It's My Birthday Week && I'll Blog If I Want To...

I'm not going to lie, I had a solid case of the Sunday night blues last night. It was cold outside, I had my super warm Uggs on, a mug of hot apple cider, and I was pretty sure that the last thing I was going to want to do in the morning would be to get out of my nice warm bed. Annnnd I was right. . .it was freezing this morning and I definitely didn't want to get out of my bed. Ugggh Mondays why do you have to be so tough??? This week is my birthday week. . .the 28th anniversary of my birth...so atleast there's a chance to wear a tutu (kidding. . .kidding...maybe). March also brings St. Patrick's Day and my first wedding anniversary! Spring break is right around the corner (4 weeks away to be exact) and the new wine kit finished up last night which means lots of delicious Peach Chardonnay! Yummmm!

There's definitely a lot of fun to be had in the fabulous month of my birth. However, there's also a to do list a mile long to get through before my loves and I can all eat Reeses peanut butter eggs and peeps! So without further ado. . .here's March: Week 1- -Math (or atleast what it looks like on paper...so far).

Basically we'll be doing a lot of reviewing for the next two weeks because the end of the third nine weeks is rapidly approaching and with that comes benchmark testing. This week I will be focusing on reviewing the following skills:
1. Missing Addends & Subtrahends
2. Graphing
3. Telling Time (Hour and Half Hour)
4. Comparing Numbers
5. 2 Digit Addition & Subtraction

I have a fun little unit in the works that's a hodge podge of all of these skills. It's not completely ready to be posted to TPT, but I'll be working to get it up in the next few days. The one part of the review unit that is already up is the portion about Missing Addends and Subtrahends. I'm finally getting to pull in my Tooth on the Loose unit and I'm crossing my fingers that my kids this year like it as much as my kids from last year. Tooth on the Loose is already available in my TPT store.

It's a 39 page unit with an activity to practice finding missing addends and another to practice finding missing subtrahends. Three homework/independent practice options are also included. The read aloud that I like to use to kick of this lesson is You Think It's Easy Being the Tooth Fairy? by S. Bell-Rehwoldt. After grabbing their attention with the read aloud, we review how to find missing addends and subtrahends through the use of the activity cards. I play music. . .they can dance around like the silly billies that they are. . .and then when the music stops they have to sit at a seat with a card and find the missing addend or subtrahend.

After all of the hoopla that comes with the practice round, it's time for the best part- -the craftivity!! I give my kids a circle pattern for the head (as always) and a star pattern for the wand and then they're on their own to create the rest of the tooth fairy.This is for Friday (I always save the messy stuff for the last day of the week so I can close the door and leave it for the vacuum to pick up. . .and hope that 2 days is long enough for the custodians to not want to pinch the tar out of me when we return).

Anyway, today we practiced our graphing skills. Since it's been kind of like a zoo in my classroom, it was the perfect day to begin the Wild About Math pack (it's on the way to TPT by the end of the week). I started by reading my favorite book of. all. time. from when I was little Put Me in the Zoo by R. Lopshire. The kids loved it. . .I loved it (of course). . .and we were definitely ready to get the party started with spinners! There are few things that my kids love more than spinners (I think I've mentioned this before in my blog). Skittles, dancing, and stickers are a few, but spinners simply knock their socks off. My kids sit at tables with atleast 2 other friends so I gave each table a zoo animal spinner card and a paper clip. They used their pencils to anchor the paper clip to the spinner and they spun, spun, spun until they couldn't spin anymore.

Each time a group member spun the spinner, they had to make a tally mark next to the animal that it landed on. At the end of the spinning time they had to count up their tally marks and create a bar graph. Then they had to answer questions about their graph by analyzing their data. Data can also be collected by having your students poll their classmates instead of spinning spinners. I wasn't in the mood for all the chaos on a Monday morning, but it does work (make sure you model the expectations or things can get a little bananas). Despite a few arguments of the 6 year old kind, it was a pretty flawless review lesson.

Tomorrow we're going to be reviewing telling time to the hour and the half hour. Some of my sweet things are having a major struggle with the half hour concept and the clock is winning. No matter how I break it down they're just not grasping that the hour is only half way done and that the hour hand hasn't visited the next hour yet. They get it for the day but it's disappeared from their brain the next. It's enough to drive a teacher crazy! Keeping up with the "wild" theme tomorrow's lesson is a dinosaur theme. I'll be reading the book Edwina the Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She Was Extinct by M. Willems. I'll blog more about it tomorrow because I've got some egg drop soup calling my name and after running 2.5 miles I'm starving! Until tomorrow. . .live, love, teach!

