Monday Brain...

Hello again, I guess you can blame my forgetfulness throughout the day on my "Monday Brain". I know that I am not the only one feeling it, haha...
I totally forgot to mention my star struck moment that I had at the Sean Covey, Leader in Me Conference that I attended a few weeks ago. Sean Covey's father is the 7 Habits author and an inspirational speaker from around the world. It was so refreshing to walk into schools and her testimonies of students taking ownership and leading in the classroom. I have a long road ahead of me but it was a huge sigh of relief to get away with some AMAZING ladies from my school. Here we are with Sean Covey himself:

 

 

The day after returning home from this conference was the 100th day of school and I think that I actually felt 100 years old after that day. To celebrate the day, we challenged our little ones to dress as if they were 100 years old and to bring in 100 pieced of their favorite snack. It was nice to take the morning and relax and read, as old people do I guess. For writing that day, we read a sweet book about grandparents and then brainstormed a list of things that 100 years old can and cant do. Here are some of the things that they came up with...

These kids think of the craziest things don't they! We also took some time out to mix our favortie things together, since one of my students claimed that old people cant even taste their food anymore, and spent some time talking about measurements! Just when we thought that we had enough, one of my sweet blessings of a practicum student came in and gave each of my students one of these pintrest inspired treats! I don't know about you but college aged future teachers are a huge blessing in our classroom and we are so fortunate to have a college right down the road from us that is full of eager student teachers!

 

 

Here is a picture of my team getting our 100 year old lady on!

 

On another note, we have been preparing for our upcoming "Living Museum" where each student has a significant symbol or person to research and become. In preparations for that we watched a brain pop video on what American symbols were and did an informational writing piece on facts that we learned. I wish I had a picture to show you but I guess I didn't get one of those. I did get one of the Statue of Liberty lesson that we did! This is always on of my favorite lessons because we involve more than one subject, I guess you could say common core... haha..... But we started out by watching a video about the Statue of Liberty and then read an informational piece to give us some more facts. For writing, we wrote some similes for the statue such as "The Statue of Liberty is a green as_______."  "The Statue of Liberty is a tall as_____" and "The Statue of Liberty use to be as shiny as______." After writing and a directed drawing, we did the penny experiment to see if we could turn the penny green. After a few days it worked and my kids were floored! I never seen them so engaged! So good....

 

Forgot to mention that the week before, we studied constellations and the students were so mesmerized that I let them create their own constellation and write a fiction story about it!

 

Also, one last thing I promise, I have been trying to come up with some fun ways for my students to practice spelling, please let me know if you have any advice. I feel like they are bored to death with the ways that I have out for them so any fresh ideas would be amazing!

Here is one of their favorites though....

How-to teach how-to's!!

Hey there blogging world. I have to be honest when I say that one of my least favorite subjects to teach is writing. My team totally has my back on coming up with some amazing ideas.. LOVE THEM.. I could not survive without them and definitely would not be the teacher that I am without their guidance. Be sure to give some thank you shout outs to your awesome teams members this week!

Last week our focus was writing how-to stories. We started off the week extremely simple and taught the students what a how-to was by reading the book," How to Ride a Giraffe". I of course looked everywhere for a book and stumbled upon this one in the very last minute before the lesson. This is prefect for teaching students to use an introduction, materials, steps and closing sentences (And they get to learn how-to to ride a giraffe, how cool is that??) But seriously, they enjoyed learning about something that they didn't know how to do. After modeling how to write a how-to book, we all wrote a how-to make a peanut butter and sandwich sandwich. We brainstormed all of our ingredients and I had all of the students describe the steps to me. The kicker came next when I overly exaggerated some of their cues like, put some  peanut butter on the bread. I actually stuck my hand in the jar without a knife because they didn't tell me to use a knife. This was one of those moments where I wished there was a camera in my room to witness their faces once again! Then I asked them to write their own steps independently. The next day, we asked students to get with  a partner and make their PB& J according to the directions that were given. They learned that details are the key to successful writing! He are some samples of what really took place.....

