Our Christmas Party

Happy first day of Christmas break to me!

Yesterday was our party and it went off without a hitch! I am forever grateful to the teacher I worked with in the spring of 2010 who always organized her parties in stations. My typically energetic and loud kids are very well-behaved during our classroom parties because they are in small groups being supervised by a parent doing a fun activity. Hooray for stations!!

Here's what we did at our party.

Our first station was math bingo! My cousin, Kelley, is doing some of her observation hours in my class, and I was lucky enough to have her for the party! Her bingo cards were super cute. The kids rolled dice and added the numbers together, then covered up the answer.

Another station was making candy cane ornaments out of beads and pipe cleaners! This one was brought in by one of my room moms. She couldn't come to the party, so she sent her high school daughter instead. The word on the street was that she did NOT want to be at the party, but she hid it well and worked great with the kiddos!!

We also played Christmas Cover-Up, thanks to First Grade Garden. This was actually pretty similar to the Christmas bingo game, but none of the kids seemed to notice... They would roll the foam dice and add up the numbers, then cover up their answers. Apparently no one won this game in any of the rotations. Oh wells!

And our last station was two-in-one. First, we made magic reindeer food out of oatmeal and glitter. I used the tags found here. The reindeer clip art is a little weird-looking, but we don't have a color printer at school and I didn't want to use a ton of ink. Because this took a total of 2 seconds to scoop out some reindeer food, I also gave them something fun - a Christmas crypto-code puzzle from Super Teacher Worksheets. They love decoding these things, and it was a little brain break during the party.

After the stations were finished, it was food and present time!

I wanted to have a breakfast party, since we only had a half day. So we had a fruit tray, mini bagels with cream cheese, and apple and orange juice. So delicious and pretty nutricious! And, this is really shocking, NO ONE brought cupcakes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was so happy, especially after the four sets of cupcakes at Halloween.

Here's a closeup of the beautiful fruit tray. Sadly, by the time I got to it, the strawberries were long gone. :(

And then we handed out gifts. These were the gift bags I gave my kids. Inside was a Scholastic book that I picked out for each kid specifically and a Smencil, which they LOVED! The bags say "Jesus loves you snow much." Oriental Trading sent these bags to my mom's work as a Christmas gift or something, but she works at a speech/occupational therapy center, so they couldn't really use them. So I really lucked into these bags! And they held all of the kids' stuff pretty well.

A few kids brought in goody bags for the other kids. They had candy or little toys or games inside. It was really sweet! But kind of a crazy mess. They loved it though. And look! Someone got Pete the Cat for Christmas!! :)

I got some sweet gifts too! I got a Thirty-One Organizing Utility Tote that looks just like this! Mine is downstairs so I borrowed this picture from Mommy of Two Little Monkeys. Mine says "A+ Teacher" in pink!!

I also got a super cute snowman treat dish! I am in love with this thing because I have none of my own Christmas decorations. When I move out someday, I am going to have the saddest house at Christmas time. Now it will be a little more jolly!!!!

I am very thankful this Christmas for having a job, teaching twelve little people that make me laugh every day, and having awesome room moms and the best future-teacher-cousin ever to make my Christmas party a smashing success!!!

The Birth of Math Stations

This summer, I read Math Work Stations and sort of followed along with the book study that was going on in teacher blogland.

The book was great, Debbie Diller had some sweet ideas, and I was pumped to get started. However, it didn't take long for me to figure out that stations were going to be hard to implement because of my two grade levels in one classroom. I only have 20 minutes per week with each grade level separately, so I don't really have a lot of time to teach my students the games or stations that I want to set out.

Complaints aside, I know I need to do these because I don't know another way to keep my first graders engaged in meaningful work while I'm teaching the second graders, and vice versa. So last week I bought containers from Dollar Tree to house some of my newly born stations.

Today I showed a few new stations to the second graders during my 20 minutes of just-second-grade-time! And I have them all thanks to amazing bloggers.

