MONDAY IS HALLOWEEN!  I can't believe it is already here.  This year is FLYING by.

So we did a lot this week in both reading and math.  We learned how to blend short u words, how to summarize, how to add doubles to 18, how to add 1 to a number, and we are going to keep working on all of those things next week so we can become masters at them!

A couple of weeks ago we learned how to write a letter.

A couple of students left a letter for the desk fairy.  Don't worry, she got them.  :)

So cute and fun.  

This week to help us get ready for Halloween, we learned about monsters, ghosts, spiders and bats.

On Monday we did worksheets on monsters and read books about monsters.  

It was just a monster day!

For this activity, the students had to listen to my directions and follow them. 

 I love how different they turned out.

The directions are:

1. Give your monster three purple eyes.

2. Add a strange green nose.

3. Put on big, pointed yellow ears.

4. Add a mouth with sharp red teeth.

5. Put on crazy orange hair.

6. Now give it pink spots all over.

7. Give your monster 3 blue feet.

8. Add 4 black arms.

Tuesday we made ghosts.  It is really simple to make.  

Just get a wire hanger, white tights, black paint, and you can make your ghosts!

They can bend them however they want to and make it their own.

I think they turned out pretty cute!

When we learned about spiders, I had a hard time reading the book I had about spiders.

I hate spiders.  A lot.  

They are gross and the pictures made the spiders look huge and SO real.

GROSS.  

I told the kids if they didn't want to look at the pictures they didn't have to, 

because I wasn't even going to look at the pictures.  

And I kept reminding them that the pictures in the book aren't real.  

I had to keep telling myself the same thing...

But our art project that we did was pretty fun.

Just get a black plate, cut around the edges, wrap grey yarn around it and put a spider ring in the middle.

BATS.  I had fun learning about bats and the different kinds.  Bats are so unusual and neat to learn about.

 We did an art project  and I love how they turned out!  I like doing art so much with these kids because they all turn out SO different from one another.  You can really tell their personalities from their art.

Monday is Halloween and it is going to be a fun day!  

We will still be doing reading and math, but all of the reading and math that we do will be about Halloween (if you can't beat em', join em').  

We will also be going to the book fair.  

If you know me, I love books.  

Therefore, I love book fairs!

Next week is also parent/teacher conferences and I am looking forward to seeing each of you!

Thank you for all that you do!

We learned SO much this week!  We learned about the difference between fantasy and realism, learned how to write addition sentences, learned our doubles, and LOTS more!  We even learned what to do during an earthquake!  To help us learn our doubles facts, we learned the doubles rap.  I love the doubles rap, and so do the kids.  We practice it every day.  They are all pretty good with the doubles facts up to 10, but once we start with 6+6, it's downhill.  So we are going to be working on those LOTS more this week.

We started doing our Halloween worksheets/crafts/activities this week. 

 I love this time of the year in a classroom!  There is so much to do and so much going on.  I just love it!  :)

To introduce the Halloween activities, we started with a scary week book. 

It was fun to make and to see how everyone drew their pictures.  Here is what the book says:

On Sunday I saw one big scarecrow.

On Monday I saw two fuzzy spiders.

On Tuesday I saw three full moons.

On Wednesday I saw four spooky witches.

On Thursday I saw five black cats.

On Friday I saw six geeky ghosts.

On Saturday I saw seven jack-o-lanterns.

Each day we do something different.  Tuesday all of our centers were about scarecrows.

Wednesday we learned about pumpkins.

On Thursday we did witches.

And Friday we learned about skeletons!  I loved this because we didn't learn about just Halloween skeletons, but we learned about our bodies and how we move.  We learned a lot on Friday!

Next week we will learn about monsters, ghosts, spiders, and bats.  

Then before we know it, it will be time for Thanksgiving!  This year is going by way too fast.  

I enjoy being at school every day, and I LOVE being a first grade teacher!  

I hope the kids enjoy school as much as I do.  :)  

Thank you parents for all of your help!  I couldn't do it without you!

Happy Boss' Day!