Love is in the Air. . .Among Other Things

Ok, so I'm not the greatest with being a regular/comitted blogger. However, I am amazingly good at losing my voice and catching colds (third time this year...seriously no joke). If you've ever had to teach without a voice then you know it's no walk in the park. . .it's nearly impossible. . .and definitely the closest thing to torture that I ever want to experience. One would think that having a day off would have given me plenty of time to keep my word about blogging every week, but catching up with my Beverley Hills ladies with this snuggle bug was way more appealing. He's seriously the cutest little furry baby that's ever lived and I love him to pieces!

Now that I'm back to normal (and caught up on all of the mess created when your substitute doesn't show up for the day) here's what we've been up to! I've always loved Valentine's day...really there isn't a holiday that I don't love. Honestly, who doesn't appreciate a good reason to celebrate and eat chocolate?? It fell on a perfect day this year too which added more to my love for the day of love. All week long I pumped in mushy gushy love themed activities into all possible crevices of our day.  For math this week we took a moment to review a few topics that we've touched on since coming back to school (comparing numbers, measuring with non-standard units, missing addends/subtrahends, and graphing). I whipped up a new unit Crazy In Love (little did I know how perfect it would be because they were cra-to the zy all week long). As usual they ate up the chance to work with a partner and spent their entire recess (4 days inside because of the rain) trying to copy the clipart on drawing paper (my little Picassos are always ready to draw some doodles).
The activities I included in the unit all have a corresponding Valentine/love themed book to get the excitement bug flapping its wings. Here is a list of the read alouds (and their activity from the unit):

1. Love, Splat- -by R. Scotton (Hearts & Graphs: Measuring with Candy Hearts)

2. The Biggest Valentine Ever! - -by S. Kroll (Cupid's Love Shuffle: Measuring with Non- Standard Units)

3. Froggy's First Kiss- -by J. London (Frogs & Kisses: Comparing Numbers)

 

4. Who Will Be My Valentine This Year?- -by J. Pallotta (My Funny Valentine: Missing

     Addends/Subtrahends)

 

They're all super cute books that I would highly suggest adding to your personal library if they aren't already a part of your collection. You can grab your copy of Crazy in Love at my TPT store && get your lovey dovey crazy on next year (or this year as a belated celebration).

 

Our writing lessons this week were focused on writing facts about animals and people. As part of our love day celebration the kids were told to pick one person or thing that they loved and to tell me why/describe that person or thing. Most of them were really sweet and picked their moms or dads, one picked me, and one picked. . .are you ready for this? Chocolate milk. After the editing was done and a final copy was created we got busy making our very own cupids. The only pattern I gave them was a circle for the head. Everything else was created on their own. I never really give them a lot of patterns because I want them to problem solve && of course I want their work to turn out a little different than the person sitting next to them. I did do the diaper fitting (yes I said diaper. . .and yes it was crazy town for a few minutes as they laughed like hyenas and rolled on the floor).

 

Of course we had our Interactive Read Alouds for the week focused on Cause and Effect relationships. Our read alouds included: Corduroy (D. Freeman), Franklin's Valentines (P. Bourgeois), Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes (E. Litwin), and Mole's in Love (D. Bedford). &&& d-to the -uh we had sentence editing in our centers. . .this week it was from the pack Lovely Sentences. Their work was something to love and I finally feel like they're really starting to get the hang of capital letters and punctuation marks! Praise to the big man upstairs (and no not Santa as one of my lovelies suggested. . ."Who? Santa?"). As always my sentence editing pack is in my TPT store for just $2.50.

 

With all of the work out of the way, it was party time- -Fun Thursday style! We all made valentine bags. . .they weren't anything special just colored paper bags with handles, their names written on them, and a few valentine stickers. Then the kids passed out their Valentines. For the first time ever I had everyone bring in Valentines to pass out that were already completed and filled in. I'm always surprised at how much candy some parents send in with their kids. . .giant treat bags that make mine look shabby (not cool)! Without further delay, here's a picture of my Valentine treat for all 16 of the little ones that hold a piece of my heart in their glue stick covered hands.

I used my super cool (and way underused) Slice machine that  my mom got for me a few years ago when I was into scrapbooking (my obsession with Publisher has put that on the back burner. . .really it's not even on the stove anymore). I then used Publisher to create a tag that I cut out (with a circle punch tool), glued it onto the cardstop scalloped tag, punched a hole and tied it onto the treat bag with curled ribbon. Inside of the bag I put a cup of pudding, a valentine note pad, heart eraser, and a few pieces of candy. Of course I attached a spoon onto the bag. . .I'm not sure if they were actually used because when dessert is involved all table manners disappear and my kids like to eat like cavemen, but it's the thought that counts right? Last but not least, here's my pinterest inspired banner. All of first grade made them for the 100th Day of School and I couldn't resist bringing it back again!

 

Until next time, live. . .love. . .teach!