Valentine's Day and some extras!

The kids had their Valentine's Party this last week and had a blast!  I'm not sure what it is about the Valentine's Day parties, but it seems like every year this is the one that the kids tend to get the most excited about.  Here they are:

We decorated bags in class the day before our party.

At the party, they got to decorate sugar cookies.

Lots of treats that included pizza!

They got to make a Valentine's card.

For our extra fun thing, we made fake snow and played with it!

Finally, we practiced our long i words by playing connect four.

Have a great weekend!

Fall Party, Extra Fun Thing, & Rhyming Game

Last week was a busy week especially with having our Fall Party on Tuesday.  We were busy all week and the kids were very excited for the Fall Party.

1.  We don't dress up at our school for Halloween, but we do have a Fall Party at the end of the day for the kids.  The parents brought in a lot of treats, goodies and games for the kids.

2.  Extra Fun Thing-For our extra fun thing, my co-teacher found this cool science experiment on erupting pumpkins.  The kids thought this was the best and they had so much fun with it.  It is very easy to do and didn't take a lot to set it up.

3.  I Have Who Has Rhyming Game-the kids were getting good at playing this game from our TPT store that you can pick up for free.  By the end of practicing the game, they were really good at rhyming!!  There is also a game that we have with pictures, but we used the one with just the words.

Have a great week!

Extra Fun Thing Choices

Every Friday in the afternoon we have what we call an "Extra Fun Thing." The students that get all of their work done for the week and have followed all our rules during the week get to participate in it. They got to choose this time what they wanted to do and they were thrilled.  Here are the choices:

1.  Math Games

2.  Reading Games

3.  Play-Doh

4.  Puzzles

5.  Pattern Blocks

6.  Computer/Ipads

7.  Paint

8.  Drawing

9.  Coloring

10.  Whiteboard

All they had to do was find their clothespin with their name on it and pick a choice and off they went.  Here they are:

It is so easy to get ready for this and the kids love it!  It is a great motivator for a lot of them.  

Have a great week!

Friday Fun and Today!

I will have to admit that I really like to have structure so I went beyond my comfort zone on Friday.  Here is why:

1.  We had been discussing the constitution all week long and my co-teacher and I decided for fun we would have the kids write with a feather and paint one of our rules.  They had a great time with it!

2.  We have an extra fun thing on Fridays.  The kids that have all of their work done and have had good behavior throughout the week get to participate.  This week we did blow painting.  We used paint mixed with dish soap and water.  I made little blow tools out of pipe cleaners.  The kids blew painted bubbles on to paper and made a painting.  They thought it was really cool.

3.  Sorry, I didn't get any pictures of this one.  To end our day we had what we call Family Groups.  The whole school gets together and each teacher has a student from different classes and we do an activity together.  We made little owls (our school theme) to put on a wreath.

I will have to say that by the end of the day I was exhausted and was ready for a little structure.  

Today, I had a meeting in the morning so I had to have a sub for the first time this year.  I got back right after their lunch time.  I am ready for a normal day with some structure (for me) tomorrow.  Although, tomorrow is our first day of Daily 5!!  :-)  Hope all goes well!

Have a great day!

Thinking Outside the Box!

We are "thinking outside the box" and loving it! The kids start with an outline of a shape and are challenged to think outside the box to complete the picture. Here's a few of my favorites from last week:

 

Flag

 

 

Lasagna

 

Lamp

 

On Fridays, during our Daily 5 rounds I like to reward my kiddos who have all their work completed for the week.  A couple weeks ago, our iPads were down and I had to think of something fast. I found these Think Outside the Box activities at First Grade WOW. Thanks, Nancy!

 

The kids ended up loving them so much, they are begging for more! I even had kids choose these instead of our usual "Fun Friday" choices last week. It's really fun to see how creative they can be.

 

Are you thinking outside the box???

 

 

Making Butter!!!

We had our extra fun thing this week and it was extra special!  Every year, we have this extra fun thing.  There is a parent that does a lot with 4H, so she comes in and does some lessons with different grade levels at our school.  On Friday, she came in and had the kids make homemade butter! 

This is always quite an experience for them because they don't realize how much work it can take.  Many of them got tired and said that their arms were hurting after shaking the jar several times.  They worked in groups and passed the jar around, so luckily they didn't have to shake it up all by themselves LOL!

They always have a great time with making butter and when they get their butter made, they get to try it on homemade rolls, YUMMY! 

It is fun to watch them try the butter because many of them are so used to the store bought butter and the taste of it.  They assume that the homemade butter is going to taste the same.  Many of them didn't expect for it to taste different. 

After they got done, a lot of the students talked about how they were going to go home and do this again!  What fun!  Check it out!

 

Hope all of you have a great weekend!  Kristi

Torn Paper Fun Thing

This week in reading, we had the story Dot and Jabber and the Big Bug Mystery.  We discussed with the kiddos how the illustrations had been done with torn paper.  Many of the students thought that it would be easy to make the illustrations with torn paper, so we put it to a test!  Well, in the end they turned out great, but they figured out quickly that it wasn't as easy as they thought it would be.  Check out the results that took a good hour to do and was only one page.  We did pick out only the best ones that we had to share.  LOL!!

We are down to 5 days left!  Next week is going to be lonnnnggggg!  We have our field trip to the zoo, field day, and an AR reading party to add to all the other chaos fun. 

Hope you have a great weekend!  Crystal and Kristi