Spring is here

Spring is officially here!  We just returned from Spring Break, celebrated Easter and the weather is finally warmer :-)

One of my favorite projects is for Easter.  We read The Easter Egg by Jan Brett and then use watercolors to create our own fabulous eggs.  They absolutely love getting to use their paints and love that they get to totally design their own enormous egg.  

After they paint we write about their incredible egg.  They describe what it is made out of (like in the story) or describe the colors and pattern they used.

Of course I loved the egg about the 'Best Teacher' ;-)

We also did a new project this year 'I Spy Spring' which the kids and I both really enjoyed.  I got the idea from Erica Boher's page.  If you click on the link it will take you to the printable sheets.

They were all very creative in describing what they say now that Spring is finally here.

Finally we worked with another story by one of our favorite authors; Doreen Cronin.  We LOVE the Click, Clack books and this was a great spring book.

This story lends itself really nicely to S.W.B.S.T. (Somebody Wanted But So Then).  This is a great way for students to follow a story's plot...but it can be hard to find the right book to use.

To go along with the book we did this fun craftivity, which of course, includes a S.W.B.S.T. activity.

 There was also a part to identify all of the characters and suggest what they would try to get the baby duck to fall asleep :-)

 Our Spring hook area turned out adorable!

To get this craftivity click on the link to go to my store.

March Updates

Last month went by in a blur!  It is now basically the middle of April-wow!!
I love March for a few reasons-Dr. Seuss Day (March 2) is one of my favorite things to celebrate in school, the weather gets nicer (even if it's just for a day or so), and my birthday is at the beginning of the month.  All great things :-) 

For Dr. Seuss Day our first grade team does a rotation.  Each teacher has a different activity to go with a different Dr. Seuss book and we rotate the classes of kids between us all morning.  

Next, we learned some new things about St. Patrick's Day.  The kids really got into learning about the legends of St. Patrick (they were even new to me).  They also thought making a flipbook was cool.

If you'd to get this flipbook click on the link to my store.

Finally, our month ended with a super fun field trip to La Fleur's Gymnastics Studio.  The kids were so engaged with all of the activities.  I wish we could do this every day!

100 days & counting...

On Monday we reached our big milestone in first grade - the 100th Day of School.  It's a pretty big celebration and we took full advantage of having fun with it all day long.

 He used his 100 marshmallows to make a dinosaur (notice the shirt.....I see a theme :-)

This year I used something new, stations from Cara Carroll.  They were so much fun!  We had eight different stations to rotate through and they were all great at practicing and using the number 100.

 100 cups for stacking

100 dots

100 cubes.  How creative is this?!?

100 pattern blocks

Finally at the end of the day we had our T-shirt fashion show.  This was a fabulous way to end the day.  I put on a little 'fashion show' music from YouTube and the kiddos get to dance their way around the room to show off their T-shirt creation.  They did such a great job!

And clearly, great minds think alike :-)

The Big Game!

With the Super Bowl coming up this weekend our class joined in the excitement.  We used this adorable little football guy to make our predictions about who would win Super Bowl 51.  

Of course, for as many students LOVE football and know every detail of the game I have an equal amount of kiddos that don't know a darn thing about the game or really care who wins.  When we are writing our predictions we talk about why/how a team could win a tournament.  We discussed things likes good teamwork and lots of practice and hard work.

Overall our class was New England Patriots 15 vs. Atlanta Falcons 8.

May the best team win!

Holiday things

This is an old post that I just realized never got posted.  Sorry for the delay!

This week we added something new to our Work on Writing center.  

HOLIDAY CARDS!

And they are LOVING it.  Not only do they get to color, they can write a card to whomever they want.  I made multiple copies of each design so they could do many cards.  This has definitely been a hit ;-)

Click on the link to get your FREE copies!