Look at me blogging. Must mean one thing... I'm avoiding my report cards!! They're due Monday, so that means Sunday will be a late night for me! lol. Well, I thought I would link up with
Doodle Bugs Teaching for
Five for Friday!
We finished up our senses unit with a popcorn party! We compared popcorn seeds and popped popcorn, then wrote about popcorn using our five senses. Of course we had to taste it too!! (I will be adding this to my
Five Senses Interactive Journal unit soon.)
At one point in the last few weeks, we celebrate the 100th day of school. It's a pretty big deal to firsties. We made some sweet hats. You can get the freebie
{here}. One of my teammates had her students make 100 tally marks on their crowns--I'm going to save that idea for next year!
I always have my students bring in collections of 100 and we sort and count them on my counting mats. This little guy gets the genius award for bringing in 100 marshmallows--he had groups of five on tooth picks. Made it super easy for counting!!
I had my students make a picture with the number 100. I was originally planning on cutting out a bunch of 1's and 0's with my Cricut, but I could not find my cord for the life of me!! It's still missing in action. Instead I printed them out on labels. The kids could just stick the numbers anywhere on the page and draw/colour right over top. They turned out pretty cute!
We made gumball machines and filled them in with 100 dot stickers. I found the pattern in Ashley Reed's
100th Day Hoopla Freebie Pack.
We practiced putting the numbers 1-100 in order on the learning carpet.
And we did these fun (but time consuming) 100 Chart Puzzles. You can download this for free
{here}. I printed them on 11x17" paper.
We also learned about why we have Leap Year. This
Veggie Tales video is the absolute cutest and explains it really well for the littles. Then we made these adorable little frogs and wrote some facts about Leap Year underneath his belly! We thought it was really neat that when the next Leap Year comes, we will be in Grade 5! You can download this freebie
{here}.
My division has been encouraging Play-Based Learning this year in K and 1, so after a few inservices I decided to give it ago. I've done it a few time now, a couple times a week, for about an hour or so. I put out about 5 or 6 centres at a time; each one has a question or "provocation" to entice and engage students. They are free to move about the centres as they wish. Some stay at one the whole time, others visit each centre. It's pretty neat to watch them work and play together; you get a lot of insight into their little personalities! Here's a few of the activities I've put out lately:
What can you do with only 3 colours?
Inspiring Books: Mouse Paint. Little Blue and Little Yellow,
White Rabbit's Color Book, Mix It Up!
Can you make a pattern?
Can you retell a story using the puppets?
Favourite Stories: Gingerbread Man, 3 Little Pigs, 3 Billy Goats Gruff,
Goldilocks, Little Red Riding Hood, Pete the Cat, The Mitten
Can you pay for your pizza using addition and subtraction?
What can you build with Lego?
Can you make a 3D shape structure?
Can you make your own stick puppet and tell a story with it?
And lastly.... the reason I am exhausted all the time and why I've been pretty absent from this blog. We're expecting!! I'm due in August with baby number two. Zoe is going to be a big sister! We just found out last weekend that it's a boy. We are beyond thrilled!
My class was so excited to find out if the baby was a boy or girl, so I threw in a little math before I would tell them. I also had them give me some name suggestions. However, I don't think we'll be naming our boy Fluffy, Hockey, or Totem Pole.
Well that's it for me tonight! It's past midnight. How did I even stay up this late?? Night everyone!