Thursday, March 24, 2011

Conferences/Book Fair!


My school has a very supportive, hard-working PTA!  Every time I see how much they do for us and for the students, I feel so fortunate.  Not only did they provide dinner one night during conferences, they worked tirelessly at the book fair, and then donated the profits so that each of the teachers would have $50 to spend on books for the classroom!  We couldn't ask for a better group of parents!  Thank you L.L. parent volunteers!

And speaking of awesome parents, many families also gave our class gifts from the book fair.  I hope they know how much we LOVE books, and how much we appreciate their generosity!  The students love every single one of the books we received!

Friday, March 18, 2011

Signs



I was a Sign Language interpreter many years ago.  Although I'm extremely rusty, I still like to incorporate it into my lessons.  I select vocabulary from our current reading series story and teach signs for those words to my class.  They each have a book of these signs in their desks to practice during free time, and we practice signs as we wait quietly in line before specials.  They seem to enjoy learning new signs, and I hope that it helps them develop an interest in another language!


March Predictions





We wrote weather predictions about the first day of March, then made these cute lions and lambs.  Some of the kids thought that the lions looked like bears, but I think they're adorable!

Note to Self




Because we have been so busy preparing for student-led conferences, I decided to combine two projects.  Big mistake!  I usually have the students make these leprechauns as windsocks, and then make the Fact Family Pots of Gold another time.  Although they turned out cute, I think next year I will make them separately even if we ultimately decide to put them together.  Just too many directions for first graders to handle at this point!  Still, we've had alot of compliments on them!

Lucky Me!



I love Mailbox!  This was in their St. Patrick's Day activities, very easy and the kids loved it!  Their eyes move when you move the tie.  The girls wanted to make girl leprechauns, of course!  These turned out so cute, I was sad to send them home!

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

Lots of fun on Dr. Seuss' birthday!  We did word searches, puzzles, and made Cat in the Hat hats.  We read and compared The Cat in the Hat and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.  We also read Batholomew and the Oobleck and made oobleck to go along with our science unit on matter.  Finally, we graphed goldfish after reading One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish as our math lesson.  I think the students most enjoyed eating the goldfish!