The Faith of a Child

This week was a tough one to say the least. Most people think that four-day weeks are easy, but they don't realize that we have to fit five days of a reading program into those four days. Plus on top of only four days, we started the LONG A. Ahh its a challenge having to teach child to switch their short a to a long a, but one moment this week made everything so worth the stress!

I had a free second in-between small groups, so I went over to straighten up my classroom library. Two of my boys were working on an Autumn ABC order activity. As I started listening to their conversation something caught my ear that made my heart shine inside. 

MN- "He died for us, right?

SC- "Right, He is the one that died for us?

(Oh, the joy that filled me!)

Miss A- "SC, what are yall talking about?"

SC- "Jesus." (said just like he was talking about the weather:))

Miss A- "What were yall saying?"

SC- "I was singing a song, 'My Jesus conquered the grave' that we sing 

at my church and so we started talking about Him"

Needless to say, this made my day/week. This came from a child who I consistently have to redirect and keep on task, but it was a reminder for me that God is keeping SC and my whole class in His hands this year. This was a great picture for me to reflect on this week as well. Is my faith like...

the faith of a child. 

The faith that is never hindered by worry, or stress, that truly is completely directed toward our Lord and Savior. What a great reminder to set our hearts on things above, because He did conquer the grave.

Other classroom happenings. 

 Welcome to Proper Noun Town.

Instead of our not that interesting SF pages, we created our own towns using only proper nouns. 

 This child's proper noun and noun town were in Idaho, where he was born. He told me that they didn't have schools in Idaho. (His mother and I decided that it was because he was too little to go to school that he thought there were no schools. ha!)

 Welcome to Noun Town! 

             This town had many intersections!            Notice the rope, in the rope swing, this and the         hotel was created all by herself, 

we didn't brainstorm this idea!

FALL flip books

 F-football, friends and festivals, A-apples, acorns, and Autumn

 Our fall bulletin board for grandparents day!

 In the fall leaves fall. I like to jump in the leaves. You have to rake the leaves. 

In the fall it is cold. Fall has Halloween and Thanksgiving!

Our first time with the complete writing process, I think it went pretty well!

 In the fall leaves fall. We have to rake them. They change colors. When they change the 

weather gets cooler. The birds fly south. Halloween and Thanksgiving are in the fall. 

 Tear apart fall trees. 

Well I am off to cheer on my Auburn Tigers! It's not Fall in Auburn without football and Momma G's!

War Eagle!

~Miss Anderson 

9 weeks down, 27 more to go!!

This week we studied the digraphs 'sh' and 'th' and what better to learn the 'sh' with than a sea shell! This week we have some very fun activities to help us with our learning. 

In grammar, we are learning about people, places, and things also known as NOUNS! Instead of doing our SF worksheet pages we created a noun art project: NOUN TOWN. We discussed people, places, things, and animals and brainstormed a list of these nouns that we would find in a town. After I created my noun town. Andersonville, they create their own town. They got really into this project, creating hilarious town names and being really detailed in their town construction. Next week we are changing our noun towns into proper noun towns, so our store may become Wal-Mart and our restaurants may become McDonalds.

Funny for the week:

I had just drawn myself on my noun town and this question was presented:

 Miss Anderson, do you have kids?

Me: No I don't have kids, I have yall.

Student: So you are married or engaged?

Me: Nope, I'm not.

MT: Yea, she's not married because she is not OLD enough! hahaha

Later that day:

JG: Miss Anderson is that your engagement ring?

Me: No its not.

JG: Oh, so its not a real ring, got it.

(Apparently engagement rings are the one "real" rings there are)

We also started our SCIFRI experiments, thanks to the creative title from my friend over at The First Grade Parade. We started this week with a skittle experiment. It was so easy, just place Skittles, S side up, in a bowl of water and observe.

 Choose your three favorite colors.

 Watch the colors spread! My students predicted that the colors would mix and form one color.

 Tricked ya! The colors form a barrier and do not mix together( the bowl has to stay completely still)

The S's simply slide off of the Skittle, isn't that neat!

Happy weekend and War Eagle!!

~Miss Anderson

War Eagle!

So I was thinking....that I really like football season. In my classroom, we are talking about things that remind us of fall and mine was of course football(my boys thought this was awesome ha). It's great to relax on the weekend by keeping my TV tuned into ESPN and ABC to keep up with all of the games. My personal favorite is of course AUBURN! I bleed orange and blue if you didn't know. This past week, the first grade teachers brought treats for the lounge and our theme was TAILGATE food. I decided to make cupcakes, but wanted to add a fun twist to them so I created Pat Dye Field with the help of two friends. Creating this masterpiece was quite fun; I was able to catch up with my old friends and it was a relaxing way to end my busy school day.

 Yellow and red make orange! Mixing for the perfect Auburn orange. 

 Creating grass, we used a fork to tousle the icing around. 

 The yard markers

 Creating my best AU! Can you tell I am trying to concentrate?

 Work in progress...

~War Eagle~

Much to my dismay, not many people wanted cupcakes, so I came home with many extra. I did get to spend some quality time with a friend and her three girls this past Sunday and I have to say they loved getting to finish the cupcakes off for me!

~Rachel 

Another week bites the dust!

It's hard to believe that we have been in school for 37 days! We are just one week away from the end of the first nine weeks, which means next week is Unit tests! We have been very busy lately and let me tell you my room looks like a barn...literally. We have just ended our farm unit, so Room A9 is covered with our animal creations. 

We are working on the short vowel sounds so the hen and pig wheels were great for word families. We even had a  horse come visit our school to make our Farm Unit come alive!

Meet Graham!

We have parent/teacher conference coming up and I wanted to have a great sample of each child's writing on my "All Star Work" board, so this week we started the writing process. Our topic: FALL! Pinterest helped me create my latest addition to my classroom, our writing process pencil!

The kids loved getting to move their name down the pencil to mark which stage they were in!!

My kids love to talk! We have had numerous conversations on when and where it is appropriate to talk and so on but we must just have a lot to say. Here are some things that made me smile this week: (yes they were said while I was talking or when they were supposed to be working but I still got a giggle)

1. I think I have an allergy in my eye.

2. You went to college! You are only like 16.

3. Look at my Baa Baa Black sheep, I colored him white!

To help with our talking issue, with the help of who else but Pinterest, I developed this:

I have a different mystery word each week. If children are quiet during work and transition time, I reveal a letter, but if we are talking I silently go up and flip a letter back over. Sadly, as you can tell this week we did not get our prize. Can you guess what it was?

I will leave you with some exciting news! I have been teaching for almost two months without being paid (the life of a first year teacher!) and I have been waiting on this:

 My first paycheck! 

Sorry it's a little blurry, I had to use self-timer, ha

Also, I got two gifts this week. If you are questioning what the yellow gift is, let me just tell you. According to SS its "flowers she picked for me" a.k.a POLLEN!

 Good thing I had allergy medicine handy!

~Miss Anderson