Looooove Monsters and a Freebie!!

Hola friends!

How was your Monday? Mine was great, considering it was a Monday. My class is really excited about Valentine's Day but they weren't being too overly crazy today so hooray for that!

Today we prepped our Valentine holders for tomorrow. I got this idea (and the templates) from Amber at Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher. I just found her through Chrissy's linky party and I was instantly loving the love monsters. My class died of happiness when I showed them my sample.

She spent a lot of time on hers! It had hair and also nail polish, which you can't see in this picture.

Last week, we made hearts for our wire thing! I got the template from Mrs. Bainbridge. They loved these even though no one understood how to weave them and basically one of the second graders and I did everyone's hearts for them. Whatev.

Tomorrow I have a pretty fun day planned, I think. For writing, we have been working on 5-sentence paragraphs, so today we started working on a Valentine which will incorporate paragraph writing! They had to write it to someone in their family about why they were the best sister ever, or brother, or mom, whatever. They needed a topic sentence, three body sentences, and a closing sentence. We wrote our sloppy copies today and I was so very proud of them! A few friends think that "bald and cool" is a sentence, so we're not quiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite there yet, but I'd say 80% of them can easily write a 5-sentence paragraph with no prompting from me!

I'll show you the finished product tomorrow, but for now, I want to share a little freebie for ya. For this writing project tomorrow, I needed heart writing paper and I couldn't find anything that I liked. So I made my own. It is nothing special but the lines are big enough that my kids can write on them and can fit their whole paragraph on there!

Just click on the little preview to go there! I'd be super happy if you left me a comment if you're able to use it!

I am excited for Valentine's Day tomorrow! Are you? We get a non-uniform day so that makes the day 100% more awesome.

Making It Fair

Do you incorporate any skits or role-playing into your lessons?

I don't, typically, but today in Social Studies our lesson was about fairness. We talked about how to know whether or not something is fair. We decided, as a class, that if everyone is equal and doesn't get left out, then it's fair!

Then I made groups of 3 and they acted out a little skit of an unfair situation and how they could make it fair. 

The situations were mostly about having to share something... an orange, a book, a pizza, and a swing. Sharing is not one of our strong points, so I figured it would be worth a chance to talk about it again.

Later on, when 3 kids wanted to be on the computer during Math Stations, we figured out that it would be fair if each kid got to be on the computer for 5 minutes! Yay for Social Studies extending into our everyday classroom life. :)

I also wanted to share this cute display that the Preschool and Kindergarten classes collaborated on.

I overheard the teachers talking about it and I think that the preschool teacher bought a foam kit from Walmart to make the owl, and then she just traced the pieces and made a template out of them! If you're an owl lover, maybe look into that? It is really cute.

And I got an early Valentine's Day gift from one of my kiddos.

I'm not a cake lover so I passed this onto my BTF (best teaching friend). But how thoughtful!!

Guess what, people? It's my last set of questions!!! Thanks to Taylor at Baking... Crafting... & Teaching... Oh My! for tagging me. :)

1. What is your favorite thing about your job? I like spending my days with cute little kids. I'd much rather deal with their drama than the drama of adults!!! Also I just like teaching new things to people!
2. How long have you been teaching? Since August! I am a newbie. It is going to be so weird in the fall saying that I'm a second-year teacher!!!
3. What is your favorite grade to teach? I love my first and second grade friends. But I also really like third grade! I don't have a ton of experience over third grade... but as a rule I am pretty laid-back, so I think I would try out any grade!
4. What is your favorite children's book? I'm really getting into Splat the Cat books! So, so, so cute. I got Love, Splat and Splish, Splash, Splat from our book fair! Yay parents!!
5. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be? Well, one of my students is leaving tomorrow for Disney World. I wouldn't mind going there - no snow!
6. What is your favorite movie? Yay! I love watching the same movies over and over. I love Love Actually, Big Fish, My Cousin Vinny, and Wall E!
7. What is your favorite stress relieving activity? I don't really get stressed a lot... but I do like to knit. Mostly I love to read!!!! I love to fall into another world.
8. What are your school's colors? Navy blue and white. The kids have to wear red, white, or blue tops every day and navy or khaki pants! It is very boring on the eyes.
9. What college did you graduate from? I went to Northern Illinois University, NIU! I was on campus the day of the school shooting in 2008 on Valentine's Day, the 4 year anniversary is coming up soon. Very scary.
10. What is your favorite "quick night" dinner meal? Haha, I don't cook because I live with my parents. However... I love grilled cheese if I need something really quick! Or oatmeal is a favorite no matter what time of day. :)
11. What about teaching do you find the most stressful/difficult? I think it's just not having a lot of experience to always know how to handle any given situation. Like the other day, one of my students said that his dad told him if someone hits him, he should hit the person back. WHAT! No!!!!!!!! Please no. We have enough hitting and pinching and slapping going on in my class, please don't tell your kid to engage in combat in first grade!!
12. What is something you plan on doing this coming summer? I think I am signed up to take Reading in a New Language...... other than that, I'll be working at el banco and hopefully spending time at the beach on Lake Michigan by my boyfriend's apartment!!! Yeah!!! I love the beach and I love Chicago so much!!

And speaking of Chicago..... I am so going tomorrow!!!!! We are going to Chinatown so I can get in some clinical hours for my Cross-Culture class and so we can have some delicious food, and then we are going to the Museum of Science and Industry!!! I am so super excited, especially since I get to take the El!!!!!!!! My fave.

