Some Websites I Find Helpful

I thought I would post a few websites that I find helpful for teaching math and other subjects.

Virtual Manipulatives is a great site! It has workmats that you can use and different manipulatives such as counters or base ten blocks that you can use to supplement your math curriculim You can project it onto your board (not sure if it works on a Smartboard as I don't have that, but if it does let me know!) or you can have the students go on. Play around with it.

Another great site is Worksheet works. I love using it for making my own word searches and math drills, but there are so many different worksheets you can customize and print!

And something I use during Bible and Art is Adventures in Odyssey. They are great stories to listen to and the kids work quietly because they are listening so intently.

So there are three great sites, I hope you enjoy playing around (yes you need to play with technology) and I hope you find these useful.

Community Helpers

We did a great communities helper activity based on this great book, "This Plus That Life's Little Equations" by Amy Krause Rosenthal. The book has little equations in it such as," tall+coffee=grownup or small+bottle=baby". So to tweak it for community helpers I wrote up some equations like, "students+bus+driving= _______ (bus driver) or students+books+reading=____ (librarian/teacher) Then I had them come up with the descriptors and I had the equals part ________+ _______= firefighter. So they had to think about two words that would describe a firefighter. We went through a number of these, and then they had to think of their own equation. It had them thinking about community helpers in a different way, and after our flop of a brainstorming session, I actually think they are understanding what community helpers are. HAHA

Here is a link to the google doc if you want a copy.

Place Value Pirates

Today we made place value pirates! It was a little tricky for some of the little darlings, but with support they did a great job! I got the idea from pinterest of course, and made the template. The kids wrote the number word on the bandanna, the standard form in the mouth and the expanded form on the beard. They were very excited about this activity.

 We also finished our construction paper houses which are always cute! Most of them followed the expectations of making everything out of paper, but some "forgot".

Community Helpers

So this morning we talked about community helpers, and man was it difficult for my guys to come up with jobs in our community! I think we have to read some more books! They had no problem listing restaurants they loved (when we talked about jobs in the goods industry) but then asking them what jobs the people do in those restaurants was like pulling teeth. I asked, who brings you your food? Does it magically appear? Who cooks the food? I got blank stares! REALLY?? I have never had a class that had this much trouble! Then on the services side, I also had to prompt them A LOT! They came up with teacher and vet at first so I was like ok, this is good, then they hit the wall and I had to prompt them like crazy to give me police officer, nurse, doctor, ambulance driver etc. I was a tad shocked. So needless to say we will be reading some more books and revisiting our chart.... Sigh.... This afternoon we had a parent come in who is an E.R. nurse and she talked about her job and then of course right in the middle we had a fire drill (not great timing) so after that they were pretty squirrely. I felt bad for this mom, and we tried to keep them under control but they had lost any focus they had had before the drill, so it was pretty chaotic. Then I had them work on a sheet talking about what job they might want to do when they grew up. I think our discussion this morning may have helped a little, it did not seem like it was successful at all, but maybe something did sink in. Some memorable ones were, Zoo Keeper, Mom, Nurse, Pilot, and Pirate! haha

Here is the Page: The font is Kidprint (in case you want to print it in the original font)
when I grow up

SO that was my day....

Wanted Posters and The Start of Writing Power

Our last Pirate activity were wanted posters. The students were quite excited about them, and though they are pretty simple, some of them were quite funny!

We also started Writing Power this week, and our first activities was making invitations. We talk about how the writer and the reader are in a very close relationship and how the writer always keeps the reader in mind when writing their stories. We also talk about how our writing should invite the reader in and make them want to keep reading what we are writing. To do this we made invitations inviting our readers to a "Thinking Party"! Students understand that getting an invitation to a party is an exciting thing and that excitement should translate to their readers from their writing. Our next lesson is on Brain Pockets! Stay tuned!!

Word Work Activities

I introduced our word work activities today! We rotated through them like centers because I think that before they can use manipulatives for "educational purposes"  kids need a chance to play with them. Some of the centers allow for more play then others, but I did not have a specific skill or concept they had to focus on.

 Students used their week one word list from our spelling program and scrabble tiles to practice the words. They also made their names and other words they knew.

