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!

Tens Sticks!

Today, we spent time in our math groups working with our 10 sticks that we had created last week. We used popsicle sticks and glued jewels to them -- the kiddos had so much fun and it made they couldn't wait to work with them today!

 We worked on counting by 10s, as our learning target for the week is counting to 100 by 10s using tens sticks and dimes. We also talked about how many sticks it would take to make 100 and then made equations such as 50+50=100, 60+40=100 etc. These first graders were pretty excited that they were making such big equations!

 While I was working with kiddos at my group, other students were working on iPods playing math games that I put together in 2 folders for them (on the iPod), and other students were creating their own story problems, which after assessing their progress, I have decided to create a story problem for them and just have them illustrate it for now :-)

This afternoon I was lucky enough to be a part of a SIOP training which is a training for providing sheltered instruction for EL learners. I learned how important learning targets and academic language is, especially when working with EL learners. Last year, I did not work with ANY English Language Learners so this year has been a wake-up call and a great learning experience. I love learning about diverse cultures and how I can best instruct those kiddos who are not native speakers.

One of the best things from this professional development was http://eisforexplore.blogspot.com which is a neat website with so many activities and ideas on it! Try it out! Another one to try is http://www.speakaboos.com. My kids LOVE this site. I use it during transitions, especially when we are getting ready for recess or at the end of the day. This site is full of catchy sing along stories. You do have to subscribe to this, but it is very cheap and worth it!

Winter Olympics 2014

It is time for the Winter Olympics! The is my first time that I will get to celebrate the winter Olympics with my first graders since this is only my second year teaching. I love winter sports so I am taking advantage of this opportunity and combining two of my passions: sports and teaching -- what could be better? The opening ceremonies don't start until February, but I wanted to get a head start and beat all of the other teachers to the library. I found some fun books and even a neat DVD explaining the winter olympics to kiddos. My first graders LOVED it! They most used phrase while watching all of the athletes compete, "Oh, I can do that!" -- let's just say they don't quite understand the level of difficulty of these events :-)

 I then made a graph in the hallway so we can keep track of all of the medals won by our USA athletes for each event. I made multiple copies of gold, silver, and bronze medals (hopefully enough) so we can post them by the correct sport when we medal in an event.

 The first lesson I taught the kids was about the Olympic rings and what they mean. We talked about how each color represents not only an area of land, but also a color on the flags of the participating countries. We made the Olympics rings by ripping apart magazines and gluing the little pieces together to come up with our rings. Yes, the one shown below is a first graders! They can be very creative!