Happy New Year!

 

Well, back to school today. Just in time for a snowstorm and bone chilling weather. So that called for a snowman themed bulletin board. Now who doesn't love Olaf?!  I'm sure your kids are just as crazy for Olaf and the whole Frozen gang as my kids are. I'm not a great drawer so I blew this image up on my document camera and created him. The kids went crazy when they saw him. For an added touch we drew snowmen on our gloves and painted snow on them with q-tips. I love how it turned out. This is a short post but as soon as we get movin' with our projects I'll be sure to post them. Stay warm!!

Christmas, Christmas, and More Christmas!

 

So, we've been just as busy as the next classroom. Here are some of the projects going on in our room. My firsties are having a ball doing them.

We started a unit on reindeer and made these adorable reindeer. Quick question, how do you explain to these little ones who whole heartedly believe in Santa and Rudolph that reindeer don't really fly?  As we were filling in our schema chart many of them said they fly. I just went along with it. I'm not going to be the one to break their hearts and besides it is fun to believe they do fly.

 

I teach at a Catholic school so we also do religious projects. This has always been a favorite of mine. I found it from Kacey at Doodlebugs Teaching. So easy to make and turns out great.

 

Today was Grinch day at school. The kids came in the Grinchiest (if that makes sense) clothes and we had many activities planned for the day. This year we made it easy. At 11:00 all the kids in the kindergarten through second grade classes rotated rooms every 10 minutes. Each teacher read a different Christmas story to the kids. They loved it. By the time they were on to the third room they were all guessing what book was next. I read the story Santa Lost His Ho, Ho, Ho!  Super cute book and the kids got to say the Ho, Ho, Ho part each time it came up. Way too cute! In the afternoon my class made these cute Grinches and then wrote what they would do to make him smile. My favorite was to take him to the circus. We also pinned the heart on the Grinch. Thank goodness we had gym today. It broke things up a little ( I really needed a break from all their Grinch excitement).

 



 

One of my favorite authors is Laura Numeroff. Who doesn't love her stories? After we read If You Take a Mouse to the Movies we made these adorable mice. I found this at First Grade Fever.

 

 

I always love looking at the cute bulletin boards around our school, Here are just a few of them.

 

 

Our class Advent wreaths.

 

Our class Grinch anchor chart (with a glimps of our Kindness elf hanging on the side)

 

Our class is working very hard on learning their math facts. This gumball math is a great incentive for them to learn them. Every time they pass their fact test they get a gumball sticker and for every 5  they get a gumball. If you are looking for this one I found it over at Fluttering Through First Grade.

That's it for now. Busy as ever. Tomorrow is our school Christmas program - another jammed packed day with rehearsals and then an all school performance and parents performance at night. Did I mention that we do after school fun classes for those who sign up? We do. I am doing a holiday baking class and an Elf Academy class. It's a lot of fun but also tiring. The kids love it so it's well worth doing. Now on to bed to do it all over again. But as all good teachers say "I wouldn't have it any other way!"



Thanksgiving Turkeys

 

Thanks to Kacey over at Doodlebug Teaching these turkeys were a favorite of my first graders (and mine). They were very easy to make and turned out adorable! Thanks, Kacey, for all your awesome ideas you create and share!

 

This board is outside our second grade class. Isn't is adorable?!

 

We read several stories about turkeys trying to escape Thanksgiving. So here are some of the funniest turkey legs trying to get away from the farmer. I can't quite remember where I saw this at but as soon as I find out I will mention it here. There certainly isn't a lack of turkey ideas on Pinterest. If you are still looking for an idea be sure to check it out. You will be sure to find what you are looking for .

Now, on to report cards. I guess it's that time of the year.

Adjectives, Halloween and Finally, A Smartboard!

We've been working on adjectives the past week or so and this activity was perfect for adjectives. My firsties loved drawing pictures of their friends. Then they had to write adjectives on the paper describing their friend. After hanging up the ones above I noticed either I have several kids with lots of freckles or the chicken pox are going around. Love these pics. Here are some more.

