Teaching Intercession and Spring Break!!!

We started working on number collection boxes right before Spring Break. Last year, I worked and worked with my firsties and some of them never did "get" it. This year, i don't think I really did anything differently, but most of the firsties seemed to grasp the concept a little better. I made one and explained it as I went, we made one together and then I gave them a piece of paper to make one by themselves. I was kind of dreading looking at the pages, but I was pleasantly surprised, most of them did a pretty good job. The next day we looked at some of them and then I put them into groups of threes. I thought that the ones that were struggling might understand it better coming form a classmate. I gave each group some dice to get their number and a piece of poster board. I told them that all of the groups that worked together would be able to use markers to finish their poster. That did the trick, they all  were working nicely, well I did have one that did have a bit of a struggle.

Here are a couple of the finished products.

The pink and purple circle WAS a clock showing 5:00 before someone got a little color happy with the markers. ;P

One of the boys in this group asked me if he could put the 11th month. :D

Last week , I was technically on Spring Break, but our district offers a full week of intercession for students are struggling. I was thrilled that I got to invite some of my students this time. We worked on number collection boxes a little more, but this time we glued "stuff" on to make our collections. Here is a picture of one, I forgot to take a picture of some of the better ones.

I think the doily is supposed to be a clock. lol

Here are a few things we did to introduce fact families to them. I thought it would benefit them to get a step ahead of the class.

We also worked on reading words cvc words and then add  Magic E.

Open the flap to find the magic E.

We worked on words families.

I used several pieces of construction paper for these. I folded them in half  and stapled them together to make a word family book.

Wednesday WOW 2/5/14 with a FREEBIE

Here it is Wednesday and time for Em @ Curious Firsties, Wednesday WOW!

WOW, I was talking to a friend from church, she and her family have only lived here since June. Anyway I said something to her about turning 54 in March, she said, "You're kidding, I thought you were 45!"  Wow that made me feel good! Then the next day she sent me a text. she had asked her husband how old he thought I was, his answer was 42! Double WOW!!! I really don't think I look that young, I think having a 10 year old threw off their guestimator! But it did make me feel good, even if it's not true! lol

WOW! Don't you love it when a lesson turns out great? We have been working on place value    

            the last week or so. While perusing through Pinterest,  I found this from Jennifer Oyler

I loved the idea, but before I had a chance to do it with my firsties, 

I found this idea on Amy Lemons' blog Step into Second Grade

So I sort of combined the two ideas. I didn't want to do their first name because some of my kids have nine letters in their name. So I decided to have them do their initials.The day before we were going to do it, I showed them an example using my initials. We did have to have a discussion on what initials were. I told them to make sure they knew what their middle name was when they came in the next day because I wouldn't have time to look up everyone's. I also told them if they had more than one middle name to pick out one of them to use. 

So we started out reviewing my initials to make sure they remembered what we were doing. Then I put a copy of the alphabet  on the smartboard. I highlighted the parts of the letters we thought we should use "longs". We decided as a class that the "Cs", "Gs", "Qs", "Os", and "Ss" would have to be made using only "cubes". Here's what we came up with.

After that we sort of set up an assembly line to get our materials. I gave each child 10-12 "longs", if they needed "cubes" they had to cut them. They put their initials on construction paper and then I made a recording page to go at the bottom.

Here are a few of their pages. The first girl does not have a middle name. What they did was write the initial and then count what it was worth. Rozlyne's R was worth one long and 16 cubes or 26. The challenging part was to then draw it using the tens and ones of the number (2 longs and 6 units). I'll be honest, I didn't think about that being a little over their heads when I was planning it. I had them come up and I worked with the ones who needed help. It was cool to see the lightbulb come on as they"got it".

It was interesting to watch how they made the letters, as you can see this little girl struggled with her M.

 On Arabella's, you can see that they also had to count all of the longs and units and then write what their initials were worth. The next time I do this I will have it on the recording page.

I really liked this activity and the firsties did too. I think we are going to try it again instead of doing initials, I think we may do words from the -ar family or the -ay family. Practice a phonics skill and a math skill in one!

If you are interested, here's the pages I used. I did add a page for with four slots to record the word families so those who wanted a challenge could do a word like play.  BTW there are two blank hundreds charts. I printed them both on one page because I wanted to use 9 x 12 construction paper.

