Leprechaun Traps

It was a great week with the smarties.  Several kids made leprechaun traps over their vacations.  Here is a peek at the traps that have come in so far.  Enjoy!

 '

Next week should be a busy one with our Parent Conferences  I am looking forward to sharing everyones' progress.

Claire

Easy Transition

      Today was a calm day.  I think all the kids were a little tired and didn't want to start back into the routine.  We started out with a new person in our community.  It was Mrs. Byrne, our crafty art teacher.  It was nice to see a new face.  We are so lucky to keep our fabulous gym teacher, Mr. Lumsden.  We will continue with our Get Moving Movement on Wednesday mornings.  We like what Mrs. Obama is promoting about children and obesity.  We have been trying to add in some art a couple of times a month.  Now I think we will try some whole group projects more often with Mrs. Byrne, as our resident expert.
      This morning we used our Netbooks to check out this blog (and all the pictures) and to try out some St. Patrick's Day links that I put onto our webpage.  Some didn't quite work as well as I had envisioned.  If you are looking for some links check out mine at https://sites.google.com/a/fnwsu.org/mrs-dietsche-s-class/     Scroll down the page a bit.  My class love the Alien Addition game and anything on www.toytheater.com 
      We ended our day working on our leprechaun stories.  Problems and solutions.....This is so fun for the kids.  We will publish our stories this week.  My class loves writing workshop time and so do I.  I think it's my favorite thing to teach.
       Next week is Parent/Teacher Conference time.  I am looking forward to sharing my students's progress with their families.  I took some quick videos of the kids telling me how they have gotten smarter and what they like best about first grade. My kids are so cute.  I love sharing these videos.  I use Movie Maker to put the little movies together.
      Have a great rest of the week!

Claire

Wishing Wednesday

      Well, it's back to work for me today, wishing for an easy transition back into the routine for all of us.  It has been a nice long vacation in the middle of winter.  Yes, I said winter.  I think we had more snow this past week than we have had in the last 3 months.  I got my work outs shoveling snow:)  We all thought that a mild winter was very pleasant.  But now I'm wishing that spring would arrive.
        I've been on a bit of a health kick lately and I bought a large stalk of celery.  I sliced right through the whole stalk to have lots of little pieces to keep me from eating chocolate.  Ha Ha!  I had spring on the brain and can't wait for the growing season to start so I put the end of the stalk stem into a bowl of water.  Within hours the center of the stalk seemed to be growing.  Was I seeing things and wishing that I might?  It took only 24 hours and sure enough there was life growing in the center of that stalk.  Here is a what my stalk looks like after 1 week.

 It looks like a pretty flower.

       It is such an easy fascinating little experiment that I'm going to recreate it with my class this week.  I think we will make a few predictions and keep a daily journal as a class.  It's all very exciting.  My wish is that it will grow as nicely as the one I have going at home. I may even try the top of a pineapple. Happy Growing.
       
Wishing you all Good Luck !  What are you wishing for? 

Claire

A Smart Bunch of Kids!

Our Class Portrait

A very smart bunch!

Claire

Towers of Cups and Another Award!

   

     Our class loved getting into the cup stacking act.  We had about 20 minutes before lunch and we had a blast stacking cups.  The favorite cup to stack were the colorful sand buckets.  I bought the buckets one spring at Michael's for a dollar each.  I took off the handles and let the kids stack.  Our class loved getting on top of chairs to try to stack the last bucket. The kids made a huge structure out of buckets that we left up for the rest of the day.  The class was so proud of it.  Our new class picture shows our tower.

 

  Checking out my comments last night I see that Katie Smith from First is a Fairytale nominated me for another award!  I am just beaming!  It's the One Lovely Blog Award!  I had better start listing my awards on my blog.  Wow!  I am honored  Thank You Katie!

Claire

Day 7  I made it!  Yippeee!

Top 10 Award!

Wow!  Barbara at  Happy Teaching Sisters  thinks I'm worthy of this terrific award!  Yippee!  I love how this award was created to help encourage bloggers to keep doing what they like doing, sharing!  I am truly honored and will pass this award onto some of my favorite bloggers.

Here are 10 Other Blogs that I have discovered and enjoy reading.  I smile every time I read them.

Laurie at Morning Sun First Grade

 (Laurie has already received this but she is my favorite and I need to share!)

 Frugal Teacher

Technology Rocks, Seriously

The First Grade Parade 

Lasotas Little Learners

Taming My Flock of Firsties 

2nd Grade Sand Castles

First Grade Delight
First Grade Blue Skies
First Grade Honey Bunch

Congratulations to you all!  Keep making me smile:)  If you won, please visit Top 10 Award instructions.

Check out all of these Top 10 Blogs!

Claire

Day 6  #2  (Hey, I was just nominated for an award!  I had to blog about it!)

Winter Carnival Fun

Cups! Cups! Everywhere you look it's cups!  We had cup stacking for winter carnival in my room.  Teams of kids started stacking cups as high as they could.  It was great to see the excitement build as the towers and pyramids climbed.  I loved hearing the shouts of laughter and awwwwws as some structures came crashing down.  Some kids choose to build together and others liked working by themselves.  When can we do it again?

 

 The kindergarten got into the act walking down the hall to a new activity.  Ms. H took a group out for a scavenger hunt walk.

Mrs. Heinlein had a group of artists create beautiful lizards with chalk.  She said that you can hanging them so that they look like they are walking up the wall 3-D.

 

It was a great time and a terrific way to end the week before our winter break.  

Claire

Day 6