It was a very fun week!  

It was a very long week, but fun.  

And the kids were wonderful for me all week.  

I always look forward to seeing them because they make me smile, even when I am having a rough day!  

I love being a teacher!

In reading we learned about s clusters.

In math we learned how to add 2 to a number.

We are still struggling with this, so if you have extra time at home, all of the kids could use some help with this!

We also had lots of time for fun projects to get us ready for Christmas next week.

We made a Riddle Book.  I really enjoyed it, and I hope all of the kids did too.

 I loved this project!  We have really been working on sentence structure, and they had to write about what they would do if they lived in a snow globe.  After they were done, I spray painted them with glitter.  They all look so cute!  I am even going to keep them up until January, since it isn't just a Christmas project.

These are just a few of my favorite.

 During story time, we read a story where Santa got stuck in the chimney.  It was such a cute story.  

So after, again to work on our sentence structure, they wrote about what they would do if Santa was stuck in their chimney.  I am really happy with how they turned out.  

And I couldn't help but laugh at most of them!  

What a creative class I have!

We also made holly bells, and they had to draw a picture (it didn't matter what the picture was) in the bell.

I love projects where they have to trace their hands.

I think it will show how much they grow through the years.

 Like I said, I love traced hands!  These are the cute reindeer we made.

Over all, it was a very successful week and I really enjoyed it.

I am in Utah now, going to my grandpa's funeral, and not feeling too well.

Hopefully I will be back on Monday...

Thank you parents for all that you do!

Well, I feel horrible.  I didn't take a single picture this whole week!  Not one.  Can you believe it?  Yeah...neither can I.  I am so disappointed...but it's okay.  I'll make up for it next week.  It has been a stressful week for me, but that doesn't really matter and is not an excuse!  Next week, there will be pictures.  I promise!  But I'm still going to fill you in on some of the things we did this week!  I am sure your kids tell you everything we do every day, and if they don't, ask them.  If they say they don't know, they really do know.  I promise.  Every day at the end of the day (the last 10 minutes of the day) we talk about EVERYTHING we learned that day.  So trust me, they all know :) 

We are getting into the harder concepts, and I love seeing their faces when they finally understand something.  We have been learning things that they didn't learn in Kindergarten (that was basically the first few weeks of school) and I am enjoying it much more, as are the kids I'm sure.  I also am a strong believer in incorporating music into learning.  They seem to remember the concepts better if they are put to a song.  For example, last week we learned a song about contractions (it is to it's) and when they were showing me what they know about contractions (taking the test) I could hear some of them whispering the song to themselves to remember how it goes.  Each week we are basically learning a new song or chant to help us learn something new.

We haven't been doing rotations this month (music, P.E., science, social studies) so I have been able to teach them about Christmas in other countries, and we will also have time for other Christmas crafts, that we normally wouldn't have time for.  This week we spent our afternoons learning about Christmas in Sweden, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and Holland.  We learned how to say "Merry Christmas" in each of the different languages.  Germany is basically impossible to say and remember.  At least for me.  My husband went to Germany for a couple of years and when he speaks German, it seems so easy.  If you are trying to read it, it won't sound the way it is supposed to.  But I was surprised when many of the students remembered how to say it the next day, and I couldn't remember it at all.  What great memories they have!  It was really fun to learn about a few of the different countries around the world.  I learned a lot, so I hope the kids did as well!

I know Thanksgiving has come and gone, but I just want to thank every single one of you for all that you do for your kids.  I am truly grateful for everything that you do at home with them to help them at school.  I have a room full of wonderful parents this year and I couldn't be happier.  I am also very grateful for all 19 of my students.  They are all very sweet and polite, not to mention funny.  They always make me smile every single day.  I always look forward to seeing them every day, and they remind me why I wanted to be a teacher.  I am thankful for each and every one of them, and for all of you parents.  Thank you for all that you do!

I apologize for not having pictures this week.  Next week we will.  I promise!

