Welcome back!

Wow! Has it really been almost a month since I posted last?! Shame on me!! 

I was a super busy bee over the break. My first week I volunteered in a friend's classroom since I was out earlier than her. She was my second grade teacher AND my master teacher for student teaching block 2 (which I co-taught 2nd grade with her.) She is one of my biggest supporters and mentors and I just LOVE being able to be in her classroom and seeing how she does different things. Such a learning experience! 

The second week was crazy. Doctors did open heart surgery on my 82 year old grandpa and the whole family was very scared and nervous. He made it through surgery with flying colors and is on his way to a full recovery. (YAY!) After that I host a small Christmas party with  my side of the family on Christmas Eve, then went to Hubby's parents on Christmas day for a big party over there. The following Saturday Hubby was rushed to the ER (by moi) at 5:30 in the morning for kidney stones! I went to the ER the following Tuesday because I got bit breaking up a dog fight (I'm perfectly fine.)  After that it was prep time for our traditional New Years Eve party...and when we finally recovered from that, I was in charge of a last minute (like 2 days to throw everything together) engagement party on this past Saturday! 

I am so glad the holidays are over...no more excitement for me. Thank you very much!

Anyway, today was the first day back with munchkins and we had so much fun!! I introduced the kids to the idea that water comes in different forms. We're going to be spending the next two weeks learning about water as a liquid, water as a solid, and water as a gas. To help the kids understand the concept of water as a solid I brought up the idea of ice (most kids are familiar with ice and that it melt into water) and asked them where they see ice outside. Many kids say that they saw ice in their cups when mom or dad gave them a drink, but a few of them said that they remember it hailing a little while ago and that hail looked like little pieces of ice. This led us into a discussion about hail, sleet, snow and icicles. I told the kids we were going to do an experiment later in the week and they were super excited about it. 

We're going to make a snow man (out of shaved ice from a snow-cone maker my co-worker is letting me borrow) and we're going to see what happens when we leave him out in our classroom vs. what happens when we leave him outside. Now today it was almost 90...I'm hoping it'll be colder outside for this experiment but c'est la vie and I'll work with what I have. Next week I'll toss a bunch of water onto a hot electric griddle or skillet and show them that when water gets really really hot it evaporates and turns into steam. Ta-Da! Introduction into the gas form of water! The whole thing is going to be a lot of fun. 

Anyway, I've kind of focused on snowmen and snowflakes for our "topic" of the week so for math we had to sequence the parts of snowman from biggest to littlest! Aren't they stinking adorable!?

The kids had to draw eyes, a mouth, and arms on their snowmen. 

Some of them got a little...creative with their buttons. 

And some you can't even see!!

Our letter of the week is Mm, and we are REALLY working on identifying beginning sound. So, as a whole group I let the kids come up with ideas of what words started with m. I think they did really well...once I really explained the concept!

Now, don't get me wrong, I still had A TON of responses that were incorrect, but by the end of the lesson/discussion time they were getting the hang of it! I'm really hoping this helps solidify our beginning sound identification. 

OH! Victory moment!! I sent out progress reports the Friday before break, along with a target work packet, and I had one little girl that couldn't identify a single letter (upper or lower case) and could only tell me the sound that x made. I reassessed her today...SHE KNOWS 11 SOUNDS!!! I just about cried when I counted up her stars! (They get stars next to the letter when they master the sounds.) I was very proud of her and all the practice and work she had done over break.

 Look at this beauty that I got for Christmas!!! My sister-in-law bought this baby for me for Christmas and I could not wait to try it out!! Fully loaded it holds 22 regular sized papers, and I only have 19 kids so it's perfect! 

I cannot wait to show you more of what I have planned for the rest of the month! It's going to be an amazing adventure. 

I hope you've enjoyed this first blog post of the new year, and always remember:

Every moment can be a learning moment!

Sincerely from TK,

Nichole

Ho Ho Ho! A classroom full of fun!

Wow, has it really been over a week since I posted last?! I'm so sorry!! 

Well, to catch you up on all the fun things we've been doing and are doing this week! We have been having so much fun doing all the different parts of my gingerbread unit. The kids have been working on our sight words, and our gingerbread ten frames. They love helping the gingerbread man across the river by following the special number. We are having a blast. 

our Gingerbread writing

We have also done a bunch of winter/Christmas crafts. The first one we did was a thumbprint reindeer ornament for our moms and dads. The kids got an ornament and a tray with brown paint. We all went step by step dipping our thumb in the paint and placing it on the ornament. My recommendation, HAVE VOLUNTEERS! I did this by myself and ended up having to wipe the paint off half of them and redo them with the kids because they were blurry, or too close together. If you REALLY want to keep a secret for the moms and dads and don't want them helping, then I would recommend dedicating a good 30 minutes (I did mine during universal access time) and call the kids over one at a time or maybe in groups no bigger than 3 or 4. Something small that you can handle and keep the kids following the directions so they turn out properly. 

I used paint pens from Michael's to draw on the nose, eyes and antlers. I felt extra crafty and drew on holly because I had the colors and the time. Here is how they came out. 

