First Week Fun

We are off to a great start.  Last week was filled with many exciting new learning opportunities for us all.  The kids loved meeting Pete the Cat and touring the building when he disappeared.  Check out these first day of school pictures and a little classroom fun.

Look at these SUPER workers working on their names.

Warm Fuzzy Fun

These kiddos collected 100 little "Warm Fuzzies" for good behavior! SUPER!  Students can earn up to four Warm Fuzzies a day for making good choices and following our classroom rules.  When they earn ten small Warm Fuzzies they exchange them in for a medium Warm Fuzzy.  When they earn 10 medium Warm Fuzzies they can exchange it in for a large Warm Fuzzy and create a Warm Fuzzy Monster.  Who knew we would be working on math at the same time too!

High Frequency Word Fun

Yep....it's cold outside.  Wowzers!!!  Since we couldn't go outside for recess, I thought we should bring a little snow inside.  We pretended our shaving cream was snow and practiced writing and reading our high frequency words.

Halloween Fun During Math

Who says you can't learn math and eat it too!  Yep, we counted using candy corn.  This was definitely the do not eat bag.  Don't worry....they got new clean candy corn when they were finished.  One person would count out the candy corn to match the number, and the other person would write the number.  Then they would trade jobs at the next number stop.  

Then why not sort skeleton bones and eat them too!  Cheetos made an adorable "Bag of Bones" this Halloween season.  We sorted, counted, built a skeleton, and labeled his bones.  

Fire Safety Week

Last week was National Fire Safety Awareness Week.  We spent the week talking about fire safety, about what we do at school and at home when there is a fire, and we even had real firefighters visit our classroom.  They even brought a firetruck for us to explore.  Two little girls in the class were pretty excited to see that our visitors were their dads.  A big thank you to Firefighter Nathan Helton and Firefighter Steve Coulter for helping us learn all about fire safety.  And yes..... there girls were super surprised.  I told the dads not to tell their daughters they were coming.

An Apple Week of Fun

Johnny Appleseed's (John Chapman) birthday was September  26, so we celebrated his birthday and the beginning of fall with a week of APPLE fun!

We taste tested and graphed our favorite kind of apple, balanced apples on our head, did an apple experiment in science, tried different foods made from apples, and made our very own apple sauce.  

Balancing Apples

Apple Science Experiment - Why does my apple turn brown?

Apple Math - Ordering Numbers and Graphing Our Favorite Kind

Apple Taste Test 

Apple Juice, Apple Butter, Applesauce, Apple Pie

Peeling Apples - We made an apple slinky!

(Thanks Tiffany Helton)

Johnny Appleseed Hats

Rain Forest Assembly

Look who we met today!!!!! WOW!!!

A big boa constrictor.

 Yep, that is our Maela helping hold up the boa constrictor.  The presenter did inform everyone one that Miss Maela would be the perfect size for this snake's lunch.  We also meat a tarantula, hissing cockroaches, an iguana, and a parakeet.  Super fun!

Cooperative Learning in Math

In our classroom we use many of Kagan's Cooperative Learning strategies to promote engagement and collaboration.  These strategies (games as we call them), keep all of the students actively engaged  and they are held accountable during the "learning" activity.  Many of them don't even realize they are working.  They think they are simply playing games.  But really......that's what makes the "learning" stick!!

Counting and Number Identification

Ordering Numbers 1-10 and Matching Ten-Frames

Printing Numbers and Counting