Snails and Help!

I’m stressed.  These class pets are stressing me out!!  Our little Gold Snail is a fickle thing.  On Monday morning he appeared to be dead.  We kept a close eye on him and still nothing.  He didn’t float, so Mrs. Harris assured me if he was dead he would be floating.  But, I still wasn’t convinced he hadn’t kicked the bucket.   I told myself I would wait until I left that afternoon before I disposed of him.    Well, before I walked out at 5:30 on Monday, he was moving around the glass!  Whew!  I really felt that was a close one.  All day Tuesday, the little sweetie was good to go.  On Wednesday, after car pick-up I entered my classroom to a frantic Brynn.  She was screaming that the snail had died.  I proceeded to check on the snail and there it was floating.  Great, the thing is gone.  Well, after debating with my fellow teachers, I decided to wait until the morning to take care of the situation.  I mean, I know nothing about these little snails, so I had no idea if floating was an appropriate behavior.  This morning the girls and I were all ready to have a quick snail funeral when we discovered the snail was ALIVE!!!!!  Man, this snail is sneaky, or lucky, or I just plain don’t understand snails!  I Googled Gold Snails and found that I should have been feeding it lettuce or algae wafers.  I felt horrible for the darling.  It was probably weak from lack of nutrients.   So, I found a small piece of lettuce and now we are all hoping for the best!  Here is the little sweetie.  It was suggested by another teacher I call him Lazarus!  J 

 

This week I have been blessed with lots of amazing parent volunteers.   Mr. Brannon (I didn’t get his picture) came and read Where The Wild Things Are.  The kids really enjoyed his visit.

Later that day we had a visit from Gracie’s mom (and OC 2^nd grade teacher) Mrs. Wilson.  She came by and read a great fall book Pumpkin Soup.

 

 

Then, on Thursday our class and football player received this amazing sign for the pep rally tomorrow from Mrs. Boyd!  Thank you so much!  It was awesome.  After I took this picture we signed our names!

 

 

I want to thank Mrs. Lopez, Mrs. Ryan and Mrs. Littlejohn for helping put together our A to Z reading books.  You guys ROCK!!!

 

I got another surprise in the mail today.  Our latest Donor’s Choose project was funded a few weeks back and I got our books and cd’s from Lakeshore!  I am so excited to download those to the IPODS! 

 

Each book set comes with four books and a CD.  I love this because now each student at the listening center can listen to the same book at the same time! 

We had an amazing week and I got some pretty good pictures of the kids at centers.    Below are those!

Sleeping Blogger

I am going to attempt to convince my blog followers that since we were studying Fairy Tales these past weeks in class, I decided to revamp Sleeping Beauty into Sleeping Blogger! That would account for the lack of an update in 10 days or so!  It isn't like we haven't been super busy in first grade, we have! So busy I haven't had many chances to take pictures and post.  But, I am going to wake up from this blogging sleep and get back in the game! 

Some exciting things have already happened this week.  The first being the Fish Fairy King (Mr. Robby) set up our amazing fish tank (Thank you Wendy!) and added some cute little fish and a snail!  The kids are loving watching them.  We had a bit of a scare on Monday morning when we couldn't get the gold snail to move.  I was very afraid we would have to have a funeral.  But, by lunch he was up and moving around. Thank goodness! 

We wrote on Monday about what we would do if we were a fish.  We then had our very first Author's Chair.  Author's Chair is where a few students have the chance to read us their stories and show off their illustrations.  They all were excited and wanted a turn.  I hated that we didn't have time for them all to share, but Author's Chair will become a must from now on.

 

Ok, check out the cool cat magnets on our center charts (the round cookie sheets)!  We got those from Puzzle magazine.  So, when I send those subscription papers know that even if you sign and return a no, we still get cool stuff for our class!  :)

 

 

 

 

NOUNS

 

 

Today we learned that a noun is people, places, and things.  I showed a amazing old school video (School House Rocks) about nouns.  Check it out!

 

Noun School House Rock

 

 

I wanted it to show the picture of the video,but I don't know how to do that.  If you do, let me know!

 

 

 

We also brainstormed our own list of nouns and compared and contrasted Proper and Common nouns. 

 



One last thing.....

Limeades for Learning has begun!  Let's get voting!!


