Five for Friday 2.4

It's Friday ladies! Everybody's working for the weekend. 

Also Happy Birthday to George Washington!!

1. So we didn't have Monday off like most of the schools around us, so we started the week off with some presidential information with the help of this fun pack by Teacher to the Core. 

2. I also found a fun idea on Pinterest with making fact hats so I called the unit "Hat's off to Presidents" We have spent this week reading informational text and taking notes. My kids then took our notes and turned them into sentences for each side of their hats. Here are our George Washington hats!

1. George was the father of our country. He led the Continental Army. In 1789 George became President. 

2. In 1799 George died at 67.

3. Gorge(ha) was 11 when his father died. George's favorite subject was math.

4. George Washington was born on February 22, 1732. Washington grew up in a farm house. 

The best part was telling them about the President's wives and what year they married, all the girls oohh'ed and ahh'ed and the boys were like 'ewwww!'

3. We also wrote about if we were President what would we do. They all loved getting live in the White House and the boys loved that they would get to ride "in their AIR FORCE 1!" (anyone remember that song, haha)

4. We reviewed contractions this week with some contraction caterpillars. Some turned out really cute, while others rushed through to get to recess on time. It was hard to tell them to slow down since we had missed outside recess almost all last week and Monday because of rain. 

5. We earned our compliment party this week. 15 compliments woohoo! So I baked cookies for the group to have during a special showing of their choice of a Magic School Bus video! Which throws me back to these fun pics:  

The Scholastic store in NYC, a teacher's dream. You can use your bonus points in the store!! I had to take a pic of the life size bus! 

RIDE ON THE MAGIC SCHOOL BUS! 

BEEP BEEP

~Rachel 

Catching up!

So I was thinking that I have not been blogging enough lately. I originally started this blog so I could document life and my teaching career and blogging 3-4 times a month is not enough. I will start trying to do better, I promise! Today I am catching up on lots of things around the house before I head North for a few days for Thanksgiving. It's also a great day to catch you up on what's been going on in my life!

1. I had to go to professional development two Mondays ago and one of the best parts was the CANDY! Major sweet tooth!

2. My students voted on Election day in our classroom, good news, I won! Look out, Romney and Obama.

3. I had a very busy weekend, last weekend. My Sunday School class had a bon-fire and it was a great time to catch up with everyone while enjoying the beauty of a bonfire. Good friends, good conversations, and SMORES, what could be better?

4. That same weekend my whole family came into town to tailgate for the AUvsGA game. We had a great time hanging out and going to the game together. My sister made these delicious pumpkin spice cookies that were a huge hit. 

That same weekend Jeff and his daughter Josie (Jeff's family started Kids International Ministries in PI) visited our church!!! Our whole group got to hang out with them and their friend Hannah on Monday so I made LB's cookies! They are  delicious!

In other news, NEWSIES was on Dancing with the Stars the other night, so I tuned in to watch them rock the stage. Oh, how I wish I could go back and see them again!!!

I hope everyone has a lovely Saturday!!!
~Rachel

From Adjective to Washington

I should really rename this segment to the Two Week Review, because I always feel like I am catching up on two weeks, but anyway, here we go! Last Friday we had our last Historian Friday before we move back into SCI-FRI: in honor of President's day my lab student presented some information on George Washington. She showed us a Powerpoint while we jotted down important facts on post-its. After, the students were able to take a post-it from the board and write down Washington facts. Then they got to create their own George! 

 Aren't they cute!

Today we read about "Honest Abe" and since it was rainy and we couldn't go out for recess, we got to have Movie Time and watch a movie about our friend Abe. 

Here is a writing about George. 

 Last week our grammar skill was reviewing contractions. I took this fabulous idea from Cara and added a fun spin to put it on my bulletin board. We took our contraction and wrote about them and drew a picture. 

Dr. Apostrophe is ready for surgery!

They loved this one!

I was so impressed with their drawings!

 "I preformed surgery on ___ & ___. After surgery the two words became ____. " 

We have been learning about penguins the last two weeks and for one of our stations did an ABC word order game. My kids LOVE penguins and loved waddling around. 

This week our grammar skill was adjectives, which was a little tough for us: good thing we have two more weeks to prefect our skill. We read this book:

and then we used the activity at the back to make Acrostic Name Adjectives. 

I loved the B is for big with the picture of just a set of legs! 

Well I'm off to prepare for Read Across America Week with some fun Dr. Seuss activities, catch you up next week! 

~Miss Anderson 

Why I Teach...

So I was thinking... that I truly love my job, and how blessed am I that I can say that and mean it. I have been teaching first grade for 111 days. No I don't know that because I am counting down the days, I know it because my class counts them everyday! I know its been a while since I have posted and I apologize, I have been forgetting my camera alot lately, but something happened Friday that I wanted to share.

With encouragement from some other blogs I have been doing special Science and Social Studies lessons; in first grade these subjects are mostly taught through reading, but loving these subjects I wanted to find a way to teacher it better; so every Friday we either have SCI-FRI(taken from Cara) or Historian Fridays, where we dig deep into history with our detective caps on!

