Mother's Day Gift Idea!

Hi!

Today was a semi-long day because we had our school play at 6 PM and all the teachers stayed for it. I helped with the play and I was proud of the kids - they really worked hard and it all came together!

I was hanging out with the Pre-K kids the other day when I saw their Mother's Day gifts and I wanted to share them with you!

She had the kids take a flower stamp and stamp a bunch of flowers on a little bag. This girl and a few others did a pattern, but they could stamp wherever they wanted to. Afterward, she traced the outside of the flowers with a Sharpie or fabric marker (I can't remember which...) and then they glued buttons onto the middle! So cute.

I love them! So colorful!

The other day, our recess supervisor asked me how much more teaching I had to do. I am desperately trying to get as much reading and math instruction in as I can, so really I think I'll only have one full day (besides Field Day) without our normal schedule.

How much teaching do you do in the last days of school?

Using Natural Resources {Freebie}

Today was a crazy day. I taught so many things and I have no idea how we fit it all in. Strange contractions... Mother's Day writing... natural resources... fractions... comparing numbers... insect body parts... and the life cycle of a butterfly! I guess if I listed out my day every day it would look like that... haha!

But I want to tell you now about our natural resources lesson! After we read the pages in our social studies book about natural resources, we filled out a little graphic organizer just to review what we learned.

Afterward, the students grabbed any picture book and looked for things in the pictures made from natural resources, specifically, trees, metal, and oil. They listed the things they found in a table.

And after THAT, we went to the computer lab and used the NCES Create a Graph site. We inputted our data into the website and it cranked out a little bar graph for us!

Do you teach about natural resources? Because I put all of this fun stuff into a little pack for ya! Click on the screenshot to download it from Google Docs. Let me know if you can use it!

{frames by The 3AM Teacher and fonts by Creating Keepsakes}

In the midst of our crazy day, it rained and rained, so we missed both recesses. By 1:15, we just couldn't take it anymore. So we went outside and played Red Light Green Light!

Good end to a good day. :)

Landform Map Project: Part II

Wow, I am exhausted from downloading all of those jackpot freebies... I just had to stop at like 50. I can't click anymore!!!!!! But I got some legit stuff!

Anyway...

Last week we started making our landform maps. As of my last post, we had planned out our maps. Click on the picture to learn about that part!

Next, we moved on to forming our countries with salt dough. My book told me to make the salt dough with 2 cups of flour, 2 cups of salt, and 2 cups of water. I stand before you today to say that if you follow that recipe, you will have a mess. I don't know what exactly my recipe was, but it was definitely heavy on the flour and light on the water. It was based on trial and error!

I went into school today to grab my Social Studies manual, and the countries are all dry and ready to be painted tomorrow! Some of the kids still probably weren't done, but I am so over making that dough! My arm was hurting trying to mix it all!!

I'm excited to show you how they turn out. I'm also really excited for my Social Studies lesson tomorrow! We're learning about natural resources and I have a fun little activity for us that I'll be happy to share tomorrow after school. :)

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!!

May Currently

Happy May!!

I feel like sometimes I am a little over the top with the optimism... I don't do it on purpose... I think it's just in my brain. But it makes me happy so that is what counts. :)

Today was Laugh Out Loud Day. The kids were supposed to bring a joke from home. I think maaaaaaybe 3 kids brought a real joke; everyone else just made one up on the fly.

Some highlights included:

• Why did the chicken cross the road? He wanted a drink.
• Why did the cow cross the road? To go to school.
• Why did the duck cross the road? He wanted to play.

There was also a joke about Selena Gomez and the Biebs but I didn't really catch the whole thing... sorry to disappoint you!

What are you doing currently? Link up with Farley!

K is for Kite!

Today was K Day in our ABC Countdown, which meant that it was Kite Day.

Honestly, I didn't really have a lot planned for today. I figured maybe we'd make some symmetrical kites or write about kites or something. The hourly forecast predicted rain every hour today, so I figured I'd have an easy out when the kids asked if we were going to fly kites today.

"Of course not!!!" I imagined myself saying. "Can't you see it's pouring out there??"

However.... the hourly forecast lied to me and it hardly rained at all! By lunchtime the sun was shining like it didn't have a care in the world. So I knew I wasn't off the hook!

So during my kids' specials time this afternoon, I googled and googled and found 20 Kids, 20 Kites, 20 Minutes. SUPER EASY kite-making directions! And I had everything in the classroom - regular paper, coffee stirrers, streamers, string, and tape!

I did have to do the diagonal fold for all of my kids, but it was a small price to pay for the sheer happiness on their faces as they flew their handmade kites outside!

I was lucky to have a semi-windy day, too!

This was an easy and fun little activity and I'd recommend it highly!!

Landform Map Project: Day 1

Today we started on a geography project that the kids are SO EXCITED about!

We've been studying geography and landforms lately, so we'll be making our own landform maps. My book suggested that we make landform maps of our state... but how fun would that be? And really, how much would they get out of it? Instead, my students are designing their own island countries. They have to include at least 4 different landforms in their country that we learned about. Eventually, they'll have a raised-relief landform map of their imaginary country!

Here we are hard at work! No wandering aimlessly around the room... no harassing other people who are trying to work... no clips moved! Go kids!

Here are a few of our prototypes so far...

You can't really see... but they marked off where they wanted each kind of landform on their island. I am really excited for how these will turn out!

Our ABC Countdown continues to march on toward the end of the year. Today was J - Jump Rope Day! I probably won't do this again because half of my kids didn't know how to jump rope and I didn't block off enough time for lessons... so my fun jump rope ideas kind of fell to the wayside while we had jump roping lessons.

Oh wells! Maybe next year we'll jump rope more often so we'll be ready for this day. :)