Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Fun with Dr. Seuss

We have been working on some fun Dr. Seuss themed activities this week.  We started out the week by  creating Cat in the Hat from paper plates. Then we added rhyming words to the hats.  Super cute!














We also made these adorable Thing 1 and Thing 2 handprints inspired from Mel D. Check out her blog {here}. She also has a really cute Lorax activity on her blog for free!

We have been working on using powerful verbs to spice up our writing. I taught the students to write a 3 action sentence to go with the Thing 1 and Thing 2 project. What is a 3 action sentence you ask? It is a sentence that follows this pattern: noun, action phrase, action phrase, and action phrase. For example, Mrs. Sousa hopped out of bed, gulped down her coffee, and drove to work. I teach them these in isolation first and then, hopefully, they will include them in their every day story writing to vary sentence structure.

I created a rough draft framed writing to help the students with their 3 action pattern sentences. Click the image to download a copy.





Thing 1 came to my bedroom. He jumped on my bed, spilled water on the floor, and broke my fan. What a mess!


Thing 1 came to my kitchen. He destroyed the glass, threw all my pans out, and jumped on my table. He is a little rascal.



Thing 2 came to my backyard. She yanked my dog's tail, made all the palm trees collapse, and leaped on my glass table. She was a little mean devil.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

My First Award

I woke up to a nice surprise this morning. I have been awarded the Liebster Blog Award from the gals at 3 Teacher Chicks. Thanks so much ladies!




What it's all about...
The Liebster Award is awarded to blogs with less than 200 followers.  The award is passed along from blogger to blogger and highlights up and coming blogs.  Liebe is the word for love in Germany, which is where the award originated.  



Guidelines to accepting the award:
Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog.  Link back to the blogger who presented the award to you.  Copy and paste the blog award on your blog.  Present the Liebster Blog Award to blogs of 200 followers or less who you feel deserve to be noticed.  Let them know they have been chosen by leaving a comment at their blog.






MY Liebster Blog PICKS



Lots of fun freebies on this site. 






An 4th grade blogger just starting out.








A first grade blog with many cute ideas.

Friday, February 24, 2012

President's Day and American Symbols

We spent a lot of time this week learning about our past presidents and American symbols. We made box books about U.S. symbols.



Liberty Bell Box Books



Bald Eagle Box Books

Students chose a U.S. symbol to write about. We had the U.S. Flag, Liberty Bell,  Statue of Liberty,  Bald Eagle, and The White House represented.


U.S. Flag

Liberty Bell

We also did some activities from Traci Clausen's President's Day Unit. The kids made themselves look like George Washington, did an Abraham Lincoln craft, and tucked a book about U.S. symbols in his hat.



I thought these were hysterical!







We also made these adorable Bald Eagles from Deanna Jump's America Unit. So cute!

Friday, February 17, 2012

President's Day Writing

We did some writing about Abraham Lincoln today.  
Click the picture to download the graphic organizer.


Here is one for George Washington


Thursday, February 16, 2012

Cloudy with a Chance of...

Today we read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and wrote our own stories about unexpected things raining down from the skies. We used stickers to help illustrate. They loved it!


I had a variety of stickers for the kids to choose from. Money, cupcakes, chickens, vegetables, donuts, soda, balls, airplanes, etc.







They look cute hanging from the ceiling.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Oh What a Day!

A giant vanilla marshmallow, a crumpled up $20 bill, and a tortilla warmer. Stumped? Just some of the treasures I brought home from our Valentine's Day extravaganza. I had to leave my own two valentines home with strep throat and face the day with 24 very excited first graders. After tackling the challenge of the boy who brought his valentine mailbox completely covered (no opening for the valentines to go in) and consoling the tearful boy who left his valentines at home, I was starting to feel feverish myself. Starbucks to the rescue! Two venti lattes later and I was ready to party. The kids ate breakfast, made a craft, and glued their valentines in a scrapbook. Just as the party was ending, one of my little guys walks over to me, grabs a $20 bill out of his pocket and says, "I almost forgot. Here's twenty bucks. Go buy yourself something nice." He throws the twenty down on the table and walks away. I'm speechless. For the record, I gave the money back. Oh...and the tortilla warmer wasn't a gift. Just something I picked up off the free table in the teacher's lounge. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Love, Splat

We have been doing some activities from Cara Carroll's Love, Splat unit this week. I just love that story. It is so sweet and the kids cannot resist that adorable fuzzy cat. In addition to Cara's activities, we made these accordion heart folded story maps.  The kids did the folding and cutting themselves. Amazingly enough,  only one student had to start over because he ended up with four separate hearts. Did I mention that I had to do it three times before mine stayed together? We did a guided drawing for Splat and glued him on the back. They are adorable!






Thursday, February 9, 2012

Valentine Friends

Picked up these adorable Valentine Friends from First Grade Blue Skies. I modified the writing by using the four square writing method to write complete paragraphs about Valentine's Day.







Here is the graphic organizer I used for the 4 square pre-write. The topic sentence goes in the heart. Detail sentences are written in the top two boxes and the bottom left-hand box. The concluding sentence is written in the last box, bottom right-hand corner. If you download, please leave a comment!

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

100th Day Write

Our class celebrated the 100th day of school on Tuesday. We made a class book from Deanna Jump's 100th Day Unit. I asked my kiddies to write one thing they would buy for themselves and one thing they would do to help someone else.  Gotta love first grade spelling!


If I had $100 I would by a home for homeless animals. I would buy a pool.



If I had a $100 I would buy a snow globe and give the rest to Pennies for Patients.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Love my new look!

After scouring the Internet for hours trying to figure out how to make my blog look cute, I decided to bite the bullet and pay someone else to do it. Altering HTML code is just beyond my scope of talent at the moment!  I'm loving my new blog design thanks to Dreamlike Magic.


Anybody out there have any tips or tricks for a new blogger? I'd love to hear them if anyone out there is reading this.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Winter is...

Winter writing in hot cocoa mugs.

100th Day

In honor of my school's 100th day of school tomorrow, here's a little activity I plan to do with my students tomorrow. This is also my first attempt at uploading a google doc to my blog, we'll see if it works!


Download it here

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Close-Up Snowmen

This project is one of my winter favorites from Deep Space Sparkle.

Where the Wild Things Are

Students sequenced the beginning, middle, and end in a simple foldable.

Mitten Contractions

Our mitten contractions

Hoppin' on the blogging bandwagon!

I have spent tons of my free time the last few months checking out teaching blogs. I have found so many amazing blogs and crazily creative teachers! They have inspired me to start my own blog. I am very excited about this new adventure. I have no idea what I am doing, so bear with me. It will definitely be a work in progress!