Halloween Madness and Class Party Ideas!

BOO!!!! 

I love this time of year when my firsties are all a-talk with ghosts, vampires, and other creepy creatures! Just check out a mask one of my girls made at recess one day! Creativity at its best!

My favorite day of the year is fast approaching! It's almost Halloween and I'm starting to wonder how other districts celebrate this day? In our district, Halloween is always used as a SIP (School Improvement Plan) Day. When students arrive, they are already in costume. We have a parade around the school, and a lot of parents show up to cheer the kids on and take in all of the wonderful costumes! Then, we spend time having a Halloween party. This year, the teachers planned the party and our most wonderful PTA provides the volunteers to run the party. Here's what's in store for my little ghouls:

1. Snack - Ghost Banana and Rice Krispie Treats (peanut and tree nut free!) We wanted to make the pumpkin oranges as well, but the deal with living in Chicago is that oranges are now OUT OF SEASON! Eek! Here's the pic of the cute snack:

The rest of the activities:

2. Halloween Charades 

3. Pumpkin Painting 

4. Pumpkin Bowling

5. Halloween BINGO (with Halloween tattoos for prizes, of course!)

How does your school/district celebrate Halloween? Drop me a line or email me! I love bringing new and awesome ideas to the table. I wouldn't want to get boring now, so please share some love!

Talk soon,

Fabulous Fall and Five for Friday! 10/11/13

Another week has come and gone! It's been full of a reading unit review, measurement in math, and community helpers in social studies. Next week is Columbus, Fire Safety and our firefighter visit. There is always so much going on, that I enjoy posting 5 things from my week to debrief and be proud of my kids and their accomplishments. I also love being inspired by what others post! I'm currently on the hunt for cool Halloween math project for Halloween week....With that said, here's my 5 linked up with Doodle Bugs Teaching!

1

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow has been a tradition for the past 6 years in my classroom. My students love the story and I love tying in the genre of legends during the Halloween season. This is the version I read, as it is not too scary and is not violent at all. It took just over a week, and we finished last Tuesday!

2

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - the movie! I show the cartoon movie from my childhood. It was put out by Rabbit Ears Storybooks in the 1990s (available on DVD) and is narrated by Glenn Close. Can you just see how attentive my students are? Not one word uttered during the 30 minute film.....and cheers at the end! Great way to connect text to video and discuss differences!

3

"My Monster" writing and craftivity. This week we focused on descriptive writing. We began with the read aloud I Need My Monster. Then, made our own monsters. Don't they look adorable hanging up in the classroom?! This is the perfect book if you have children that are afraid of the dark as well. It's a boy who NEEDS his monster to fall asleep, but he's on vacation! Simply adorable.

4

Scarecrow "Fall is..." writing. Again, descriptive sentences using our senses. My favorite is below and says "Fall is leafy."

5

Community helpers writing - one of my students wrote about teachers and drew...ME! Here I am with my fabulous long ponytail (I have short red hair), Halloween dress (because I love Halloween so much), 6 fingers on each hand, and long, pink fingernails (I bite my nails and keep them as dark as possible)! *THIS IS WHY I LOVE FIRST GRADE!!!*

I hope everyone had an inspirational and productive week. Enjoy your Monday off in honor of Mr. Columbus! That's all for now!

October Currently...

Just a small little post this morning to link up with Farley at Oh Boy, Fourth Grade to  bring you my October currently...then it's off to get ready for my best teaching friend's wedding! { I'm doing a reading! Eek! }

A Nutty Week & 5 For Friday!

This has been a week I will never forget! The weather has been crazy, my allergies have been crazy, and my firsties have been STIR crazy! We even had a coyote on the playground one day...Is it a full moon?!

Today, I'm linking up (one day late, because I needed a break last night) with Doodle Bugs Teaching to share 5 things from this week in my classroom:

1.  Froot Loops graphing: Throughout our CCSS unit on interpreting data, my students had the chance to get hands on with some Froot Loops the day we introduced bar graphs. Gotta love the collaborative work! (And Froot Loops are peanut and tree nut free for those of you who need that!)

2. Hundreds Chart: Also during our "interpreting data" unit, we practice the concept of more and less. Here, my students are using a *giant* hundreds chart to find patterns in the numbers and find "one more" and "one less" than given numbers. They LOVED being able to choose a number themselves and quiz their friends.

3. Dice Game: After using the ginormous hundreds chart, we broke off into groups to roll dice and find "one more" and "one less" of the numbers we rolled. These foam dice are so fun and CHEAP! I use them in centers, during math time, and for free time as well! Find them, along with a lot of other cool, cheap manipulatives { here }!

4. Another great resource for teaching about the hundreds chart can be found { here }!!

I use these interactive hundreds charts in my room to reinforce concepts. The "splat square" hundreds chart is a *favorite* of my students. It has fun sound effects and lots of colors to point out patterns on the chart and show more and less in a very concrete way!

5. This last one's for me: I started setting up my Halloween things this week. My favorite holiday is only a month away! I'm just starting but here's how my mantle looks so far.

Talk soon!

           

Celebrating Johnny Appleseed Day!

What a day on Friday! We had a 1/2 day of school *and* celebrated Johnny Appleseed's birthday. His actual birthday isn't until September 26th, but we always celebrate the Friday before.

Not only did we do the usual "dress up as Johnny" and "wear a pot on your head", bring an apple for snack, but we also did some super cute activities from Cupcake for the Teacher! You can check out her Johnny craftivities { here } !

We started the day with an apple experiment: smell, touch, taste, sound, and feel. Then we hypothesized which liquid would preserve an apple from turning brown best: water, pop, lemon juice, or milk. Our results were......LEMON JUICE!

We then watched a Discovery Education video about Johnny Appleseed.

Last, we created our own Johnny, complete with facts and a page that students wrote "I think Johnny Appleseed was important because..."

My favorite was "because he planted apple seeds and was a good guy."

We created a Johnny Appleseed hat and ended the day with a graph: "How Do You Like to Eat Your Apples?" Obviously, apple pie was the winner!

Talk soon!

MY NEW DESIGN!!

Oh. Em. Gee. It's finished!!!

I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT MY NEW BLOG DESIGN!!! Thank you so, so much to Christi at Designs by Christi for making my new design *so* adorable! I can't wait to connect with more teachers!

Happy (soon) Friday!

Read to Parter and Base Ten Fun

Welp....we're back in the routine. I just wanted to send a quick post of two first grade successes so far.

My firsties have been working hard on building their stamina for "Read to Self" (we're up to 10 minutes at a time!!!!!!!)

Today, I introduced "Read to Partner"! They were so excited to practice!! Here are a few shots of my hard workers:

*tear*...such a proud teacher!

We also just wrapped up our first unit on tens and ones this Monday. Here are some pictures of them working hard at the SMARTboard and doing q-tip ten frame painting.

Hope everyone is on the route back to sanity!!

Talk soon,