It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Christmas is right around the corner! We officially have 1 full day and 3 half days left of school.  I love Christmas and had so many great ideas to do with the kids back in September.  Now that the holidays are upon us, it seems there is so much I would LIKE to do, but simply do not have the time.  Yesterday we made our ornaments for the kids to give to their parents.  Today we decorated gingerbread men compliments of several grandparents that came to visit.  Tomorrow is my special day with the students.  It is our Polar Express Pajama Party!

I started the trend of decorating the classroom with monkeys from day one.  It has taken a turn and has become more of a sock monkey themed room.  I actually found some really fun sock monkey bulletin board decorations that I plan to put up over the holiday break.  Since we have started on this trend, I knew I wanted to make sock monkeys for Christmas.  I ended up tracing a monkey from the bulletin board set I found and using that as the template for our sock monkey ornaments.  We used sparkly pom poms for the sock monkey's hat and buttons from the eyes.  I also glued each students' picture to the belly of their sock monkey ornament.  They turned out really cute!  I included the template below.

Pictures from our gingerbread making are below.  The kids were able to decorate two big gingerbread men and one small gingerbread man.  The grandparents that came in to lead the activity used food coloring to color icing and then provided the children with paint brushes to paint on the icing.  Isn't that a great idea? I never thought of doing it that way!

This past week we learned about the sound of "ow" saying long o.  This was very fitting with winter and Christmas coming so soon.  I guided the students in a step by step snowman drawing project.  We used white crayon on blue paper.  After, we brainstormed sentences to go along with our snowmen drawings. See examples below.  They came out really cute!

Well, I don't have any pictures of the Polar Express stuff we'll be doing tomorrow yet, but we will read the story then do a sequencing activity.  In the afternoon we will watch the movie.  I will pass out hot cocoa and cookies.  Lastly, I will give my students the first gift of Christmas!! I found bells and red sparkly gift tags.  I put them in a mini stocking with a mini candy cane.  I hope they have as much fun as I'm going to!

Veteran's Day

Friday in our classroom we celebrated Veteran's Day.  This is a super important holiday for my classroom because one of my student's dad is on his way home from Afghanistan and another student's dad is a veteran.  Of course everyone else has grandparents etc. that are important to celebrate too.  But, since it is so close to home for some of the kids, I really wanted to make it special for them.

I asked parents to send their child in with a name and/or picture of a veteran they would like to honor.  We made Veteran's Day stars with the names/pictures of these men and women and hung them up on the wall.  The students also got to stand up and tell us a little bit about their special person.  It was really neat to hear all about them.  I even had one boy bring in a picture of his great grandmother.  She was in WWII.  I'm guessing she was probably a nurse.  The picture of her was so pretty.  I just love how women always had their hair all done up pretty back then.

Anyway, I had seen somewhere in the past, a bulletin board that had a turkey with the kids' handprints as feathers that said, "We are Thankful for our Veterans."  I thought this would be perfect for our classroom, so I did the turkey and then hung our Veteran's Day stars up.  I'm excited to keep it up for a week until Thanksgiving!

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I am going to take on the task of a Thanksgiving Day Reader's Theater!  I just love Reader's Theater!! I've never done it with students as young as mine, though, so we shall see how it goes! 

Election Day in First Grade!!

I have been bad about posting all the neat things that have been going on first grade!  Tuesday was Election Day and I knew I wanted to teach about the election process, but I also knew I didn't want to get too political.  For one, I am not a political person and for two, I had overheard the children arguing previously about Mitt Romney and Barack Obama (yes, they are only 6 and 7!).  I came across the book, "Duck For President."  I liked how the book talked about the process (ex. ballots, campaign, recount, etc) while still remaining fun and age appropriate.  After scouring the internet, I stumbled upon a great unit put together by Angela Rubin on TPT.  She had cute election activities to go along with "Duck for President" as well as literacy ideas.  The link to her packet is here: Duck For President.

