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!

December is here

December is finally here!  The cold weather and Christmas music is starting to get me excited for the month to come!  We have just started to get in the Holiday mood with winter and Christmas themed books and projects.  Before Thanksgiving we did a Reader's Theater performance for our parents.  One of the scripts was Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type (which they thought was hilarious) so naturally we had to read Click, Clack, HO! HO! HO!

 

This is a great story to work with order of events.  First, Duck gets stuck.  Then, all the farm animals get stuck behind him.  They also have to think of a clever way to get the animals out of the chimney.

To make the chimney we talked specifically about drawing the bricks. I think they really got the hang of it.

I'm sure the animals would enjoy their tails being pulled ;-)

Click on the link to take you to my TPT store to get this activity!

Also, we did a quick activity to extend our Kindness Challenge from Blair Turner.  Fun In First had the cutest idea for  sharing ways to be kind.  Since we have been working with weekly challenges all year this was a great way for us to write about a way we could be kind to others.  Some of them used ideas that we had done earlier this year, but some came up with totally new ways to show kindness.

I love how it 'lights up' or hallway.

Election Day!

In the spirit of Election Day yesterday we held our own classroom election.  We read Duck for President and Grace for President to get us in the voting mood.  

Both books are both really cute, especially Grace for President which gives a really good description of the voting process and electoral votes, etc.

We used part of a unit from Cara Carroll which had all sorts of Presidential and election activities.  To start each of the kids had to fill out their Voter Registration card.  Then when it was time to vote they had to bring their card, show it to me (where I checked to make sure it was really them ;-) and then they were able to place their vote.

 

The three choices were:
*Duck *Grace *The teacher ;-)
They really took this whole voting thing pretty seriously - it was adorable...

After they made their choice they got to color an 'I VOTED' sticker to wear.  

Finally we tallied the results and there was a clear winner . . . 

The activity was really fun and I think the kids enjoyed to getting to be part of the Election process!  Now I have to sign off as my free time will be spent working on my move to the White House ;-)