It Never Rains in Florida!

Today we studied seasons and weather in Social Studies and made a foldable! I don't do a ton of foldables but my class really loves them. I think they're into the little flaps, haha.

They had to draw a picture of the season and then write a little something about the weather during that season.

Part of what we learned today was that different parts of the country have different weather at the same time. We talked about how people from Illinois go to Florida during the winter because it's warmer there than it is here, and then I learned from my class that it NEVER rains in Florida! Isn't that interesting?

In other news, our little zinnias are coming up beautifully!

And while I was by the window taking this picture, I noticed our sweet kite glyphs that are making our room so cute!

This glyph is from the Great Glyphs Around the Year e-book from Scholastic. 

I got it during one of the dollar specials and it is pretty sweet. I especially loved this particular glyph because there was no gluing involved! We have been totally out of glue since before Christmas... yikes.

And I leave you with this which made me die laughing today! I hope you're enjoying the last day of April, because starting tomorrow......

Leaders Foldable

So 100th Day sort of threw us off... and Chinese New Year... but we really are studying our government! Today we learned about our leaders. We talked about community leaders, state leaders, and country leaders.


They had no idea what a community leader was even called, so they didn't know their own mayor. Also they didn't know who our governor was! So we learned a lot. The funny thing was that, in our book, the governor example is Arnold Schwarzenegger and the president example is George Bush.


I asked if any of them recognized Arnold from anywhere and they just looked at me, puzzled. Five minutes later, one said, "Um, isn't that the guy from Kindergarten Cop?" Yes, my friend, yes it is.


Anyway!


We made a foldable type of thing to help us remember our leaders. I don't know if it really counts as a foldable per se since no folding actually occurred. Regardless, it was a type of graphic organizer and the kids loved it!

As you can probably see... we wrote the name of our community (which I have removed, just use your imagination) with the name of our mayor in the little circle, Illinois with the name of our governor in the middle circle, and United States with the name of our president in the outside circle! It also helped them understand that the president leads more people and has more power than the mayor and governor!


They took their bullseyes home today to teach their parents about our leaders! Although I found one on the floor after school..... boo.

Tomorrow we learn about elections! I'm excited to push a read-aloud into Social Studies - check back tomorrow! :)

Marvelous Matter

We wrapped up our matter unit today! I think I saw some tears. Haha! The first and second graders looooove matter.... it's a little strange, but I'm down.

So here are a few more things we did this week!

Yesterday, we played Matter Scoot! I saw this activity on a few people's blogs so I tried it out. If you've never played before, I will fill you in! On each kid's desk there should be a question (or task) and a number. You give the students a paper with an answer space for each numbered desk, and they move from desk to desk filling in their answer sheet. For my matter scoot game, the students looked at pictures and had to write whether the object in the picture was a solid, liquid, or gas and a property of the object.

They looooved this! I even took a video for you!

Today we took our end-of-the-chapter test. Part of it was the traditional paper-and-pencil situation (which they all did amazingly on!), and another part was completing a states of matter foldable.

They did well with this! I asked them to cut out 3 solids and 3 liquids and just try to find a gas. If they couldn't find one, they were allowed to draw a picture and label it. They had a good old time. I didn't grade these yet but based on my circulation around the room... I think they all rocked it. :)

And I'll leave you with something cute. As I said yesterday, we had indoor recess for both the morning and lunch recesses. At lunch recess, since it's almost 30 minutes long, we do Adventure to Fitness, but in the morning I let them do whatever. I have some games or they'll play on the geoboards.

Anyway, 3 of the kids came up to me during recess and said, "Look! We made solid, liquid, and gas out of legos!!"

The big white part is ice. There is a little blue because it's melting a little bit, haha. The big blue part is water. The little white part is a chimney with air coming out of it! We had just talked about how the heating or cooling can change the state of matter, so this really made my day!!

A Little Christmas, A Little Community

We had a pretty busy day today!

First, today is St. Nicholas Day. Teaching at a Catholic school, I feel pretty confident in celebrating this. Our religion book had me talking about St. Nicholas last week, so I threw it out there that December 6th was the official day. And that we should put our shoes out and see if St. Nicholas comes to see us!!!!

Well, that was last week.

Today, when the kids came skipping in the room, they said, "Can we put our shoes out in the hallway???" And I was like, "OH NO!" Totally forgot to get stuff for them. I really need to keep candy bags in my desk!!

But, no worries. My wonderful friend Stacy who teaches 3rd/4th grade came to the rescue during math stations!

The purple shoe is mine... they made me put mine out too, haha!! They totally did not see through this, yeah!

Today I also read Tomie dePaola's The Legend of the Poinsettia.

It was really meaningful to my Spanish speakers that I read this book about Mexico and they were amazed that I could read the 10 Spanish words in the book! :)

Afterwards, we watercolored stained glass pictures of poinsettias (here's the template). My kids love watercoloring and I think their pictures always look so beautiful! One thing I am definitely grateful for about my students is that they always give 100%, even if it's just watercoloring. :)

Aaaaand lastly, we are studying communities in Social Studies right now. They've had a pretty tough time remembering which type of community is which, you know, urban, suburban, and rural. I did a quick Google Reader search for anything to help us, and I found this great foldable idea at Keeping Up With Class!

Even though it legit took me 15 minutes to figure out how to fold these little books... the kids ended up loving them. I hope we can review them over and over and finally master these important vocab words!

Tomorrow I am SUPER excited to do our December math quilt that I got from Reagan at Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits!!!! Our entire afternoon (which is when we normally have math) is being taken over by our Christmas music program practice.... so I will squeeze this into the morning!!! Party time!