Pumpkins!

I cannot believe it is NOVEMBER! I am so excited because 1). My dad came back from his deployment in Turkey! 2). It is fiiinally starting to cool down and feel like fall! 3). Only 2 1/2 weeks until Thanksgiving! 4). Then only 3 and a half weeks until Christmas break!! THIS IS MY FAVORITE TIME OF THE SCHOOL YEAR :)

We have pretty much wrapped up our pumpkin unit, and it's been fun! As I said in my last post, we did quite a bit with the basal last week (due to PT conferences) and read The Life Cycle of a Pumpkin and really focused on a pumpkin's life cycle!

This book is an amazing look at the life cycle, too!

We practiced sequencing by writing the about a pumpkin's life cycle using words like first, next, then, last, finally, etc. I forgot to take a picture, but we made the cutest craft to illustrate the life cycle of the pumpkin! Wish I had photographed it! Oh well :)

This week we observed, described, estimated, graphed and measured using a pumpkin (and pumpkin seeds) I brought to school.

We first observed the outside of a pumpkin and wrote down all of the adjectives we could think of to describe it. Then I carved the pumpkin open, and the kids to got to see, smell and feel the inside of the pumpkin! They LOVED it! Some thought it was nasty and would not touch it though :) Then we wrote all the adjectives about the inside of it. My kiddos completed a craftivity and had to write at least 3 sentences to describe the outside of the pumpkin and 3 to describe the inside. These turned out so stinkin' cute, and they were way into it!

 

Here is a photo of our pumpkin anchor chart (as well as our seed adjectives for Pumpkin Seed day!)

The next day was Pumpkin Seed Day! First we all got a few pumpkin seeds, and we had to look at, feel and taste them! We wrote adjectives on the giant seeds (see photo above) and we graphed whether we liked or disliked the taste of the seeds. We used Abby's cuh-yoot Pumpkin Seed Data and All About Pumpkin Seeds record sheets!  

That afternoon I read

 It is a great introduction to what it means to estimate! We looked inside our pumpkin and estimated how many seeds we thought were inside of it. Our estimates ranged anywhere from 12 to 101. My kiddos worked with their tables and had to make groups of ten.

After they finished counting their seeds, we added up the class total (great mini lesson on regrouping!)The grand total of seeds inside our pumpkin was.... drumroll please.... 253! Our closest estimate was only 152 off :) But they had a great time!

Today we worked with partners to measure our pumpkin using standard and nonstandard units of measurement. They did AWESOME!

Tomorrow we are playing catch up and doing lots of math games and activities. I am all pumpkin-ed out :) Can't wait until our Patriotic mini-unit next week!

Have a fabulous weekend!

I'm still here!!

Holy cow, I cannot believe it has been a month since I posted on this thing! Things have been busy and I keep forgetting to bring my camera to document what we are doing! We just wrapped up Parent Teacher Conferences last night. They went great! I have got some wonderful parents! It is sooo nice to have today off though :)

Lots has been going on around here! One thing I am VERY excited about is that I got funded through Limeades for Learning! Woo! We got ALL kinds of materials for Daily 5 and some fun math games (I am so excited about my hot dots set!!) My kids are really excited too :)

Last week we read The Life Cycle of a Pumpkin in our basal and did a lot of the activities from it. Not gonna lie, I needed something easy this week with it being conference week and Red Ribbon Week. Speaking of RRW, look who came to visit our school yesterday!!

RUMBLE! I looove me some OKC Thunder! It was SO. MUCH. FUN! Aaaand I got to go up and do a teamwork game with some of my fellow teachers, and our team won. I was so pumped!! I seriously felt like a little kid. I may have been more excited than some of the little ones.... :)

Next week we will continue our pumpkin unit and do the FUN stuff :) We are going to do a cool inside/outside pumpkin observation activity, measurement, estimation and some cute poems. I WILL bring my camera to document the week, as well as some of the other things we have been working on :)

Hope everyone has a happy Halloween!!

Spelling & Word Chunks

This past summer, my sweet friend, Amy, and I decided we needed to revamp our spelling. We were using the spelling lists that came with our reading program, and really, I feel like many of the kids were just memorizing for the test-not really learning the spelling patterns. This year we are doing word chunks and I am LOVING it! We structured our spelling based on this book:

Each week, we have a focus poem. We find helpful chunk words from the poem, and focus on 3 to 4 a week. My kids are doing GREAT! And they are actually using the chunks in their writing! They always point out old chunks and underline chunks in their work. LOVE IT!

For the spelling test, I give the kids 10 chunk words to study (most are 2 syllable words, some just have blends and digraphs). Then I add anywhere from 1-5 extra words (sight words, old chunks we need to review). On test day I give them 5 secret words that they don't get to study. They have to apply what they have learned.

