Thankful!

I have so many things to be thankful for. This week was just like icing on the Thanksgiving cake (or maybe pie). This morning one little cutie came in with a bag with this in it:

I mean how could you not love a child who gives you that? I beamed.

My favorite part is the stick picture drawing of the child and me he did on the back of the sign. Man I look skinny. :)

The sign sparked the following conversation with another child:

Child: Miss R, I don't know if you're the best teacher.

Me: Why is that?

Child: Well, I've only had 3 teachers.

Me: That's true.

Child: I guess you're the best teacher SO FAR.

We had a blast on Monday making these turkey hats inspired by this pin on Pinterest.

Today was Book Fair Preview Day and our sweet librarian made each teacher a turkey! They were so precious!

This had to be my favorite Thanksgiving craft! The kiddos chose someone they are thankful for and then wrote one reason they are thankful for that person on each leaf. They wrote the most adorable things like "you always tell me you love me" and "you play video games with me". Later we filled the jars with m&m's for the recipients to enjoy.

Of course my assistant and I had to make our own for another teacher on our team. We're one big happy family.

And what day before Thanksgiving at school would be complete without leaf jumping! I showed my kiddos the proper way to make a leaf pile and jump into it the other day and ever since that's all they want to do outside. It's so fun to watch them! We set some ground rules for safety (and I sat closely nearby) but I let them loose. They made a huge line (like 20 kids) and cheered for each person when it was their turn. Afterwards today they also had a "leaf party" where they threw leaves into the air for 5 minutes and then made "leaf angels" on the ground. So precious!

My list of things to be thankful for could go on for a long time. I'm thankful for all of you - thanks for reading and hanging out! I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Moving in Math - SCOOT

Need a little something to spice up your math time? Need to get your kiddos moving? SCOOT is the game for you! Scoot is a game that I learned about via Christina Bainbridge. Basically you can break up any worksheet or activity so that the kids move around the classroom in an order. The kids have their own recording sheet (I use this one from Christina) to write their answers on.

An easy way to play Scoot is to write problems on the kids desks with a dry erase marker. I did this one time with basic addition problems. The kids thought I was crazy but it wipes right off with a clorox wipe (another excuse to clean!).

A while ago I made some cards for when we learned about comparing numbers using greater than and less than. I printed the cards on cardstock and laminated them. When it was time to play Scoot I just put the cards on the desks and we were good to go. The kids wrote both numbers on their paper, along with the greater than, less than, or equals sign. As Christina suggests, it's a good idea to first train your kiddos how to move about the room. I usually have one student model the path to follow during Scoot.

My kiddos love Scoot! It's a great way to review and keep the learning going while getting wiggles out. :)

I hope you find this helpful! Click here to get your copy of my Scoot cards.

Note: Numbers 21-24 have smiley faces because they are "free spaces". The recording sheet has 20 spots and I have more kiddos than that so I spread out the free spaces. The kids get to take a break when they are at a smiley face spot.

Halloween Happenings

Can I just say PHEW? I think this afternoon teachers everywhere let out a big sigh of relief after the school day was over. I loved today, we had so much fun but PHEW I was tired!

After doing Daily 5 as usual we got to work on our haunted house writing. I am loving this project! Today they added their detail sentences, being sure to have at least one adjective in each sentence. They were so creative. "You will love my pointy spiked furniture." "At night you can sleep in a spooky coffin". I even played some spooky music in the background while they wrote.

Then, my assistant and I decked the room with orange and black. The kids had NO idea what we were doing. It was cute to listen to them try to come up with what we were going to do.

I brought in a pumpkin and we estimated and then counted the number of seeds in it. It was funny watching them put their hands inside the pumpkin - they thought it was so gross. There were many sound effects added. :)

I split the pumpkin seeds up into groups and each group made piles of 10 to see how many seeds they had. They did a quick folded paper activity to show their number in different ways - number, number word, ten sticks and ones, and expanded form.

Then we used base ten blocks to practice regrouping and added up the totals from all of the groups. We are just starting to learn 2 digit addition so this was perfect! Our pumpkin had 457 seeds!

For a fun treat, we made spider cookies using oreo cakesters, twizzlers, frosting, and m and m's.

If the kids weren't excited enough I let them play pin the nose on the pumpkin. This was a dollar store find and it was fun!

