Game On!

Just a few weeks ago, I introduced our class to "Top Bananas," a letter mastery system. Within a few weeks, every student could tell me every letter of the alphabet! We celebrated our success with banana splits!

Next, I introduced "ball words:" 11 sets of 20 sight words. I have to say, I was a bit skeptical. Most students were having some trouble remembering the sight words that I have already introduced in class. But we gave it a try.

The kids were psyched! Within a couple weeks we had our first ball word champion! A few days later we crowned the second champion! And then it exploded - kids are passing word lists like crazy! Even parents are asking if I have time to quiz their child that day! Check out our wall of champs so far...

And of course, when we all reach "Baseball Champ" status, we will HAVE to have a baseball party! I don't think it will be long...

Welcome Back!

I would like to officially welcome all my new students and their families! We are now two weeks into the school year and things are rolling right along! We just finished firefighter week (always a class favorite and great start to our year!) and ended the week with a visit from Zero the Hero! He stops by every ten days (since you can't make tens without him!) He left us a treat, too! Each student received ten "zeroes" to eat on the tenth day of school!

In Bible time we've been learning all about how God created the world. The kids love getting up and participating in our song about God's creation, Father, We Thank Thee. I'm especially impressed with how well each child has learned their verse the first two weeks of school!

I always have plenty of willing helpers!

Of course, the first couple weeks of school are pretty exhausting, especially if a child is used to taking a nap in the afternoon. I'm pretty sure I wore them out this week!

Dismissal time is a bit too long...sometimes you have to take time to recharge!

In all honesty, I was pretty worn out by the end of the week too! I didn't have a chance to take a lot of pictures this week, but hopefully now that we're in a routine, I'll pick up my camera a little more often! I'm looking forward to a week of learning about policeman...but not until after the long weekend!

AaaARgh! Pirate Day and More!

This is our second week back to school since spring break, and we are right back to work, full speed ahead! Besides kicking off our next unit with purple day, we also started last week with Pirate Day on Tuesday! What better way is there to learn the AR sound than to be pirates for the day?

There were pirate words hidden all over the school!

Our day started when we received a special message in a bottle that had washed up into the kindergarten classroom. (There was also a rare sighting of Mrs. Keppley dressed in pirate garb...I bet you're sorry you missed that! Unfortunately there were no pictures.) Our message was from Pirate Mark who lives on an ark and loves to eat candy bars for breakfast! Throughout the day we searched the school for AR words and added them to our map.

We also made little pirates and wrote down some of the AR words we learned. We started a list on the board, but the kids caught onto the AR sound so quickly that they were able to add lots of words to their lists that we didn't put on the board! The pirates turned out so cute!

Aaaargh! What a cute bunch of pirates!

We added the pirates to our bulletin board (and some in the hall) and we were all set to find our treasure!

The kids searched the room high and low and finally found a treasure chest - full of candy bars! We enjoyed our special treat before we went home. I sent some very tired and excited pirates home that day!

This week we've been talking all about gardens and plants. Unfortunately, God is watering our gardens quite a bit this week, so we are back to indoor recess. I caught this gem during recess this morning:

Mrs. Moore even got in on the action today!

Hopefully the sun will return soon!

Stepping a Little Deeper into Writing

This week we read a book about Ruby Bridges, an African American girl who was chosen to attend a white school in the 1950s. We talked a lot about how brave she was. To help the kids connect to the text and this time period of history,we all thought of some times that we were brave. Each child drew a picture of a time that they were brave and wrote a sentence or two about it. This was a HUGE step for some kids! Almost everyone is excited to draw, but as soon as we talk about putting words with our pictures the excitement goes down and the stress level goes up!

We've spent a lot of time learning blends and other special sounds in words (sh, ch, th) the past few weeks, and I'm super proud to say that they did a fabulous job incorporating them into their writing today! It was like a total "aha!" moment for some of them when they realized they could spell words that used to be a mystery to them. Very freeing! (Lightbulbs were coming on all over the room!)

