Here we go!  4 1/2 more days of school - and next week is going to be the saddest, funnest week of my teaching career.  I have so many fun things planned, but it is going to be sad to see them go.  Hopefully they will all come and visit me next year!  We finished our entire reading curriculum this week - just on time!  We learned how to add -er and -est to a word, and what it means when you add them to words.

Of course, we also continued with our countdown!  I am sad I didn't take NEARLY as many pictures this week, but I did take a few, and I remembered my camera, so that's a plus!  Here is was we did this week for our countdown:
10 days left: Play Day!

On this day, we did a readers theater of The Three Little Pigs.  I split up the class into 3 different groups, let them practice their parts for a while, then we did it in front of the class.  We did this twice, changing up their characters the second time.  They did SUCH a great job!  I couldn't believe the wonderful expression that they were using.  I was a very proud teacher and smiling the entire time.

9 days left: Sidewalk Chalk!

For this day, we went outside and made beautiful pictures and wrote thoughtful messages on the sidewalk for the people in the neighborhood.  It was a very warm day, so we tried to find some shade on the side walk...as you can see in the picture, we didn't find much, but we found some to keep us cool!  It was a perfect day for sidewalk chalk!

8 days left: Learn how to do Origami!

Mrs.Wells taught the class about Origami!  They had so much fun with it and did a great job.  I was so happy that they all followed directions so well.

7 days left: Make cards to next years first grade class!
I didn't take pictures for this day, but they turned out SO cute.  I had them all make 2 cards for the students that I am going to have next year.  I had them make 2, because I don't know how many students I am going to have.  They drew pictures on the cards and wrote about what their favorite thing was in first grade.  They spent a lot of time on them and I am hoping that the students next year will enjoy them as much as I do!

6 days left: Learn about the Ocean!
I didn't take pictures for this day either, but I should have!  Basically we read a few books about the ocean, focusing on the choral reef, and learned about the different animals that live in the ocean.  We also did a few math and literacy activities with ocean animals.  There was a "crabby sneaky e" where we had to spell words that had a sneaky e at the end of the word, and a some addition activities that we did as well as some counting money.  It turned out pretty fun and I hope the students learned as much as I did.  I am always so fascinated with the ocean.  I used to want to be the person that works with Shamu at Sea World...maybe one day I will get to do that  :)

It was another fun week full of learning, and I hope that everyone had a good week!  Next week is the LAST week of school!  I can't believe it!  We are still going to be learning and doing really fun things throughout the week - so please try to make sure your child is there!  We will be taking a lot of our supplies home throughout the week, which is another reason why it is important every one is there.  If you know your child isn't going to be at school on Friday, please let me know ahead of time so I can send some things home with him/her that I am giving them on Friday.

I am also wanting to get some addresses together so I can keep in contact with my students throughout the years - so if you haven't given that to me yet and you wouldn't mind me having it, please send it to school with your child some time this week.  :)

Thank you SO much parents for everything you do!  You have amazing children that have touched my heart and I truly care about each of them very much.  It will be sad to say goodbye, but I am glad that they will be able to visit me next year (hopefully they will!)

I also wanted to share something that I am going to be doing this summer.  I will be sending a flier home on Monday, but just to get the word out, I am going to be doing a Fancy Nancy Camp for Girls Only!  To find out more details, go to this website: http://fancynancycamp.blogspot.com/
It will be really fun and I am getting very excited for it - I hope that I will be able to see some of my students there!  :)

The last two weeks we have been learning bossy r's, and it really bothers me that we wait until the very end of school to teach it.  I might introduce it at the very beginning of the year next year...r-controlled vowels are in SO many words, and I feel like if we taught it at the beginning of the school year, they would be even better readers than they already are.  Oh well..live and learn!  :)

I meant to post this picture of our bulletin board last week, but I completely forgot!  Here is a picture of the beautiful flowers the students made:

We also made our May calendars this week!  Here are a couple of examples:

We are down to 10 days left!  We can now count them down on two hands...this is nuts.  I am so sad to see this year ending with these kids.  I hope they come and visit me lots next year!

And our countdown continues:

15 days left of school: Learn how to make cupcakes!

We learned how to read a recipe and everyone took a turn putting something in the bowl and mixing it 2 times.  Then we "put the cupcakes in the oven" (really, they were made the night before...) and they were done after recess!

14 days left of school: Jungle Day!
We did 4 different centers for Jungle Day, and we read some Jungle books too!
For this center, the students had to put letter tiles on the alligator and decide if the word is a real word or a silly word.

 For this center, the student chose any one of the cards, wrote the number sentence for it and made up a story problem.  It was such a wonderful review for what we have been working on all year.

 At this center, they had to match the animal cards and then put them in order from smallest to greatest.  He did fix these cards, just FYI.  :)

 Here, they had to put the alphabet in order then fix it on a piece of paper.  It was pretty easy for these kids, but it was a fun little "race".

13 days left of school: Pajama Day!

 The other teacher in the picture is our amazing student teacher, Mrs.Wells!  We love having her in our class!

Apparently footie pajamas aren't very attractive on an adult, but I thought I would post the pictures anyway  :)  The kids got a kick out of my PJs...and I laughed a little too, and felt pretty silly...but that's okay!

12 days left of school:Nature Hunt...but unfortunately, the weather did not agree with our special thing for that day, so instead we made fireflies and looked at them in the dark gym with all of the lights off! 

On Tuesday we read, Fireflies for Nathan, so I thought this little project would go perfect with that story.  After they drew their fireflies, I put a little dot of glow-in-the-dark glue on the "bug" and we went in the gym and looked at them fly.  It was pretty cool, if I do say so myself.

11 days left of school: Painting Day AND Kite Day!

 Before we went outside and flew our kites, we made our own kites!  I don't think they will actually fly, but it was fun to see what they came up with.  They are SO creative!

 We also read a book about an alligator living under a bed, and we made these fun little alligators:

The one on the left is mine...  :)  They turned out pretty cute, and it was a fun little project!

It was a really fun week, and I have a lot of other fun things planned for the last 10 days of school.  This week was also Teacher Appreciation Week, and I just wanted to say a big Thank You to those who brought a special something.  I really couldn't do anything without your help and am a very lucky teacher.  Thanks to such wonderful students and parents, I wake up every morning excited to go to work!  I love my job.  Thank you parents for everything you do!

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.