It is very easy for all students to work on the same chunks, but you can modify the words for your struggling students, as well as your gifted students :)

Here is what our poetry and word work journal looks like. Our poem goes on the left, and we sort chunk words on the right. **Sidebar-this poem is also a great one to teach blends and adjectives!**

Here is what our Word Chunk Wall looks like currently. (I cut off the "U" and "Other" chunks, sorry!)

So this is kind of what our week looks like currently...

Monday: Introduce new poem at morning meeting (written on chart paper). Ask kids what they think would be helpful chunks. Pick out 3-4 (pre-selected) chunking words. Underline chunks in poem with highlighting tape (so I can reuse the poems on chart paper year after year :). Then I write the chunk words on construction paper in front of them. I do not have these pre-made, although I realllllly wanted to! I think they are more meaningful since we write them together. I give the students a copy of the poem and we read it again and circle our chunk words. Then they cut it out and glue it in their journal. We also go over our spelling words for the week.

Tuesday: We reread our poem. Review the chunks. Brainstorm words that have our chunks on the whiteboard. Then the students sort their spelling words on the right side of their journals. They will add other words at their own pace throughout the week.

Wednesday: I have a cut and paste word sort for my kiddos to do.

Thursday: We play our word chunk race! My kids get their marker boards. I give them one minute. They write as many words as they can think of for the first chunk. Then, I give them another minute, and I call on students to tell me as many chunk words as they can! I write them all on the board. Then it's my turn! Except I only get 30 seconds and I have to do it alone! (I don't win very often!) We repeat this for each chunk. They love playing against Mrs. Lynes :)

Friday: We play Sparkle and take our test.

When we have extra time throughout the day, I let them get out Word Work materials (magnets, pipe cleaners, stamps, etc). Once I get it up and running, it will be a rotation as part of Daily 5.

TGI (almost) F!

Apple Week!

I can't believe that Apple Week is over! The school year is really flying!!! We had a great week learning about Johnny Appleseed and doing different activities involving apples! At the end of the week we made homemade applesauce and the kiddos brought apple snacks for our apple tasting party. YUM! Here are just a few photos of some of the things we did this week.

Of course we read several versions of Johnny Appleseed and discussed what we learned, as well as comparing the stories.

I introduced adjectives to my students by giving them each a piece of a granny smith apple. I told them to use their senses to describe it. The very last thing they could do was taste it. They talked with their neighbors and then they came up with words to describe the apple! (I used this prompt to help make sure they were coming up with adjectives: I have a _____ apple). I wrote their responses on our huge apple (below). Next, I gave them a piece of a gala apple. We repeated the process, and of course they came up with different adjectives since the two apples look and taste different :)

The next day, we reviewed adjectives and I had them use adjectives to describe different things in our classroom aloud. Then they made these cute adjective apples!

This week, we worked on addition story problems. I had my students write story problems with apple stickers!

I had each of my students bring an apple to school on Wednesday to be used for some graphing and measurement activities. (Then of course we would use them for our applesauce!) First we graphed the color of apples we brought. At the bottom I had some questions about the graph for my kiddos to answer.

The next day we worked on measurement (and estimation) using standard and nonstandard units. First, we practiced measuring things that had a straight edge. We found that was pretty easy! We wanted to measure our apples, but could we measure something round using a ruler? Not really! So we decided it'd be easier if we put yarn around our apples and then measured that! I had my students measure (to the nearest unit) their apples using unifix cubes, dominoes, pennies, inches and centimeters. They did awesome!

My kiddos also got to make apple transformations. I have decided that next year I will now show them an example of an apple transformation... I may do a different object so they get the jist of it. Because even when you tell them 45 times, "No copying Mrs. Lynes!" you get about 10 who still do :) But they are still adorable regardless!

I can't believe Apple Week is already over! Pretty soon it'll be onto pumpkins, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas!! Eeep!

Communities

The first two and a half weeks of school have been awesome! I absolutely love my class-they are the sweetest kiddos! They are making it so easy to implement Daily 5 and I just know it's going to be a fantastic year! I will write about how Daily 5 is going in a future post :)

The past week or two we have been focusing on communities and mapping skills for social studies. We have read these stories from our basal to help compare the characteristics of different kinds of communities:

 

I am still trying to learn that I can LET GO OF THE BASAL while doing Daily 5, but these two stories went really well with communities. We have been comparing urban, suburban and rural. They loooved seeing my photos from NYC and Chicago, too! Many of them had no idea just how big a city could actually be!

 I made this bulletin board and we sorted out the different characteristics of each community:

Then, we made our own model of the different communities using milk cartons! The model turned out so cute, and I think they really got it! :) (This is a photo of my friend Amy's class' model-I forgot to take a picture of ours and had already let my kiddos take their buildings home!)

So stinkin' cute, right? :) The following day, we started our mapping skills. We made a map of our model. We learned that we needed a title for our maps, as well as a map key!