Here are some great samples of our work (with translation underneath - spelling is a work in progress!) We started with just the word "brave" on the board (since everyone would need that one to write about their picture!) I kid you not, I did NOT spell words for these kids! I believe I spelled the word "of" for one child and gave a few hints to a couple others, but they totally did these on their own! Check out their impressive work!

I had to be brave at Monster Jam.

I was brave to go under a car.

I was brave at show and tell.

I was brave when I got a snake.

I was brave when I was on the stage.

I was being brave when I was on the stage.

I am brave in class.

I was brave on the roller coaster.

I had to be brave when I did the national anthem.

Look out first grade! Here we come!

Ipads and Oceans

Our unit this week has been all about oceans. Good thing, too, because it's hard to learn about sh and ch without beach, fish and shells! We've enjoyed learning about shells, sounds, whales and a myriad of other facts about the ocean. For show and tell we enjoyed seeing some real starfish, coral, sea sponges and a tiny little seahorse. We sorted seashells by shape, size and color. In other words, we've been BUSY!

A couple months ago, the administration gave our classroom an iPad to use. So how do we use one iPad among 20 students? Good question. We've been slowly trying it out, incorporating it into our daily schedule. Here are a couple ways we've been using it:

We love how the noise meter app has been helping us control our voices during lunch time and indoor recess. A siren goes off when the noise gets a little loud and the kids bring the level right back down to where it should be.

Noise Meter on the Ipad

Today we went on a word hunt in the classroom and took pictures of all the ch and sh words we found. Here are just a couple of the things we took pictures of on our hunt:

chalkboard

shoelaces

We also let the iPad tell us who is going to have a turn next during class. This keeps everyone on their toes since no one knows who will be chosen next!

I've downloaded some really neat apps and I'm working on a system that will give everyone a turn to use the iPad on their level of learning. I think we'll need to come up with some classroom rules to keep the iPad safe first!

Our 100 Day Celebration!

After lots of snow days and postponing our 100 day celebration several times, we finally were able to go ahead and celebrate! The kids arrived to school so excited! Each child brought 100 items to school. We had 100 goldfish, M&M's, rubber bands, Teddy Grahams, paperclips, BoxTops, Smarties and more...such creative kids!

After dividing up into groups, the kids all rotated through six stations to work on different 100 day activities. We counted, stacked, weighed, stamped, colored, and more!

The "crowning" activity was making our celebration crowns! 

After our crowns were assembled, we ended our time with a "parade" for the office staff to wish them happy 100th day! Ugh...I forgot to get a group picture with the crowns. They were so cute!

Thanks so much to all the parents/grandparents who came in to help. I think they had just as much fun as the kids!

River, Lakes, and Water Cycles, Oh My!

This week we've been studying rivers and lakes as part of our study of America. We learned all about how the water cycle works and even made it rain! Here is what the kids wrote about our activity time today.

We put some water in the microwave. We called the microwave the sun. After the water was hot, we put a plate on top of the jar. We waited and talked about the water cycle. Mrs. Keppley lifted up the plate. It rained! This showed us the water cycle.

We ended our time eating some "fishy" snacks! We had blue jello with fish floating inside. They were certainly a hit!

Next week we'll finish up our study of rivers and lakes by talking about insects that live in and around water. I have a few students who are especially excited about this!

We've finally gotten back into a routine after the holidays and all our snow days! This week we started a new unit on America. We started by talking about mountains. On Tuesday we learned all about volcanoes and even set up a model volcano and watched "lava" come out. The kids were so excited when it started bubbling over the top. We wrote this story together to tell about our experience:

The Volcano

The volcano looks like a mountain. Mrs. Keppley put powder in the volcano. It exploded! Red lava came out. It was so cool! It looked dangerous.

The second highlight of our week was panning for gold! Everyone got to pan for a little gold (corn kernels) and decide what they would do if they had real gold. There were some pretty creative responses! Some kids decided they would spend their gold - a Playstation 3, a Rainbow Loom, an art box, a tutu (that one mad me smile!), and a car were some of the purchases to be made. A couple decided they would sell their gold, and one precious kiddo decided he would share it with others. What a crew! 

Stay tuned - we're talking about prairies next week and we will end our week with a "Prairie Picnic!"