Wisdom for Wednesday - No Strain, No Strength

Hi there! Thanks for stopping by for today's:

Take a look:

I really like this quote. It applies to so many areas of life--not just our spiritual lives.

Oswald Chambers was speaking of our spiritual strength--or the strength of our faith. Our faith gets stronger with each test, each trial. God never promised us an easy life--quite the opposite. 

James 1:2 says "...when ye fall into diverse temptations;" Notice it doesn't say 'if.' 

Our faith will be tested. 

Will we let the strain make us stronger?

My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.

James 1: 2-4

Telling Time to the Hour and Half Hour, Sight Word Olympics, & Extra Fun Thing!

I think, I'm a little like Crystal this week and have a few random things that I am posting about.  We will start with the telling time to the hour and half hour.  We have been working a lot with this because it seems like they get the hour down and then when you introduce the half hour, everything becomes confusing.  So, we have been practicing a lot!  We did a hands-on

activity with telling time to the hour and half hour that I found at A Heart Teaching.   In this activity, we made a human clock and the other kids had to tell the time that the students were showing.  They were very careful when it was half past the hour that they showed the short hand in between the numbers.

We then practiced with the Telling Time I Have, Who Has Game that we have at TPT.  They loved playing it and I started timing them to see how fast they could get.  Each time they were faster and got so excited!

We then used the I Have, Who Has cards to play a few games of Scoot.

Finally, they partnered up and played our connect four telling time game.

After all of this practice, they are getting much better at telling time-YAY!

Next, we have started Sight Word Olympics that goes with our Pathways to Reading Program.  It is just a fun way for the kids to work on and learn their sight words.  They were given a list of sight words to practice on and had to read them in 2 1/2 minutes without sounding them out and missing any of them.  Olympic Judges (myself and our Title 1 teachers were the Olympic Judges-which one of my boys thought an actual JUDGE was going to come in for it :-) ) come in now and then to test them.  Well, we did the first testing of it and I had a few pass it and earn a blue ribbon.  They were so excited and now the others keep asking when the Olympic Judges will be back because they have practiced extra for that blue ribbon!  :-)

Finally to our Extra Fun Thing.  On Fridays, my co-teacher and I do an extra fun thing where students get to participate if they get all of their work done for the week and their behavior has been good.  My co-teacher and I switch every week.  One week, she does the extra fun thing with the kids that earned it and I take the workers etc. and the next week we switch.  My co-teacher had the extra fun thing this week and she is very crafty (I'm not at all crafty).  She did sand art with them and they absolutely loved it!  All of the kids sand art turned out really neat!

I'm a K-state (KSU) fan, so this was of course one of my favorites!

Hope you have a great week!  

Plural Nouns, Ordering Numbers, Venn Diagrams and What the Pledge of Allegiance Means to Me

How's that for a random title? As you can tell this post will be all over the place, but hopefully you'll come away with a couple of ideas you can use!

First up...the plural nouns. We worked on the rules for adding -es and -ies this week for our spelling and grammar skills. Take a look at a quick, fun activity we did. 

I love taking resources from our reading series and turning into something a bit more fun. For this, kiddos cut out word cards (of singular nouns) that were included in their workbook and worked with a buddy to write the plurals under the correct heading. I also love teaching my kiddos this "cheer."

In math, one of our lessons was on ordering two-digit numbers. Here's what I came up with to make it a little more fun. Students worked in teams to put several numbers in order from least to greatest.

Then because my class is so awesome, I let them all work together and combine all their cards to make one big line of numbers from least to greatest. It stretched across the room which they were pretty excited about!

We also worked on Venn Diagrams this week. After doing one as the math curriculum said, I paired up students to do one with a partner. They were to compare and contrast themselves. To explain how it would work, I had them help me do this one comparing me to the principal. 

They had a lot of fun with this...believe me! :-)

And finally, my daughter placed 2nd in a local essay contest. She had the opportunity (or torture--ha!) to read her essay in front of a huge crowd at a Celebration of Freedom program. The essay topic was "What the Pledge of Allegiance Means to Me." Take a look:

I had to giggle a bit. She was trying so hard not to talk fast that sometimes it was painfully slow!

