What a fun, crazy, stressful, exciting week! Okay, maybe it was just me that was stressed...but I still had a fun week. I gave the class the wrong language arts test this week. I gave them the one that they were supposed to do next week...that right there tells you how the week has been. HA. I don't know what I was thinking. And the funny thing is...I didn't even notice until I had already graded them and handed them back to the students. Boy am I going crazy or what?
It has definitely been busy busy busy and full of learning! We are down to 15 days left of school! We started out countdown for the last 20 days of school this week. I got this idea from the wonderful Pinterest. Whomever made up Pinterest is a genius. There are so many helpful tools for teachers and moms. I learned how to sew thanks to Pinterest. Okay, I'm getting off topic.
Back to our countdown...I blew up 20 balloons and put strips of paper in each of them saying something special we can do that day, or not do. Each day we pop a balloon to tell us what we are going to do that day. They are loving popping the balloons, and having less than 20 students, it makes it easy to let everyone get a chance to pop one balloon!
20 days left of school: No Homework Today!
19 days left of school: No Shoes!
They always want to take off their shoes for some reason. Usually it is in the winter when they get wet and cold, but they still sometimes ask me if they can take off their shoes. So as a special day, we didn't have to wear our shoes for a day...excited to lunch, the bathroom, and outside. The room was a little stinky, but thank goodness for air freshener and a window that we can open!
I thought this picture was pretty funny. I'll let you figure out who's foot that is.
18 days left of school: Farm Day!
A few weeks ago, I asked the class to write down something they want to learn before 1st grade is over. Someone said they wanted to learn about chickens, so instead of just chickens, I turned it into a farm day. We did look at a powerpoint about how chickens grow, but I also incorporated other farm animals in the lesson. We read the funny story called Hogwash and made our own little muddy pigs.
17 days left of school: Eat With Teacher!
I don't have a picture for this, but I didn't realize how much of a hit this would be. They LOVED it! I ate with them in the lunchroom and talked to them about what they are going to do this summer. We all had a fun time eating lunch together.
16 days left of school: Celebrate Cinco de Mayo!
This was SO much fun to plan! We did a lot of different activities for Cinco de Mayo, and I took lots of pictures. Here is what we did:
To review many of the reading concepts that we have learned this year, we did a few different reading activities. First we did blending. I gave each group/table 8-10 peppers with words on them. Each word had a special blend. They had to write these words on the correct blends on the piece of paper.
After they wrote the words, they took turns sorting the words on the board, and we checked them to make sure they were all correct. They did such a good job, and I have such a very observant class. For almost everything I hear, "Mrs.Jackman I notice...". This time I got, "Mrs.Jackman, I notice that the peppers with words on them are the same color as the pepper with the blend." :)
Every morning we do a "tricky sentence". I mess up some things in a sentence, and they have to figure out what is wrong with it. Usually a spelling word is misspelled, it is missing a capital letter, or a period. This time, I put 6 different "tricky sentences" around the room and they had to write the sentences correctly on their pieces of paper. I couldn't believe how well they handled this. They were working so hard and I was so proud of all of them.
We then learned how to say the colors and numbers in Spanish. After we learned some Spanish, we did some Cinco de Mayo centers. One of the centers they each had a "game board" and they had to match the correct word to the squares.
We have a senior practicum student right now, Mrs.Wells, and we LOVE having her! She knows Spanish, so she was able to teach them the proper way to say the words, and she helped out with this center and did a wonderful job! I am so grateful to have her in our classroom, and all of the kids love her.
One of the other centers, we reviewed contractions. They had to match the taco and the girl up to get the contractions. They didn't have much time to write the words on their paper, but we tried. The important part was matching the words together, and that is all I really cared about. :)
At a different center, they had to match the pictures to the picture on their paper, then write the words with that picture in ABC order. It was a little hard to do...but once they got the hang of it, it turned out okay.
For the last center, we reviewed Nouns and Verbs. We have been working on these all year, so I was excited to do this to see what they remembered. All they had to do was sort the nouns and verbs and write the words on their paper. Each group did a really wonderful job working together.
To end our Cinco de Mayo day, everyone got to try some bean dip that I made. I was surprised, but they ALL tried it! And most of them took it home...I hope it made it home without being a huge mess.
Everyone got the chips and bean dip and some drinks that came all the way from "Mexico". Okay, they probably tasted like any other drinks, but the words were all in Spanish so they all thought the drinks came from Mexico and I didn't correct them.
It was a fun week and I am looking forward to the last 15 days of school!
Thank you parents for everything you do!
I wouldn't be able to do what I do and enjoy it without such amazing parents.