Students used wiki stix to make words, stick men, flowers, etc.

Similar to the other two stations, the used the foam letters to build words and made up a song when they found a sticky J in the mix! haha

Students used letter stamps to stamp words, their names, and a butterfly that they found in there for some reason....

I bought this game, BRAND NEW from a garage sale this summer for $5! It has word cubes inside with word chunks, blends, and individual letters. Students are encouraged to make words, but some of the weaker readers and writers decided to put the blocks together randomly. We will revisit this one, and use it during small group instruction.

The last station was Spellmaster. Its an older game where students choose a card with pictures on them, they find the letters to write the word that goes along with the picture. So if there is a picture of a cake the have to spell cake.

Most of these stations will be Word Work choices as we launch our full fledged Daily 5 in October!

Simple Math Centers

On Friday we had Math centers. I wasn't sure if the kiddos could handle it, but they did wonderfully. I had 5 centers that they rotated through.

Students need to match the number, the number word and the picture representation. I got this at Walmart a few years ago. It's simple but an important skill (number/word recognition)

The kids liked this one! The only thing they "had to do\' was make patterns, then they could connect their patterns to make a long "snake".

In this center the students are given a hundred chart, a die, and a crayon. They roll the die, colour in that amount of boxes, and then roll again adding that number to their hundred chart. The first one to reach one hundred wins!

In this center the students use pattern blocks to create animals (there are cards with patterns on them).

The last center is a domino game that is like the card game "war". Students turn the dominoes upside down, and then each player flips one domino over. The player with the largest amount of pips wins all the dominoes in that round. The person with the most dominoes at the end of the rotation time wins. If there is a tie, those students flip over another domino and then whoever has the largest number wins all the dominoes.  

I was so happy with how well they handled centers and I am sure that we will be doing a lot more of them this year! 

Piratey Things

So we are doing a small unit on pirates this week and therefore we did a few 'piratey" things.

We completed our pirate glyph and the kids did really well, they handled it better than I anticipated and we got through it pretty quickly!

Cute right?
We also did a" look back on our summer" activity, and I entitled it "Summer, Ho!"(it was the most piratey title I could come up with). The students were given a spyglass, and had to draw a picture of something they did this summer. Then they had to write their name, what they did and a detail about what they did. Some really "got it" and others.....not so much....

I am thinking of having the kids create a wanted poster as though they are pirates wanted for some crime or other....but we'll see.

We have also read many Pirate books, which the kids have loved.
Some favourites:
Small Saul
Fluffy: Scourge of the Sea
Pirate Pearl
Pirates Go to School

The kids are enjoying it, it really fires their imagination and increase their excitement level for school. It's been a fun break  from Frogs for me as well, and I may do it again next year, unless I see something awesome on Pinterest! haha

First Day

I did it! Another first day under my belt. Woot! I have a couple unique children, a few sweethearts, and a few monkeys! I think once they understand the expectations and the "rules" it will go better for all of us! I was given a 25th student unexpectedly this morning so that was a little bit of a mad scramble, but God is good and knows all things because I have one student who will not be in school until next week, so a desk was all ready there and supplies were there too! PHEW. Then I had to teach and try to get certain things put together by the end of the day, but my grade one colleagues have "trained" these kids well and they were happily reading for 20 minutes this afternoon, so it was all good and a pretty pleasant day.I'm tired, but not exhausted as I have been in the past, and I am ready to tackle another day (not quite right away, but after a good sleep).

I spent some time after school, as I usually do on the first day, talking with other teachers (who were still there) and finding out how their day went. I also like finding out how my former students are doing. It's nice to just chat and see what surprised, challenged, and delighted them. The first day is all about impressions and we all try to make lasting ones, and the kids do to. Not that they try, necessarily, but there are always those that stick out right away for whatever reason!

I am thankful that I made a dinner yesterday that would produce leftovers for today and tomorrow so I didn't have to think about cooking tonight! I will post pictures of some of our first day projects tomorrow, as some are not quite done, or put up (I may be good, but not that good).

So now to sit, relax, or go for a walk...I'm not sure what will win out tonight.
And now my first Linky... not quite sure how to...but I will try. It looks like an awesome one!