Have a great weekend!

Wisdom for Wednesday-No Excuses

Welcome to another week of:

We all know about being busy and I think that being busy is something that our society sees a lot of now.  There have been many times that it just seems like time slips by and I haven't taken the time like I should in the word or in prayer.  Then I may use the excuse....."I was too busy, there just wasn't enough time today."  Then I ask myself what did I have time for.   HMMMMM.....well there were many things that I spent time on that aren't very important.  For me, it is an excuse which I should not be using.  I have the time to spend reading the word or in prayer, but I have to make the time.

1 Thessalonians 5:17 - Pray without ceasing.

Have a great day!

All in a Day's Work!

I took a lot of pictures of our last day of school last week and wanted to share a little bit of it with you.  On Thursday (we didn't have school on Friday), we had many things going on throughout the day.  At our school, we don't dress up in our costumes, instead it was red ribbon week for us and every day we did something for it.  On Thursday, it was crazy hair day or hat day.  So in the following pictures you will see some crazy hair or lots of hats being worn.  

During the week, we read a story called "Beth and the Band" and in the story the kids made instruments and played. them.  The first graders had all week to be creative and make up an instrument out of things that they had at home.  We had a lot of neat ones come in.  They got to play them during Music class.  Check them out!

Later in the day, we started with an assembly.  During our scholastic book fair that goes on during parent teacher conferences, our lovely librarian decided to put out jars with teachers from each grade.  So my jar had a picture of me and my co-teacher on it.  Kids could put money in the jars and whoever got the most money would get feathered at the assembly.  Well, it so happened that it was my co-teacher and I.  The great thing about it was that we got to spend the money that we got in the the jar on books at the book fair.  If you don't know already, I don't like to be the center of attention or have eyes on me, so getting up in front of the whole school and all the teachers to get feathered gave me an anxiety attack :-).  Not only that, but my lovely co-teacher came in during our lunch and said, "Hey, I wonder if we will need an extra pair of clothes to change into after getting feathered because it may mess up the ones that we have on."  GULP!!!  Anyways, we got feathered and it wasn't too bad but the lovely Kindergarten teacher took pictures of it and sent them to me (I debated sharing them!). 

After the assembly we had what we call Family Groups.  Each teacher takes about 6-7 kids throughout the whole school (K-6) and we get with our groups and do a fun activity.  During this one, we got to dance with our group.  Sorry, I didn't get any pictures of that, but I don't think you would want to see me doing any dancing!  I think the favorite of the students was the Chicken Dance.  :-)

Finally, to end the day, we had our Fall Party in the classroom.  We have parents that volunteer to come in and do the parties and our party was really good.  They had 3 games for them to do and some great treats.  

WOW!  That was a lot for me in one day!  

Hope all of you have a great week!

Happy Halloween or Happy It's Over?

Hello! 

I survived Halloween!

Actually it wasn't too bad this year. My class really is amazing! We had a pretty normal day until about 2:00. Then the kids put on their costumes and paraded around the gym in front of parents. My kids had some really original costumes! They all looked cute, but I was able to snap a few of my favorites...

I've never played Minecraft, but this was cool!

This little "nerd" even had fake braces on her teeth! LOL!

This may have been my favorite. She was an old lady with a wig, sweat suit, and fanny pack. Hee hee! She made it even better by saying things like, "What'd you say? I can't hear you!"

Enough about Halloween...

I have one little guy who is working so hard on his handwriting. I mean, seriously. I haven't even been able to believe it is the same kid writing some of his latest papers! His second sentence on the spelling test shows me exactly how he feels about it, too. LOL!

 

He makes me laugh! :-)

Have a great weekend!

Wisdom for Wednesday - Life's Situations

Happy Wednesday! 

Thanks for stopping by for today's:

I love this quote because it is so true! Take a look:

I don't know about you, but there are times when the situations of life can get a little overwhelming and discouraging. 

If I start to focus on those things--and my lack of understanding about why they are happening--it leaves me feeling pretty helpless. 

Those are the times when I should change my focus from the situations to the things I do know about my God. I know that He is good, that He cares about the details of my life, and that I can trust Him with anything this life has to throw at me!

Have a blessed day!