Base Ten Names

Can you believe it? We just hired a kindergarten teacher at the beginning of January and at the end of January our other kindergarten teacher retired. We only have eleven regular classroom teachers and this makes the second one to retire and we have had one to quit. Our PE teacher also quit, but she had just finished up getting a nursing degree. It has been a tough year for our teachers and an even tougher one on the children. Seven out of the eleven classrooms have had students juggled around due to the teachers leaving. I don't know what is going to happen with this new development. I'm hoping that we will be able to hire someone quickly. Most of the days the kids have been split up into different classrooms, as you can imagine kindergartners with a pack of papers isn't a good learning situation. :(  

Since the new kdg teacher hasn't been trained in the easyCBM (and she can't log on to the site), I have been trying to get the kinders tested during centers and my plan time. Yes! I only have 4 left to test of 49! It will be a big WOW when I finish. 

I found this on pinterest the other day. I really liked it.

source

Stay warm, we are having bitterly cold weather the next few days here in Oklahoma.

Made It Monday and Favorite Song Linky, Plus a Freebie.

This week I'm joining Tara @ 4th Grade Frolics, once again, for her "Monday Made It" linky party.

I have been working on things for the classroom since I report back on Wednesday.

The first thing I have made I got from this pin.

I loved this poster! When I was working on mine, I decided to get  most of my words from the Great Expectations Life Principals. So if the life principle is curiosity, I put curious. I made a few words to start with and I'm thinking about adding one word a week to make sure the kids will know each word. Here a picture of some of my words. As you can see, I haven't actually made the poster. I just got the pages laminated. Hopefully I'll get it on my board tomorrow. 

I also worked on a set of motivational quotes that are in my TPT store. Here are a few that are printed, laminated and trimmed.

My last Made It came from Math Coach's Corner. she has blank ten frames you can print. Then you use colored dots to make cards for the students to practice subitizing. This was a very easy made it thanks to Donna.

I also wanted to link up with Barb from Grade ONEderful and share one of my favorite poems/songs. When I used to teach kindergarten, it was always the class' favorite song out of all of the songs we would learn. I found the song in a Mailbox magazine years ago, I don't know who to credit. You can grab a copy HERE if you like.

The kids love the song and as you can see it also has some wonderful vocabulary to introduce.

Enjoy your freedom, while it lasts, I go back Wednesday.

Monday Made It - July 15, 2013

I'm joining Tara @ 4th Grade Frolics for another edition of Monday Made It.

This week, I tackled recovering an office chair. I have never done anything like this before and it was kind of a learning experience. I was trying to save money and used fabric that I already had.  When I first began, I had a lot of trouble using the heavy duty  stapler. I could not get it to staple without using both hands to squeeze the "trigger". As I continued, I found that it was much easier to squeeze if I had the stapler on a flat surface instead of hanging off of the chair. I used spray adhesive to keep the fabric formed to the seat and seatback. I also had trouble with the back cover. I couldn't use the little hidden nails, they were rather bent up and I couldn't get them nailed in. I took them all out and thought I would use upholstery nails. There must be some trick to using them, I couldn't get any of them nailed in so I used my trusty can of spray adhesive. I think it turned out OK, I might even try recovering something else.

Here's the chair before.

Here it is after.

I had planned on taking the chair back to school, but as I was working on it, I realized that it would look really good in my poor excuse for an office that I am trying to re-vamp. The colors in it go great with the curtains. Last week, a neighbor put a round, black pedestal table on the side of the street. I brought it home and cleaned it. Now it is in my office area as a work table, the brightly colored chair will be perfect with the black table. I also decided to hang the bulletin board I made last week by the table. I remember that Reagan @Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits had framed a picture of her blog logo in her beautiful office. My redo won't even compare to hers, but I did make a picture of my logo.

If Once I get it all together I'll post a picture.

I saw this graphing idea HERE. I loved the idea of having a graphing board that was easy to use. I changed mine a little bit. I made a border around my dry erase board using duct tape and then because I was impatient, I also folded the duct tape over to use instead of ribbon. I wanted to make it where I could use more than 2 graphing choices so I put 5 velcro dots on the back and I made 5 strips that I could attach depending on what the question is. Here's what the back looks like.

Here it is with 3 strips

Here it is with 2 strips. 

The last thing I made this week is a bunting to hang out in the hallway.  After I got it made, I decided that the font was a little hard to read. UGH! I'm not redoing it because I don't want to use anymore colored ink. If you can't read it, it says, "Welcome to 1st Grade", so original.  ;P

Hope this is the beginning of a fantastic week for you and me!