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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Graphing with M&Ms

Well this was the last week before we start assessing and it is my FAVORITE unit: graphing! I absolutely LOVE graphing. I love planning graphing lessons for my kiddos because you can make it so fun and it is also a lot of fun to teach! To make it hands on for my students and to introduce them to graphing within small groups without filling out multiple worksheets we made picture graphs using tape, markers, and m&ms -- very simple, but oh so fun!

 The students couldn't wait to get to the table to sort their m&ms! By the time they came to me the third day they were writing comparing sentences using the words most, least, more, and fewer. We incorporated handwriting and phonics into this lesson, which is another reason I love graphing! This week we will be taking a (hopefully) small break from graphing so we can assess students before trimester 3 -- happy assessing!

February

More from February…in social studies this month we have been learning about black history heroes such as Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman and the Underground RR, and now we have started learning about Ruby Bridges. We read a story about Ruby's life and then brainstormed characteristics of Ruby before watching some clips from her movie.

 Also, another view of our room around Valentine's Day. We created WE LOVE LEARNING signs with our hand prints and wrote what we love about learning on each heart. It was fun for our parents to see what we love! Only problem was once one person asked how to spell my name, many repeat offenders followed closely. I'm sure parents were wondering what I gave each kiddo who wrote that they loved Ms. Howard on their heart ;-)


We have been updating our Sochi medal chart -- however, the USA is not getting as many medals as I expected. For all the hard work and time it took to make this poster, we better pick it up here at the end of these Olympics!!

Lastly, my learning targets for this upcoming week are posted below. Have a great week!

Valentine's Day and more...

Wow! It's been a busy month! This past week we just finished up evening conferences on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday due to make-up days. Even though it was long, it was worth it to get to have great conversations with parents. Conferences are always one of my favorite times of the year because we get to share positive stories and really SHOW how much we care about students and their families beyond the classroom.

Anyways, we started this month off by kicking off I LOVE TO READ month by using the Winter Olympics as our theme. Many of the staff members dress up as Olympians and paraded in to an all school assembly. It is one of my highlights from this year! The kids were going crazy and probably confused their parents when they went home saying they "high-fived" Olympic athletes today! 

Another "lovely" memory from this year was this past Friday, February 14th. I honestly had as much, if not more, fun than the kids. The day ended with a bad headache and having my head almost collapse on my desk, but the fun numbed all the pain during the day. We started earlier in the week with graphing candy hearts and then waited until Friday to continue our Valentine's celebrations. Students brought in their boxes and bags, handed out Valentine's in the afternoon, created "Compliment Placemats" for their classmates (LOVED THIS) and had a mini-dance party while looking at each others colorful, sugar-covered tongues! I can't imagine I liked those sugar sticks (or whatever they are called) when I was a kiddo. YUCK! Hope no one has a dentist appt. soon :-)

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

We are really ready for these Olympics to start! I feel like I have been getting ready forever, but we are so excited! This project was my mom's idea -- she used to do the making of the flags with her 5th graders for the holidays. I thought it would be neat to do a similar project for the Olympics. I used wikipedia to find all of those countries that are participating in the olympics. Each kid picked (without looking) a country and painted the flag after creating the template. I was so impressed with our first graders' skills. Obviously 28 first graders does not cover all of the participating countries, but we tried to concentrate on the simpler flags, however some are very complicated - they did better than I ever could!

We kept the paint out the next day and partnered up to make our letters "LET THE GAMES BEGIN." They could use any colors that were used in the flags. I set this up today, which was another "cold day" -- luckily I live across the street from the school so it is not too hard for me to go in on these yucky days.

Soon we will be tracking USA medals on the Sochi graph I made awhile back -- I am getting sick of looking at the same graph without any medals! I'm sure I will be adding more Olympic activities on here as the weeks go on -- GO USA!

Continents

With the Olympics beginning soon, I thought it would be only fitting to at least figure out where Sochi is and teach a mini lesson on continents. This is a very interesting topic for first graders. They love social studies and learning about things that are NEW to them. They have a hard time telling the different between a continent, country, state, and city. After explaining it to them I can understand why it is so confusing -- every country does it a little different. The most popular answer when asked "What continent do we live in?" was "MINNESOTA!" :-) We read about the continents, watched some live clips, which they couldn't believe especially when we looked at Anarctica and it was ALL snow and ice or when we looked at Australia and it was all black. They couldn't believe it was night time! I highly reccommend live cams (or live Skype sessions with people from each continent) to teach your kiddos about different places in the world. They were so excited. After all these exciting discoveries we made our own worlds on blue plastic plates. They turned out awesome and are proudly displayed in our classroom!

Digraph Party!

This week we have been concentrating on the digraphs sh, th, ch, and wh -- what better way then to practice them then with CHocolate pudding?? Of course I had to model how to hold the wax paper, pour out the pudding, set the pudding cup down ON the wax paper and spread the pudding out just in the middle. After a few anticipated reactions and comparisons, the "EWWWS" were all gone and all the kids dug in and got messy.

Even with all the modeling I still had one kiddo who had more on himself and his desk than on the wax paper. Also, one boy must have experimented by adding water to his because it was running all over his desk, but overall the activity went great. After we were done I got a lot of begging to lick their hands. I said no because I didn't okay it with parents and I am always nervous about allergies in which the kids responded, "I'm not allergic to anything!" Famous last words!!

The next day we calmed down a bit and did some work with digraphs that was a little less messy. We worked on the Smart board by underlining digraphs and saying the word. We also did a matching digraph game and a little Baby SHark dance by the learning station. We are continuing to work with these digraphs throughout the week, however that plan was halted today on behalf on the -40 degree windchill. Instead I am sitting on the couch updating my blog and blowing my nose more than I thought possible! Thankful for the cold weather especially when I am sick!!

More Olympics!

So I began yesterday by going back and forth on whether I wanted to brave the storm and paint the Olympic Flags with the kiddos (we had previously drawn our flags with pencil) when I hadn't really prepared much. Well, we rocked that storm! The kids did phenomenal and I am so proud of them. We only used 28 of the participating countries flags because we only have 28 of us and some of the flags are much too complicated for our little fingers to master, especially when using paint. Today we finished our painting by creating bubble letters stating "Let the games begin!" They turned out awesome as well. Pictures will be coming later for the letters.

 Each kid randomly drew a country out of a hat and then got the opportunity to paint that country's flag. Mr. Jamaica was pretty excited :-)



\Later in the day, we finished our snow creatures. When I was gone this past Monday I had the sub work on some hats, mittens, and boots with the class. They were to put what they liked about winter on each clothing item.

After all was cut out they could make whatever snow creature they would like. The favorite creature was the snake. I happen to think it was because it was the easiest, but they seem to think differently! Many did snowmen and some did snow people!

 Later after finishing our snow creatures we worked on some more -ck phonics work, by matching pictures and words on the smart board. This was quite the day. There was a lot of energy surrounding our room! The best part of my day however was my new little puppy coming to visit my classroom! She is adorable and I can't wait to get home everyday to see her! I can't wait to show my kids this picture tomorrow. They won't believe she was in the classroom!