It's April

            We have about 50 days left to our school year.  Time is flying by and spring is in the air.  It's mud season and the sap is flowing into buckets and tubes all throughout Vermont and Northern New York.   The ice is almost out of the lake and there are still just a few patches of snow hanging around.  Soon every thing will start green up and we can leave winter behind us.  I love this time of year!

One  Fun and Crazy Class

New Fun Link and a Spring Freebie

I came across this great link that is new to me but not new for many people.  It was created for adults to use for instant feedback at conferences.  I have adapted it for use in my classroom.  It's called Today's Meet.  It's found at www.todaysmeet.com  

 I created a room with a question for my kids to answer or respond to.  Then I put a link up on my webpage for them to access the site.  It is a very simple website.  You go to the website and create a room.  Keep the name simple.  It will become your link.  Then in your first post, create a question.   I like that my kids have to type their name and then their answer to my question and it's a simple click to post their response.   And the best part is that it's FREE!  You can cut and paste all responses in one highlight to be able to save permanently.  You get to choose how long the page and responses stay up anywhere from 2 hours to 1 month.  I just love it.  Here is what my kids did with the Question: What would you do if you caught a leprechaun?

Check out Today's Meet for an easy way to tap into your students' knowledge.  Good Luck!

Also check out a post I wrote 2 years ago for a great spring freebie!

Trapping A Leprechaun

We are sure there was a leprechaun lurking around our classroom this past week.  It's a good thing my class created leprechaun traps to try to capture one.  Oh the messes he left all week long took us way too long to clean up.  I am so glad the our leprechaun has moved on to greener pastures (namely back home to Ireland).  There was green glitter sprinkled all over the carpet , books and even on the traps.  Our shoes were lost for a good part of a morning but were found in the bathroom.  We suspect that the tricky leprechaun stole them because the toilet water was green even after we flushed it.  He was kind on our last day when he left us necklaces, and candies.  He wasn't fooled by any of the fabulous traps.  Maybe next year.........
Check out how great all of our traps were!

St. Patrick's Day Videos

Erin Go Braugh..........Ireland Forever!  I love St. Patrick's Day.  Today I share some YouTube videos with you.  My students will be bringing in their leprechaun traps this week and I will share them next week with you all.

St. Patrick's day Hat

Leprechaun Hat

Leprechaun Stories and crafts  15 mins.

Song: Eat Potatoes and Cabbage

Song

Heart Stacking with our Skype Buddies

I love our skyping buddies Mrs. Hilton's First Grade from Morning Sun, Iowa.  During the month of love, we hung out together doing some estimating and stacking candy hearts.  We loved getting a chance to practice our estimating skills.  Mrs. Hilton had 3 baby food jars filled with small candy hearts.  She showed them to us and we all made our educated guess.  Next we recorded our guesses.  Mrs. Hilton counted out all the candies into groups of 10, a skill we all practice.  It was cool for my kiddos to get close to the actual totals with their estimates.
       We had a blast trying to stack candy hearts.  Our top stacker, Jessica was able to stack 19 candies.  We even took out rulers to measure how high our candy stacks were.  Of course we got to munch away at our yummy candies.  We all had a great time.  We are all looking forward to our next Skype session with both Iowa and Texas.

Science Fun

                 Have you ever wondered about the world around you?  Kids are naturally curious creatures.  My little group of kiddos is no different.  They are a very curious beast.  They are always on the look out for things out of the ordinary.  It may be a bug crawling across the carpet, or their marker bleeding through their paper, or even a pencil's ding on a metal water bottle.  Kids want to be up close and personal with why things work the way they do.  I love where their questions take me.  It's one of the reasons why I love first grade so much.  I never know what my day might bring.  I love the internet for helping us to find out more about any topic under the sun.
                    My little scientists had a great time recently discovering and writing about our five senses.  Our curriculum states that we must talk about how our five sense satisfy our needs and how they keep us safe.  My kids loved reading about them and getting a chance to touch, smell, taste, see, and listen to several objects from our classroom.  The best part for them was when I pulled out our science goggles for the first time.  Now every time we do science we wear them.  They had to take a walk around the building the first time we put them on to practice using our 5 senses.  I think they just wanted to show them off to everyone.

What are you curious about?

Check out how "Smart" we all look in our  new science goggles.

Dice Dice Dice

I have a thing for dice.  I think I have an addiction to them.  I can never have enough. I have all kinds big dice, soft dice, regular dice, colorful dice, multi-sided dice, dice inside dice.  You get the idea.  Last summer I found some more dice that I love.  I  found 3 tiny dice inside one cube.  I bought 20 of them.  Then a couple of weeks ago I was browsing in the Target’s dollar section and found these beautiful big dice that had hearts instead of dots.  I bought all packages.  (There were only 6 sets.)   Dice Dice I lovvvvvvvvvve dice.

When I get excited about something, my kiddos get excited, too.  They all know about my obsession with dice.  I have them practice adding 2 dice together, working on addition.  They got bored.  Then I moved on to 3 dice, using my new special dice within dice.   They loved to new dice.  I had them write down the numbers they got and then give the total.  They liked this activity but it got tedius.

My favorite discovery was when I gave every one 4 dice to add together.  They all liked the challenge.   I made up a game I call Go To The Ten.  They roll their dice and find how the dots combine to make 10.  Since we have played Fast 10’s with cards of adding numbers to 10 as fast as they can, adding 4 dice together has been easy.  My kiddos are doing an amazing job of seeing the numbers in different ways every time they roll.   Some kids are still counting all the dots and others are seeing combinations and adding 4 dice very fast.  I have taken this to the next level by giving some kids dice with numbers to bring in the abstract.  I also started having kids adding strings of numbers in their heads.  Oh the excitement.  

Check out my latest obsession.  What's yours?

  

 

a little blurry 3 dice in cube 

Start each day in a happy way!

Discovering Through Books

I love our Read to Self time in first grade.  My students love it when I put out new books.  They will scoop them up and seem to devour their every word.  Recently, I put out stacks of books during our science class.  We were studying our five senses and how they satisfy our needs and help to keep us safe.  I loved to see the kids reading and talking and sharing all they were discovering from the books.  It really is a magical time in my first grade classroom.  Check out what it looks like.

Discover your passion in a book!

Start each day in a happy way!