Earth Day Fun!

We celebrated Earth Day this last week! So much fun! I found all sorts of super fun activities on blogs and TPT for us to use in our class.  Here are a few pics of some of the activities:

Our Earth Day Anchor Chart: (I CANNOT draw at ALL so I used this anchor chart found here to help me! Again, not my creative thinking!)

Here is a pic of the craftivity we worked on! It turned out very cute, I think?! 

We also reviewed less than, greater than, and equal to.  The kids completed math facts, then sorted the cards according to their relationship to 10.  This activity was found HERE.

We also read The Lorax by Dr. Seuss and discuss story elements- character, setting, problem, and solution.  Then, we wrote and illustrated the main events from the beginning, middle, and end of the story!  The Lorax activities came from a unit called Reuse, Reduce, and Recycle!

50s Fun

Oh my goodness! Yesterday was our 50th day of school and we celebrated 1950s style. So much fun! We even dressed like they did in the 50s! We counted to 50 by 1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s. We listed numbers greater than 50 and less than 50. My sweet teammate, Miss Martinez, made a PowerPoint to show the kids pictures of clothes and toys. We compared and contrasted how people lived in the 1950s to how we live today. The kids were shocked they didn't have cell phones, or color TV, or Wii! Here are a few pics of our wild and crazy, but educational day! ;-)

After we discussed the differences from the 50s to today, the students wrote a few sentences about what they learned! Super cute, huh?

After lunch, we enjoyed root beer floats! It was YUMMY!  Then, we graphed how many students liked their treat, and how many did not! Ice cream outside on a beautiful day? What's not to love?

 

 

In the afternoon, we had a sock hop! The kids loved dancing to 50s music!  We also showed clips of I Love Lucy so they could see what TV shows looked like in the 50s!

Just an FYI for teacher friends, I purchased Cara Carroll's unit: “Cruisin’ Through the 50 First Days of School”. All of our activities came from her unit.  I would highly recommend it! 

Pennies Please!

In our classroom, we use pennies as an incentive.  Each child has their own drawer where they keep their pennies until they are ready to spend them at the class store.  The drawers look like this:

The kids can earn pennies several different ways.  If they get their homework folder signed Monday- Thursday night, they get 1 penny on Friday morning.  They also get a penny if their homework is turned in on time and complete!  At the end of each day, if a student has moved their clip up to orange, they get 1 penny, and if they've moved to yellow (wow!!) then they get 2 pennies! 

I also randomly give out pennies to good behavior!  However... if they make poor choices, sometimes they owe me a penny.  This does not happen very often because they want as many pennies as they can get!  I try to make the focus of the class store to be privileges rather than toys.  For instance, they can buy the chance to eat lunch with me, or sit at my desk, or sit by a friend for a day! They are really enjoying this system and their behavior is rockin'!  Plus, it helps when we get to money in our math curriculum.  They can trade their pennies in for nickels, dimes, and quarters.

Place Value Initials

This week we have been discussing place value in math.  We are learning about ten longs and units and we have practiced by counting manipulatives.  The kids have done really well!  Today we made our initials out of paper ten longs and units.  Then, the students counted how much their initial was "worth".  They had a blast!

I found this great idea on another first grade blog- Crayon Bits!  She has wonderful ideas!

Dinonumbers!

I found a great resource this morning on Doodle Bugs Teaching!  Its a simple and cute way to teach number recognition and even and odd numbers.  Check out their blog and download your copy!