Let me first apologize for not updating last night.  

I got home from work ready to make a blog post, and the internet decided it wasn't going to work.  

The internet is STILL not working, but we figured out a temporary solution. 

So this week we learned SO much, and they did so well with it!

English is a hard language to learn, and I am always so impressed with how well they do.

We learned about contractions and r blends/clusters.

We also learned some new things in math.

Adding 0 to a number, subtracting 0 from a number, and we finally got a new coin to learn about and count...DIMES!  They were so excited because counting pennies was just getting too easy :)

I decided that it was time for them to switch out crayon boxes.

They were getting pretty beat up.

I was trying to wait until after Christmas, but we didn't make it.

Can you tell which one is the new one?

We also started our Christmas crafts and activities this week.  

And we are just getting started!

First, we had to make out December calendar!

 This is our tree that I made and they added the ornaments.

They decorated the ornaments on the front, then on the other side they wrote a gift they could give someone.

The gift had to be something you couldn't give in a box.

For example, help someone stack a chair, give a compliment to someone, help someone who is hurt, etc.

Each day until Christmas, I turn one over and our goal is to give at least one person that gift by the end of the day. 

 They made their own stockings!  Each one is different and I love that.

 Letters to Santa!  We made 2 letters this week.

The first one they took home and left it there.

This one they had to keep here until December 21st.

I LOVE reading what they all had to say.

Our Christmas program was on Wednesday this last week, and it went so well!

They did SUCH a great job!

A HUGE thank you to the mom's that helped put the program together! 

We have such a great class this year and I am so grateful that I get to be their teacher!

We are almost half way through the year, and I get a little choked up thinking I have to say goodbye at the end of the school year.

Thank you parents for all you do!

What a CRAZY week!  Tons of stuff going on, and the week we get back from break is going to be crazy too with our Christmas program!  Whew!  I will warn you...this post will have a lot of pictures.

This week we learned about verb endings.  To help them understand the difference between -ing and -ed, I got these little pictures (from another teachers blog...THANK YOU!) and the kids LOVED them!

Notice the "ing" is a few first graders because it is happening now.

 And the "ed" is an old couple because it happened in the past.  I think this was cute.

 They even got to make their own characters!  Many of them wanted to make the exact same one I had, which was fine.  They all look wonderful  :)  We have a VERY artistic class!

We also played a game during centers to help us understand the verb endings.  I also got this from the other teachers blog, and it helped so much.  One of the cubes is a verb, the other is an ending.  They had to put them together to make the word.  Later that day, we also did a word hunt.  I put verbs with the endings around the room and they had to find all of them and write down whether the ending was an -s, -ing, or -ed.

 

To help them understand that there has to be a root (or base) word, I used this picture to help explain it.  The word starts as the root of a flower, then grows into a bigger word with endings.  I know it's lame, but it works

So a wonderful group called The Standards came to sing to us on Thursday morning.  They are REALLY cool and I loved their message!  They do "music with a message".  Their message was to love your body, keep it healthy and take care of it.  I didn't take any pictures, but I stole these pictures from their Facebook page.  A 5th grade teacher took these pictures for them, so this is all I got.  :)  There aren't any of kids in my class looking at the camera, but there are some of first graders with kids in our class in the picture, so I figure that's good enough.  They were so excited to meet them and get their autograph.  It was a fun program and I am really glad that they got to come to our school.  It was such a neat experience!

 I look silly...but I was having fun with the kids  :)  So were the other teachers, if you can't tell.

 Remember how I said they were so excited to meet them?  This is where they started freaking out.  That is me about to shake his hand, and the girls were SO excited that he gave them a high five.  It was pretty cute.

Now...IT'S TURKEY TIME!

 We have been SO busy the last few weeks, we haven't had much time to do crafts for Thanksgiving  :(  I am so bummed about that, just so everyone knows.  I had so many fun things planned to do with the kids, and we just didn't have any time!  I made time today to do at least one project.  So we made indians/turkeys.  I think they turned out pretty darn cute!  On one side it's a turkey, on the other side it's an indian.  Some of them didn't finish, but we did what we could with the little amount of time that we had.