We also used Time For Kids to read some non-fiction election facts.  Teaching and learning about the election was fun, but I am glad my students aren't old enough to vote!!  We all agreed in class discussion that Farmer Brown would be a better president because he was hard working and took care of his farm.  Once we voted on Duck or Farmer Brown being president, though, Duck won by a landslide just because "he is cool!"  Hahaha... Oh, well!  See pictures below of election fun in First Grade!! :-)

Campaign Poster for Duck

Campaign Poster for Farmer Brown

Voting Booths set up

Happy Teaching!!  On to Veteran's Day activities tomorrow!! :-)

Weather Field Trip & Responsibility!

Since I blogged last we have finished up our weather unit and we took our weather field trip, which was AMAZING!  We went to visit the meteorology dept at a local university.  They split the children into two groups and gave us a tour.  We went on the roof of the building and saw old and new weather equipment as well as some experiments students were currently working on.  The children liked being on the roof because they could see into the football stadium from the building we were standing on so that was pretty neat.  The second part of our tour took us into the National Weather Service office located at the university.  We saw the computers they use for forecasting and then we were able to see the actual weather balloon they were going to launch that evening.  It was pretty amazing to me to see that the balloon was located on the third floor, but the helium is piped up from the basement.  There is a door in the ceiling that opens up and the balloon is launched out the roof.  It takes two hours for the balloon to get enough altitude to pop (which is pretty much outer space when that happens).  When the balloon pops, they then have to go track down the "package" attached to the bottom that gives them all their data.  The last part of our tour was probably the children's favorite part.  We went into the weathercasting studio and they stood in front of the green screen pretending they were meteorologists.  We finished up the field trip with some demonstrations of air pressure.  Overall, I think the professor that set all this up for us is pretty amazing.  He as well as the other professors that helped with the tour, did this out of the goodness of their heart!  I can't wait to go back again next year!

weather balloon

green screen!

Our language arts unit that we just started is focused on responsibility.  I created a fun bulletin board using crayons as the theme to display responsibility.  The focus is being responsible to myself, at school, to my friends, my family, and the environment.  As a homework assignment last week, I had the kids bring in a news/magazine article about someone being responsible.  We decided who they were being responsible to and hung the picture from their story on the bulletin board under the appropriate category.  A while back, I had some grandparents ask if they could come in and do a sock monkey activity in the classroom, since they knew my theme was monkey.  I was also given a sock monkey book to read to the kids along with a sock monkey stuffed animal.  The book is called Sock Monkey goes to Hollywood: A star is bathed.  It fit with our responsibility unit by teaching the children that keeping themselves clean is part of being responsible to yourself.  So, we read that story and then the grandparents came in and led the class in an activity of making sock monkeys on paper.  It was really fun to see their creativity and I'm excited to hang them up!

close up of the board

whole bulletin board

working on their sock monkeys

trying to figure out how to make that paper into a shirt

 Well, fall carnival is next week and our booth is going to be an alphabet duck pond! Stay tuned for pics!

Rainbows and Adjectives!

This week we learned about rainbows in first grade.  We talked about how rainbows form and looked at pictures of them on the computer.  Next, I taught the kids the colors of the rainbow.  To help us remember the colors, we created Mr. Roy G Biv to help us out! Thanks to Made for First Grade for the printable name tags!

The second rainbow activity I saw online somewhere in the past.  Maybe it was on Pinterest?  I started by reading the book EyeLike Colors to the children.  This book goes into many many different colors, including translucent and iridescent. To keep our activity focused, I chose to read only the colors pertaining to our rainbow.  After I read the book, I had the children color the red arch on their rainbow and write "Red reminds me of _________."  Then we went on to Orange and the rest of the colors.  It took us a three day span to finish this project and it was SO worth it!  I love what the children came up with.  One of my students said, "Red reminds me of my mom's world famous red cookies.  Orange reminds me of my mom's world famous orange brownies.  Green reminds me of my mom's world famous salad!"  Hehehe... I bet her mom will be so proud when she reads it!

