American Education Week Revisited and New Happenings

Well, I didn't quite make my goal of one post per day for American Education Week.  Here is what we did the rest of the week as a school:

Monday - Whole school read for 15 minutes
Tuesday - Thank you notes to someone who works at a school
Wednesday - Reading round-up ( we dressed up like cowboys/cowgirls)
Thursday - Volunteer Read-A-Loud in classrooms
Friday - My favorite book writing assignment

Here is a pic of our great guest reader and another pic of Ava dressed in her cowgirl gear.

 

Other happenings in our classroom have included our most recent inquiry project, which we did Friday.  The students came up with our question, "What can neighbors do to have fun in the park?" and they had to put together a puppet show to answer that question. They worked together in groups of 4 or 5.  Here is them working hard on their puppets:

Next we went to work practicing our parts. Then came the fun part, putting on the show.  I put some desks together and put coats over them to help "hide" the students. Their plays were a-dor-a-ble.  Some had stage fright at first, but they were so cute.  Next time I will have to take some video to post!  This group was playing basketball in the park.

 This group was playing on the playground equipment.  I love the slide and swings!

 This group was walking their dogs in the park.

Onto other news in my life....I am excited to tell everyone that we are expecting a baby boy mid-April.  I was so thrilled when we found out on Wednesday.  Everything was great on the sonogram, with no abnormalities that they could see.  Our little boy has some long legs, which explains why his foot was in my ribs all of Thursday afternoon ;) 

American Education Week: Day 2

Happy Tuesday everyone!  Today for American Education Week the students got to design their own bookmarks to help promote reading.  Here are my kiddos at work on their bookmarks:

 

Last week on Thursday, our school had Reading Night. This is where families come in the evening for games, information, and a book fair.  First grade was in charge of the sight word fishing pond.  Here is one of my students getting ready to fish and another student enjoying a cookie while at the sight word walk:



 

 

Teacher Tip of the Day:  If you see Ava's shirt in the picture above, you will notice that those are self-portrait t-shirts that we made this year.  I order the shirts from Rocky Mountain Shirt Company and they are only $10 for a youth and $12 for an adult shirt.  You have to have a minimum of 18 shirts, but shipping is totally free!  I have made these the past 2 years with my preschoolers, and I have found that my firsties love them just as much.  I love to see their drawings of themselves on the t-shirts all year long.  Be sure to check out their website here.

 

American Education Week

In honor of American Education Week, I am going to try to post every night with our special activity of the day and something that has been happening in the classroom recently, along with a teacher tip!  To kick off our "Reading Round-Up" was a whole school 15 minute read this morning.  The teachers knew it was today, just wasn't told at what time.  That just keeps us on our toes!  Here are my firsties reading their books in the hallway:

They just love to look at their library books and were super excited that we got to do it in the hallway!

Another activity that we did today was writing postcards to adults in the school to thank them for all that they do for us on a daily basis.  The students got to pick who they wrote their card to.  We had lots who picked the principal, some who even picked me, and some people that I was so proud of them to think of (cafeteria workers, Title 1 Staff, the janitor, etc).  We will deliver these cards to the appropriate recipients tomorrow.

 

 

On Friday we completed our inquiry project for Lead 21 (our Language Arts curriculum).  The question that the students came up with was, "Who works in the community?"  I was super happy that they came up with such a great question.  So, on Friday each table group made two community buildings and then we combined them together to make a mural.  Then they drew on the community workers that work in those buildings, along with adding other details like cars, clouds, and trees.  I think that they turned out fabo!



 

Teacher Tip of the Day:  Glue a pom-pom onto the end of your dry erase markers.  I used hot glue to adhere the pom-pom to the end of the marker, it eliminates the need for erasers!  The students love the cool erasers and get to pick what color they get.  They also like to use the lid as a prop up for their dry erase board, which in turn improves their handwriting.  A win - win!

