Recess Fun and Santa Letters

I had recess duty this week and I checked in with my kids on what their favorite thing to do at recess is.  My kiddos are so happy!  They love snow.

Recess Fun

A few Santa Letters...The template is from Katie King's The Busy Teachers Best Friend Christmas Edition on TeachersPayTeachers.  I love her stuff.  Check out her blog here.  Katie is definitely The Queen of First Grade.

Remember to be kind!

Claire

Let the Holidays Begin! And a freebie:)

I love this time of year.   I am enjoying some relaxing days off with my kids.  I came across a cute and simple snowman for my kids to create during our craft day in December.  I just love Pinterest.  I hope others might find it as cute as I have.  Check it out!

I created a pdf of templates to create this adorable snowman.  This certainly can be used in January in a snowman unit.  

Spiral Snowman Templates

Here's another cute idea for a gift for your students or maybe even for your kids to create.  But I love to create something for each of my students.  I guess this year I have a snowman theme going on. 

These little snowmen are created with a pack of lifesavers, (bodies) fingers from gloves (hats), and some chenille sticks (scarves).  The faces and buttons are drawn onto the body.  You can be as creative as you like.  I just love them.  Create away everyone.
    Well, there is no snow in Vermont or northern New York yet but I hear it's on the way next week.  Enjoy the rest of your weekend!  We'll be crazy busy for the next 4 weeks!

Remember to be kind!

Claire

Being Thankful and Riding Turkeys

     I love this time of year.  I have so much to be thankful for.  Life is great!  I am thankful for my two terrific kids Catherine and Bobbie.  They are the best part of me.  I am looking forward to their return from College.  I am thankful for my job and the students I teach every day.  I am thankful for all my friends near and far.  I am thankful for all my loyal followers on this blog.  I am thankful that I am a healthy, happy, and full of life.  I live in a beautiful part of the country and I am thankful for all the nature that I am surrounded by.  What are you thankful for?

Here is what my class is thankful for.

Thanksgiving 2012

The kids had lots of fun riding turkeys.

 

Thank you for reading my blog.
Life is good!
Remember to be kind!

Claire

Favorite Book Character

Friday was our day to dress up as our favorite book character.  I just love the book Miss Nelson Is Missing by James Marshall and Harry Allard.  I know this book by heart and love sharing it with my students every year.  I read it many times to each class.  My students usually love it as much as I do.  This was the first time that I have dressed up as my favorite character.  I decided to dress up as Miss Viola Swamp.  She is mean and nasty.   I was mean and ugly.  I had such a great time playing a character all day.  I wore a long black wig and ugly black outfit.  I found these adorable striped socks and black shoes.  I loved trying to be mean to kids.  They all looked at me and laughed most of the time.  I tried hard not to scare any of the kindergarteners.  It was a fun day.  It was a nice break from being so professional most days.  What do you think of my look?

Great striped socks!

Miss Swamp times two.  

Mrs. Therrien dressed as Miss Swamp along with me. Lots on mean teachers on the loose.

  I guess Miss Swamp is a very popular character.

Mrs. Therrien is so much better looking than I am.  We both had a great day!  

Have a super week!

Remember to be kind!

Claire

Monster Rocks and Magazines

     We have had some beautiful fall weather in October and we enjoyed some time playing together.  We love to run!  We went for a little walk to collect rocks.  We turned those rocks into monsters.  They turned out so nicely.  We have been creating maps of the town their monsters live in.  It's a nice tie into our social studies mapping unit.
    I subscribe to National Geographic Young Explorer and I love it.  It has the most incredible pictures and is at a first grade reading level.  The topics are perfect for any first grade classroom.  My kids love them as much as I do.  This is my third year of subscribing to the magazine so I have multiple issues for my class to explore.  Ms. McDermott has been teaming with me to teach my class how to write a constructive response (research based) using articles from these magazines.  We worked in groups to create sentences with a main idea and 3 important details.  We created titles for our work using alliteration.  The students made pictures to go with each of their details.  It has been encouraging to see how excited my class was working on this project. 
 Check out National Geographic Young Explorer online.  It is an amazing magazine. (And no I'm not getting paid to say this.)  I just love this magazine.  http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngyoungexplorer/

 

 

Check out Raki's Rad Resource's wonderful blog and Teacher Pay Teacher amazing products.  I am always amazed at how regular teachers can be this productive.  Check it out today.

Remember to be kind!

Claire

Active Alliteration

     Ms. McDermott came in for another visit last week.  She introduced us to Alliteration.  Alliteration is when two or more words begin with the same letter or sound. For example  Dressy Daffodils.  Over the 3 days with Ms. McDermott we heard several terrific books that have lots of alliteration through out the story.  My favorite story is The Great Fuzz Frenzy by Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel.  It is a hilarious tale about a tennis ball that rolls down a hole. 

 Our activity centered around our names.  We paired the kids up and they helped one another figure out a great alliteration for their names.  Next we decided to have kids create a heart with their names, a place they liked, a person they liked and a thing they liked.  Then we helped them create alliterations for all 4.  They turned out terrific!  (Oh an alliteration there.)  I love to see the kids start to discover alliterations every where now.  Some kids start to incorporate it into their writing.  It's so fun.

   

Click here for a blank heart.

Remember to be kind!

Claire