Monday was Boss' Day and I was in charge of putting something together for our principal.  I am part of the social committee and I am the only one with no kids.  I don't mind thought if I get to do things like this!  If you know me at all, you know I love doing things like this.  If I could do this and make money, I totally would!  Anyway, I made him a candy card and a football basket.  If you can't tell, he LOVES the Denver Broncos, so I got him a few things with Broncos on it.  The Bronco's football plays music when you hit it.  I thought it was pretty cool.  Then there is popcorn, chocolate, and I put a drink in the cup.  And the bowl is a football!  I thought it was pretty clever.  And I really enjoyed making it!

I have to say, I am SO lucky to be working at the school I'm working at and with the best people in the world.  When I interviewed, I knew right away I wanted to work with the wonderful people at that school.  I couldn't be happier with my job and the people I work with!

A Good Find!

When we do our carpet time, we are not by a white board.  It is the most frustrating thing EVER!  When I am wanting to do something on the whiteboard, but stay on the carpet, we have to move to the back of the room, instead of the side where we do pretty much everything.  So I was thinking about investing in a little white board that stands up that I can put by me during our carpet time.  I didn't want to spend the money...so I kept putting it off.  Then one day I was just walking around Deseret Industries and found this!

$6!!!!!  What an amazing deal!  I didn't pass it up!  It is in great condition, still has paper in the middle of it, and it stands!  :)  It still needs to be cleaned up a little bit, but I felt so lucky to find it exactly when I needed to!  I already use it ALL the time!  I love getting excited about things like this.  :)

This week was mostly a review week.  On Monday we celebrated Columbus Day, had review days, and then Friday was Pirate Day.  We were a week ahead in reading, so I decided to have a review so we could be on the same page as the other teachers.  I love being a teacher because I also learn things every day!  When we were learning about Christopher Columbus, I learned some things that I either forgot about or never knew.  And today, some of the kiddos taught me some things about pirates that I didn't even know.  :)  It was pretty cute.  We all had a fun week.  I've been sick (for kind of a while now...it all started when I got hit in the nose with a volleyball) and was hoping to feel better before the end of the week.  Now I am hoping that I will feel better by Monday...but the kids have been SO helpful with me being sick, and they have been so accommodating for me as well.  :)  Thank goodness it's just a sinus infection and not contagious...I've never had to get a substitute and I don't want to start unless I HAVE to.  So here is to hoping that I will feel better come Monday.

This week FLEW by!  On Wednesday, I thought it was Tuesday.  Then before I knew it I had to prepare for pirate day.  Where did the time go?!  We were just having too much fun learning at school.

So remember the beans that were growing in our classroom?  Well I sent those home on Tuesday after school, and there was one that I still had in my classroom until today.  The plant was growing BEANS!  I was excited and didn't want to get rid of it, but he wanted to take it home so I decided I should probably let him.  :)

This is what the plants looked like when I got back from our long weekend.

 This was the one that was left until Friday.

I was surprised at how tall all of them grew!  How fun!

So on to pirate day!  Like I said, the other days were review days and nothing new!  So I only took pictures of pirate day.  So here is what our day about pirates consisted of:

We read some books.  I highly recommend these books.  They are all so much fun to read and the kids really enjoy them!  I JUST got Pirates Go to School, and I loved it!

We read Pie Rats Ahoy! during our reading centers.  I had a book for each kid.

We also got to name our ships!  I moved  their desks into groups of 4 or 5, and put a pirate flag in the middle of their tables.  They had to name their ships and I put a flag with their name on it.  We always refered to their desks as ships, instead of their desks.  They had to constantly remind me.  :)  We also talked and walked like pirates all day.  It was kind of hard to remember to do that...but it was fun and they were good reminders!

So keep in mind that we learned about Christopher Columbus on Monday.  So what they named their ships made me laugh and I thought it was cute.  

1: The Attacking Ship

2: Pinta (one of Christopher Columbus's ships)

3: The Gold Crusher

4: The Santa Maria

We also got to make our very own pirate book!  We made the story together, then the kids had to draw pictures to the story.  I paired them off and they got to work together to make the pictures.  I couldn't believe that there was no arguing or tattling going on.  They all worked SO well together!  I couldn't have been a happier teacher about how the day went with all of the group and partner work!

