Five for Friday: April 24

My first grade class had a wonderful week. Take a peek into our classroom to see what we did.

We are super scientist in first grade and have been connecting our reading, writing, and science curriculum.

I read many plant books this week to my students. Two of my favorites were Eric Carle’s The Tiny Seed and Gail Gibbon’s From Seed to Plant.

My students made this filp book on parts of a plant, wrote about the life cycle of the plant, and started an investigation on celery.

The students are observing and waiting to see what will happen when we put red dye in with celery.

In reading this week, the students read the book Hi, Fly Guy! This is such a great book to read with first graders. They love that there are chapters in the book but it is still easy enough for them to read on their own. The students did a reading response and made their own fly guy and wrote about him. I love how they used many of the same ideas from the book.

In math this week, we are studying measurement and time. Measurement rolled over from last week and time was the main focus this week. I think they should be separate units but our math series puts them together.

The students measured kites with paperclips (which is actually a non-standard unit of measurement and a standard if anyone is curious). They drew pictures to go along with the kites and labeled them shortest to longest.

I read The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle to my kids and talked about the time throughout the story. The kids then made the ladybug clock and practiced time to the hour and half hour with a partner. Now they have a clock they can practice with at home too.

It was my assistant principal birthday today. The first grade team knows that he absolutely loves Diet Mountain Dew. He always is drinking this during meetings. So for his birthday we made this little sign with Diet Mountain Dew and Mountain Dew cupcakes from a local bakery. He was so surprised this morning when we gave it to him in office. I know it made his day. I love that our school makes sure everyone always feels appreciated and I’m glad to return the favor.

Lastly, we got our tentative job assignments for next year and I will be moving on up! Drumroll please……I’ll be moving to second grade next school year! I’m very excited for the change and looking forward to a new grade level. I’ve taught first grade for six years and I think it was time to switch it up. I’ll be stalking all the amazing second grade blogs this summer.

Hope you all have a fabulous weekend! I’m ready to rest, catch up on some TV, and scrapbook. As a side note, I only have 27 days left of school!! Bring it on, summer!

Five for Friday: April

 

It’s the little things in life that make moments special. Here are a few small moments from my past few weeks.

Last week was my Spring Break. On our last day our PTA gave us orange sodas as a treat for our hard work. The staff felt appreciated and I dare saw even more excited for Spring Break!

I also hit another milestone last week. Tutoring officially ended for the school year. So as a thoughtful gift our math and reading coach gave the tutoring teachers sharpies. I was very excited and graded all reading, spelling, and math tests with these before break. I tutored reading Tuesday and Thursday mornings before school started. I’m glad to now have that time back to just focus on my classroom and also feel proud that my fourth graders are ready for their state test.

Speaking of my fourth graders preparing for their state test…it was the first days of our FSA testing for 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th this week. Another teacher and I took on the task on decoration the door and providing snacks for this fourth grade class. Here are the door decorations I made. “ Sail Through the Test” will hopefully encourage those sweeties to relax and do their best. I had many of these students in my class when they were in first.

This morning I woke up feeling great after a night of book club friendship. On my way to work I saw this beautiful sunrise. I don’t think the picture really even captures the pink and orange but the sky made me grateful and reflect on this Good Friday.

Lastly in class I had my students all pick an egg filled with jellybeans out of a basket. It was super important to them that they got the colored egg they wanted…oh little ones. They used the jellybeans to graph each color. It went perfectly with our graphing unit. The kids loved doing this jellybean math.

We even had this conversation, as we were packing up.

Student: “We didn’t do math today.”

Me: “Umm yes we did our jellybean math.”

Student: “Ohh wow! That was math! That was the most fun math!”

I love first graders sweet innocence and was reminding of that today through a simple fun activity. When I picked them up from music and was peeking in on them playing instruments, I thought to myself that I am lucky to have these kids.

Well I hope you all have a wonderful Easter weekend. I can’t wait to hit the beach (hopefully the weather will hold out!) and enjoy time with family and friends.