 

 

Here is one of my students enjoying her reward after a hard day of writing and you better believe that I took part in some PB&J time as well!

 

 

After I modeled this strategy several times, I had the students write their very own personal how- to books. I made them pick a topic that they knew a lot about!They turned out so precious! Her are some samples...

 

 

This is my favorite! This sweet little one goes to the same church that my husband is a pastor is at and when she told me her topic I almost melted!

 

 

Let me know if you have any cute ideas on writing how-to books because I'm like every teacher and trying to fill my idea bank as much as possible! Enjoy your week!

 

 

Back to the Grime.....

Hello all,
WOW has it been a while. Yikes.... Please forgive me as I have enjoyed some sweet, much needed time away with my amazing husband, friends, family and self! Taking time away from my love of my computer at home is something that was on my New Year's Resolution list. When I am home with my husband, we are home. I absolutely LOVE my job as he does too, but spending time resting and relaxing is vital to our health and peace of mind. All that to say, PLEASE FORGIVE ME for not posting anything all of last month..yikes.. how does that much time get away?
 
Here's what we have been up to lately.... (I'll add more from last week as soon I get some pictures taken!
 

We started off the year creating our very own New Year's Resolutions... Her are some examples of what they said.

Too cute....

 

My favorite part about teaching science is having the ability to tie together writing, art, reading, math, etc. Our last science unit that we focused on was stars and constellations. The goal was for students to understand that their were more stars in the sky then they can count. Well when you start showing them pictures, they start seeing shapes and begin creating their own constellations. I fed off of their energy and we drew our very own constellations and made up stories to go along with them! the Orion constellation as nothing on these 6 year old!

 

 

 

This very hands-on week ended with us learning about verbs. Of course we couldn't just do something simple, that just wouldn't be fun.....so tin foil action figures here we come. I introduced this lesson talking about what a verb was and why we use verbs in our writing. Then we brain stormed a list of actions that our class could do. They had to actually demonstrate the verbs that they called out to show everyone else that it really was something that they could do! They loved this although at times it got a bit loud! Altogether we made our tin foil action figures and they had to think of a way to make it look like it was doing the verb that they chose! Here are some examples of what we created!

 

 

 

 

 

(Thank you to someone for this very clever idea, not sure where I found it exactly... sorry)

I hope that you enjoy your week and take sometime to rest and relax. I'll be update a lot sooner I promise!!

 

 Blessings, Kelly T.  

 

 

I smell cookies.....mmmmmmmm

One of my most favorite things about Christmas is not only the tree and all of the gorgeous lights, but it is also the wonderful aroma of Christmas cookies.. This weekend I spend some sweet R&R while spending time in the kitchen mixing up some of my great grandmas famous cookie recipes (if you lucky I might even let you in on some southern family recipes!) Man so I love to hear my kitchen timer going off when a fresh batch of cookies are ready... and then to get the first bite.... OH MY WORD.... I am addicted......

Ok before I eat another one of those cookies I need to move on! hahaha.... This week our theme is gingerbread! We will spend days reading the various gingerbread man books, like gingerbread baby, gingerbread girl, gingerbread man, etc... After we have read and story mapped each one, we will spend a day comparing all of the stories and coming up with reasons as to which one we liked best. For writing this week, we are learning how to steal, I mean borrow stories that have been written by other people and make them our own. This week since it is ginger bread themed, I will have my student write their own version of the gingerbread man but all it "The Gingerbread ____insert their name______"  The students will write their stories in a gingerbread cut out book and then decorate the outside of their book like a gingerbread cookie! I promise I will post pictures of this project when we complete it on Wednesday!

We are also starting measurement this week so don't forget to check out my new unit on called Merry Measure Me!!! Its a freebie so go get it!

Here is the latest unit that I will be using this week. It is fun of ginger bread themed morning work pages, reading worksheets and Long O word sorts activities!

Also wanted to give a shout out to some AMAZING blogger who inspired some of my gingerbread creativity.....  You have got to check out their gingerbread units!!!