We also did some pirate centers today.

1: Language Arts center.  Pirate Vowels.  They had to cut out the pictures and play a matching game.  On the pirates hat it has the vowels, and the students had to put the picture on the correct vowel that is in the word.

2: Reading center.  Pie Rats.  That was the book that I posted a picture of earlier in the post.

3: Art center.  They had to put the clothes on the pirate!

4: Math Center.  Cold From The Spanish Main.  I think this center was my favorite.  It really challenged most of the students and they really wanted to finish the worksheet.  They had to figure out the answers for the pieces of gold (the yellow pieces of paper) and write the answers on the paper.  They all did a pretty good job!  Also in math today, we learned how to make a subtraction sentence, and we used "pieces of gold" to help us.

Finally, we went on a treasure hunt around the school.  It was a nice break for us to get out and walk around the school.  The treasure ended up being in our very own classroom!  Who knew?!  ;)

 And this is what was inside.  I wish I could have recorded their reaction.  I don't think I have ever seen 19 little 6 and 7 year olds so excited!

 But wait...there was more treasure!  They got these little gift bags with pirate things in them.

 There was an eye patch a sucker, a pencil, an eraser, a compass ring, a ping pong paddle, some candies, and a couple of fake tattoos.

It was a fun day, and we still learned a lot!  This proves that you can have fun and learn at the same time.

Every day at the end of the day we have some carpet time and I ask them what they learned that day.  I was surprised by their answers today.  They really learned a lot about pirates!  And they remembered everything!

My favorite responses were:

"I learned that pirates eat raw fish."  That came from a book that we read today.

"I learned that pirates smell bad."  Again, from a book.

"I learned that pirates are really gross."

There were some other things that they mentioned that we learned today, but those made me chuckle.

Next week we start our Halloween Crafts and centers.  One of my favorite parts of being a teacher is getting to celebrate holidays with 1st graders.

Thank you parents for all that you do!

I'm sorry that I didn't post on Friday!  I didn't forget...I just thought I could put it all together today, since we have Thursday and Friday off.  SO last week was another great week.  Friday was a crazy day - it was the Hillcrest homecoming parade, so they came by our school and threw us all candy!  We learned how to be fair, and give everyone the same amount of candy.  It was a fun little lesson, and they all got candy out of it!

In science last week, we put beans in a baggie with a paper towel and a little water at the bottom (so it doesn't get dry) and we've been watching them grow for a week now.  These pictures were taken on Tuesday (yesterday).  Even I have been getting excited about watching them grow.  I can't wait to see what they are going to look like after the long weekend!

 

Like I said, these were taken Tuesday.  This one was taken in the morning...

This one was taken Tuesday afternoon.  I couldn't believe how much it grew just in one day!!!

 

My favorite part about this science project is watching the roots grow.

I am looking forward to coming back to school on Monday to a wall full of beans!  :)

 

Once a month, we will be going to a program called FAME.  Volunteers will come in each month to teach the kids about some form of art, then the kids will do the art project themselves.  In September, they talked about stories behind music as well as different colors and shapes used in pictures.  The students were given foam shapes with different colors and had to make something out of the shapes.  These were the results.  I love how they turned out!  They have such an imagination and they are so creative.

 These were a few of my favorites.  I loved this one.  It's a giraffe with clouds in the sky.

 This was a picture of a cabin in the woods, but I loved the trees that this student made and had to share those

 It's a cheetah!  I love this!  The title of this one is "Speed King".  How creative.

 I love this person.  They did a great job of coming up with things out of shapes.  So abstract!

Each month we will make a calendar, similar to the one we made in September.  But this time, there was enough time to actually finish the calendar.  They really enjoy making their own calendar, and I am so happy about that!  It is a really important concept to learn, and I am glad that I get to be the one to help them learn more about calendars.  :)

We had a great last week and a half!  Each and every day is getting better with these kids. 
I am learning more and more about them every day.  They are such a wonderful class!
Thank you parents for ALL that you do!
Have a WONDERFUL and safe long weekend!