On to a different topic, this week my kiddos also were introduced to adjectives in our Language Arts program.  One of my problems with the Language Arts program we use, is that they introduce a concept for about 2 seconds and then they might not talk about it again for months.  I think it is confusing to briefly introduce students to many small topics, but don't follow through to allow them practice with the concept.  SO as with nouns, I created some writing activities with adjectives and then for the "test" I had the students make "Awesome Adjectives that Describe Me."  I saw this on First Grade Lyons Den and loved the idea.  I noticed after my students did their "test"  that I mis-spelled adjectives :-(  (I'll have to send an apology home to my classroom parents before I send that project home! OOPS)

Possessive nouns next week!  Happy Teaching!

Precipitation and the Water Cycle

The beginning of this week we finished our cloud books.  They turned out great.  I discovered that I only have one set of watercolor paints in my classroom, though.  So, I had one student go around and dab on some grey/black water color paint to everyone's stratus clouds.  Note to self:  look for watercolor paints on sale so everyone can have their own next time!!

We talked about 4 types of precipitation this week:  rain, snow, sleet, and hail.  I used the chart that "Fun In First Grade" posted on her blog.  We brainstormed some words as a class to fill in the blank to describe each type of weather.  Words we came up with were wet, cold, round, etc. Then, I had the children choose one word to fill in the blank and draw a picture of the type of precipitation.  Since we live in FL, sleet was fun to explain!! See picture below:

We made a classroom thunderstorm together, which I was so excited to share with the kids!  I remember doing it when I was little and I've done it with camp kids in the past.  Everyone always loves it.  It goes like this: 

It all begins on a windy day. (Have students rub hands together slowly.)
The wind begins to blow hard. (Rub hands together quickly.)
Suddenly, big rain drops begin to drop from the sky. (Snap fingers slowly, then quicken the pace.)
Can you hear the rain drops coming faster and harder? (Clap hands for downpour!)
Oh no! It’s pouring! And what’s that I hear? Thunder! (Stomp your feet once and yell boom!
Continue to clap for rain.)
After thunder, you know lightning will be coming next. (Flick classroom lights.)
(Repeat the thunder and lightning pattern a few times. When ready, make the storm pass.)
Just like any storm, I think this storm is going away. (Begin snapping fingers quickly.)
It seems like there are just a few drops left. (Snap fingers slowly.)
There’s the quiet wind again. (Rub palms together.)
And, look, the sun comes out. It’s a nice quiet day again. (Turn lights back on.)

After learning the types of precipitation, we talked about what happens to the puddles that form during the rain.  The kids gave me all kinds of thoughts of where the rain goes, but one child actually came up with the word EVAPORATION.  I have to say I was impressed to hear that come out of a first grader, but it was a great lead in to the water cycle!  We colored and labeled the water cycle and I taught them a song to help them remember the big, long water cycle words.

Water Cycle Song 

(sung to Oh My Darling tune)

Evaporation (bring hands from ground to above head)

Condensation (hands for a cloud above head)

Precipitation (bring hands down to look like rain falling)

on my mind (point to head)

Oh it's called the water cycle (make a circle in the air)

and it happens all the time (point to wrist)

And that is where we are at this point.  I am so excited, I have just got a field trip lined up to go along with the end of our weather unit.  The local University nearby has a meteorology dept and the head of the Undergrad program said he'd take us on a tour and do some experiments with the kids!! I'll have to give them some background knowledge on air pressure before we go so his experiments make sense to them, but I think it is going to be great.  He is going to do a helium weather balloon launch off the roof with them.  Now to get my chaperones and bus lined up!! On to rainbows and snow next week to finish up learning about weather!

Happy Teaching!! :-)

Weather Unit and other Misc. Things!

