Grinch Week!

Yes, I am about a hundred years behind in my posting! Grinch Week was last week but I have not had the chance to post until now. Boy is life getting crazy!!! I was forced to call in sick for the first time on Monday (however, not without an unhealthy amount of guilt and stress from wondering how my kiddies were doing that day...) and then there were parent teacher interviews and an endless list of "to-dos" ...I thought Christmas time was supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year? *Deep breaths* haha

ANYWAYS, despite the insanity of each day in the month of December, Grinch Week was a ton of fun! Here are a few of the activities we completed:

Of course we read Dr. Seuss's How The Grinch Stole Christmas and during our literacy block, we worked on describing the Grinch's character. Because we have just begun descriptive writing with adjectives, this was a great way to reinforce that new concept:

(click the pic to download your free copy!)

Next up, we did a fun little craftivity (inspired by the amazing Cara over at The First Grade Parade) where the kiddies had to come up with a clever way to make the Grinch grin:

Some of the answers I got were *too funny*

"To make the Grinch grin I would tickle him in his furry armpit and feet" (HA!) & "To make the Grinch grin I would give him a pet dog."

"To make the Grinch grin I would kiss him. He would smile all day" & "To make the Grinch grin I would draw him an in-line picture" (I asked what an "in-line picture" was and I got this response: "I would colour him a picture and stay all inside the lines so it was nice and neat. He would think it was beautiful." so precious!!!)

And as if those ones weren't cute enough, I got this one:

"To make the grinch grin I would cut his fur. That would be so he won't have to shave" hahaha

To celebrate the end of our Grinchy mini-unit on Friday, we got to watch the movie, How the Grinch Stole Christmas:

...and because there is never any "pointless fun" in my classroom (hehe) I took it as a great opportunity to cross off some media studies by completing a book/movie comparison! We first discussed what was similar and what was different between the book and the movie, and then the kiddies completed this worksheet:

(click the pic to download your free copy, along with another descriptive writing freebie!)

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This was actually a great book/movie for this media activity because the two were so similar with obvious differences which made it better-geared toward my firsties. 

Finally, I sent my kiddies away at the end of the week with a little treat:

"When the Grinch discovered there was no way to keep Christmas from coming on Christmas day, he devised a new plan...though not quite as mean, he licked all the candy canes 'til he turned them all GREEN!" ...Thanks again, Cara!!!

They just thought that was the greatest thing in the world.

Well, I may as well say "enjoy your weekend" since tomorrow is FRIDAY! I will be back soon to post about this week's Gingerbread fun! :)

Tables, Anchor Charts, Gingerbread, OH MY!

On Thursday, something mind-blowing went down...MY TABLES ARRIVED!!! I ordered them about a month ago and, because I was incredibly impatient and could not wait until the custodian moved the desks on the weekend, I took matters into my own hands:

I spent my night moving desks out, and tables in. Great exercise, let me tell you! 

Ah, the finished product :) Already, the tables have solved so many little problems that were making my life (and the kiddies' lives) unnecessarily difficult: Now everyone can reach the supplies, goodbye silly arguments! And most importantly, I can easily sit and work with the groups that need one-on-one assistance during periods of independent work. Plus they increase walking space and generally look awesome.

Anyways, enough of my obsession with my new tables. On to some learning! First up: Science!

We have been learning about energy and this week was all about energy sources and outputs:

(sorry for the quality...I had to use my phone since my camera wasn't charged!)

We also completed a couple activities from my Science Pack. 

 Moving on now to literacy; First thing every morning, after morning routines, is our shared reading and literacy centres. This week we explored Ezra Jack Keats' infamous book, The Snowy Day:

I love this book, and so do the kiddies! I realized that way back when, we talked all about nonfiction but I kind of forgot about exploring fiction...oops! So this book was the perfect opportunity. We built on this anchor chart all week: 

(please excuse the horrible printing...especially at the bottom :S)

For our Oral Language Centre, I stole this awesome idea from my team teacher: The kids take turns giving each other instructions of various details to add to a blank colouring page. But here's the catch: I put up a screen between them so they couldn't peek at each other's drawings. The point is that they had to give very clear and detailed clues {shape, size, colour, location} so that the pictures would be as similar as possible at the end of the week. You can print off this worksheet and others like it HERE (scroll down and make sure to click for the B&W versions). These two did really well!

Next up, after literacy centres, we have shared/modelled whole group writing and independent writing. We are now finished with Making Connections and are moving on to Descriptive Writing. After our diagnostic assessment earlier in the week {describe one of the four seasons}, I'm starting off this unit with adjectives! First, I read the kiddies a couple pages from this FANTASTIC book to help them understand what adjectives are (I found my copy at a Miko Toy Warehouse Sale back home in Toronto, but you can grab a copy HERE)

 Here's the anchor chart we built with this book:

Kids love to talk about themselves so what better way to introduce adjectives than to have them describe their awesome and unique personalities?! This activity is included in my Writing Focus #3: Descriptive Writing unit:

(I love it: "I wrote clumsy bumsy because my mom calls me that!")