This Friday we had a historian Friday as we dug deep into the history of African American inventors. (Side note: Did you know that the mailbox, ironing board, mop, traffic signal, incandescent lightbulb and POTATO chips were made by African American inventors...my kids loved that one!) After learning about these inventors we had the chance to be inventors ourselves. My kids were really creative coming up with some great inventions from random craft items that I had in my classroom!

One of my little boys was having trouble deciding what to invent and knowing that he played football this year we decided on a field goal and football to play table football. He loved it and got started writing his patent to invent it!
However; once his was made the football(two stryofoam cups taped together) got stepped on. His face sank as well as my heart. After lunch we were sharing our inventions and he didn't want to share, all he could do was hold his football in his hands. I had to think of something fast, so loving football myself (I broke my arm playing with the boys in the 6th grade) I turned on my announcer voice and set the scene hoping I could cheer him up enough to present. "Three seconds left in the last game of the season, and it all comes down to this one field goal" I grabbed the popscicle stick field goal and lined up with him (the whole class is laughing at me at this point, even my lab student) but I didn't break a sweat because the next moment, the BIGGEST smile came to his face and he shot the football right through the uprights and my class cheered! It was great!

I'm tearing up just thinking about it, because this is why I love my job. I get to act silly, dance around and love on kids everyday while teaching them about life and learning. I am blessed to have the opportunity to help a sad little boy smile the biggest smile because I made his invention special. I am truly blessed.

Here is a recap in pictures of our adventures:(taken w/ the phone, sorry if blurry)

<-- SCI-FRI We learned about our bodies and got to trace ourselves on the carpet with chalk! Then we played a simon says type game with body parts.

--> Paper plate clocks to learn time to the hour and half hour.

 We celebrated the 100th day of school with funfetti cookies, counting 100 things, and doing things 100 times like jumping, clapping and stepping!

SCI-FRI! Study of clouds: cumulus, cirrus, ans stratus cotton ball craft!

 For Groundhog's day this week, we made cute little groundhogs (All of the shapes are hearts!) and wrote about what our burrow would look like and discovered what animals are true hibernators and which ones are just light sleepers! Did you know that a bear is only a light sleeper, and groundhogs slow their breathing down to one breath every five minutes when they hibernate.

 Post-it note bar graph!

 Historian Friday: Invention- the soft guitar, he let me borrow it to rock out my air-guitar!

 The pillow purse, complete with a pom pom on the other side that clasps it shut:)

The violin complete with a pipe clean and yarn bow. Let me tell you it's pricy though, her patent says that it costs $209! 

Happy Saturday! Football tomorrow!!!
~Rachel

Sailing, Sailing on the Ocean Blue

I promise I will start getting better at posting weekly updates so I can be true to the name of this school series, the weekly review.  

Our Mayflower voyage went well and we sailed right into the learning about the pilgrims daily life. 

We created suitcases that displayed what we would bring on the Mayflower and even created our own Mayflower ships that listed our newly learned facts. 

When polled: Most children decided that they did not want to ride on the Mayflower. One interesting fact we learned was that the Mayflower was not meant to carry passengers. 

As you can tell we learned many more facts about the pilgrims and their voyage. Their favorite fact: When the water went bad, everyone, children too, had to drink beer.(Maybe I'll leave that out next year ha!)

 I chose to include five things in my suitcases hoping that they would at least fill in the same amount.

This little guy went above and beyond listing 12 things he would want to bring. If you notice #11 it will bring a giggle. 11. and evrethig ellts (translated: and everything else!)

They also loved learning that little boys had to wear dresses until they were six years old! We took the two days before Thanksgiving break off from Scott Foresman to review before our Unit 2 test so we had time for some fun activities. The media center showed the Mouse and the Mayflower which allowed us to further our Pilgrim journey. I have to admit this movie is cheesy and very poorly made but my kids were enthralled with it as they always are when we get a chance to watch a movie. During the movie they quoted some Psalms which I loved and hope took root in my little guys hearts. This lead to the Pilgrims talking about the Holy Bible. One of my little boys(SJ) came up to me right after and said, "Miss Anderson, they just talked said the Holy Bible, guess what? My mom has that book!" Me: "Really, I have it to, its a really good one!" This was a great reminder that I am a teacher to not only teach them about curriculum but to spread His word and love by my actions and words. 

This touching moment was followed by a hilarious one. Two seconds after the first mention of the Bible, little MM comes up and says " Miss Anderson, they just mentioned the Holy Bible and that reminded me...my mom's name is Holley." 

As we were waiting on the bell to ring, we discussed all the things we were thankful for and I was shown God's work in my little ones again, when two of them said that they were thankful for God and Jesus. These were followed by a precious little guy saying that he was thankful for old people. At that comment the bell rang and they were off to their homes to celebrate Thanksgiving. Oh, how they make me smile! I hope you were able to count your blessings yesterday with great food, friends, and family. We have so much to be thankful for!
~Miss Anderson