Leaves

I am estatic today! It's only lunch time, (yes, we go to lunch at 10:55) but I am so happy already! My kids are working so hard and quiet today! I couldn't be more happy!!

We started the day practicing for our first spelling test on Friday. Let's just say I hope the real test on Friday goes better than the practice one today! ;)

After recess, we came back and did poetry, finished up our bee project-based learning unit, and then went into the bulk of this post!

I read Leaves by David Ezra Stein. LOVE the illustrations in this book.

We talked about how author's don't need to use a ton of words to get their story out there. And then we reviewed the CAFE strategy "Retell the Story" by writing about the beginning, middle, and end in their cute little reading journals. I sent my little buzzers back to their desks and this is just a sampling of their reading journals:

 

 

When they were all settled and working, I started pulling some little ones to work with at the table. Then, all of a sudden I hear one of my little darlings say, "Hey, I just forgot the periods!". My class is terrible at remembering punctuation, but I keep telling myself, "It's only the first quarter of first grade!" Even though it was a disruption to my high attention kiddos, it was adorable. When they say cute things that relate to what I have been hounding, I make a BIIIIG deal of it. That student gets to draw their school picture, just like they did here, expect on LARGE paper and then we write in a speech balloon what they said. We hang it up so all can see and remember for next time. They LOVE this. All of them. It really gets each child to strive to get their picture up with something brilliant they said. Here's his:

GREAT day here so far! I hope you are having an AWESOME day, too!!!

Marcy

Science Week...AUGH!

First and foremost, I must apologize for the second posting. I know it's against blog rules, but when have I EVER followed the rules? Let's be honest...

I love Science. I love Social Studies. BUT...(enter dun, dun, dun Halloween music) I actually teach them integrated with Math, Writing, Reading, etc. (GASP!?!) I know...I believe the latest terminology for it is project-based learning and I couldn't be more pleased! We'll get in to that more later. Let's get into Teaching Blog Addict's Science week, shall we?

Monday's favorite books (although there are a TON more):

I love using The Tale of Peter Rabbit to introduce our project-based learning unit on living and non-living things!

And I fell in love with this book for our bee PBL unit. The photographs and captions are fascinating!

 Tuesday's favorite websites (again, there are a TON more):

The Magic School Bus. Great videos, printables, games (GASP!) and more!

NASA Kid's Club. Amazing in general. A-MAAAAA-ZING!

That's it! I will try to keep up with the rest of the week on time!

Geesh...27 kids isn't a handful or anything. :)

Marcy

 

Inside My School Bag Linky Party!

My favorite Abby, over at The Inspired Apple, is hosting an Inside My School Bag Linky Party! And if you know me, I LOVE a good party! :)
Here goes:

My bag, as of now. I received this with some cute little numbers at my bachelorette party last summer. ;)

Cold Sore Gel...left in there from early in the year. Too much stress causes this girl a cold sore.

Also, my Victoria's Secret Mint Box to keep the Ibuprofen in!

My favorite colored pens go with me everywhere!

Hobby Lobby gift card from one of my sweet little buzzers! Can't wait to go spend that!!

Postcards that have been in my school bag all week waiting for me to put names on them...

Prescription sunglasses. Guard those bad boys with my life!!! Can't go to recess without them!

Camera charger. Also, goes with me everywhere!

I LOVE these binding clip thingys.

A candy bar...just received this morning from one of my sweet little buzzers!

D.D.P. Can't get through a day without it.

A jump drive, zip drive, whatever you call it. I could leave this at school since I don't have a computer at home anymore!!

There you have it. A look inside this girl's school bag. I hope you enjoyed every minute of it. And every picture. Since apparently I can't take one picture of everything. That would be WAY too easy.

OOOOOH, and stop by tomorrow...one of my fellow 1st grade teachers is turning 40 tomorrow. We're going to get her good...my kids made the cutest little animals to surprise her with. 40 of them, of course. :)
AND we're going to the apple orchard for a field trip, too! YIPPEE!!!!

WOWSA!!!!! What a Week!

Oh my goodness gracious! What a week this has been! It's only been four days, but did it ever fly by?!

