We rocked 100 days of school..

Well it’s been a busy two weeks in my classroom. Between my mom’s going away party, the peaches learning about the spelling of /ar/, getting our valentines in the mail to exchange with other schools,  getting pneumonia, getting ready for Valentine’s Day and celebrating the 100^th day of school I hardly had any time to catch my breath! So I’m going to be on picture overload for you this evening. 

First up: Mom's going away party. That's right my mom who has been around for 28 years of my life is now living and working over 2,000 miles away in Louisiana. All night I heard the question, "Do you want your mom to go?" OF COURSE NOT! But do I want my mom to be happy, yes! Do I want her to be successful and enjoy her retirement when the time comes, yes! The only way these things could happen were if she moved. I miss her like crazy already but I'm trying to stay strong and be happy for her!

 

 Next, our Valentine's Exchange. I decided to sign my school up for a Valentine's Day valentine exchange hosted by PAWSitively Teaching. I decided to have my kiddos make animals out of hearts. Let me say the results were just adorable. Then it hit me, what could make this project even more exciting? Let's put facts about that animal on the backside of these animals. Of course I didn't account for some peaches to take a little more time and the fact that I was absent for two days to try and get better. So I was rushing to finish these up last Friday so I could mail them out. Everything came together and hopefully reached their destination.

We are also charting all of the valentines we have received on a map on our bulletin board. The kiddos always get excited to see another valentine added. 

Alright, I found out at the end of January that my  kiddos were going to learn how to spell /ar/. So I cruised on over to TPT and Pinterest and found some amazing things! I purchased the fabulous Babbling Abby's Learning /ar/ with Pirate Mark. So I dressed up like a pirate, Captain Bell to be exact, on Monday to introduce the topic and my kiddos got so into it. I told them I like /ar/ words and they started asking me, "Do you like star?" I'd respond with a pirate voice "Arrggh, I like star because it says /ar/" They bought the lesson hook, line, and sinker. They even began writing stories about pirates, I love when learning takes over my classroom like that!

My pirate gear!

Arrgh ye ready to learn /ar/?

It's hard to read my peaches handwriting/phonetic spelling, it says:There was a good pirate it’s name is Miss Bell(that’s me hehe). She sails across the sea with her crew.

Finally, Pièce de résistance! The 100th day of school celebration!! 

So this is my 6th 100th day celebration and I only get wiser as the years go on. Here are some tips I'd like to pass on to you to make your 100th day celebration easy peasy lemon squeezy! 

Tip #1: Try to have your celebration on an off week. It felt so easy to just slip the 100th day of school in during this four day week because things are already off because of a holiday on Monday and Valentine's Day on Friday. Granted it wasn't the 100th day but my kiddos had tons of fun!

Tip #2: Try to have it on an early release day. My first plan was to work myself all weekend and have the celebration on Tuesday. BUT let me tell you how easy it was to have it today (our early release day). We skipped the language arts period, did our celebration, had lunch, cleaned up and they went home all sugared up! Easy peasy lemon squeezy! 

Tip #3: Use the free aging booth app!! If you haven't used the aging booth app, do it! So many times I have my students try to think what life would be like when they are 100, some imaginations were bigger than others. Now they can use a picture to visualize it! I took their pictures, printed them and added them to a "When I'm 100 years old" page. So what are you waiting for??? Go get the free app!

Vocabulary Wall I created to help with writing

My example!

Tip #4 If you have older students, use them! In the past I would enlist the help of my husband and we'd spend our weekend prepping (aka blowing up 100 balloons). The past two years I've enlisted the help of our oldest students to help keep my insanity during this busy time. 

My two 5th grade helpers!

Tip #5 Have them dress up! For the past 5 years, I would make my students shirts saying "I survived 100 days of..." and their grade but I decided to mix things up this year. I had my students dress up (with only a days notice, shame on me) and let me tell you it was the best Decision EVER. All of my students participate and I even had an awesome mother stay and do make up for all the peaches!  

These two cracked me up!

Amazing make up!

My coworker and I all dressed up err down!

We had a fun time being elderly today!

Happy 100th day of School from Union School!

 Tip #6 Do Stations! I can't tell you how easy it was to set up the stations and rotate during our celebration. I had 4 stations 2food, 1 craft, and 1 writing. I walked them through the directions and they took off running, in pairs! It's so amazing being at a school where upper grades are readily available. They all picked a name, or two, and were paired up for these stations.

Snack Station

Our 100th Day Collection

Rock Star Station

When I'm 100 Station

Fruit Loops Station, yeah that's me!

 

Top 10 of the school year!

Well I'm blogged out for the night... here are two more pictures I wanted to share! Good night everyone!

What I've Been Up to This Month

Wow! My last post was early December! Soooo not only did the holidays catch up with me but I got a horrible cold that I’ve been trying to get rid of going on two weeks now! But I wanted to let you know I’m alive and well and I wanted to share what we’ve been up to in our classroom. Here we go!

Let's start with my favorite Thursday activity: Art! I teach art to my students every Thursday and I love starting art with this activity (and it gives me a little more time to prep the art project). 

Materials: 

-white butcher paper

-timer

-markers, crayons or colored Pencils

I lay out a white piece of butcher paper. I have each student pick a different color marker and pick a spot around the desks. We go over the rules mostly that it's not okay to draw over someone's drawing, they can only add the existing drawing. I then time them for 1 minute and they can draw anything they like in their area. Once time is up we rotate clockwise and add to the existing drawing or draw a different picture in that area. The kids love it and I love seeing what they draw!

 

The first week back I got a horrible cold,  still have a cough, and I muddled through the week and forgot that Friday I was filling in for my co-worker for math and language arts with the upper grades. For this primary gal it is no walk in the park. So, I didn't realize they were both learning how to perform different operations with fractions. What made it hard were the students who didn't have their multiplication facts down. The 4th graders had to order fractions and  find the common denominator which is hard if you don't know your multiplication and division facts. Sometimes the common denominator would be in one of the fractions! Let's just say I was happy to go back to teaching regrouping in addition and learning numbers to 100. Here's what their math looked like:

Speaking of counting to 100, my firstie peaches are amazing! I needed more time with my second graders so I had them write numbers 1-100 on a blank hundreds chart. It was amazing to see what they could do independently. Here they are proud of their hundreds chart:   

This past week we learned about MLK, Jr. and thanks to Molly Lynch from Lucky to Be In First, Cheryl from Primary Graffiti, Bonnie Kathryn from Kinders and Beyond, Jennifer from Simply Kinder I had a successful unit for the week:

I asked my students who they thought this was and I recorded their responses. Aaron btw is my husband.

They really enjoyed Molly Lynch's little books. This one was drawn by one of my firsties.

We used Cheryl's book companion for Martin's Big Words

Friday we colored and wrote a biography of MLK Jr.

This week my firstie peaches were learning about even and odd numbers. Of course I had to bring out Even Steven and Odd Todd. I was looking for something to give them extra practice so I took to TPT. I stumbled upon this awesome Scoot freebie from Tiffany Gannon: 

 Odd Todd and Even Steven were referenced a lot at the beginning and then they started to gain confidence and didn't need the posters. 

Last but not least I've been doing Fun Fridays this year with my class and they absolutely love it! Two weeks ago my second grade peaches read a story about a trip to a firehouse. So on Friday we made fire engines out of food and I transformed some water bottles into fire hoses and took them out to spray some "fires" out. 

Well that's a wrap! I hope to blog more now that I'm over this cold! Stay healthy everyone!