100s Day, Skittles, and Silly Monsters, Oh My!

This week FLEW by and yet was such a fun one too! Tuesday, my team decided to take a personal day and stay at school to plan. It was so productive and yet still a nice *break*. We were able to plan through February in each subject, such a good feeling! Thursday was groundhogs day AND 100s days, my oh my! My kids really enjoyed their 100th Day Stations (1o stations with 10 activities in each station). For example, station 1 was "10 thumbprints", station 2 was "Solve these 10 equations" and so on... They were completely engaged for 1 hour, wow! This even/odd coloring sheet and 100s Day certificate was laying on their desk as they walked in:


Streamers!

Here are pics of the kids working on their 100th day stations:

In math this week we've been learning about graphing so I decided to do a graphing lesson I picked up from the Primary Perspective (thank you!) I started off by reading "More M&Ms Math". In the book it talks about graphing/sorting M&Ms by their color. My class had to use skittles instead due to a students's food allergy, but I think it went super well! Here they are sorting & graphing their skittles by color...

Once they finished filling out the corresponding worksheet, I let everyone taste 1 skittle of each color to help determine which color was their favorite. We then made this pie graph based on their favorite color candy skittle. Yum!

(sorry the pic is a little blurry)

And how can I forgot the adorable lesson our counselor did in my classroom this moring about "Manners". She read a story about a monster coming to school and breaking all the rules. Finally, when the teacher's had enough, she decides to send him home. The monster bursts into tears because he didn't know the 'rules' in the first place. The kids decide to give the monster another chance and teach him the rules.

My students then drew a picture of the monster following a rule and then wrote a sentence explaining their picture. I had some *pretty* creative monster drawings lemme just tell ya! haha! Take a look:




Here's my favorite "monster" picture and sentence:
Have a happy weekend!

Mystery Box, MLK, & Math!

Hey friends, it has been WAY to long since posting about my sweet kiddos this year! Lemme just say that this week has quite possibly been the L-O-N-G-E-S-T week of my life! I don't know what it was, but I thought Tuesday was a Thursday and I woke up Thursday morning thinking it was Saturday. What. A. Sad. Feeling.

On a brighter note, my firsties did some really fun things today which was just what they needed to finish the week off right! We started the day with a little Mystery Box. I mean, who doesn't love a little mystery box?!?! (and it fit perfectly in with our 'making inferences' unit!) Here are my kids getting ready for the big mystery!





Any guesses?!? IT'S A MICROPHONE! Wonder why? It was my way of introducing the important speaker: Martin Luther King, JR. I then read "Martin's Big Words" and the kids made the CUTEST handprint wreath (I'll show pictures on Tuesday!) They completed the MLK Weekly Reader with a partner and watched a GREAT MLK video from Discovery Streaming!


After lunch I COULD NOT find my math activities for today and began to freak out...then I remembered that I am teacher. I am flexible. I quickly made these cards that had questions like "My number is more than 58 and less than 80" and placed them all around the room. I partnered kids up and had them rotate to each station. Of course, I made sure they showed their work and gave me the right answer. The atmosphere in the room was great with lots of discussion about...numbers! Love it!



Anyway, that's all I got for today and SO happy for my 3 day weekend. *Sigh*

Versatile Blogger Award

"The Rules"

1) Thank the person who gave you the award and link back to their blog.
I just wanted to give a HUGE thank you to Annie over at Awesome in 1st Grade for awarding me this Versatile Blogger Award! Thank you! She has a great blog with LOTS of awesome freebies!

2)Tell 7 things about yourself:

-I've been teaching 1st grade for 4 years and LOVE it

-My principal and I share the same anniversary

-I'm a wife of 4 years and 'mom' to our chocolate lab Abby of 2 years

-I'm currently listening to the new Florence & the Machines CD (thanks to Sophie!)

-I'm currently reading the 2nd Hunger Games book "Catching Fire" along with the book "One Thousand Gifts"

-I graduated from ACU (go Wildcats!) and loved it. Seriously couldn't have been a better college for me!
-I was the Pledge Mom for my sorority (and I'm sure this is no surprise at all for those of you who know me well!)

3) Pass this on to newly discovered blogs and let them know they received the award!

Check out these new blogs and be sure to follow them!

Happy Oreo Day!

This past week our school celebrate our 1st annual OREO DAY! Our math and science specialist worked together to create some fun and enriching activities (yes, they even correlated with the TEKS!) as we celebrated a day full of black and white "oreo-ness!" We started our day where each child competed in an "Oreo-Stacking Contest" where they had 2 chances to see how many oreos they could stack with 1 hand.

Then, we took the winner from each grade level to compete in an oreo-stacking contest against the winners from the other grade levels! A 6th grader won by stacking, I believe, over 20 oreos! We also had the teachers compete in a "minute to win-it" contest to see who could get an oreo cookie from their forehead to their mouth without using their hands!
For our firsties, we made predictions about how long we thought it would take an oreo to dissolve in water, soda, and milk; and which liquid would take the shortest time. We thought soda would be the winner but it was actually milk! It did take over 24 hours though for the cookie part to dissolve, but the icing did not dissolve. They made great observations!


We also did lots of fun oreo math story problems (Ex: Jake had 3 fewer oreos than Adriana. If Adriana had 12, how many did Jake have?) Then we, OF COURSE ate our oreo cookies, and came up with a list of adjectives that described our oreos. After that, we listed our adjectives in complete sentences in our OREO booklets.



Other grade-levels completed activities such as making a book about "The Day in the Life of an Oreo" or using a balance scale to see what weighs less, more, or equal to an oreo, and many MANY more awesome activties! We also had a 2 graphs in our hallway. It was "What is your favorite way to eat an oreo?" We had the student's complete 1 graph and the parents/visitors complete the other graph when they came to our school. Then, the kids had a corresponding worksheet that we could complete with questions related to the graph. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pics of the two graphs. It was such a fun day and something our students will never forget!

Happy Birthday Johnny Appleseed!

Today my class celebrated Johnny Appleseed's birthday in the middle of our apple unit. I started the game by showing them my Johnny Appleseed voki character I made. The kids LOVED listening to Johnny talk to them and were so fascinated that he "knew" my name. Then, we read about him and began making our applesauce! I gave each child 2 apple slices that they cut in half (w/ a plastic knife of course!). Then we dumped it into the crockpot...along with lots of sugar and cinnamon! Afterwards, we made these cute little sequencing booklets.

Later, the kids labeled and colored all of the items needed for applesauce. I got this great little worksheet from Cara over at The First Grade Parade, thank you!!!

Later in the day the kids wrote down facts about Johnny and ate their *delicious* applesauce!

Oh, and I have to show you this cute little shirt I got from anthro several years ago. I only wear it on applesauce day at school! Love it!

Classroom Pics (finally!)

I hope everyone had a wonderful first day back to school with your kiddos! I have 20 beautiful little faces that I'm anxious to begin teaching! I really think this will be a great year! I have a few pics from my classroom that I'll share with you. I decided to change my "jungle theme" to something a little more "light" in color. I have more polka dot/stripes in pastel colors. To me, it makes it more fresh and soft on the eyes. Enjoy!

Outside of door "We are having a BALL in first grade"
Inside of door:
"Our work is something to TWEET about"
Math/Focus Wall:
Our 6 class rules:
Birthday chart:
Desks with crayon organizers:

Behind my desk:
BB I made over the summer:
Our class promise poster (it's now filled in and the kids decorated a drawing of themselves to go around the poster. It turned out really cute!