Randomness

This is a random post with some pictures I wanted to share. Ever since I got the kinders, I have been doing good to get one post out a week. These pics are from a couple of weeks ago when we did some leaf art. I thought they did a great job!

This one is by one of the kinders, it is a tree with leaves falling from it! hahaha

 These are some of the stories the firsties wrote after reading "A Prairie Dog's Home"  I remembered that I had some "people" crayons so I put them out for the firsties to color their pictures. It really made the pictures look better!

This little boy insisted on writing "The prairie dog home is protectable".  Yes, my spell check has underlined the word.

We had a Read-a-thon one afternoon. Why is it so much more fun to read when you can sit on your desk or put your feet up on the table??? ;P I'm always telling them, "When you see me sit on the table, you can." Well they didn't see me sit on the table, but they did have permission to do it. 

My last couple of pictures to share are with Delaney. The first is the lazy way we started our Thanksgiving Break.

I didn't take any pictures from Thanksgiving. My sister took this one of Delaney and her door art. My favorite one says, "When I was born my mom dropped my in a pool of awesomeness and glitter."  After having several bullies when she went to my school, it's good to know her self esteem hasn't been damaged! lol When she is 75, she will be the one decked out in sequins and gold!

Yesterday, I babysat for some friends. It worked out great, I took Delaney and the crew to see Frozen. We absolutely loved it!

Have a great Saturday!

Thankful Wednesday WOW

I'm linking up with my friend Em @ Curious Firsties for her weekly linky party Wednesday WOW.

When I taught kindergarten, I would always teach some very simple Thanksgiving songs, but for some reason when I started teaching first grade, I stopped doing it. Since I have kindergartners this year, I decided to make them a little book with four Thanksgiving songs. Both classes loved it!  The first graders would get the books out and start reading or singing the songs. I know next year I will definitely be using the book again. We went to sing to the principal and secretary, in the past I always wanted to have them memorize the songs, but this year I decided that they should take their books with them to look at. It was very rewarding to see them all reading their songs! Here's a short video.

I wanted to share these pictures of our Thanksgiving dinner. I told the class we would eat the school Thanksgiving dinner in the classroom. They all made a placemats and I brought plastic forks, spoon, knives (yes I brought knives) and Thanksgiving napkins. I showed them how to set their table settings. We enjoyed sharing our meal together and I brought everyone a Thanksgiving cookie for dessert.

We received some good news this week...a kindergarten teacher has been hired. She can't start until January, so I'll have the kinders through December. I will miss them, they have been sooo sweet and they love to give hugs! I kind of feel bad for them having to have 3 teachers this year, but I know the new teacher will be able to give them the true kindergarten experience. :)  Hopefully I will get to have some of them next year for first grade. My firsties that went to the other class keep coming up to me and asking when they get to come back. They never gave me hugs until they left now they come over everyday to give me a hug!

This year I have so many things to be thankful for.

1. I'm thankful having a God who is always watching over me and my daughter.

2. I'm thankful to have Delaney, she adds so much joy to my life.

3. Thankful for my family.

4. I'm thankful for my church family that is always ready to help others when in need.

5. I'm thankful for my job. I love teaching! I have complained a lot this year, but my complaints are not about teaching, it is about the higher ups wanting us to be cookie cutter teachers, all teaching the same thing at the same time in the same way. It would be fine, but none of my students were cut from the same dough, they are each different with different strengths and weaknesses. Oops, I guess I got on my soapbox. Sorry!

6. I'm thankful for blogging, I love having friends to talk to, get ideas from and share ideas with.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Cornmeal

Wednesday WOW (late again) and FREEBIES.

I'm linky up with Em @ Curious Firsties for her weekly linky party Wednesday Wow. A couple of weeks ago, I told the children that I would give them some bonus points it they would write the page number where the answer was on their weekly assessment. Some did and many didn't. So the next week, I decided to give it another try. This time I gave them a sentence starter...On page ___ it says,  It was pretty cool, all of the firsties did it except for 3 students. Here are a couple of examples. I was sooo proud of them! I've always wanted then to answer in a complete sentence, but some weren't doing it, so maybe the sentence starter was just the trick! ; )

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My next WOW was an afternoon of math games. In the past when I have tried something like this, there have been lots of arguments.This time I was pleasantly surprised, most of the them did a great job and had fun at the same time. To make it easier on me, the game baskets rotated instead of the children.

We played Top It.

 This was a place value game with dice.

They made designs using shape templates.

 They played the Bunny Hop (Everyday Math). I made my own numberlines and we used bear counters.

If you need a numberline, click HERE.

                                                         Just print, tape them together, laminate and cut. 

I was reading Math Coach's Corner blog about a game for counting coins. It seemed like it would be very easy to implement in the classroom. She had cards made for the game, but I somehow, missed that when I was reading. So I made my own set. The game is simple, just print the cards then laminate and cut. I plan to print 5 or 6  copies of the page. The kids draw five cards and then on a piece of paper they write out what coins they got (ex.  D D N N N P) and then write the amount. You can adjust it however you want, you may not want the children to draw 5 cards if they aren't ready for it. Only use the coins that you are studying. I also included a dollar bill to challenge my top students. Please leave a comment if you download this.

Counting Coins Game

Have a nice weekend!