 

October Art Image

Okay, okay.  I know that it has been a month since my last post, but things have been hectic! The first quarter is done and I had to do grades for the first time.  The last two years in preschool have not prepared me for the horror that is doing grade cards.  Don't get me wrong, they are beneficial and a good measuring tool, but it is hard to pass judgement on young six year olds.  I was soooo proud of my babies, as their knowledge of sight words when way up from where they were in August.  Yeah!  The daily drill during guided reading groups is paying off.  I am ready to move one of my intensive groups up to the first grade list.  This makes me uber happy.

On to fun art projects; we had our second Art Image project last week.  In the spirit of Halloween, we made oil pastel paint resist with jack-o-lanterns in the night sky.  The sky turned out purple instead of black, but I like that they now look eerie and creepy instead of just dark.  A big thanks again to Cori's mom for organizing and setting up this art project.  Here are some pictures of the project in progress and our finished products.  They look so cute hung up in the windows in the hallway.

 

I love how hard they are concentrating on their pictures!

 

Our finished products:

 

 

Hopefully, tomorrow I will post about our visitor for Fire Safety Week and later this week on how I run my Literacy Workstations.  Being pregnant is tiring, but I vow to be better on posting more often.  I am looking forward to seeing all my parents this week for conferences.

Constitution Day

Our school is a big believer in Constitution Day.  On Monday we had an Army National Guard soldier come and speak to us and then we sang patriot songs as a whole school in the auditorium.  It was really neat to hear 520+ students all singing the Star Spangled Banner and This Land is Your Land, among others.  It really makes you proud to be an American where we are free to express ourselves and our country.

We have 5th grade buddies which we do art projects and read with.  Our buddies came down and helped us to complete a patriotic heart, complete with a sentence that says why we love America.  I thought that they turned out darling!

My silly camera would not take a good picture without the glare of what her sentence says so I will just tell you.  "I love America because I get to go to school and learn."  How precious is that?!?!  Sorry I couldn't post pictures of us making them, but our buddies were in all of the pictures.  Go Red, White, and Blue!

Apple Time!

I am going to start posting twice a week (hopefully!) on the happenings within our classroom.  Last Monday, the 10th, we had our first Art Image class.  That is where one fabulous parent comes into the classroom once a month to teach art to our kiddos.  I am so thankful that I have Cori's mom to do mine this year!  Since it is September, we decided to do apple prints.  Here are some of my students creating their apple prints:

 

 

 Here is one of our finished products:

 

 I loved how they were all different and unique.  Some students put lots of apples on their paper, covering it, while one student did one apple of each color and called it good.  I love Fall and Fall themed art.  They had lots of fun with this art project and some even asked if they could eat their apple afterwards :)  Yuck!!!  I, of course, told them no and they smirked at their joke.  A big thanks to Jennifer for setting this up and we are looking forward to next month's project!

Classroom Library

 

This is a little late coming, but this year has been a whirlwind of activity since school started over a month ago.  Along with switching from preschool to first grade, I am also expecting my first child in April.  I am so tickled!  This is another organizational post, along with ideas for setting up your classroom library.  So far, this system is working great with my firsties.  Here is a look:

 The numbered bins on the top shelves are my student's browsing boxes.  Now that school has started, they have 2 books of their choosing from my library along with the monthly theme reader for our Language Arts curriculum and books that we have read in their group during guided reading for the current theme.  As you can see, I have lots of choices for the students to pick from to find a book. I  was just holing them up in the cabinet and thought that I would put them all out this year, except for a few that I don't want handled.  The books are sorted by Author or topic.  The big crate houses my Beanie Babies, which we use as quiet reading buddies.  The two empty bins will hold the seasonal books that I change out monthly.  The book bin labels are courtesy of my TPT store.  You can get those by clicking on the picture below.

 

 I also sell these sets in Primary Polka Dots and Plain borders.  I also have a second set of labels in all three themes to expand your library selection.  Here is a close up view of my bins.  Each bin is labeled with the large label, which matches a smaller label that is placed on the inside front cover of each book.  This allows the students to put the books back into the correct bin.