Limeades for Learning! VOTE!!



Ok, I was wrong.  There is one more thing I need to say (well, type...)



THANK YOU!!!!!!!

Our classroom is so very blessed to have parents who are willing to go the extra mile.  I am overwhelmed with the response and participation of my parent volunteers.  You have all been amazing and I appreciate your kindness more than words can say!  The students and  I are both very lucky to have parents who will take time to help out.  Again, thank you!

Donor's Choose

Our class project was funded today!!!  I am so excited!  We will be receiving some books for our listening center soon.  Limeades for Learning is coming up, so watch out for updates for that project!

I LOVE BACON!!!

Our training schedule today included Word Wall Sentences, Play-doh Word Works, and the every amazing Poetry Journal!  We are really getting that poetry journal down!  Next week, I will add another component to it. 

The kids LOVE Play-doh words!  I mean, who wouldn’t love to play with play-doh AND learn at the same time.  It is the best of their world and mine!  They are rocking out using that play-doh to make all their letters. 

We are studying the “-et” family, so we had a poem called “Chet’s Pet” today.  It was about a little boy who wanted a snake (YUK and GROSS!) for a pet.  The funniest part of the poem (to me at least)  is that the DAD said no and the MOM says yes!!!  HAHA!! 

What about some comprehension??  Yep, we are all rocking out the grown up first grade story map!  I used the most amazing story…LAZY LION!  I love the Lazy Lion.  It is a fable about a lion who commands the animals of the African plains to build him a house.  But, he is never satisfied with the houses.  So, he ends up stuck in the BIG RAIN!!!  The moral of the story is “Don’t be lazy!!” (a quote from one of the firsties!)

They did a wonderful job with this group story map!  I am super proud of them!

In math we talked about ICE CREAM!!  Yummy!  We graphed our favorite ice cream using pictures we drew ourselves.  I really think to be an extraordinary teacher, I should follow this up with a taste test on Friday!  J

Today Briza lost a tooth!!  Whoot Whoot Briza!!! 

My favorite quote today was “We are picking up trash because I don’t want you to hurt your back when you bend down to pick up trash.  That’s what happens when you are old!”  Man, I really didn’t think I was old! 

So, to prove I am NOT old, we danced it out to We Are The Champions!  Pictures are not available for that activity…sorry! 

One last final thought…..I LOVE BACON!!!!!

Pictures with Rowdy the Rebel

Thursday your child can have his/her picture taken with Rowdy the Rebel!!  Pictures are $2 and all proceeds go to help Rowdy get a "facelift" aka a new head!!!! 

No! David!

Last week was our No! David week.  We used David to help us learn classroom rules and predication.

We read David Goes to School  and then compared his classroom rules with ours.  We then made our own little David and copied our rules in our BEST handwriting to hang in the hall. 

If you have ever read a No! David book, you know there are not so many words.  So, we used our background knowledge and the pictures to guess what was going on in the story.  We recorded some of our answers.

(Excuse my handwriting, it was hard writing as fast as the kids were talking!)

I just had to add this picture of Jackson and his googly eyed glue!! 

Our Donor's Choose Project

http://www.donorschoose.org/richardsond

$57 left to go....spread the word!!!

Blogger App

Ok, I am trying something new today.  I am blogging from my phone!! I took a few pics with my phone today of the kiddos playing Fiddle Sticks.  Fiddle Sticks is a game we use when practicing sight words (HFW).  It is really a fun game the kids enjoy. 

This week we are still in First Grade boot camp.  We are training for Literacy Centers.  The plan is to start reading groups and Literacy Centers next week. 

Math Stations

This week we tested the waters with Math Stations.  I introduced the math manipulatives we would use this year.  We went over the rules and then I let the kiddos just "play" with them for a while.  This helps them get the feel of the manipulatives and also takes the "mystery" out of them.  Now, when we use them for educational purposes, they will hopefully be able to focus on using them to learn!

On Friday we did FUN Friday Math Stations.  On Fridays, when we have worked really had during the week, we take a short FUN break.  This afternoon we did some FUN math stations like computers, playdoh numbers, blocks, magnets and shapes!!!  They had so much fun and so did I watching them work together and just be kids!  It was a great way to end a great week.