Now that I have a long weekend I can catch up on blogging about the fun things that have been happening in first grade!!  We started a weather unit and the kids are LOVING it.  Hurricane Isaac just passed, so they can relate to what we are talking about and it is fun to see how excited they get about learning.  I got the idea from "Fun in First Grade" to make a chart of weather words and then have them make their own little charts of words.  I had them list everything they knew about weather first (see pic below) as whole group and then instead of choosing 10 like "Fun in First Grade" did, I had them choose 6.  It was great to see how many weather words they could come up with.... I especially liked "drizzling."  Check out Fun In First Grade's blog post about it here: Fun In First Weather

Next we talked about wind.  We discussed "good wind" vs "bad wind."  For example, we talked about hurricanes and tornadoes being bad wind.  Then, we talked about good wind being wind for flying kites and cooling you off on a hot day.  I had the children take a large piece of paper and draw a line down the middle.  They drew one picture of good wind and one picture of bad wind.  I rolled the paper to make the top of a windsock and then let them glue strips of paper to hang off the bottom to complete their windsock.  They loved making the windsocks and talked about all the places they could hang them when they got home.  I didn't get a picture of them, but they were so cute!  Next year I'll make a point to take a picture!

Now we are on to clouds.  We watched a youtube video on the three types of clouds: YouTube Cloud Video.  We also visited this website to get another look at the three types of clouds: First Grade Learns Clouds.  One at a time, we used cotton balls to create the types of clouds in our "clouds" books.  On Monday we'll finish them by making the stratus clouds.

Some other random fun stuff that we have been doing in First Grade is cutting our spelling words out of kid-friendly magazines.  I thought of this one afternoon on a whim as a time-filler and the kids LOVED it.  I planned for it a second time and it was just as successful.  I am going to wait a little while before we do it again, so as not to overuse the idea, but it's a good one to keep in my back pocket! :-)

In Language Arts we introduced the topic of nouns, so I sent the kids on a hunt for nouns in the classroom with partners.  It was interesting to see which nouns they picked.  Almost all of them listed our classroom fish, Hunter!

Ooh and the last thing I wanted to share was my "Don't Monkey Around" behavior chart.  I talked with my mentor teacher and she said she thought my kiddos needed something more concrete to look at DURING the day to help manage their behavior.  At the end of the day I give stars out to the students that have good behavior and once they get 5 stars they pick from my treasure chest.  My "Don't Monkey Around" chart starts everyone out on the monkey.  If they have to flip a card for behavior, it goes to yellow and then red.  If they get to red a note goes home and they do not get their star for the day.

The first week of school!

Well school started on Wednesday and I have been terrible at keeping up with blogging about my classroom, but I am going to try to be better about writing more often.  The first day of school was SUPER crazy.  The kids kept asking me what time lunch was, what we were going to do next, and "do we HAVE to do this?"  While teaching is very exciting and fun to me, the first day was a bit overwhelming and made me think, "is this what I have to look forward to EVERY day?!"  But, of course, day two and day three were steps in the direction I was hoping we would go.
One thing that I did not expect from my little first graders was that they FLY through work.  I thought I had over-planned, but we did each and every thing I planned and at a couple times I wished I had more planned.  I filled in the blanks with little games and things that ended up being successful.
Looking back over my first week of school, the best accomplishment I had was to provide magazines to the students and have them cut out their spelling words.  They LOVED the activity and were focused the entire time.  It was kind of an on the fly decision to do the activity because I didn't have magazines myself, but the teacher next door offered up some to me, and I'm glad she did!  Sometimes the least thought out projects end up working the best!
So as I prepare for my second week of school, I also am planning my sub folder.   I came across a wonderful website called education.com.  It is free to sign up and they have lots of worksheets you can download and print for free.  I found a bunch to put in my sub folder and also some I can use this upcoming week.  We will be learning basic addition and I found a monkey and banana addition worksheet which is just perfect to fit my classroom theme.
I hope everyone else is having a good end to their summer and a great beginning to the new school year! Happy Teaching!

Classroom Library & Misc. Pre-planning!

My daily thoughts lately have been, "so much to do, so little time!"  I feel like the school year has crept up on me very quickly!  In just 5 days my parents and students will be coming into the classroom for open house and then in exactly one week from tomorrow we will have our FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!  EEK! How exciting, but nerve-racking as well!