It's been a crazy and busy week, but we made it and the kids have been such good sports about everything!  I couldn't have asked for a better class.  I hope everyone enjoys their Thanksgiving break!  

If you are traveling, travel safe!  

I am looking forward to hearing all of the Thanksgiving stories when we get back.

Thank you for everything you do parents!

What a week!  I won't lie, I am so exaughsted!  But it was a fun week, like it always is with this class.

We did a lot of partner work this week and group work.  My favorite thing we did was when we learned about bar graphs.  I put them in partners, each one with a dot cube (that's what we call it), they each rolled it then they added the numbers together.  They really seemed to enjoy this, and so did I!

 They love anything they can do out of their seat.

This week we learned about Indian Corn.  I love having a projector in our classroom!  It makes everything SO much easier.  I just looked up Indian Corn and showed them a picture of it through the projector so they could see what it really looks like.  Then they made their own Indian Corn out of graph paper.  I think they all turned out pretty cute.  I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do with them (I am very indecisive) so I just hung them from the ceiling.  It adds a nice color to our room.  :)

 Happy Veteran's Day!  To celebrate Veteran's Day, we read the following story:

 Boy is it a tear jerker.  I couldn't make it through without bawling.  It is about a little girl who's dad goes to Afghanistan and misses him, so she goes home and writes down all of her wishes for her dad.  I won't tell you how it ends, but don't worry, it is a good ending.  Very wonderful story.

After we read The Wishing Tree, each student got a yellow ribbon to write a wish for a soldier.  Then the fifth graders came around and helped the first graders tie them onto a tree for the fifth grade Veteran's Day program.  These were just a few that I loved to read.

 Thank you soldiers and families of soldiers, for all that you do for us.

Next week is the last week before Thanksgiving break.  HOLY MOLY!

Thank you parents, for all that you do at home!!!

What a busy 4 days!  Halloween and parent/teacher conferences make the week seem so crazy, but fun at the same time!  I really enjoyed seeing all of you at conference this week!

Monday was Halloween, so we did a lot of Halloween activities. 

I gave each of them a piece of orange paper, and we read "The Little Orange House".  It is about a witch that makes a house that she can stay in for the winter.  She folds the paper in half, cuts off the corners on the top to make a roof, cuts a little door big enough for her to fit in, cuts out a window, then she meets a ghost friend and she has to cut out a little door for the ghost.  In the end it makes a pumpkin when you unfold it.  I love how unique they all are.  They turned out so different from one another.

 We also play Halloween Bingo.  They each colored these last week, I laminated them, and then we played!

Later we had a Halloween parade and a party.  Thank you SO much to the parents that did the party!  It was really fun and the kids enjoyed it so much.  

The kids got to play 3 different games. 

They got to eat donuts from a string without touching it with their hands.

 I thought this game was fun!  There are pictures in those bowls, they each got a straw, and they had to get the picture stuck to their straw...

 ...run it to the other bowl...

 ...drop it, then run back.  It was such a fun relay game!

 They also played a music game where they would get prizes.

 It was a fun day to say the least!

After Halloween, it was time to start on the Thanksgiving projects.  Seriously?!?!?!  Already?!?!  Only 2 weeks before our Thanksgiving break.  I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT!  Once we get to Halloween, Christmas seems to come right away.  CRAZY!

The first things that we got to do were:

A turkey math page.  We've been working on our doubles, and they all did a great job!

 We made thankful hands!  They traced their hands, wrote what they were thankful for and I put them on a tree in the back of the room.

 We also made our November calendars! 

Next week we will start learning harder things and I am excited to teach them!  We will be learning about ending blends and sounds.  -ed, -s, -ing.  I'm pretty excited!

Thanks for all you do parents!