Next we were given an impromptu challenge to decorate gingerbread people for a contest held by the Canada Post Office. So after a busy day of hard work, we had a little holiday fun and decorated our gingerbread with markers, pencil crayons, sequins, stickers, and tinsel. I ended up with some gingerladies, gingercats, and even a gingerzombie! And of course, I forgot to take pictures of the finished product (blame it on my foggy Friday brain) so this will have to do for now:

And that's it for now! The snow is falling and I'm off to hunt for my first real Northwestern Ontario Christmas tree!!! God bless us, everyone :)

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It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

The snow has officially arrived! It started off peacefully enough on Friday morning and then it really hit on Saturday...although I'm told I ain't seen nothin' yet! Anyways, here's a quick peek at a couple of our centre activities this past week...

First up is our Word Work Centre. This week, rather than having the kiddies produce a piece of work to practice an isolated skill, I had them working together to sort vowel sounds. This is the last week that we will be talking explicitly about long and short vowel sounds. I'm so proud of how well most of my kiddies grasped their vowel sounds! They really enjoyed sorting the words and pictures all week:

You can find the differentiated sorting activity below (along with my vowel reference posters)  HERE:

**2016: THIS PRODUCT HAS BEEN UPDATED!**

At our Writing Centre, I was excited to start our very first creative writing journal entry! Last week at this centre, I had the kiddies simply create a title page for the writing journal that we began this week, and will continue for the rest of the year. I have been waiting to introduce these journals because they will be such a great tool (and keepsake for families!) to watch the growth in each kiddie's writing from the beginning to the end of grade one. Grade one is SUCH a developmental year, so it will be beyond exciting to have a compilation of that growth! I waited "this long" to begin Writing Centre Journals because I wanted to make sure my kiddies had all the resources and knowledge they needed in order to write without frustration (basic writing rules and confidence, for the most part). Our first journal entry was "If I lived in space..."

This week, I used my Oral Language Centre/Investigation Station primarily as oral language practice. My firsties go all kinds of crazy for the I Spy books I have in my room...partly because the books are reserved for indoor recesses only. So when I brought them out for one of our centres this week, I swear they almost fell off their chairs! Rather than having them read and search for the clues given in the books, they were to take turns giving each other clues for an object in any given picture. This way, they had to use descriptive language, problem solving skills, and basically just positive oral language interaction. The kids were totally engaged and I was thrilled at the language I was hearing them use:

In Science, we finished off our Daily & Seasonal Changes unit and began our Energy unit. So far the kiddies seem to be enjoying this unit. We built upon this anchor chart all week to talk about the sun, and energy chains:

Okay. Now for the fun stuff! I'm an artsy person and I was slightly devastated when I found out that I would not be teaching my own visual arts this year (it is my super prep coverage). BUT, as is obvious from this blog, I often squeeze art into many of our other activities. So anyways, there were 5 of my 14 students away on Friday and, because of that, I did not want to get in to something that I felt was important for every student to be present for. I always have a bunch of meaningful art activities on hand, so I took the last block of the day to do some of our first Holiday Artwork!

The art teacher will be continuing texture with the kiddies next week, so I decided to build upon that concept. We made wintery scenes using ripped up construction paper:

 That's one of my favourite things about art; you can really see a child's individuality come through their artwork. All of the winter scenes were SO different. I LOVE howadorable they look altogether!

 Next up, we cut coffee filters and used watercolour paints to make beautiful snowflakes!

I have to admit, this was somewhat of a selfish activity on my part: I can't afford to spend money on Christmas decorations for my class, so I thought it would be adorable to have my kiddies produce the decorations! They *lovedddddd* painting their snowflakes and seeing them hung on the window. We rarely get the opportunity to use paint so this activity was definitely worth the mess!

Aren't they amazing?!

 Last but not least, we did a name activity--Christmas style! I love name activities because they reinforce so many basic skills. For this particular one, I had my kiddies figure out how many Christmas lights they needed in order to write their name:

They had to cut out their lights, write their name, and hang them on the string (using spatial sense!). Then, I hung them in our room:

(I was going to correct the backwards "E"s but I stopped myself because art is the one subject were the KIDS have creative control; it's the one subject where they can really just let loose. This, to me, is a symbol that grade one's are still just babies...They will grow SO much this year, and it's crazy to think that I get to play a big part in that growth!)

Okay, enough of my sentimental gushing! I hope you all enjoy the rest of your weekend!

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