Fire safety, Halloween, and Elections

We have been having a BLAST in our class!

First, I mentioned in my previous post how we were talking about fire safety.  Here are some pictures of our fire fighter writing / craftivity!

Uh oh!  This one lost a foot!!!

One of my teammates had her students add hoses to it!  It was so cute!
I was originally inspired to do this activity from the Pencils, Glue, & Tying Shoes  blog!


One of my favorite bloggers I follow is Reagan Tunstall!  One of her blog posts from 2013 had all of her bulletin boards in it.  I LOVED her Spiders bulletin board and knew I had to do it with my kiddos!  This is my board from last year.

Here are my pics from this year:

Now my students know that will all our writing crafts, we always do our writing first and then the kids did the art part.  We read some books about spiders.  The students recited facts that they remembered / learned.  As they talked, I wrote the facts on the white board.  The students then chose the ones they wanted to write on their papers.  Afterwards, they made their craft and put it all together! :-)

My students and I also made glow in the dark lanterns which I found here.
I will have to post pictures of that next time as I can't find pictures of the finished product.  Let me tell you though, they were ADORABLE!

I love Election Day activities with my students!  I read 3 books to my kids: Grace for President, Duck for President, and My Teacher for President. Throughout the books, I compared it to a real election.  I then announced that we were going to hold our own election!  The kids wanted to know who was on the ballot so I sad, "Grace, Duck, and.....ME!"  You should have seen and heard their reactions!  It was PRICELESS!!!!!  They were very excited!  Before they could vote, they needed to fill out their voter registration cards!

To help my firsties out with their information, I gave each of them a small card with their information on it.  For their photos, I took a picture of each of them, printed it out, and gave it to them to glue on.  They LOVED it.

I had decorated my room for Election Day.  I had some awesome help from my co-teacher, Jonathan! Even though you can't see it, Jonathan taped off the floor just like they do at the real polling places!

Jonathan's very creative wife made our ballot box!

I also had balloons on every student's seat!

After their cards were filled out it was time to line up to vote!

Jonathan was our electoral judge!

He announced that the polls were open and this is what happened in my class:

One at a time, the students went up to Jonathan.  He took their card, and asked to verify some of the information on there. He then stamped their card AND their hand before giving them their ballot.

Students then came over here to cast their vote.

Then they put their ballot in the box and I gave them each a sticker for voting!

They all had a blast!  Afterwards, Jonathan read out the votes.  We made a graph and the students interpreted the information! 

For those of you wondering, here's how the votes stacked up:
Grace - 0
Duck - 3
Me - 9!   I won! :-)

Afterwards, the students did a writing on why they thought I would make a good President.  I can't wait to read those!

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Until next time!!!
Stacey

1st Grade Hodgepodge Update

What fun we are having in 1st grade!!!!!

A few weeks ago we practiced the -op chunk! One of my favorite things to do is a sensory writing with POPCORN.  We didn't get to the popcorn that week, but we had fun writing -op chunk words on popcorn pieces and making this art project!

Yup, I'm hungry now! :-)

Next up, Columbus Day!

2021 Edit:  As I look back on my posts, I realize that some of the things I blogged about over the years, are no longer celebrated the way they use to be or reflect correct information.  For example:  Christopher Columbus.  Although I could delete this, I am going to leave it up.  Why?  My hope is that my post will spark ideas for other explorers or activities teachers could use INSTEAD of this one. 

My students and I discussed how Columbus was an explorer.  We then talked about what an explorer is and what they do.  Then they wrote about what they might see for the first time if they were the ones who discovered America.

They came up with this:

I know I got the unit off TPT but I can't find it anywhere.  If this is your unit, please let me know so I can give you credit!  Thanks!

On Monday, we went to the zoo!  I took a whole bunch of pictures but I'm only going to post a few of them!

If you can't see - there are 2 of them there!

We had such an amazing time!  This has really helped boost our enthusiasm for our zoo project we're going to embark on this year!!!!

Next up: The kids saw a bat at the zoo and they started talking non-stop about it!  I found this awesome idea from First Grader...At Last! and knew I had to do it!  Therefore, I leave you with our bat mobile!

Thanks if you have hung in this long! One more subject for the evening - fire department visit!!!!

We had guys from our local fire department come and talk with the kids on Thursday!  The kids saw one of the guys put their uniform on and after each piece he put on, they were reassured that he wasn't scary.  We're trying to emphasize the importance of firefighters and that kids have no reason to be scared. They talked about what to do if their clothes catch on fire and what to do if there is a fire in your house.

Then we went outside and got to look at an ambulance and a firetruck.

Here are some pics!

The kids had a blast and they were so well behaved!  Afterwards we wrote about firefighters and did a craft to go with it.  I'll make sure to post those pictures next time!

All right folks! Thanks for reading!  Enjoy your weekend!!!!!
Stacey