Monday, September 30, 2013

Australia!

We started the year working on African animals.  For years and years, I have done about 10 African animals to start off the year.  This year, I cut it to six.  Then I made six Australian animals and six Asian animals.  I am so excited about my new animals.  Africa consists of giraffes, elephants, hippos, flamingos, lions and zebras.  Australia is going to be wombats, platypuses, koalas, kangaroos, kiwis and echidnas.  Asia is going to be camels, peacocks, rhinos, komodo dragons, tigers and something else I can't remember.  Here is the platypus I made.  He is uber cute.  Of course, when the kids saw the platypus, the first thing they thought of was Perry from Phineas and Ferb.  In honor of Perry, we made regular platypuses and Perry's.  The kids even made hats for Perry.  And we, of course, have to glitterfy everything!


Perry the platypus!





Flip the Dinosaur!

My school uses the "Treasures" reading program.  The story we read this week was Flip.  It is about a dinosaur that wants to go to school.  So my partner in crime thought we should do an opinion writing piece about the story.  She is BRILLIANT!  So I got to work drawing Flip.  The original idea was "would you want Flip to come to your classroom?  Why or why not?"  I goofed up and had them write an opinion over whether they liked the book or not.  Oopsies!  They still came out great.  Here is what Flip ended up looking like.  He is rather cute I must say. 






Get The Moon For Me...

I work with this fabulous first grade teacher.  She found this last year.  We have been working on "Sky" for science the last few weeks.  We started with the sun and made sun trackers.  We learned about the moon.  We read Papa Please Get The Moon For Me by Eric Carle and made the craftivity in the picture.  We have also learned about thermometers, anemometers and rain gauges.  We have been busy scientists!!!





No David

We also read, David Goes to School.  I had the kiddos write the classroom rules to go with it.  They wrote, "Rule 1: Follow Directions Quickly, Rule 2: Raise Your Hand to Speak, Rule 3: Raise Your Hand to Leave Your Seat, Rule 4: Make Smart Choices, Rule 5: Make Your Dear Teacher Happy."  I LOVE these rules.  We do them all the time and there are motions for each.  They came from Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids: (and the rest of your class, too!) A great book!  Here is a pictures of one of the kiddos pieces of work.






The first week...

So I am incredibly behind posting pictures and things we have been doing.  The first week of school we read The Important Book and wrote about what we thought was important about first grade.  My daughter is in my class.  She made this one.  She wrote, " The most important thing about first grade is listening to Mrs. Worf."  Gotta love it!