First of all, the sweet Barbara at Grade Onederful you are too sweet! To be on someone's Top 10 Blog List?! I am honored! Thank you-- I love your blog, too! And Mrs. Wyand over at Keeping it True in K-1-2 nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award! Awesome, more on that award tomorrow! Go check both of those awesome ladies and their blogs right away! They are too amazing!!!!
Secondly, this week has been awesome. I finally started LOVING my kids this week...yes, all 27 of them. They are amazingly good at chatting, but I have come to terms with that. At least I do not have the extreme throwing chairs kind of behaviors that I had last year! Waiting for them to stop talking has been extremely effective for me this week. I was yelling and that was not working, so I switched gears after getting sick and decided to wait, patiently, for as long as it takes. They caught on fast!!!

Today was the dreaded individual school picture day. We've been talking about them all week. I LOVE drawing their school pictures the first week of school, but never got around to it until this week. Without the chatting, we accomplished a lot in this classroom this week! Here's a glimpse of a few school pictures:

I just adore them. I keep them hanging up all year. At our poetry coffeehouse at the end of the year, I take them down and hang them in the hallway outside our classroom. Each buzzer writes an "About the Author" page. Also, very adorable.

Today was the first Friday I tried Math Stations. It was a success. I almost can't wait until next Friday already. :)

We also watched a clip on 9/11 today. Most of my buzzers knew about it already. I love that their parents have exposed them to history at such a young age! We wrote about why we love being American and they turned out darling. Some, even wrote about the World Trade Centers. And Sunday is my big race day. My first ever and last FULL marathon! I am running on Sunday in memory of 9/11. If our soldiers and military personnel can make the ultimate sacrifice, I can at least run 26.2 miles. God Bless America!

Wish me luck! One of my sweet buzzers came today with a good luck giftcard to The Juice Stop. In case you don't have one, they make the most delicious smoothies. I can't wait to indulge in a big fat juice chocolate smoothie after running 26.2 miles on Sunday.

See, we had an awesome week! I hope yours was as good as mine!!!
Marcy

Three for Thursday!

I am lovin' Blog Hoppin' and Teacher Week! It is so much fun to creep check out everyone's classrooms and ideas! My classroom will be way more exciting when I have time to stop pinning and get to making all these great things!
Today's party is here to entertain you with THREE favorites...your favorite font, favorite blog, and favorite online resource. And I have to agree that there are so many favorites so it's hard to pick one for each category!

My Favorite Font

I can honestly say I haven't got much into the fonts. I don't have a computer at home so everything would need to be done at school and I guess that's where I can seperate school from home! I just use the boring good ol' fonts on Microsoft Word at school, so I guess my favorite would be Kirsten ITC. Nothing too fancy here. 

My Favorite Blog

I LOVE blog stalking. It's true. I can't honestly say that I have ONE favorite. I do really enjoy The First Grade Parade. I love her classroom. SO cute. I wish mine looked like that...wanna come help me Cara? I love her math tubs. I just love it all. I wish I was in her classroom! So if you haven't already, go check her out.

My Favorite Online Resource

I guess I don't know if I'd call it a resource, but during these first week(s) of school, I cannot live without http://www.brainpopjr.com/ and http://www.learn360.com/. They have awesome videos that relate to standards, especially the listening and viewing standards. LOVE the Auto B. Good videos! They each summarize the lesson at the end, too.  

And now, to survive another day without getting too exhausted...even though I am already hittin' up the Diet Soda Pop. :) Have a GREAT day!!!

Marcy



Where It All Goes Down Wednesday!

Hey all!
This is my 3rd attempt at posting these pictures, so ENJOY!!! Obviously I need help in the blogging department.  I am just going to post them...if you have questions about what each picture is, feel free to ask in the comment section. Haha...I'll laugh since in the time it took me to do this, I was supposed to be running. Oh well, I ate light today, so hopefully my marathon training can wait another day. :)

Just inside the right side of the classroom door. Lunch cards and math manipulatives.

A close up of the math manipulatives. Wish I had more room for a larger shelf to house all the games/activities for math stations!

Student lockers and my messy storage area above. Don't worry- I know where everything is. :)

Looking in through the front door. I love those little curtains.

A view from the door.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE these magnets. They came with our Treasures reading curriculum. I have the kids write their name on them the 1st day of school and we use them for graphing all year.

My "I can..." board. We are supposed to post our standards here. We'll see if I can keep up with that! :)

Our meeting area. It's tight with 27 little buzzers around this rug...actually, we make an oval spanning from the kidney bean shaped table all the way to where I am standing taking this picture.

The calendar/ schedule bulletin board. (We did create rules today...finally!) I am going to attempt to do calendar on the SmartBoard this year so this will just be for the C.E.O. to update every morning.