When they came back from specials each kiddo had some goodies on their desk. The bag of candy was from a sweet assistant who works with one of my students. She was so kind to make them each a little goody bag! I also made a bag with a Halloween joke book (from the Teacher Wife), vampire teeth (the parents will love me), erasers, and some rings.

I wish I had a picture of what the classroom looked like at the end of the day - it was such a mess! I spent a good 30 minutes simply sweeping, vacuuming, and cleaning up all of our activities. Days like today are exhausting and messy, but well worth it!

Classroom This and That

Today I've got a variety of tid-bits from my classroom. I wanted to take some pictures but of course I left my camera at home. So I apologize for the poor cell phone quality pictures.

The awesome writing process tracker pencil chart that has been floating around Pinterest. I knew I had to make one! I can't wait to start using it!

I bought this awesome Haunted House Descriptive Writing Project on TPT and I love it! So far we have brainstormed who would buy a haunted house and what kinds of things they might look for in a house. They had some super creative ideas! Today they made their haunted houses out of construction paper and tomorrow we will start writing our ads.

This is my teacher bulletin board that is right next to my desk. I'm a big fan of the polka dot border. The beach/hammock picture is great to stare at and pretend that I'm there in the middle of a stressful day. :)

Don't you just love our cute fact and opinion owls? We have learned all about facts and opinions and one of our activities was these cuties. The kiddos simply cut the strips and sorted them by fact and opinion before gluing them onto the owls.

My classroom job chart. I use clothespins for EVERYTHING. I have a long list of jobs and each kid gets their own job. We keep the same jobs for 2 weeks. I "pay" the kids Eagle Bucks (part of our school behavior incentive program) on "payday". They know that I pay more for a job well done! Then the kids who get paid the most get to pick their next job first. I told the kids that I want them to do their job well so they get to choose instead of me assigning. It works GREAT! They love the responsibility and it helps me out so much to not worry about some of the little things in the classroom.

Have You Filled A Bucket?

As I continue on my journey of teaching, I feel that I learn new things all the time. As a teacher I am always learning new ideas, strategies and ways to do things. Last year I realized that my academic teaching goes so much further if we have a healthy, positive learning environment. I began to look for easy ways to integrate character traits and positivity into our daily routines.

A couple weeks ago, I pulled out book Have You Filled A Bucket Today? to use for a minilesson. The kids love this book and the concept is so simple. It teaches them about kindness in such a simple, easy to understand way. We read the book at least 3 times in a few days, stopping to talk about what it means. My sweet assistant read it to them during snack one day and then had a great talk about how they could fill buckets at home and school. She challenged them for their "extra homework" for the night to see if they could fill someone's bucket at home that night and then come back to school ready to share. The next morning at Morning Meeting we stopped at the end to share how we had filled buckets. It was so sweet to hear the ways they filled buckets at home! People often don't give kids enough credit - they are so creative and really do want to do the right thing!

So I decided to take the bucket filling a little further in the classroom. I printed out some bucket filling slips and then wrote the name of each student in my class on one slip. After we read the book again for the bazillionth time I told the kids that they were going to get a chance to fill someone's bucket right then. I had them put up their no peekers (file folder office/study buddy) so that it would be a super secret. I gave each student a slip with someone else's name and told them to write a nice thing to that friend. I then collected them and checked them all to make sure they were sweet and kind before passing them out. We sat on the carpet in a circle and when I called each student's name they came up and read it to themselves and then to the class if they wanted. They were beaming as they read what someone else wrote about them! It was too sweet!

The following week one of our awesome guidance counselors came to do her first lesson for the year with the class. Lo and behold her lesson was on bucket filling! She said we were the first class that had already read the book. She reviewed it again with the kids and they had fun sharing the ways that they had already filled buckets. I am now thinking that we will add filling buckets to our Friday Awards Ceremony. Our guidance counselor made us a cute bucket with blank slips to keep in our classroom.

I would like to have a bucket filling area in the classroom but with moving every 9 weeks it needs to be something simple. I have seen all sorts of cute bucket filling displays using buckets and pockets around the web. Any ideas for a portable one?

Resources:

- Bucket Filling Website

- Bucket Filling Ideas on What the Teacher Wants