So, what have I done since last time that I can share with you?  I've finally finished my classroom library!  This has been the most drawn out project in the room, but I am completely satisfied!  Greg came to the classroom with me on Sunday evening and we labeled each bin of books with a color and capital letter.  We cut matching color construction paper bookmarks with the same capital letter as their corresponding bin.  This will enable students to put their books back in the correct bin and it will also allow me to control exactly which books they are reading at what time.  For example, I can say, "please choose a book to read from bin Q"  and I know that the books in bin Q are math books.  See my pictures below!

Another thing that I have worked on to prepare for the kids is to label their coat hooks and prepare my name sticks.  Using name sticks allows me to quickly and easily pick students in a fair way for groups or to call on them for answering questions. 

I would love to share more, but there's so much to do and so little time!  Blog more soon!  Happy Planning!

My bulletin boards!

Progress has been made in the classroom on finishing up my bulletin boards.  I have also been working on more documents to provide to the parents at the start of the school year, but I'll blog about those in the next post.  Here are some of my bulletin boards and my ideas for how they will work in my room.

This will be used for our high frequency words.  We will add words to this board as the year goes on.

This board is a reminder of the numbers for the students.  I will add math vocab words as the year progresses as well.

This will be an extension of our calendar exercise.  Students will learn place value while counting the days in school.

This bulletin board will display the students' work.  The monkeys swinging on the vine say words like "great job" etc.

One week left until open house for the parents and students to come see the room! It's time to get everything wrapped up soon!

My Past Week

This time last week I was setting out on my first day at the 2012 Summer Institute for Technology Integration (SITI).  Four other fellow teachers and I drove down to Dunedin, FL to learn SMARTboard techniques as well as how to teach our students to use Higher Order Thinking skills.  We learned so much at the institute; especially my group, since we had little to no knowledge about the SMARTboard.  Throughout the week we created a 15 page lesson using many different strategies.
One of the greatest things I discovered was SMART exchange.  This is an online sharing forum for teachers to share the lessons they created.  This will be great to supplement my lessons without me having to re-create the wheel.  For example, somebody created a balloon pop game that is used for attendance.  I will bring it up on my SMARTboard each morning and the students can come in and "pop" their balloon so I know they are present.  I'll share more neat lessons as I discover them!
Once I returned home, I did go out and work in the classroom a little bit.  See the pictures below of a couple bulletin boards I am working on.

Monkey Calendar Bulletin Board

Our Daily Schedule

Welcome to the classroom!

Bookshelf Organization

When I received the keys to my classroom, one of the first things that I knew I would need to work on was the bookshelf!  Books were literally piled on it haphazardly and what wasn't piled on the shelf, was packed in milk crates.  I have a very strong need for organization, so I knew this would not work for me.

My first order of business was to go through the milk crates and make piles of similar books.  I quickly noticed there were lots of different types of beginning readers (mostly level 1 and level 2).  I put all similar level 1 beginning readers in individual piles and then combined all the level 2+ beginning readers in one separate pile.  After the milk crates I tackled the shelf which had more beginning readers and lots of random picture books.

My strategy for tackling the picture books was to pull out all non-fiction/subject related books and put them in piles.  I ended up with a history/social studies pile, a math pile and a science pile.  I also pulled out holiday books and kept them in their own piles so that when each specific holiday rolls around I'll be able to easily pull the books.

The rest of the books that were left were simply picture books.  There was a wide variety of hard and soft cover picture books.  I put these to the side until I decide what I want to keep on the teacher shelf and what I want to put out for student enjoyment.  I pulled Clifford, Richard Scarry, Berenstein Bears, and Little Critter books knowing that those will be put out for students to read and the rest went into the milk crate for me to continue to sort through.

I placed each pile of beginning reader books and the picture books mentioned above into a clear container so one can easily see the covers.  I also put the math books out on the shelf in a clear container with covers showing.  You will see in the picture below that I also have an old set of leveled readers in matching holders.  I placed these on the shelf for now as is,  but may change and put them in clear containers to match.  Also, Dr. Seuss books are free-standing, but will be place in clear bins once I purchase some more.

