Dr Seuss Week

This will be just a quick post because I am actually supposed to be filling out report cards.  Yikes!  I am so behind.  We have conferences next week.  How about you?

Every year we celebrate Theodor Geisel and the many books of Dr. Seuss with a week long celebration.

I thought I would share my students creations.  With the first picture I read "Ten Apples On Top" and then the students got to draw a picture of themselves and then balance 10 apples on their heads.  We have been working on place value so what a perfect time to practice number order with two digit numbers.  The apples are numbered lowest to highest from the top of their heads to the top of the paper.

For my bulletin board I had my students do a listening/drawing activity.  I don't tell them who or what we are drawing, I just direct them to "Draw after me".  I don't know if it's truly "art", but it really shows who can follow directions.  My favorite part is that it lets a lot of my kids see that they CAN draw, they just have to look at the lines and curves.  I try to convince them art is all about lines and curves, but I'm pretty sure they think it is all about magical powers. HA!

Sorry the pictures are a little fuzzy today.  I took them with my computer as I was headed out the door today!  I can't wait for more Dr. Seuss fun tomorrow.  It's Wacky Wednesday and we will all be 

wearing our craziest socks!

In Other News:

In celebration of the Leap Year our store is participating in TPT's leap year sale.

Tomorrow only, get 20% off everything in our store , wowzer!

 PLUS, if you enter TPT's sale code (at the bottom of the icon) you will receive 10% of our sale price.  Wahoo, big savings!

Happy shopping everybody!

President's Day

I do a question of the day each morning at our calendar time.  Usually, it goes along with something that we are talking about or that is coming up or honestly, it is random because I forgot to think ahead. So my question of the day yesterday was, “Can you name a President of the United States?”

Silence (this does not happen often in my class).

I gently prodded them along (teacher speak: activated their background knowledge).  “Think about some of the faces on our money…”

Oh good, I see some hands! “Washington?” (there’s one!) “Roosevelt?” (there’s two) one little smarty gave me a “JFK!” (there’s three!) I had several church leaders mentioned and a “Broccoli Obama”…uh, close, but not exactly. I don’t know if I’m failing as a teacher or really it’s the curriculum departments fault that our country’s leaders are a new concept to first graders!  Anyway, I had a good laugh and carried on.  I read this story:

Then I told my kiddos that they were going to run for “The President of the United States of America!” - -yes, I often use a booming announcer voice while teaching, a girl has gotta keep the pony show rocking!  They did such a great job with their “campaign poster” and their “If I were the President…” I have been using Rachelle’s  President’s Day Unit (What The Teacher Wants) and I just love it!  

Oh and seriously, look how cute my bulletin board turned out!  Love awesome parent volunteers who can make teacher "vision" a reality!

I apologize for the OVERUSE of quotation marks in this post, okay, I don't really, but WOW I used a lot of them! 

Keep on teachin' on folks!

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day!

We love making words and hope that your students love it too!

Enjoy this free making words from our TPT store!

Winner, winner!

Happy 100th day of school everybody!

Can I just do a little truth telling here?  I'm exhausted.

This is our team and cute student teacher rocking our "100th day of school" shirts!

The First Grade and Fancy Free girls.

We are so excited to announce that we have a winner for our drawing!

That means Jennifer wins our hundreds day activity unit and a set of "100th day of school" iron on transfers for this comment:

Wahoo!

Oh, we will also give her a little shout out, because her blog "First Grade Blue Skies" is DARLING...check her out here!  Thanks to everyone that commented!  We hope your 100th day of school went as smoothly as ours!

100th day surprise!

Monday will be our 100th day of school.  Can I get a a woot-woot?!  Oh my, some years are challenging and this year it feels like a major milestone to make it this far!  I thought my team deserved a little 100th day surprise so I made them a little present tonight.

Those are iron-on transfers for "100th day of school!" t-shirts.
First, I made them in a PowerPoint using Kevin and Amanda's Pea NJH Whimsey font.  Then, I took a screen shot of them in 
each color.  After that, I imported them as an image so that I could flip them
to a mirror image and Voila!  Aren't they cute?

Oh and here, I made them for you too....

Click to print your own!

Then I trimmed to 1/8" around the image.

Ironed it on with the hottest setting and no steam for 2 minutes

 Then I waited for the transfer paper to cool, peeled off the backing and there you 

have it: my 100th day of school shirt!

I sure hope the girls like theirs!  I can't wait to give them out tomorrow.

In honor of our 100th day of school we will be giving out 6 ready-to-go "100th day of school"

iron on transfers and our 100's Day activity packet from our teachers-pay-teachers store!!

Celebrate with us by entering!  We will close the drawing Sunday at 8:00 p.m. and the winner will be notified on Monday, our 100th day! 

There are two ways to enter: 

1. Be a follower of our blog and leave a comment* on this post.

2.  Follow our TPT store and leave another comment* on this post.

*Please leave your email so that we may contact you and let you know how to collect your 100th day fun!

We love teaching and look for any opportunity to throw in a little extra fun with it!  

Thanks for celebrating with us.

We hope your 100th day was or will be FANTASTIC!

Groundhog LOVE

Look what my little cuties did with our Groundhog Day unit.  Yesterday, I told my students that we were going to meet a special guest but I needed them to guess who he was and what he might do. The way their little minds think sometimes, it just makes me laugh!

"I think that Punxsutawney Phil is a orange, blue, black, yellow clown!
That juggles!"

"I think that Punxsutawney Phil is a person
a helper who helps everyone he is very nice"

Today we wrote an opinion paper, "I would/would not like the groundhog

to see his shadow because..."

This little guy has been telling me for weeks that he wants to drive his remote control boat.  I guess his mom says he needs to wait until winters over.

"I would not like the groundhog to see his shadow because I want
drive my RC boat."

The illustrations on this activity are AWESOME.  Don't you love the sunglasses on the "6 more weeks of winter" groundhog?

I know that tomorrow is Groundhog Day, but if you haven't picked up our unit yet it's only $1 in our TPT store!  We are giving away a unit to one of our lovely readers.  Since there are 3 of us that blog together, we will give it to the third person who comments.  Please leave your email so that we can let you know how to get it!