Delicious Sea Monsters

Today was our last full day of school!

I am a little sad... that might sound crazy! I didn't have a class of perfect angels this year, but it was my first class by myself, and we went through a lot together!

Part of our last day was spent by us making a little snack together. We found this recipe in the nonfiction magazine that comes with our reading program. This is one thumbs-up I will give to my program... these magazines are actually pretty sweet and the kids really like them.

We made under the sea monster things!

Here's what you need to make these...

A package of Goldfish, a box of raisins per child, a tub of whipped cream cheese  (one was just enough for 12 children), and one mini bagel per child! Plus a plastic spoon, knife, plate, and bowl-like dish per child.

First, each kid got some cream cheese in a cup. Then we added 1-2 drops of blue food coloring and stirred it up to make water!

Then, we spread it onto a plate. It was really supposed to be much thicker than this (so it actually looks like flowing water), but we rolled with it.

Next, you cut your mini bagel in half. Set half aside and cut the other half in half again. There will be three pieces of bagel. Arrange them like so:

Last, use cream cheese to attach raisins for eyes, and place the goldfish wherever your heart desires. Ta da! A delicious sea monster.

The kids LOVED THIS PROJECT. It was especially fun when they realized that the bagel is supposed to be the sea monster going in and out of the water. It just blew their minds, haha!

If it wasn't the last full day of school, I so would have thrown in a how-to writing activity. However, I let them off the hook and we just snacked instead. :)

Math With M&Ms!

I am coming to you in the midst of my weekend full of church.

Yesterday we had school Mass, as usual. Today I went to my twin nephews' first Communion. And tomorrow is one of my second graders' first Communion. The other four have theirs later this month.

Here's a picture from the first Communion after-party today!

Onto what this post is about!

Yesterday was M&M Math Day. While looking online for good ideas to use, I found a bunch of great M&M Math activity pages! There are a lot of different ways you can use M&Ms for math (graphing, probability, mean/median/mode, and so on), and the activities are written out super well. They aren't the cutest sheets ever, but they fit a TON of different things on each work page.

For first grade, I used Math Activity Page 1, which focused on sorting, counting, greater than/less than, and adding. With a little help from me to get them started, they were able to do the sheet very independently. And they had a lot of fun!

For second grade, I used Fraction Fun with M&Ms, which was a good review of fractions of a set. It also covered greater than/less than.

For both grades, we also did Math Activity Page 2, which actually focused on division with remainders. It didn't use those words, but that's what they were doing. It made me think that next year when I introduce division to the second graders, this would be a good way to do it. They were really into it! They all LOVED this page, especially because at the end they got to eat a few and write how many were left over. :)

I don't think the students expected to do quite so much math with their M&Ms... but they did really well with all of the activities.

One last little story...

My reading curriculum focuses on... I think 10 kids. All the stories are about those 10 kids. In first grade, there isn't an overarching plot that connects the stories together. There are just a bunch of stories about random stuff the kids do. The last unit I'm teaching is about the kids going to Super Happy Fun Land. In second grade, the stories take place within the context of a school year and it follows the trials and tribulations (and drama) of the kids in school.

Recently in our soap opera reading book, the kids' teacher got the flu and they had a substitute. The substitute had the students write get well poems for their teacher, and in my students' workbook, there was a little section for them to write their own get well poem for the pretend teacher.

One of the girls came up to me afterwards and said, "Read my poem I wrote... but don't read it out loud..." and I was like, "Okay?" So here is what it said:

Aw, I'm the best teacher in the world!

Hope you're having the best Saturday in the world today!!

Done with Week 4!

Friday of this short week meant that I've made it through four weeks of teaching!! It's very exciting and exhausting, all at the same time. :)

Last week we talked about Labor Day so that they knew why we weren't in school on Monday. We made mobiles depicting different jobs and hung them in the room. I don't have pictures but they were nothing too too exciting - they just drew pictures and backed them on construction paper. Then I tied the pictures to hangers. I really should have taken a picture of how one student spelled Army....... he wrote "aknu." And this is a child coming out of the reading program where "100% of Kindergarteners can read by Christmas!!!!!" Anyway, that is a thought I should keep in my brain. :)

Moving on to better things, this week we discussed 9/11 and Grandparents' Day. I'm glad they coincided because it was going to be a tough week without Grandparents' Day. When I brought up 9/11, none of my students had ANY idea what I was talking about at all. So I showed them the 9/11 BrainPop video to give them an idea. Then we colored a sheet I got from First Grade is Fantabulous. The second day, I read 14 Cows for America.

I had to paraphrase many of the pages because the words were really over their heads. But I think they got the main idea. Then I made a little PowerPoint about the Maasai tribe and we watched a Youtube video of them singing and dancing. The kids really liked it a lot! A lot of them said it was their favorite part of the day. I also had a student tell the class that she is part Maasai and that she had been to the place where they keep the sacred cows. Needless to say.... she is 100% Caucasian American. Has anyone else encountered a student who makes up blatant stories? She does this a lot and never about actual important things - only things like this, or that she speaks a different language. Weird.

Anyway, for Grandparents' Day, I sent home a family tree and the families filled them out. Then, my favorite next-door neighbor teacher helped me make a big tree to display them on in the hallway!!

I also had the students bring in pictures of their grandparents to share. About half of the students brought in pictures. But it was awesome for the kids to hear each others' stories and practice asking questions.

Before we shared pictures, I read Who's Who in My Family?

This was a really cute age-appropriate book about family trees and families in general. It talked about the nuclear family as well as grandparents, great-grandparents, great-aunts and uncles, and blended families. It also discussed adoption, which only one of my students had ever heard of.

And last, but absolutely not least, my library finally ordered Pete the Cat for me!!!!!!

I am soooOOOooo excited to read this on Monday! I'm planning on using lots of ideas I've seen in blogs to accompany it. Yay!!!

Math Manipulatives and Reading Program Frustrations

It's been a LONG week of orientations, trainings, and institutes!

First, for the good news! I follow ETA/Cuisenaire on facebook, and a while back, they offered a giveaway of a set of their new mini VersaTiles cases. I entered it, and then they ended up giving it away to everyone who entered! I got my set of 10 in the mail today.

I'm so excited about this! As you may remember, my math manipulative situation is pretty desperate. Although these aren't really manipulatives, they're more like a review tool, I still think they will complement our math program well! Also I can use them for other subjects! And I found out that I can create my own VersaTiles activities using the template on their website!

And now for the semi-bad news. Yesterday, I went to two trainings so I can learn how to use my new reading program, Superkids.

I'm pretty sure no one uses this besides the Archdiocese of Chicago. This program was created by the woman who made American Girls. It is extremely phonics heavy, as in, they don't want you to teach any other word-attack strategies. Their idea of differentiation is using the same decodable reader for all of the students, but just "teaching it in different ways." If you have a high reader, you aren't supposed to give the kid a chapter book - you're just supposed to force the kid to read the -sh digraph story regardless.

I read a LOT this summer, including the Daily Five, Reading With Meaning, and Growing Readers books. Everything these books told me to do is opposite of this program. In the first grade program, they even literally said in the training manual that students should only be reading SuperKids materials - no authentic text.

I am just beside myself. Luckily, having read all of these books, I had enough backup to convince my principal that I can't teach SuperKids the way they intend and that I need to supplement it highly. Luckily, he said that was fine and he is supporting my choice! If I did everything according to their crazy plan, I would spend 90 minutes on first grade and 120 minutes on second grade. Ummm...???

So that's the scoop! We start school, I'm pretty happy with how my room looks, and I'm going in tomorrow with my next-door buddy to continue getting things ready!