First, I showed them Spin and Graph, which I just won from Kelli at Castles and Crayons

In this station, the students spin a spinner 10 times and make a bar graph of the results. Then they answer a few questions about them. I found that using a paper clip as the spinner worked well for me instead of the arrow. I'll probably have to adjust this for the second graders but they loved it so far!

Then, we played Boo Bump, courtesy of Denise at Sunny Days in Second Grade!

They LOVED this, I can't even tell you how much. When it was time for the first graders to come back to our room, the second graders were not happy campers. My two girls who can't do P.E. right now (broken elbow and appendix surgery?) brought the whole tub to P.E. to keep themselves occupied. I have to give a shout out to Meredith for the heads-up about the Halloween erasers in the Target Dollar Spot! They complement Boo Bump perfectly because they're flat. The kids CAN NOT get enough of this game, which will hopefully be awesome for their math skills!

And I just threw it this now-favorite so we could all have something to do, Cupcake Facts, which I downloaded from Alisha at The Bubbly Blonde.

In this game, students match the addition problem on the cupcake top to the sum on the cupcake stump (yeah Seinfeld!). Since I don't have a color printer, I printed the super cute Halloween-themed cupcakes on colored cardstock. Unfortunately.... that makes the game a lot easier, since the pinks always get matched with the pinks. Note to self - print on the same color cardstock next time, haha!

And lastly, I just wanted to give a shout out (not that he needs one...) to the amazing Mo Willems because Happy Pig Day! was just released into bookstores today!

Can't wait to read it. :)

What I'm Loving ... Thursday?

I just realized it isn't Wednesday. I mean, I knew it all day, but the whole way home from school I was thinking about what to write for WILW this week. Apparently it's Thursday so today it is WILT!! Wilt!

I'm loving my class, again. They're a handful and we have a lot of emotions running through our 12 little bodies, but they are funny and I like being their teacher. Today, as I was setting my phone timer for an activity in Math, the first graders asked if I was calling my boyfriend. I said, "Why would I call him now? We are in the middle of math!" And one girl said, "You could call him and say, 'I'm teaching the kids! Don't talk to me!'" (said in a very angry voice). They make me laugh a lot.

I'm loving the baby steps I'm taking towards Math Work Stations! Finally! It only took 32 days of school!! I want to have my management board set up by Monday because I forgot to finish taking pictures of the kids. So far I have 3 stations set up, so over the weekend I should come up with 3 more so they can have a little variety in their lives. I will keep you all posted because today we (sort of) did them and it worked out really well! Except - I have an odd number of first graders and an odd number of second graders. Do you all make groups of 3? Because my groups of 2 worked together way better than my groups of 3, but I don't want to isolate anybody... hmm.

I'm loving that I learned how to use the little laminator at school today! Now I understand why everyone loves personal laminators. I think I should probably buy my own sleeves so that I don't get yelled at for depleting the resources.

I'm loving the post office down the street from my school! Our class is participating in the postcard exchange hosted by Primary Graffiti and The Techy Teacher, and today I called to see if my class could take a field trip there next week so we can be more invested in our postcard sending. They were cool with it and we're going in a week! There are definitely perks to teaching in a small town.

I'm loving Adventure to Fitness!!!!!!!! A lot!!!! Since I'm in a private school, I can't sign up because my school is not a choice. I've probably sent them 5 requests and they are just ignoring me. So, I asked my wonderful sister to sign up on my behalf and now my kids LOVE running with Mr. Marc! We've already had 3 days worth of indoor recess this week and this has saved me in a huge way.

I'm loving these super cute apples we made yesterday!

I got the idea from The First Grade Parade. It was really easy (I used contact paper) and the kids really liked it. Sadly we haven't had sun to shine through the tissue paper yet but they are so beautiful regardless. :)

I'm loving another thing about my students. They are really good at making up excuses for stuff in their own lives, so whenever something goes wrong in my room, they always come up with a reason for it. For example, we watched a little video about the planets today, and the audio kept skipping. It was super annoying. One of the kids was like, "It's fine, it's just because the planets are so far from the radio tower." I was like, "..... I'm sure that's it." They never get upset about anything! It is so funny.

Oh - I need a bit of advice. I have a student who literally will not do anything unless I stand there and tell him to. Like, he won't even write his name on his paper unless I prompt him. Today we did dictation, and at the end I collected their papers, and he literally wrote nothing. The whole time! My first graders are very dependent as a whole, but this is confusing to me. Any words of wisdom??

Math Work Stations - Chapter 3

The latest chapter of Math Work Stations was very helpful, as it described how to set up stations and how to start using them. Debbie Diller had so many examples of mini-lessons and actual conversations teachers can start with students to explain expectations and how the stations work. This is SUCH a great resource!

Here are my answers to the Guided Questions for this chapter!

What should your math work stations look like, sound like, and feel like? This reminds me of the Daily Five framework, where you make anchor charts with students so that they know your expectations for that period of time. I definitely agree with the examples that the book showed. Students should be working the whole time, taking turns, speaking quietly with their partners (about math!), and using appropriate math vocabulary. I think making an anchor chart to remind the students is a great idea - it gives them ownership of the whole situation!

What does your management board look like? Although I am so tempted to purchase Debbie Diller's pocket chart ASAP, I really need to be saving my money... I did see a teacher who implemented her literacy stations, and that teacher created a setup similar to the Really Good Stuff pocket chart, but on her bulletin board. It worked out really well. She used student pictures, and they LOVED that, so I think I will do that next year, too!

How do you support math vocabulary (math talk cards) in your stations? I am planning on implementing Academic Vocabulary in my classroom next year, so this really goes hand-in-hand with that. When I was teaching 5th-8th grade math for six weeks at my school during this past school year, I had students in every section who struggled with what I saw as basic math vocabulary when they were solving word problems. It worried me, so I want to give my students a solid foundation by exposing them to the vocabulary in 1st and 2nd grades. Anyway, I'd be sure to bring up applicable math vocabulary during our Academic Vocab time in the morning, and then we could definitely make the math talk cards as a class to put inside the tubs. I loved her idea of the conversation bubble - how cute! And it makes the math talk cards stand out.

I am starting to feel a lot less stressed about this now. The first two chapters really had me worried, since I haven't been able to check out my math manipulatives and materials. The more I thought about all the work I have to get these stations up and running, the more stressed I was! But Debbie Diller's awesome, concrete tips in this chapter are easing my mind. Thanks, Debbie!! :)

Check out Mrs. Parker's blog to see other teachers' reflections and ideas about Chapter 3!

Math Work Stations - Chapter 1 & 2

So I am a day behind on the book study blog party... but it is because my book just came TODAY!

I love that it is spiral-bound and the spiral is red! Also in the mail, I got Dear Abby's Healthy Moms Advice Kit! I got five copies of a selection of the FDA's publications for Women's Health. I'm hanging onto these just in case a mom of one of my students ever sees a need! I have a ton of government-made publications in my life that I've ordered for my classroom because they are FREE!

Anyway, I got right to work reading chapters one and two. Sadly, I really do not have a lot to contribute so far because I'm just starting next year! I am really hoping that I will have lots of math manipulatives - but I teach at a private school and it seems like they don't typically buy "stuff" that comes with curricula... mostly just the textbooks and teacher's manual. But we'll see! I really need to get in there and organize everything. Chapter two was especially helpful and I will definitely bring the book with me to keep me going in the right direction. :)

I've never been in a classroom that has used any kind of independent math centers or stations - only whole-group instruction. Clearly that is not the best method for the students. I think I have my work cut out for me trying to implement math work stations in the fall, it being my first year teaching, but I can't bring myself to just teach whole-group!

One question I have for everyone - I'm teaching a 1/2 split class in the fall, and math is taught separately. I'm not sure how I will be able to teach both grades separately, and do math work stations, and do small group teaching! Does anyone have experience with this, or have any helpful tips that I could use? I would appreciate anything you have to offer. :)

Check out Mrs. Wills's blog for other teachers' AWESOME reflections on these chapters!