Teacher Week '13 & What I'm Loving Wedne...THURSDAY!

So I'm getting all kinds of crazy today and knockin' out TWO linkies!

Let's start with #teacherweek13 

(remember to use this hashtag when sharing your post on Instagram, too! I did! @funwithfirsties)

So today on the Teacher Week '13 menu is 

Taming the Wild: Classroom Management.

It goes without saying that a strong establishment of routine right at the beginning of the year makes all the difference. But it's also all those little things that help get you and your kiddies smoothly through the day. I'll be sharing a couple of "the little things" with you today.

First thing in the morning, my kiddies walk in and see this:

(This question was originally from our Spiders Unit)

It is a "question of the day" chalkboard where, every day, I write a different question for the kiddies to answer and discuss. I started this because, during that Morning Madness time where I'm trying to take attendance, get milk/hot lunch orders, etc., the kiddies are usually still chompin' at the bit to talk.talk.TALK. So I figured this chalkboard was not only a great way to focus the chit-chat, but also to set the tone for the rest of the morning (and quench my personal obsession with chalkboards in a chalkboard-free school). I'm always so pleasantly surprised with how engaged my kiddies are in their on-topic talk. It becomes a daily surprise for them to see what the Question of the Day is going to be.

How It's Made: I made it by simply painting over a 2-dollar-garage-sale-find-old-as-heck oil painting with chalkboard paint. And then I made it nice and pretty by painting the frame in a blue ombre style (with acrylic paints).

Note: Most days I will write an education-related question; whether it be reviewing something learned the day before, activating prior knowledge about a topic we will discuss that day, etc. But some days (typically Fridays and holidays) I will write a "just-for-fun" question.

Now, like many of you, I need to frequently change things up in my classroom...keep my kiddies on their toes! So, some weeks, I'll scrap the chalkboard talk and replace it with "Brain Break" videos on my SmartBoard. The kiddies can.not.get.enough of these. Their favourite videos are from Just Dance Kids, Just Dance Kids 2, and Just Dance Disney Party. Here are a few examples I found on YouTube for you to see:

I just pop these DVDs into my computer at school and we're good to go! The deal is, the first kid ready and in the class gets to press play on the ready-to-go video (touching the SmartBoard never gets old!). It's amazing how quickly kids can take off their layers of winter clothes when they know their friends are having a dance party in the classroom without them.

We usually do 2-3 Brain Breaks after the bell and then we are ready to learn! I also throw these on throughout the day when I see my kiddies fading away...it works wonders with their focus and energy levels!

Now for What I'm Loving Wednesday Thursday with Covered in Glitter and Glue!

1. David's Tea is always an obsession of mine. But I am LOVING my Bodum Stainless Travel Press...filled with *any* of their looseleaf teas. mmmmmm. Bring on the crisp autumn breeze.

2. My new Word Families Booklet! I struggled with teaching word families last year simple because I felt there were SO many of them and we were all.over the place. So I came up with this little booklet to not only help me organize my own instruction, but also give my kiddies a resource they can refer to throughout the year!

3. I am in desperate need of new PJs. I've been eying Victoria's Secret Cotton Mayfair Pajamas and Sleepover Cotton Pajama (one in every colour please).

Now it's your turn! Click either pic below to link up your post or just check out all the great things going on:

Run, Run, Run, As Fast As You Can!

'Tis the end of our deliciously fabulous Gingerbread Week! Oh, what fun we had. Here's a closer look at some of our themed activities...

First up: literacy centres! On Sunday, I made the most simple and yummy-smelling gingerbread play dough EVER!!! 

Yes, it looks like poop but it smells like heaven, and the kiddies were totally engaged in this oral language centre activity..."baking" gingerbread cookies:

At the writing centre, the kiddies got to work on gingerbread storybooks.

(I think I got them from Deanna Jump?? I can't remember...let me know if they're yours!!)

I added some simple word recognition by making this little "cheat sheet" and having them colour every word in their book according to the legend:

At word work, they had two gingerbread-y activities to work on. The first was sorting gingerbread cookie words on to word family plates. We have covered lots of word families by this point in the year so I added 5 new ones to give them a little challenge (-oy, -ight, -ake, -ow, and one more that I can't remember right now...oops!)

(To make the gingerbread cookie words, I simply printed off and laminated clipart I got from google-searching "gingerbread man clipart." After my lovely fiance cut out every single gingerbread man for me, I just wrote my selected words with permanent marker. Easy peasy!)

The second activity goes hand in hand with word work and our current graphing unit in math. The kiddies got to spin the word spinner and first tally up to 20 spins, then graph the results. I think this activity was part of one of Deanna Jump's freebie packages? Anywho, I love the cross-curricular application and the kiddies loved the activity, too!

And I'll just throw in my listening centre for the week since it matched our theme; They got to listen to Gingerbread Baby, which I bought specifically for this mini-unit. Gotta love Jan Brett!

