neat ideas) and thought I could tackle this one and was confident I could make it work.  I needed to find a way for kids to be held accountable for their choices to make sure they were not choosing the same center twice, because first graders are sneakier than you think! I purchased 5 dollar store pizza pans and one cookie sheet. I typed all my kiddos names, laminated them and put a small magnet on the back. I did tape the magnet over because many started falling off right away especially when the kids were touching the magnets with their hands. I put all of these magnets on the cookie sheet by the door (velcroed the cookie sheet to the wall) and the kids always start their day by grabbing their magnets and their exit ticket out the door is to put their magnet back, so their is no clean up on my part.

Once they get their magnet they come to the carpet and get ready for their first choice of the day. Unless they are with me in a group, they choose a center to go to and put their magnet on the corresponding pizza pan. They can choose math with someone (partner games), math with computer (math games), writing about math (journal), or math with self (math bins). I will post pictures later of the math with self bins, but some of the pictures of kids completing math with self are below.


I do like Daily 5 math however it does include a lot of patience. Math time is usually a lot shorter than reading so I choose to do 3 stations with no whole group so I can meet with 3 small groups at my table a day. All of my teaching is done in small groups. I do try my best to monitor the other kiddos on what they are doing and at the end of each 15 minute Daily 5 time I have a "power pellet" student who worked hard the WHOLE TIME and used their stamina throughout their time at their center.

St. Patrick's Day

It's been awhile! A St. Patrick's day post is WAY overdo, but better now than never. St. Patty's day is always one of my favorites, however it is an "iffy" holiday as to whether to actually celebrate it or not -- but I never miss it! Even if my kiddos have no clue what St. Patrick's Day is or anything about leprechauns they all seem to enjoy the activities that go along with it. This year we made leprechaun traps (upside down styrofoam cups) to put on our desks on the day before St. Patty's Day. That night I brought the cups home and put them into the oven for about 2-3 minutes (3-4 cups at a time) and they melted into leprechaun hats :-) Of course, the kiddos did not know that I participated in this little trick. Instead they were baffled as to how the leprechaun was so clever as to shrink their traps into little hats!

To add to the fun, I also made little leprechaun prints using a q-tip and green paint, which is easily removable. However, don't ask me why my leprechaun hats look so similar to dog paw prints…not sure what I was thinking there, but the kids did not notice. I only heard a few, "HEY…these prints look like my dog, not like a leprechaun." I argued with them saying that they don't know exactly how big THIS leprechaun was and what he looked like. They agreed :-)
 Anyways, it was a fun St. Patrick's Day and one the kids will remember. This will continue to be an annual activity because it is one of their favorites!

Weather!

 We have just begun a weather unit due to some extra homeroom time! I thought this would be a fitting unit due to the 6th snow day we just recently had -- it has been a winter to remember!! (or to forget!)

We started by brainstorming about science, since this will be our first science unit of the year. We made science journals and talked about what science is and what a scientist does. As soon as the kiddos heard the word science their ears were listening and eyes were watching. This is a favorite subject of many because it is full of discovery and experimentation.

After discussing science, we jumped right into different types of weather. We brainstormed weather words, talked about the water cycle, sang a water cycle song and watched a short video before creating our own water cycle sentence strips.

To continue the excitement we talked about the "coolest" thing in weather which is the rainbow. We discussed how they form and who can see them. We also talked about if we could catch one, which we figured out you cannot because when you move, the rainbow also moves! WOW! Then we incorporated some similes into our writing and created a rainbow mosaic, which is being displayed proudly in our hallway.

Then we finally started the experiment that they were all waiting for. We started talking about cumulus clouds and how they form cumulonimbus clouds when they fill up with to much water. We took mason jars and filled them with water and I went around to each group and put shaving cream on the top of each jar to represent a cumulus cloud. They observed this cloud and predicted what would happen if they dropped some water (with food coloring) into this cloud to form a cumulonimbus cloud. When their predictions were done they rotated with their group members and put 2 drops of water mixed with food coloring into the clouds. In order for this experiment to work you must put the drops in the same place. Within a few drops I heard some groups exclaim, "It's RAINING…It's RAINING!" This was the most excited I have seen them in a LONG time! For other groups it took way more drops, which brought up a great discussion about a cloud's holding capacity and how some clouds are stronger than others and can hold more water before they let it go.  This was an experiment and a day these kids will never forget. To end the day we each grabbed a cup of water on our way out to the buses and since it was -30 windchill we formed clouds by throwing the water in the air. As expected, after this cloud forming there was a lot of filling up cups with snow to bring on the buses. Kids will be kids! Let's just say it has been  a "partly cloudy" week :-) 

100 Days! (I think??)

Happy 100th Day! Wait…is it really the 100th day? Who really knows…too many cold/snow days to remember when it is, but we got sick of waiting so we decided to celebrate! I decided to buy all of the kiddos white t-shirts this year and their job was to decorate them with 100 of anything! You can see that we have a pretty creative group of 1st graders. From thumbprints, to cotton balls, to paw prints, and beads…these were some well thought out ideas! 

We spent the afternoon discussing what we would do if we had 100 dollars, in which some of my favorite responses were, "I'm going to buy a MANSION!!!" or "I would get a car!"…barbie dream house mansion and Ken's convertible maybe?!? We also talked about if we would rather be stuck in a room with 100 butterflies or 100 ants, have to live with 100 snakes or 100 dinosaurs, and finally what we would do on our 100th birthday. Yes, yes…some of us do dream of pushing our wheel chair into Chuckie Cheese in 94 years..but others of kept it low key and just said they would sleep ;-) They must have great-grandparents as examples!

The other part of our afternoon was spent building structures with 100 toothpicks and 100 marshmallows. The kiddos had a blast with this activity. It challenged them to revise and redo to make things stronger/better which is very hard for first graders to do -- it challenged them to think outside of the box and it allowed my engineers in the classroom to get their time to shine.

The only problem that arose was when some groups came up and said, "Ok we need more toothpicks!! My response? "You only get 100!" Their response? "Awww….C'mon!!!" They struggled to then go back to their groups and use all of the materials. They learned how to work with friends who they don't usually interact with and to listen to all of the group members ideas. I was very impressed with their collaboration and their efforts. It was neat to see them in STEM situations!

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