 

This is the bulletin board outside of my room. I got this idea from Kacey over at Doodlebugs Teaching. She had some of the best boards ( and products)>

 

Finally, we got a smartboard in our room. This kids were thrilled and so am I.  Now if any of you have any good programs to use on it please let me know.

 



 

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day off ( if you have no school tomorrow due to Columbus Day).

Bulletin Boards

 



 

When I saw this adorable bus bulletin board I knew I had to have my firsties do it. It's just so cute. I had all the pieces ready for the kids to put together. When we were just about done with it and ready to hang up one of my lovelies said, "Hey, where is the window? All buses have windows" Low and behold I completely forgot to give them the window piece and by now there was no room for it. Oh well, it turned out cute anyway. As a matter of fact our second grade class purchased it also and they did put the windows on their buses.  I found this over at  Firstgradeblueskies if you are interested in making it too.

 

 

This is one of the cutest back to school boards I have seen in a long time. Our wonderful second grade teacher has this outside her classroom.

 

Since our back to school theme is to be kind I decided to start the year off with a Kindness unit. I saw this poster on Pinterest . As we go along and make a few kindness projects I will staple them up on this board and fill it in.

So of course the heat is on here in Chicago. We have not had many warm days this summer and of course here it is now. Monday was in the high 90's and our classrooms were also in the 90's so we had to do the next best thing and spend the day in the air conditioned church. It's really interesting trying to teach in the pews of the church especially when many other classes are in there. Now every morning as my firsties say their prayer intentions there is always one of them who prays for winter to get here. I just pray for 60 degree weather (we all know how brutal Chicago winters can get). More pics to come soon.  Stay cool!!

First Grade Begins!!

 

 

 

So today was our first day of school. And of course summer decided to begin today too. All summer we have had very cool and rainy weather (not pool weather). So today summer decided to return with temps in the high 80's, humidity, and no relief in site. Of course!!  Anyway, we had an awesome first day. Only one crier for only a few minutes. This year I have 16 firsties which is the lowest I have ever had in my many (25) years of teaching. I really hoping that means we will be able to get a lot more done this year. Here are a few pictures of my room. Sorry about the lighting. I will be posting more pictures soon as soon as I can get some projects up and the lighting is much better.  

 

 

As I was doing my usual blog stalking this summer I came across Maria Manore's blog and her AWESOME classroom. The first thing I thought was I GOTTA HAVE IT!  I was on a mission all summer to recreate her room or at least her library. This is what I came up with. I just love my new class library and have had many compliments on it. I am still planning on getting the boy and girl silhouettes but as we all know there is only so much time to get ready.

 

 

 This is the same clipchart I used last school year. It worked wonders last year so I was not about to change it out. My firsties were all over it today.

Here is a view at the back of my room. This is my calendar/math board, word wall, and the yellow board is going to be our Kindness board. We will hang our kindness projects on that.

Here is a view from my door. As you can see we are loaded with windows which I usually love but not when the temps are up. The sun is beating down on us since we our right outside the blacktop parking lot. I plan on hanging our anchor charts on the screens as we make them together.

I just love my door decs this year. I got the phones from Molly over at Lucky to be in First. They turned out adorable!

Here is the bulletin board right outside my room. It's the same one as last year and I still love it. This idea came from Kacey over at Doodle Bugs Teaching.

 

 

 

 Here is another shot of my library before I picked up the bench cushion. I was lucky enough to find a lady in the neighborhood who sews for a second job so she made the red cushion for it.

 

I will be posting more pics in the next several days, but in the meantime I want to show you some of the awesome bulletin boards you will find throughout our building.