Next up, we made some gingerbread ornaments just for fun! During math centres, I called the kiddies one-on-one to help roll out and cut their own gingerbread people. The recipe is super easy; it's just 1/2 cup glue, about 1 1/2 cups cinnamon (more or less to establish a doughy consistency), 1/3 cups applesauce, and LOTS of sparkles! The only downside is they take about 3-4 days to fully dry and you have to keep flipping them so they don't curl. But overall, it was a super fun activity and my classroom STILL smells delicious as a result of it :)

(I put a hole in each gingerbread head using a straw and, once they fully dry, I will string them with some festive ribbon for the kiddies to take home.)

At the beginning of the week, I promised my firsties that we could make gingerbread houses. I thought they would be disappointed to learn that we were using construction paper instead of real gingerbread, but they loved it just the same! 

They turned out AWESOME!!! 

(look at that one on the top left! It's hard to tell but she made a 3D door and added a very complex lock system to keep the house safe!)

Like just about everything else, I took the super fun craft and used it for a boring writing activity :P The kiddies actually LOVED using our descriptive writing period to describe their very own gingerbread houses. They did a great job:

Moving on! During our once-a-week computer period, I kept the gingerbread theme going. They got to decorate and print out another gingerbread house through one of the activities on ABCya.com. (If you have not visited that site, do it! It is a fantastic resource and, best of all, it's FREE! I love how it allows the kids to easily select the appropriate activities based on their grade. Check it out: ABCya). 

Next, (yes, there's still more!) some of the kiddies got to decorate a construction gingerbread person. I had this as a backup activity and it definitely came in handy! If a student finished their work early, this was the fun activity that they could work on. I love how differently they all turned out:

 Okay, I promise this is the last gingerbread themed activity I am going to share! On Friday, at the end of a fun-filled gingerbread week, I couldn't go without giving the kiddies a real gingerbread to eat. So, as per usual, I turned the treat into a math activity!!! How fun. 

haha but, seriously, it actually was lots of fun. I told the kids that once we each had our gingerbread men, we were going to take ONE bite all together on the count of three. 

Then we graphed the results: who bit off the head first, arm first, leg first, or who didn't even take a bite:

After graphing our results and discussing the data (and eating the rest of our gingerbread!), I had them repeat the activity so that they could graph the results and interpret the data independently. Of course, that meant we had to repeat the survey aka eat another gingerbread man :)

And then, after all of our gingerbread graphing fun was done, I sent my sugar-filled sweeties home to their parents. haha Sorry moms and dads!! Have a great weekend everyone! 

*one more week*

Get your FREE Color Monster lesson and activities!

I respect your privacy. Unsubscribe anytime. No worries!

Built with Kit

Pumpkins and More

To get our pumpkin unit rolling (pun intended!), we started off with a quick little art activity. I put only yellow and red paint on each table group and told the kids to paint an orange pumpkin. They were totally confused haha Then we talked about mixing colours and I showed them how mixing yellow and red will make orange. You'd think I had told them Justin Bieber was coming to visit. They were off-their-rockers blown away each time they smushed the two colours together and made a whole other colour haha Adorable!!!

Of course all of our morning literacy centre activities were all pumpkin themed:

We read the poem "5 Little Pumpkins" all week. I love tracing activities for my kiddos who need fine motor and letter formation/direction practice. 

(click the pics below to grab those worksheets)

(more examples of our pumpkin literacy centres to come next week!)

In science, our current focus is on how daily and seasonal changes affect people and other living things. We started with looking at how trees change throughout the seasons and so, after a couple days of investigation, I had the kiddos draw a summer tree, fall tree, winter tree, and spring tree:

(I'm still missing a couple})

Well that's it for now...short and sweet! Enjoy the weekend everyone :)

Thanksgiving Shinanigans

Happy Thanksgiving! We had lots of Thanksgiving fun going on in our classroom. Here are some of the highlights:

Because we are learning about writing recounts, I had the kiddies write about what they eat on Thanksgiving (because it is a recount, it had to be foods they have had on past thanksgivings). After using as many Ws as they could, we did a craftivity to go along with our writing. I had my firsties cut out some of the foods that they wrote about and paste them on a paper plate . Then I glued on some cutlery and made a simple hallway display. They turned out to be all kinds of adorable <3

(I found this adorable activity idea on Pinterest of course!)

 I also sent home one of my favourite family thanksgiving activities; I challenged my grade one families to help a turkey make it through thanksgiving by disguising it. I got some hilarious "turkeys"...

This one is a partridge..complete with real partridge feathers!

 This turkey has nicer legs than I do! Ou la la...

 At our word work centre the kiddies made word family turkeys...

 We also made thanksgiving place mats (which I laminated to make them spill-proof!). They traced one of their feet to make the turkey's body, and used their hands for feathers. Then the kiddies wrote about what they were thankful for...

 

That's all for now. I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving long weekend!
Here's a fun little Thanksgiving FREEBIE for ya'll: