What I'm Loving Wednesday

Wednesday is already here!! I love that my weeks feel so quick. :)

I'm loving my class! They are working hard and (hopefully) learning a lot. Every morning, they have part of a handwriting packet to do, and almost all of the students go on past where they are supposed to stop every day because they say they love handwriting so much. I can't really complain about them wanting to practice handwriting..... haha.

I'm loving our class's new book boxes!

 Inspired (once again) by the amazing Lindsey at The Teacher Wife, I ran out to IKEA last week to buy these book boxes. They were 5 for $1.99!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How can you even beat that? My kids are obsessed with them and they have been super excited about decorating them. I'm hoping this excitement transfers to the books housed inside. They were sad when I said they could only put 5 books in their boxes!

On a related note, I'm loving IKEA. I never wanted to leave!!! Too bad it is about an hour away. Worth the drive, for sure. :)

I'm loving our space unit! Today we made little models of how the sun lights part of the earth while the other part has night. They were pretty simplistic but the kids were just amazed. They were also amazed at the quality of the picture that I'm posting of the finished product. They think I am a great photographer, haha!

 I'm loving International Peace Day. I read two books in honor of this awesome day: Can You Say Peace? by Karen Katz and The Peace Book by Todd Parr (whom I love).

And of course, we did corresponding activities for each book! For Can You Say Peace?, I found a little reader's theater that goes along with the book in a Library Sparks magazine. It is really cute and perfect for first and second graders! Each kid represents one country, so they say, for example: "My name is Carlos. I live in Mexico. I say paz." There are 11 different countries featured in the book, and they aren't all European countries!!! Hooray!! We have been practicing like crazy and we're going to perform for each class on Friday! For The Peace Book, after reading it, we created our own version. The students had to write, "Peace is ____________" and fill it in with their idea of peace. They did a good job!

 I'm loving taking walks with my mom and pupster at our local conservation area!

I'm loving our new bathroom passes that I got from First Grade O.W.L.S.! The little plastic frames to hold them were only 95 cents at Walmart and they adapted to this change in routine really fast. Yeah! And they are super cute. :)

I'm loving that Jennifer from Rowdy in First Grade awarded me with the Versatile Blogger Award!!!! I am still so surprised!! I will make that post tomorrow maybe. But it really made my day and week!! :) :)

And finally, I'm loving my boyfriend because is the bomb dot com! We went out for Chinese last night and it was deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelicious and made for a great lunch today!

Not only am I linking up with What I'm Loving Wednesday, but I'm also linking up with Ms. Kerri and Her Krazy Kindergarten for her positive things linky party!!

The Sun, Collaboration, and Free Educational Clip Art

We had a fun and successful week in first and second grades! I'm doing better with being consistent about behavior expectations, and the kids are really catching on to routines without me constantly reminding them. I am a happy camper. :)

I mentioned on Wednesday that we had started our space unit. On Thursday, we studied the sun. Our Science book included a little song about the sun to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. We didn't sing it... we just said it like a poem because, although I know the kids are only 6 and 7 and I shouldn't be self-conscious about singing in front of them.... I still am. Haha! Anyway, the song was legit and included a TON of facts about the sun. Then we made a little graphic organizer about the sun, but I forgot to take a picture of it!

Afterwards, I borrowed an idea from Mrs. M at The Techy Teacher and we watercolored pictures of the sun! Watercolors were not on my students' supply lists, but our awesome art teacher told me about the huge basket of watercolors in the art room! The kids were SO EXCITED about painting and they did so well! I started to explain watercolor expectations to them, but they informed me that they knew how to watercolor...... and they were right! No issues. :)

I left Mrs. M's examples on the TV screen so they could see that I didn't want them just to paint a yellow sun and call it a day. They did really well and I hung them up after school!

On Friday, the third and fourth graders came into our room to read us the fairy tales that they wrote.

I was really happy with how my students behaved! When the third and fourth graders came in, I was like, "WOW, there are a lot of people in here!" Then I realized that between the 2 classes, we only have 30 students................... which is the number that most other teachers have every day. I'd like to pat you all on the back!

Last week, I discovered a free educational clipart website run by Florida's Educational Technology Clearinghouse.



They have over 65,000 pieces of free clipart there! It's not cute, but it is useful! For my math curriculum, we only have the student workbooks and teacher manuals, no homework pages or tests, so I make everything myself. This was really useful to me this week when I made the second grade math test and needed clipart of base 10 blocks or bundles of 10s. It's not just math too... there are many different categories which I have not yet explored. But definitely check this out and bookmark it. :)
This post is part of The Clutter-Free Classroom's Week in Review linky party! I'm excited to share what I'm doing every week and also I'm excited to get new ideas! :)

What I'm Loving Wednesday

Happy Wednesday, friends! I have not participated in WILW since August 3rd!! Holy mama. I need to get back on it.

I'm loving that I'm lucky enough to have a class of 12 as a first-year teacher. They definitely feel like 30 sometimes though!

I'm loving the space unit we started yesterday! I really haven't done any full-on units yet - just tiny mini-units on September 11th or Labor Day or Grandparents' Day. But after seeing a few other teachers' space unit ideas, I thought that would be a good first unit! I never really liked science as a kid, and I don't want my class to feel that way. I'm trying to make this unit as hands-on as I can! Today we did a lab which helped us understand what causes day and night. We made models of the earth with foam balls and unsharpened pencils and then shined a light on the ball, which represented the sun! The kids really liked this a lot and it was a pretty inexpensive activity.

Tomorrow we study the Sun!

I'm loving that my first Scholastic book order came today!!!

Even only having 12 kids, our class bought $150 worth of books! Although I have to confess that my mom ordered some books for my cousin's birthday... haha! But because of our amazing total, I got a ton of free books!!!

I had $10 to spend in both SeeSaw and Lucky catalogs, and then I got free book packs from both also!! This made me sooooooo happy, because I love books! And the kids were excited about my free books too since they know that they'll be able to read them as soon as I categorize them! Too many exclamation points!!

I'm loving my bff Nicole who also helped out my class by buying the Hunger Games trilogy! They were a great price and they came with a Mockingjay pin! Now we have to get together so I can give her the books. :) Also I am loving this picture of us from New Year's 2009!!

I'm loving this idea that I adapted from a someone's classroom pictures blog post! I don't remember who it was, but if it was you, please tell me. :) My students ask me ALL DAY LONG when it is time for snack or lunch or going home - at which point I tell them how sad I am that they are so excited to leave me, haha. So I bought the dollar clocks from Target, stood on a stool, and tried not to break my limbs as I threw these up on the wall. God bless my hot glue gun!!! The first graders told me that it still doesn't help them since they can't read a regular clock....................... oh wells. Hopefully they'll catch on.......

I'm loving the education honor society I'm a member of - Kappa Delta Pi. As we speak, I am participating in a webinar about getting kids excited about reading and writing! However, I plugged in my headphones and nothing is happening, so I'm not loving that so much. I also got my New Teacher Advocate magazine in the mail from them today!

I'm loving that my kids get excited about morning meeting. I truly have no idea how to really do a morning meeting, but we do our best and they really look forward to it after morning work and routines are taken care of. They especially love when I play Start This Day With a Song from Jack Hartmann's Hip Hop Alphabop 2 cd.

Okay, I need to figure out why my headphones don't work!! What are you loving today?