Measurement and Chinese New Year

HAPPY FRIDAY!!!!!

We started off the week with some measurement activities!  Students took piles of squares, made 3 towers, and then compared them.  (Short, shorter, shortest, taller, taller, tallest, etc...)  I even threw in "What is the root word?"  And they all answered correctly!!!! ***Proud teacher moment!***

Here are some pictures of them in action:

Then for the rest of the week, my students spent lots of time on Chinese New Year!  My initial thought was break students into two groups and have two dragons to parade around school with.
Each student drew a picture of what they wanted their dragon to look like.  Then they broke into groups and voted on 1 dragon per team.  Here are those dragon winners.

Then they got to work making their dragons.

Not only did they use lots of construction paper and glue, but they also added fun things!

Then one of my students had a brilliant idea!  "Mrs. Lynch, can we connect the two dragons to make one big dragon?"  SURE!!!!  Between duct tape and binder clips, we attached the two tunnels.

Then each student got a piece of red paper.  They wrote Happy New Year messages on it and we attached them to make a tail.

Finally, I had a small group made the face.  (All I did for the face was give them the basic shape - everything else they did on their own!)

Finally, we attached the head and went parading around the school!

Here are some shots of the dragon itself:

If you're wondering where to get tunnels from, I purchased mine from
http://www.amazon.com/Multi-Color-Childrens-Exploration-K-Roo-Sports/dp/B00ECEJ9XE/ref=sr_1_1?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1391224835&sr=1-1&keywords=pop+up+tunnel

(And yes, I used 2 of them!)

As my students paraded around, they shouted "GUNG HAY FAT CHOY!" and told everyone Chinese New Year is celebrated in China which is part of Asia.  They also mentioned other facts "You're not supposed to sweep out the front door!  If you do, you'll sweep away your bad luck!"  "Dragons and lions keep evil spirits away!"  So cute!

Let me tell you - we paraded around twice today and I am EXHAUSTED!!!!!!!!!!!
Time for bed!

Good night!
Stacey

Long time....no update

Hey everyone!

I'm sorry it's been so long since I've posted!  I meant to update this past weekend BUT I forgot to take pictures before leaving work for the weekend!  Due to the MLK holiday, a teacher workday, and a snow day, today was my first day back!!!  My pictures are now ready to go!!!!

I don't believe I posted this in my last entry or not.  I made this several years ago and put it up each year.  My students LOVE it!

I'm not sure how well you can see, but the outline of the board has tickets for the Polar Express.  My students painted them with gold glitter paint!

Once we came back from winter break, we had fun talking about our New Year's Resolutions!  This is what the kids came up with!!!

So cute!  The students had fun brainstorming ideas and then making their person!

Our school just started this GOOD LEARNERS ASK GOOD QUESTIONS activity.  As students ask good questions, they are written on the small clouds which are then put on the big cloud.  The small clouds will be collected each week and put in the front hall for all to see.  Here are a few pics:

In case you couldn't tell, the questions my first graders asked had to do with MLK.  (We were watching OUR FRIEND MARTIN.  We stopped several times to discuss things and they asked some AMAZING questions!)

Speaking of Dr. King, here is one activity we did:

 

The students gathered facts about Martin and wrote about his life!  They did a great job!

Then in small groups, we discussed Martin's dreams for the future.  Afterwards, we talked about our dreams and wrote about them. 

Our Dream Bulletin Board

Close up on description of bulletin board

Close up

Sorry it's blurry.

Love this one!!! :-)

So today was our first day back!  It was also a 2 hour delay.  I read THE SNOWY DAY and then they made these cute snow pictures!

I LOVE how they turned out!!!!  So adorable!

All right, that's all for now!  Hopefully, I'll update more often!

Good night!

Stacey

Our Gingerbread Home

What a BUSY and short week we had!  Monday and Tuesday were snow days!  While I was excited for the days off, it made me wonder / worry how I was going to get some of my holiday stuff done!

Never fear!  My students worked so incredibly hard these three days of school we had!

My plan was to have my students make a gingerbread house bulletin board.  However, I didn’t just want them to make it and then that would be it.  I wanted them to show their work on it.

Our finished project!

Our gumball roof and part of the house

Part of the bottom of the house

The other part of the bottom of the house

Bottom middle of the house

I cut out the basic shape of the house (which was divided in half because on that wall, it’s the bulletin board, coat hooks, and then wall,).  Then during small groups, my students helped me paint the frosting.  This was actually a better activity then I ever thought it would be.  First of all, my students had to collaborate on this.  (How they were going to divide up the area, share the paint, etc…)  Second of all, a few of my students had no clue how to paint,  how to use the paint brush, how to turn it to make the lines look good….so it was truly a learning experience for all of them.

Next up we worked on our peppermints.  I had already put the lines on the paper plates.  My students and I talked about patterns, what they look like, and different kinds of patterns.  Then I let the students paint a pattern.  They really liked it! 

While the paint dried, we reviewed doubles facts.  We used the poem from First Grade Wow’sDouble Mint Math packet!  We also used 2 of Harry Kindergarten’s Doubles videos.  Doubles 1-5 and Doubles 6-10. (My kids LOVE those songs!)  Then I gave the students their peppermints.  They had to write doubles facts on there.  While they were writing their facts, I could hear them reciting the poem and singing the songs!  So cute!!!  Here are a couple of the peppermints:

Next up were our gingerbread people!  I got the template from a Holidays Around the World packet I bought on TPT.  We’ve been learning about adjectives in class.  So after coloring in the face and decorations, they wrote adjectives about themselves.  (They did all of this with crayon.)  Then we took brown water color paint and painted over it.  The kids LOVED how it made the crayons POP!

I love how this student made a frown but wrote they were nice! :-)

We’ve spent a lot of time learning about December holidays all over the world. (Courtesy of the packet I mentioned above.) Each of them got to pick a gumball and a country.  Then they had to write a fact that they remembered from that country.  I was pleasantly surprised (and happy) with some of the things my students remembered!

Finally, my students made mini gingerbread houses that we turned into fact family houses.  They got to pick the numbers they wanted to use for their fact family.  (Of course they were somewhat limited.  They could only pick numbers from 1-10.) 

Added this to the side of our gingerbread house so anyone passing by would know what we did!

After all was said and done, I put up their work and showed it to them.  Their faces lit up with excitement!  It truly was adorable!

Thanks for reading!

Enjoy your weekend!
Stacey

My Daily Hundreds Chart

I love counting the number of days of we have been in school!
I have my students use the number of days we've been in school as a daily math lesson!
I have a chart prepared each day that looks like this:

Each day, I write a student's name at the top.  (I go in ABC order.) 
Here are pictures of the completed chart and sections of the chart:

Completed Chart

They have to draw the number using tens and ones

Then they have to come up with all the different ways of making that number.  This takes lots of practice!  Students eventually see the pattern are easily able to do it.

After circling whether the number is odd or even, my students say a chant.  Today's chant was "0, 2, 4, 6, 8, even numbers are so great!"

My odd chant is "1, 3, 5, 7, 9, those odd numbers are so fine!"

I model this process for the first fifteen or so days of school.  The students love to do this!  I also allow them to take their paper home at the end of the day.  They are so excited to share the paper with their family!

Thanks for reading!
Have a good night! :-)
Stacey