What's Been Goin' On? and a Freebie

      Wow, it's been a while since I have posted. where has the time gone? I hope all of you mothers have had a wonderful Mother's Day! I started mine early by going to a Scholastic Warehouse Book sale with Delaney and a good friend and her daughter.

 

      I used one of Kathy @ First Grade a la Carte   Color by Codes as a filler for early finishers.(The kids love them!)  It was a picture of a ladybug. As I have said before my class can be a handful, so after recess I thought I would wear them out a little more, so we stayed out and collected ladybugs. I only had 3 bug boxes and I must say they did a great job staying on task and working together. When we came back in I had them write about their experience. It was fun reading the different thoughts they had. My favorite came from Breonna. One of the things she said was "Two ladybugs were playing piggyback." oops!
       We used Skittles to worked on fractions and graphing. They of course thought this was the best day ever! Here is a link to the page I made, if you need one. I put a few lines at the bottom and had them write about their experience. I made the graph small because I always have kids who do not want to color them in so this way there isn't much to color.
Skittles Math Freebie

       We were also working on symmetry. I had the kids fold a piece of paper in half, cut it, color the one side and then open it up and color the other side. After a couple of botched attempts (cutting the fold off), we ended up with some nice work.

Love the seahorses! They took some careful cutting.

For all the Angry Bird fans.

      We also made symmetrical butterflies using finger paints. the kids had a great time doing it. I thought they turned out so cute, I decided to use another one of Kathy @ First Grade a la Carte color by codes. We used the MOM one to make the cover of their cards and then they each wrote their own message to their moms. It was another good chance to go through the editing process.

 

 

 

This student is Hispanic and her mom doesn't speak English. I used one of those translating sites so she could write her message in Spanish also. I sure hope it makes sense.

        On a personal note, our district has a track meet every spring for 4th and 5th grade. My daughter Delaney decided she wanted to try out for it. She was all bummed because she said she was one of the slowest runners in her class. I told her they also had the long jump as an event, so she started practicing. When they had their "tryouts" and she made the team. She is so excited. I'm really happy for her. I am taking a much needed mental health personal day Tuesday to go to the track meet with her.
      My "mom" is still in my class every day, pretty much all day. I guess I am just a slow learner. I finally realized that I need to keep her busy so she can't sit and watch every little thing that is happening in my room. She keeps jumping in and sorting out problems instead of letting the kids do it themselves. I actually think the behavior has been worse since she has been in there. If I tell the kids to line up and it is not in any particular order, she gets on to them for taking cuts. My thought is if the other student doesn't care, why should she? Even worse, I don't think she is helping her son. She sits by him and prompts him all day to keep doing his work. The minute she is not in there, he does something. The other day, I was griping at, talking with the kids about their behavior in the cafeteria. He wrote a note and brought it to me that said, "I don't like you, I wish you were dead."
Another day he came in the room and turned on the Smartboard and DVD player and sat down to watch a movie because the breakfast line was long. When I told her about it, she said I just don't think he understands since you sometimes will watch a DVD at the end of the day. I told her he is smarter than that and he knew that wasn't right. Later, I thought I should have told her, "He is so smart, he has you and your mother sitting right beside him everyday giving him one on one attention. Now that's a smart kid! I'm hoping my plan to keep her extra busy will work. If it doesn't, I can make it through the next 13 days, I can make it through the next 13 days, I can make it through the next 13 days....