We also did a directed a art lesson, much like our turkeys, where we made reindeer using our hand prints as antlers!! They came out super cute! I forgot to snap extra pictures of the kids' reindeer, so you only have my lovely teacher sample to see for an example of the final product. Again...YOU WILL NEED VOLUNTEERS! Have your volunteers trace all the kids' hands on the light brown and then do the art lesson bit by bit. If you don't have volunteers or want to keep this as a surprise, take time during independent time and trace the kids hands one by one...OR you could use a hand cut out and just trace that instead of the kids' actual hands. It is completely up to you. 

Here is what they look like completed (at least my teacher sample.)

Another craft we did (that worked with fine motor skills) was our paper plate Christmas tree. This was a 2 day craft that took some prep work from the teacher. I had the kids paint their plate green and then after it dried I cut them into thirds and glued them into the tree shape. I placed them under books to be pressed flat while they dried. On day two I gave the kids their plate tree and some pom poms. They needed to glue the pom poms to create a decorated Christmas tree. I think they turned out adorable. Don't you?

The last craft we've done (so far) is a hand print reindeer. I painted both of their hands brown and placed them down one at a time. Some of the kids didn't let me place their hand and they ended up right on top of each other rather than next to each other to create the head and the body. The kids glued a red pom pom down for the nose and then the fuzzy pom poms for the collar.  I took a sharpie and drew on the eyes and the mouth. These are hanging above our desks and the kids love them! (The parents can't wait to take these home either.)

I have two more crafts (at least) planned but they are simple foam crafts from Michael's. These crafts help the kids work on their fine motor (the peeling of the paper off the backs of small pieces.) These are fine motor activities...that's my story and I'm sticking to it! Once I do these crafts I'll get pictures of them too. 

Ahh so many fun things crammed into 2 weeks. My count down has already started! 4 days left!

I hope everyone is having a great holiday season!

Always remember, every moment can be a learning moment!

Sincerely from TK,

Nichole

Not your normal blog post!

Well hello there!! I am full into Christmas mode at school! We're doing reindeer and gingerbread in my class. I cannot wait to show you some of amazing crafts that the kids are doing. It's going to be amazing. 

Anywho, I'm here to remind everyone that TPT is having its annual cyber sale!! Go shop till you drop and enter the code TPTCYBER at checkout and receive 10% off instantly! To go along with the amazing discounts, I am having a sale as well! 10% off everything in  my store. Exciting!

I am also here to promote some good friends and fellow bloggers! My friend Kristen from Easy Teaching Tools has released an UH-MA-ZING writing product for Christmas!! It contains 27 pages of amazing writing prompts and pages for little writers to write their hearts out! Check it out!!

She is a fantabulous blogger and if you want to see what she's doing in the classroom as well as what is going on with her creative and fun products go follow her on her blog here! She really is amazing!

If you're looking for some fun math activities that go along with all the holiday fun, check out Jamie Huerta's (from Laughloveteachlearn.blogspot.com) Common Core Holiday Math Pack for First Grade! This pack is 30 pages of student-friendly math sheets that get your student's brain a tingling! 

This pack contains concepts like: Number Bonds (Numbers 1-15), Word Problems (solve using number bonds & pictures), Creating number sentences using number bonds, Fact families, Solve it making a ten, Doubles plus one facts, Find the missing addend (cut & paste), Is it true? Is it false? Prove it!, and Find the missing number (addition & subtraction)! 

Swing by to pick up your copy before the sale runs out!! Follow Jamie on her blog here!

So, I'm off to go prep for more fun Christmas activities for tomorrow's festivities (OooooO! I rhymed!) and I hope everyone had an amazing break!

And never forget! Every moment can be a learning moment.

Sincerely from TK,
Nichole

The Turkeys are coming!

So I have a ton of pictures I want to upload to show you the lessons from last week, but sadly with the hectic-ness of this weekend (it's my anniversary and I had to leave work quickly to miss all the traffic) I FORGOT MY CAMERA AT WORK!!! (*sob*) So I'm going to tell you all about this coming week and I'll upload pictures tomorrow after school so you can see all the fun projects we worked on! 

So this week we have a ton of fun projects planned. On Monday we are coloring a scarecrow craft and cutting him out. He will be pinned together and put up on our theme board. Tuesday we will be working on our "What are we thankful for?" writing prompt. Wednesday (my favorite!) we will be doing TIE-DYE TURKEYS!!!!!!! I'm so excited! (Can you tell??) The kids get to color a coffee filter with marker and then we spray it with water and watch the colors blend together. Thursday we will color a big turkey cut out to mount our writing to it, and Friday we will be making Pilgrim and Indian hats and learning all about the first Thanksgiving. Unfortunately because of the new healthy snack act in California (I think I've mentioned it a couple of times) we wont be able to reenact the first Thanksgiving with actual food. Such a bummer! But we're still going to have fun. 

I also wanted to take a moment and let you, my dear readers, know that I have released my Gingerbread Man unit on TPT! It's 100 pages! A complete unit, with writing, math, letters and all sorts of fun activities, all for you to use during your winter months. I will be using it for the 2 weeks of December, but it can be used during many different times of the year. 

 

Now normally I have my products free for the first 24 hours, but because this product took me almost 2 full weeks of work I'm only allowing it to be free for the first 10 downloads. So swing on over and take a look, but be quick! It'll go quickly.

I hope you've had a great weekend, and, as always...always remember every moment can be a learning moment. 

Sincerely from TK,

Nichole