Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel!

We have had a crazy week with tons of interruptions for Christmas program practice. Today the kids were pretty good, all things considered, so I rewarded them with Adventure to Fitness (yeah!!) and I taught them how to play dreidel!

First, I read them Runaway Dreidel!

This was a good book! It covered a ton of stuff about Hanukkah, and it was set up to be a bit similar to The Night Before Christmas, and it rhymed, so the kids loved it. We did have to talk about how it was a fiction book and that a dreidel wouldn't really spin up the wall and down the street. This was very concerning to them...

Then I broke out the dreidel and the chocolate chips that we used to play!

Let me just tell you - in my 79 days of teaching these kids, I have never seen them be more focused and engaged on anything, ever! They were so into playing dreidel.

I picked up my dreidel at Party City for the low low price of 50 cents! I splurged on the wooden one and it spins beautifully. :)

Winter Cleaning!

The teacher who was in my room before me had been teaching at my school for about 15 years. The teacher before her had been teaching in my room since the late 80s. Neither of them felt the need to remove anything from the room upon their respective retirements.

Little by little, I have been purging. I have entire sets of Weekly Readers from the 90s. I have file folders of notes from parents from 2000 - notes like, "Susie will not be at school today because she has a sore throat." I did have a stack of records that I found shoved in a cabinet, but those were donated to Purple Heart many months ago.

Today I tackled an entire file cabinet so I could start using it for actual storage!

I threw 99% of everything inside it away. Well, it's actually in piles on my floor so I can recycle it in the morning. Here's what it looked like before I piled it up!

A ton of the stuff was way outdated. A few things I thought I miiiight be able to use, but then I remembered my mom saying: if you got through half the year already without knowing what was in the cabinet, you can survive without it. Plus, everything I get from blogs totally trumps the worksheet graveyard that is my floor.

While poking around in the closet, I also found a little Christmas tree (that I forgot to take a picture of) and a nativity scene!

I don't know where Joseph is... unless one of the shepherds is supposed to be him?? I put one next to Mary just in case. :).

We finished our gingerbread man glyphs that I got from Denise at Sunny Days in Second Grade! I didn't hang them up yet and I forgot my camera today sooo I will put those pictures up tomorrow!

And I continue to get rave reviews about my math quilt that I got from Reagan at Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits!!! I just want to marry that quilt!

The whole day was not great though! One of my second graders hit someone in the face with a chair leg today. Awesome. And our second class frog lost its life over the weekend. Also I've had the songs from the Christmas program stuck in my head all day. Ahhh!! Luckily tomorrow is the program! Go first and second graders go!

Using a Compass Rose

In the communities unit of our Social Studies book, they wanted me to teach the kids how to use a compass rose. So we did just that!

After introducing the compass rose, pointing out the compass rose on every map in our room, and reading the pages in our book, we played a fun game that reinforced the cardinal directions!

One at a time, a kid would sit outside the room while we'd hide our traveling buddy, Tyrone, somewhere in the room.

Then we would bring the kid back inside and use our knowledge of the cardinal directions to help the kid find Tyrone!

They loved this game! We played it 12 times so that every kid had a chance to find Tyrone. They got CRAZY loud because they felt the need to scream out the directions to the kid trying to find Tyrone. The noise paid off, though, because today in one of our read-alouds, the author wrote about some town in the north, and I said, "So which way is north?" And everyone pointed north right away! Hooray!

Afterwards, the first and second graders drew maps of our classroom including a compass rose. This was a little tough for some of them because they had to draw the room from an angle that they don't usually see, but I was really impressed with their hard work and all the little details they included!

Now what I need are some clip-arty direction signs! My handwritten ones that I made during morning recess are not beautiful.

Our First Math Quilt

I heart Reagan and her awesome geometric math quilts!

Today was a crazy day. We had 30 minutes of tech, a combined 120 minutes of music, lunch and recess for a total of 60 minutes... I'm lucky I got anything done. What I'm really lucky for is the sweet geometric math quilts we made today! I stuffed Math in there somewhere!

They loved cutting the triangles to fit the pattern! And they thought the final quilt was so beautiful. Ours is tiny because we only have 12 people! One second grader was absent today so I made one to put on the quilt - otherwise it would be way smaller!

It was easy to teach them the cutting, and once I showed it to them, they took off on their own!! Also we don't have a die cutting machine, so I hand cut my trees during our crazy long music time.

When I told them that we'd do one every month, they were super excited! I am too. 

Also, I have a first grader who is pretty far behind the rest of the students in most of our content areas. I also usually have to give him directions a minimum of 5 times before he processes them and pays attention. But during our quilt-making today, I only had to show him once, and he did great! He had no problems figuring out how to turn the triangles to fit! I was so super proud of him and I think he felt great about himself too! Hooray for a project that incorporated a different type of intelligence!! And hooray for Reagan!!

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!

I Got a Grant!!

Today I was paying VERY close attention at my weekly mentor meeting when I got an email (and then later on a letter) from Target!

In September, I read somewhere online that Target gives out field trip grants, and all you have to do is apply! So I applied and I was chosen as a recipient!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am super super excited!!

A ways back, I mentioned that I went to the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago for an Illinois Butterflies workshop and that I wanted to take my class to a field trip there someday. So that's the field trip I applied for!

We won't go until the spring, after we've hatched our butterfly. I should get my field trip check in January and then we'll be all set! Yay!!!!!

Reading Rods

This week, I received a Reading Rods kit that I won because I follow ETA/Cuisenaire on facebook!!!

This wasn't the first thing I've won from them, which is crazy because I never win any blog giveaways!! In the summer, they gave away a starter kit of mini VersaTiles cases, which I also won. Then my kids destroyed them.

Well, not really, but we are missing some tiles which is pretty annoying.

Anyway, my box came in the mail on Tuesday, but I went home sick that day because I had some kind of 24-hour-flu! So on Thursday, I debuted the reading rods to my first graders and we did the first activity flipbook page together.

They looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooove these!! They love the colors and that they fit together! And that they can make words by themselves!

I am definitely going to integrate this into my regular reading instruction. I couldn't believe they gave me ALL this stuff!! An entire instructional guide and two flipbooks!! Wow!! 

My reading program is totally hands-off and very boring. I have a sad feeling that I'm raising a group of people who aren't going to like reading - except for one of my first grade girls, who reads at a level M! And she is only 5; she's supposed to be in Kindergarten!!!!!!

I am hoping and praying that reading rods will turn our literacy lives around. :) Do you use them?