My space. Pretty clean right now actually! Notice the Apology of Action and teacher language reminder above! We are a Responsive Classroom school.

Close up of some of the Responsive Clasrsoom stuff.

BEE-utiful writing! LOVE this already! If the buzzers write an awesome story we are going to post it here. Just like at home when you post awesome work on the fridge. The kids are SO excited about this. It's also my way of keeping writing samples...we'll just post one on top of the next!

CAFE board...nothing fancy.

This is my non-fiction table. Every couple weeks it will change and we will learn about something else through project-based learning. I haven't started this yet, but I am so excited to delve into this when we get our routine going! I'll post more about this later when we really get into the heart of things!

Library and Rockin' Bear Chair.

Cupboard space and Math Strategies board. We post all our math strategies on this cupboard, since there is no more bulletin board space!

I hope you have enjoyed a tour of my classroom!!! Have a great night!

Marcy

C.E.O. and Fifty's Nifty!!!!

I hope y'all are doing well workin' in your classrooms. Some of you in the heat yet!? Oh my word. I couldn't do it...I guess there's one good thing that came out of the mold: they turned the air on at my school!

Today I wanted to share with you what I do for a classroom helper in my room. I cannot keep up with having 10 different jobs in the classroom like some of you. You know, 1 kiddie gets to be the line leader, 1 kiddie gets to be door holder, 1 kiddie is the plant feeder. Yeah, I can't keep track of that. So my bestie, who now stays home and comes up with great ideas for me to try (LOVE!!!), always had a C.E.O.- Chief Example for Others. I guess I loved it enough to continue the tradition. Since I have the bee theme going in my classroom, I decided to make a sign that says, "BEE a C.E.O." so that it has more of a connection to our theme. Here's the sign:

I give my C.E.O. a seperate working area for the week. They LOVE this because it's like their own little teacher desk almost. This is why I choose carefully those very first times! I let mine be the C.E.O. for the whole week so they really become attached to their personal work area!

Here's a picture of the C.E.O. desk this year:

And yes, those flowers are cute little pens!

And the C.E.O. wouldn't be complete without a brief case to carry their goodies around in all week, right? So, here's an old briefcase of my sweet hubbies that he lets me use because he doesn't need it anymore. Love that guy.

In the past, on Fridays, I would draw a name out of a fancy little box to be the new C.E.O. for the next week. They would take the briefcase home and fill it with 5 of their favorite things and bring it back on Monday to share with the class. The remainder of the days, they would be just my go-to guy/gal when I needed something. This year, thanks to this awesome post from What the Teacher Wants, I am going to do something every day of the week for them! I love that!

Here's what I plan on doing for my C.E.O.:

Monday- Share their 5 things from the C.E.O. bag

Tuesday- Read their favorite book either from home or school

Wednesday- Read aloud their parent letter

Thursday- Share their C.E.O. questionairre (pictured below)

Friday- Lunch with their parent (hopefully, if their parent came come! if not, maybe their reading buddy or sit by their bff)

And that's my C.E.O.!

And FIFTY followers? Who'd a thought? THANK YOU for stickin' around! Be watching for a way cool giveaway later on in the week...my mind has been on auto-ponder about somethin' REAL good for you guys. After all, it takes a lot to put up with my mumbo jumbo!! :)

Have a great Tuesday!!!

Marcy





I'm back!!

Hello! Did ya miss me?
Wow, it has been a long time since I posted. I've had some issues with posting from home on a wonderful iPad! We also spent a long weekend in the beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota for our first anniversary!

Here's my handsome hubby and I at Mt. Rushmore!

 And here we are four-wheeling through the Black Hills near Deadwood!

And, here we are after I finished my first ever half marathon through GORGEOUS Spearfish Canyon! 

Anyway, I'm back at school. Lucky enough to have my computer up and running, so here I am! I have been workin' hard in this classroom of mine!

I have spent so much time setting up our classroom library. I went through each book and labeled them according to theme and put them in a corresponding basket. Hopefully the little buzzers will have no problem figuring out which basket their tub goes in, riiiight??? Here's what it looks like so far: 

And then, after looking at that cozy rocking chair with the bears on it, I thought it needed something more. Last year, my speech kids had a hard time saying rockING and just called it the rockin' chair. So this summer I came up with this: 

I am planning on doing read alouds and reading lessons at this chair, since it's in our classroom library. So, whatdya think?

Thank you for reading and I will post more about this year's classroom another time! Happy day to you...it's a whoppin' 95 degrees in South Dakota today!

Marcy