We will continue our mapping skills this week. We will read

and the kiddos will have homework-make a map of their bedroom! They will have to include a title and at least 5 symbols in their map key. I can't wait to see what they come up with!

Hope everyone has a great rest of the weekend!

Cheap Classroom projects

I have been blog stalking all summer long, looking for ideas for Daily 5. Many classrooms I came across have all kinds of fun, comfortable seating areas for students to read. I wanted to provide some more fun seating options for my kiddos during Daily 5 without breaking the bank. And then one of our 3rd grade teachers gave me this awesome idea! And it only cost about $6 a pop!

I bought a few baskets from Wal-Mart for about $3 each. I bought enough padding at Hancock for 4 seats ($12). I had some leftover fabric (free!) and my dad had some plywood in his shed (free!). My dad cut the plywood for me, but I found out that Lowe's will cut it to the correct size for free if you buy the wood from them! Have the wood cut so that it can sit inside the basket where you would normally hang folders. Hot glue the padding to the wood. Cover with fabric, and use a staple gun to secure the fabric. And voila! Cheap seating for your babies (or you!) plus extra storage! I am storing my kiddos' extra school supplies inside my seats. AND I use one of these seats at my easel! I love being that low and close to my kiddos! It is the perfect height for writing on my easel, too!

This is an idea I got when I was student teaching. I do not have cubbies to send my kids' papers home, and those things are expensive, and I do not know anyone who is into shelf building :) So I use cans instead of cubbies! They are the perfect size for papers!

This was a SUPER cheap project for me, and these things have lasted since I started teaching in 2007. I get a lot of compliments on them, too! I worked at a daycare before I started teaching, so I had the lunch staff save the large cans that fruit and veggies come in for me (you can have your cafeteria save them for you, too!) I made sure to put gobs of hot glue on the edges where the cans had been open so there would be no cut little fingers! I cut butcher paper to fit the size of the can. I used calendar numbers, then I laminated the sheets of paper. I hot glued the laminated papers at the seam, and bam! A cute, CHEAP way to send your kids' papers home :)

A View of My Classroom!

I know, I know. It's been FOR. EV. ER. since I last posted. I started working on my room August 1st, and went just about everyday (with the occasional day off to be poolside!) and by the time I would get home I just didn't have it in me to type a post! LAZY! Anyway, I put in a lot of hard work, and I must say that I love my new classroom! You wouldn't believe what a difference it is to be out of the basement and to have a window!!! And I love that my room has carpet! No more noisy chairs scraping on the tile everytime my kiddos move! :) It feels so much more cozy and home-y than my previous room.

I have absolutely loved seeing everyone's classrooms in the blog world, so I thought I would share mine! This post will be a classroom tour. ENJOY :)

These two photos are as you enter my room...

This is a close up of our "Words We Know" wall and our calendar/math meeting area (with lots of Everyday Math routines). Next to the clock are our Eight Expectations. (My window and teacher table/counter space are to the left). My Words We Know wall will be for high frequency words, but I will be focusing on word chunks this year (which is on a wall in the front of the room).

My reading corner with the canopy I purchased from Ikea for around $15!

This is my Bucket Filler area. The students place their bucket fillers in the orange basket for me to "deliver" This is actually so I can check them first :) My kids are already SO into this! We read How Full is Your Bucket? and discussed it. We made a chart of Bucket Fillers and Bucket Dippers. We hung up the Bucket Fillers chart and trashed the Bucket Dippers! We then did a reader's response and they were coming up with the sweetest ways they could be bucket fillers! Then they all filled someone's bucket. I wrote everyone's name on a slip beforehand and randomly handed them out so that everyone's bucket was filled this first time. I am so excited to be implementing bucket filling this year!

The next two photos show my book basket areas. These are the chapter books...

 ...and the blue and green baskets are the picture books. The bulletin board above those book baskets have our school creed, school song, character trait of the month, word of the week, and quote of the week. We say these every morning to help us start our day.

This is my Tree-riffic Words tree! Each week we will add our Word of the Week on a leaf and hang it on the tree. By the end of the year, our tree will be blooming with Tree-riffic words! :)

Next is the door to my closet. It will be my Celebrity of the Week area! There is a sheet protector in the middle for the Celebrity's poster to hang all week long! I made a bag over the summer for the Celebrity to take home and bring all the things they will need to share during the week! The library pockets on the bottom of my door are for my students' library sticks and their Everyday Math login cards. The library sticks are the large popsicle sticks where I will write their reading range to help guide them when they visit the library.



This year I am starting Daily 5 (well, more of a Daily 3)! I am so excited about it! This is my word work area. Students will have the choice to use magnets, stamps, pipecleaners (same idea as Wikki Sticks, only way cheaper!), letter tiles and dry erase boards. They may also do rainbow spelling with crayons or stair spelling. I may add more choices as I find other materials or other ideas I like :)

And those are the only pictures of my room that I have at this point! I hope everyone has had a great school year so far!