My next step for the student book shelf is to label these books in a kid-friendly way to ensure they are put back organized each day.  I am thinking that I will label each container with a number or color and put a corresponding color or number on a bookmark that will stay inside the book.  I will teach the students to refer to that bookmark when returning a book.  Also, it will allow me to do a quick check to see if the books have been put back properly.  I think by doing the bookmarks, I will be able to give myself the freedom to tweak the system in the future if I find problems with it.  If I were to do a sticker on the book, it would make changing the system messy. 

The holiday books are organized and placed in bins on my teacher shelf (see picture below).  I will do the same with Science and Social Studies once I go through the books more in depth.  I plan on pulling out sub-categories of these books and labeling them appropriately.

I am learning as I go.  I would love to hear if anyone has tips/suggestions for me regarding the best way to organize the bookshelf!Thanks & happy organizing to you!

Classroom Helpers

Something that I want to acknowledge from the start of the year is the use of parent volunteers in the classroom.  I realize that parent involvement changes year to year, but I feel like the younger the child, the more the parents will want to play an active role.  Therefore, in order to get an idea of what way each parent has a desire to do to help, I have created a volunteer form.  I have listed items that would be useful and helpful to me in the room and I have given the option of checking off all that apply.  Check out the form below.  I am going to try it out and see if this helps me to organize and delegate tasks in a useful way.

Open House Student Information Sheet

Our first day of school is on a Wednesday.  On the Sunday before we have an open house so the students can come and see the classroom with their parents for the first time.  Parents can bring the requested school supplies to the room on this day, so the children will not have to lug it all on Wednesday.  This is also a time for me to provide information to the parents on how a typical day will go and procedures they will need to be aware of while their child is in my classroom.  Since I am learning school rules and procedures myself, I am trying to be proactive about planning my open house to ensure the best result possible.

Today I was thinking that it is going to be most important for me to get personal student information from the parents on this day as well.  I have seen teachers handle this in different ways, but I think having a paper they can fill out will be the best way.  I am going to create files on each of the students and I can easily put the sheet into their file once the form is returned to me.  I have included a copy of my "student information sheet" below. 

One thing that I want to note is that an important thing to know about a student is their "special food requests."  Most teachers think to ask about food allergies, but since we have such diversity in schools today, that is not all that needs to be accounted for.  At a previous school that I was an assistant at, we served snack to Kindergarten students daily.  One day we served dinosaur chicken nuggets as snack.  One child went home and told her mom what she ate and the mom was very upset with that decision.  It turns out, the child lived in a vegetarian-only home.  She had never eaten meat in her life.  The mom felt betrayed by the school for providing her child with a food that she wished she not eat.  In that particular case, the teacher had never been told previously about the vegetarian household.  In order to avoid any kind of conflict, I was sure to include a spot about special food requests.
 

The start of a great thing

Maybe a little over a month ago I was offered a position to teach at a private school as a first grade teacher. All of my previous school experience has been in public school where there are classrooms pushing 30 kids, limited supplies and para-professionals to help with the difficult students.  The school I was offered a position at is the antithesis of the environment I am used to.  I am the sole teacher, helper, and aide of the room.  I will have less than 20 kids and I can teach with my very own, personal SMARTboard installed beautifully at the front of the classroom.  So, needless to say I accepted the position and I am so excited to finally have the key to my very own classroom!  I think I literally jumped up and down when I got it!  In the weeks that have gone by since that moment I have felt the whole spectrum of emotions, including feeling like I'm never going to be prepared enough to teach the fragile little kids coming to the "big" school for the first time! 

While I have been fruitlessly planning in my spare time for this wonderful classroom of mine I have visited many other teachers' blogs to get inspiration and ideas.  I found so many great things that I decided to start a blog of my own.  I am going to share my thoughts, ideas, experiences, and failures on here for other teachers to learn and grow from as well.  I hope that my blog is able to help somebody the way that others have helped me.  And, if nothing else, I think it'll help me reflect on my own experiences as I journal my way through my first year as a Bobcat (our mascot)!

This is what the room looked like when I first went to visit it:

Stay tuned for the transformation that will soon be taking place!  I am thinking grouped desks, work areas for centers, and a "Swinging in to First Grade" monkey theme!