 

 

I want to explain this Kindness board. Our school's theme this year is kindness. We have a little girl (2 year old) who lives in our neighborhood.  She was born with Apert syndrome, which is a cranial facial syndrome. Her name is Mary Cate Lynch. Her parents did not know before birth that anything was wrong so when she was born they were totally surprised. It is so rare that one a few babies a year are born with this syndrome. Her parents decided to embrace her and her differences and wanted to educate the public about this syndrome. Therefore, her mother, Kerry, goes around to all the local school and brings Mary Cate with to talk to the school children about being kind and that just because she looks different doesn't mean she is different. Kerry is incorporating the book Wonder into her speeches. It is incredible what she is doing. So far Kerry has visited over 50 schools, been written up in the Chicago Sun-Times, and even did the Today show over in Australia. If you would like to she has a blog and a facebook page which you can read all about her , just go to Mymarycate.org  or Mymarycate facebook page. Her story is really touching. Kerry and Mary Cate came to our school on the last day of classes in June and talked to the whole student body. Therefore, we ended the school year with kindness and now we are beginning our year with kindness.

 

 

I hope this wasn't too long and boring for you. As soon as I take more pics they will be posted. Now back to school for our back to school ice cream social ( the teachers do all the scooping and the kids love it)!!

Chicks and End of the Year Boards

 

 So, our chicks have arrived!! After 21 days of turning the eggs three times a day and keeping a close eye on the temps our little babies have hatched. Out of a dozen eggs we hatched nine cute, fluffy chicks. We were so surprised to get black chicks this year. We were expecting the traditional yellow and a few brown chicks. Certainly not black ones. They are adorable. Each one has their own yellow spots and markings so my firsties can tell them apart. Sooo cool!! The other first grade class in my school has seven, mostly black chicks. If these days haven't been loud and crazy enough the chicks just add more excitement to first grade. As you can probably figure out, there isn't much learning going on these days. Tomorrow the chicks will be going on a fieldtrip to hang out with the kindergarten kids for a while. Maybe then we can squeeze in a little teaching.

 

 

 

 

We did get a chance to complete this project about all our first grade favorites. Each year I usually have my firsties make one of those booklets of all their favorite things about first grade and it takes so long to get each page done. This year I just loved this project when I saw it and I thought it would be much easier  and less time consuming. Don't get me wrong, I do love all the other booklets the kids make and I know the parents love them too, but this is not the group to do that with. It would take forever to get many of them to finish the pages. Each group of kids brings it's own set of rewards and challenges and this group likes to take their time completing their work OR they rush through so fast it is quite sloppy. Therefore, I thought these little people would be perfect and they were. Thanks to Lyndsey Kuster over at A Year of Many Firsts for this adorable project. 

 

 

I found this cute board on Pinterest. It's perfect for our summer board. This is the first thing our parishioners see as they enter our building to attend mass. The tree does look much bigger in person.

So needless to say, it's done and now let's move on to summer.

 



 

SPRING Has Finally Sprung!!

 

YIPPEE! Spring is here! However, it doesn't quite feel like it. We are still having some pretty cold weather but at least it's not that 4 letter word - snow.  Here is our first of many spring projects. It worked out perfect. I had a really cute kite for them to make when this kite just came to me as we were learning about drawing and measuring line segments. The kiddies really loved using the ruler and measuring items throughout the room when it dawned on me that they should draw their line segments on the kites and then fill them in, They turned out really cute and were much easier to do than what I had planned.

 

 

 

I found these awesome eggs on Pinterest one night and then when I went back to them I just can't seem to find where I saw them at. Sorry!! This was one of the easiest Easter eggs we've made. All the kiddies did was use blue painters tape to mark the lines, color it in with sidewalk chalk dipped in water, and let it dry. Once dried I pulled off the painters tape and this is what they turn out to be. So cute and colorful!! I have a bunch of them hanging in the hallway and have had so many compliments on them. If you are looking for an easy egg to make this is it.

 

 

So, here are two more projects we completed this week. Since we are a catholic school we can make these crosses. I gave each of my students a cross pattern and had them color the edges of their cross with oil pastel crayons ( $4.99 for a pack of 24 at Michaels). They then placed the crosses on another sheet of white paper and rubbed the crayons off the cross onto the new sheet. It was very simple to do and they turned out awesome.

 

Now on to our plant unit and a ton of fun planting.