First Grade Parade
Fun in First Grade
Erica Bohrer's First grade
Babbling Abby

Again these ladies are FABULOUS!! Thank you ladies for inspiring us all with your creativity!

Click on the image below for your very own copy of this week's FREEBIE

 

Let me know if you are doing anything gingerbread themed in these last two weeks before the winter break!

Fa La La La La La la..... Getting into the Christmas Spirit!!

So I can honestly say that I am getting into the Christmas spirit thanks to my sweet little husband! He was so sweet and precious and make me leave my computer and school work at school for one night (if you know anything about me, you know that it a really tough things to do as a WORK-A-HOLIC), but agreed and had such a fun night making memories that I will never forget. This is our second Christmas together as a married couple and it was so much fun digging out those old ornaments and and making hot tea and Christmas cookies while decorating our new tree.. I promise just a few pictures and I'll move on to some FREEBIES!! I apologize for the the poor quality of the pictures (my IPhone is amazing but sometime the quick little snaps don't turn out the way I want.......but you get the idea)

Our sweet little fat tree!

Okay, okay I cant resit it .... I got a little crafty (with the help of an amazing talented friend) thanks to the pintrest inspiration and made some darling little mugs for my husbands youth ministry volunteers. He wanted each one to have different lettering and fun designs with the same IMPACT student ministries logo so here's how I ended the night----20 mugs later------

 

So I promised so freebies so here they are... Just click on the picture for your free copies!

 

In class we are teaching the phonic skill of "ee" and "ea"... so enjoy the sweet treat act ivies! The frustrating part about about teaching "ee" and "ea" is that sometimes there are words that sound the same but have different meanings and spellings so I created this unit to teach some small mini units on homophones! I hope that you enjoy!

 

This next one is one of my favorites. I am reading the book "Oliver the other reindeer" which is about a dog who really wants to be a reindeer which the kids just LOVE after we have already spent the week learning about reindeer. Anyways, the students have to write a letter to Santa telling him why they would be good on Santa's sleigh team! Not only is there cute writing paper but they are differentiated. If your class is anything like mine, they are all over the spectrum and I teach to all different levels..

 

 

I would love to hear from each of you to see what you are planning on doing with your little ones for the holiday!

 

Blessings,

Kelly

New Measurement Unit

Please tell me that I am not the only one having to go to school for two days before we can begin celebrating the Thanksgiving season. I have to say that I am a little bitter and upset that some of my friends around the blogging world are already enjoying their long vacation week.

I promise to update you on all of the fun things that we have been doing in our class for the Thanksgiving season but if you are like me you are already thinking about Christmas themes and lessons. This weekend I got a little inspired to create a measurement unit to begin once we return from this much needed break. My little ones have been working so hard it will do them a lot of good to take some time away and "Sharpen their Saws"! This unit is called Measure me Merry because I want my little ones to fall in love with measuring!! Click on the image below to grab your own measurement unit that follows the common core standards! Enjoy..

Voting All Around

Hello all,
My vote is in and I can tell you it has been a fun week teaching little ones about all of the politics and election pieces going on around our nation. I started the week out reading the story called " Vote for Me" which the students loved! From there it was really easy to transition into real world elections and voting. Character descriptions were the writing focus for the week and I decided to have the students describe their perfect presidents.  Some of their pieces were so adorable! Here are some of the samples from lesson:

What I LOVED about this unit (besides the future voter button) was the differentiated writing pages. If my class is like anyone elses, I have some really high, average and low writers and these pages helped my students to feel successful no matter what their level was.  This unit also includes Long A Sorts, Recording Sheets, ABC Order Sort and writing pages!

 

If you would like to grab this unit for free just click here to download it!

 

Another very exciting thing that took place this week was the announcement that I was VOTED Rookie Teacher of the Year for my school. Honestly I was blown away and so humbled because we have so my amazing first year teachers. So thank you fellow colleagues!

Here are some fun things that I was showered with:

 

 

Enjoy the rest of your week and keep a look out for the Thanksgiving Unit that is up and coming!