Earth Day

After reading and watching "The Lorax" last week, we decided a good way that we could help our Earth right now would be to recycle! We collected paper, plastic, glass, and aluminum all week, then took a little field trip to the Recycling Center down the street and sorted it out!

Another thing we talked about was how plants help the earth stay beautiful. We planted grass seeds in clear plastic cups and are watching them grow in the window sill!

We also got CATERPILLARS! Our class is enjoying watching the little fuzzy guys getting larger and larger, pretty soon they will go into their chrysalis- then a butterfly! I will post pictures as they grow!

"The Lorax!"

Last week we read Dr. Seuss' "The Lorax" in honor of Earth day! After reading the story we discussed the different ways we could help our earth. I was very impressed with the ideas they had, as well as what many of their families do already! I gave them a writing prompt "If I were the Lorax, this is how I would help our Earth..."  and this is what they came up with!

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Easter Fun!

This week we did a fun Easter craft- we made a nest with eggs! It took minimal supplies and the kiddos LOVED it! We used yarn, styrofoam bowls, liquid starch, plastic eggs and stickers!

All we did was dip the yarn into the liquid starch and wrapped it around the bottom of the overturned bowl. It was pretty messy, but the kids dug right in. Next they got to decorate some plastic eggs with stickers.

I let the nests dry over night, then turned them over, put some "grass" inside and completed the craft by placing the eggs in the nest! Adorable craft project and soo fun!

We have Tadpoles!

If you have seen my classroom, or even the name of this blog, you are well aware that I lika da froggies! So it makes sense that I had planned on getting tadpoles as a pet for our classroom for some hands on life cycle learning! I was going to order them from an online company but decided against it because it would have cost too much. Lucky me though, my aunt was cleaning out a fountain in her front yard and found some teeny tiny tadpoles. I rushed out and got an aquarium and welcomed some new class pets into room 103! Although the tadpoles are super duper tiny, the kids seem delighted any time they see one dart across the front of the tank. We will be learning about the life cycle of  a frog leading up to Earth Day, and will continue to watch the little guys grow and develop! I will post another picture when you can actually see the tadpoles!

St. Patrick's Day Leprechaun Hunt!

So I am pretty lucky- My sister works with a girl from Ireland and she has her very own pet LEPRECHAUN! She agreed to let Mr. Leprechaun visit our classroom on Wednesday! I was so excited when he came to school early in the morning- but when when I went to the teacher's lounge to make some copies he must have escaped! I returned to the classroom to find a mess of cubes on the floor with a riddle left by Mr. Leprechaun! So when the kids came to class, we decided we had to go look for him! We followed the clues left behind to classrooms all around the school. There were even little green footprints leading to the clues! We finally were led back to our class and found the last clue with a pot of delicious treasure! 

In the afternoon we came back to our classroom from recess to find green glitter leading into the bathroom and green water in the toilet! We kept spotting clues, but could never find that tricky leprechaun! 

I tried to capture good pictures along the way- but I had some very excited and eager first graders that picked up clues and footprints before I had a chance! Hope you enjoy the video and Happy St. Patrick's Day!

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Dinosaur Fossil Fun

At Glenpool Elementary we use Reading Street for our reading series, and this week our story is called "Mister Bones: Dinosaur Hunter." I am lucky to work with an amazing team of first grade teachers, and one of my close friends Aubrey (another first year teacher like myself) had an AWESOME idea to create dinosaur fossils with three simple ingredients: Flour, salt and water! We mixed it in a large bowl and then the kiddos had at it! We played with the dough, smashed it down and then used our fingers to make a dinosaur footprint! We talked about fossils and are creating elaborate stories about where we found our fossils, which dinosaur we believe they belong to and how we excavated it! 

We are having fun learning more about dinosaurs and I hope you enjoy the pictures of my sugar pies creating! 

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BUILD Math Centers

BUILD is a new math centers program I am using for our classroom. I found this idea on adventuresinteaching.blogspot.com and loved it! Build is an acronym for B-buddy games, U- Using Manipulatives, I- Independent Reading, L- Learning about numbers, and D- Doing Math. 

We are rotating these centers in the afternoon after our main math lesson. We will spend 20 minutes at these centers and rotate to a different letter in BUILD each day of the week so by the end of the week each student will have rotated through all the centers.

This week for buddy games the students are to partner up and quiz on another with tens and ones rods. One students holds up tens rods and ones cubes and the other student identifies the number the cubes and rods represent.

For Using Manipulatives I started out by giving the students pattern blocks and work mats to create pictures. In the future I will rotate in coins, clocks, and cubes with varied activities to solidify the skills they have already acquired. 

Independent reading is just that- reading! The books at this center all have math concepts as the story line, like "The Greedy Triangle" and "Five Little Monkeys".

The Learning about numbers center focused on using cubes to help create fact family sentences. Each student wrote a fact family like 5+3= 8 and 8-3=5 and checked their answers with cubes.

Doing math was an extension activity we started last week with Valentines Day. The "Be Mine Boxes" allow the students to write a number in 4 different ways. They represent the number by writing number sentences, write the number word, tallies and tens and ones.

I am eager to continue to explore the many options these centers allow and I am happy to give my kiddos another outlet to practice their math skills in a fun and exciting way!

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