Odds and Ends ... and a Dilemma

Just some random stuff to share tonight! I'll make a list.

1. I took a few new pictures of some winter-y things in our room!

I already wrote about our snowman comparing activity, but since then, a few people at school were boggled by the display, so I added a title and took a nicer picture for you! I just printed out letters in a bubbly font and then cut them out. It was a little tedious but I am happy with the outcome!

 Here is our door right now. Nothing too fancy but it is okay. The kids love their mittens for some reason.

 And I never posted a finished picture of our January math quilt! Please don't mind that aquarium underneath............ ay yi yi.

2. I have been slacking on the Clutter-Free Classroom Project BUT I did want to update that I cleaned an area of my room!!!!!! I am super proud of myself.

Here is the before picture...

 And here is the after!!

That corner by the file cabinet has legit been messy since like week 1 of school. So it reeeeeeally makes me happy to see it clean!! I pretty much just threw everything away. I did relocate the linking cubes to a math area.

I am happy that this week in CFCP is working on our teacher area. Mine needs some help. :( My students tell me that almost every day....

3. I'll end with my dilemma. Today we started our new unit in Social Studies, which is Our Government. Because I teach at a Catholic school, my students come from very conservative families. That, in and of itself, obviously is fine! We did another vocab visit, like I did with matter, and I had printed a picture of President Obama, since he is our president. As soon as I put the sheets out to write on, I had a few students saying how much they hate Barack Obama, how their parents hate Barack Obama, that he doesn't want to have any schools anymore (???) and how he is a bad and terrible person.

This frustrates me on several levels, but mainly because regardless of how you feel about a president or his tenure in office, I think it's very important to instill in children that we respect leaders. So basically that's what I said... you can have your opinion, and that is totally fine, but we are not talking about how we feel about President Obama. He is our leader and he is important to our country.

Have you dealt with something like this? Or how would you have responded? I know I am going to be hearing this every day until I can figure out what to do. :(

December Currently!

I'm so happy the December Currently is here!!

This past week was our Gingerbread Week. We read 5 different gingerbread stories, compared and contrasted them, and did a few fun activities. Here is our CLAPS (Characters, Location, Action, Problem, Solution) chart which helped us compare each of the stories throughout the week.

As you can see, we read The Gingerbread Man, The Gingerbread Girl, Gingerbread Baby, The Musubi Man, and the Cajun Cornbread Boy.

They ALL loved Gingerbread Baby the best!

We made the gingerbread glyphs that I got from Denise at Sunny Days in Second Grade!

We also did a ginger taste test graphing activity which I got from Tales of a Teacherista! I didn't get any pictures of the actual tasting, but the kids loved it. We tried ginger ale, gingerbread flavored marshmallows, and ginger snaps. They could not get enough ginger ale!!!! And they detested the ginger snaps. We had fun. :)

Unrelated to gingerbread, we made new window decorations. I think 3 months was long enough to leave up our apples, right? We made Christmas-themed tissue paper/contact paper things this time.

Okay, go link up with Farley!

Yay for a Good Day!!

I had an awesome day with my first and second graders today!! They listened most of the time, they worked super hard, and all these minutes showed up that I never usually see!

I think it was because I was more strict than normal right when the day started and moved a couple of kids' clips down for talking during calendar. I hate moving clips down and I would much rather focus on positive behavior, but I've gotten pretty frustrated with the extreme amount of talking that happens all day long. So I guess those kids sent a warning to everyone because the rest of the day was just lovely. :)

Today I started decorating the room for Christmas! The other day I saw this cute wreath idea on Dr. Jean's blog and decided to go with it! I don't have any store-bought decorations so everything I put up is kid-made (which I like better anyway)!

Admittedly, this is not really "kid-made" besides that those are really the hands of first and second graders. I first had them trace their own hands. After two kids who took 15 minutes EACH, I commandeered that situation and traced all their hands and cut them out in my free time. Our secretary had that sweet bow template and then I just cut some little circles for berries! I think it looks amazing, haha!!

I also put up my Dollar Tree Christmas bell! It's so close to the door that it won't even ring but I don't care!!

Over the summer, I signed up for a traveling stuffed animal project on Second Grade Teachers' Club and yesterday we received Tyrone in the mail.

The kids think he is the best thing that ever happened to them. One girl already is bringing him with her to everything she does... math stations... P.E.... the carpet.... I have to try and find a little pin to put on his vest!

With Tyrone, we also received a book - Owney the Mail Pouch Pooch.

I am not going to lie to you, friends - I was not feeling this book. It is a true story of a dog who hopped on trains and went all over the place. The story was pretty cool, but it was exceptionally long-winded and I got bored reading it. In my bizarro world classroom today, the kids stayed sitting and silent for the ENTIRE THING. Whoa.

I also started Words Their Way this week!!! It was a little hectic yesterday trying to explain what we were doing in life, but today when I had them re-sort their words into groups, about 80% of them were super into it. Hooray!!!! Yay for sorting!!! I have 4 groups and only 12 kids.... on one hand, I feel like that's kind of overkill, but on the other I do have two grades and incredibly varying ability levels. So I am feeling good about that!

And on a last, more somber note, one of my dear little frogs went to frog heaven today.

I am not really sad about it, as I only had them since August and the kids never cared enough to bother giving either of them a name. And this experience has taught me that I am not a class pet person. I think I'm more of a class plant person........ except I have a classroom that gets no natural light!! My wall of windows looks at the building right next door and we face the north! Any suggestions on plants that are cool with shade?