A Classroom Update {iPhone Style}

I’ve been TERRIBLE about remembering to take my camera up to school. Terrible. I think I’m sleepwalking in the mornings before I get to the gym because I rarely remember to bring what I need. If it’s not packed in the car and ready to go the night before, then I will…inevitably…leave it at home. Lunches included :/ The one thing I never forget…because we’re super attached at the hip…is my trusty little iphone. So here’s a little classroom update iphone style.

Halloween was SO much fun! My cute student teacher read this story to the kids…

Talk about old school ;) Ha! Seriously though…it’s a cute little story about a mysterious person who goes around the town and smashes pumpkins on Halloween. We had the kids draw their own pumpkins and while they were at specials, the “pumpkin smasher” ripped them up and left a little surprise on their desk. She even left some caution tape on our door :)

Of course, the kids weren’t convinced that it was the pumpkin smasher, so my student teacher and I had to do some pretty serious acting to get them to buy our little story. 99.5% of my class eventually bought it…hook, line, and sinker. Kinda cute. Before they believed, we had them piece their pumpkins back together on a big sheet of construction paper and then write about who they think “smashed” their pumpkins while they were gone. Bless their hearts. Their writing was SO funny!!

We also did a little riddle writing this week. We’re getting into describing characters, so I decided to introduce this concept by having the kids write riddles to describe themselves. Their prompt was, “Trick or treat, smell my feet. Guess who’s hiding under the sheet.” They had to write a few sentences describing themselves using only clues. Then they had to draw a picture of themselves and “hide” it under the sheets :) They did SO well with this!!!

Now, these DARLING projects aren’t mine, but gosh darn…they are PRECIOUS!!!! My sweet friend who teaches next door had a mom who wanted to come in and make these with her kids. Ohmiword…SO adorable! And simple, too!!

As if Halloween wasn’t enough this week, today we celebrated our 50th day! It was a non-stop day completely full of chaos & learning and we had a BLAST! Our morning was filled with 50th day math games & activities.

We searched the web for pictures of games, cartoons, tv shows, clothing, hairstyles, cars, malt shops, and LOTS more from the 50’s. We did a little Kids in the 50’s/Kids Now venn diagram and then we made this little poodle skirt/rolled jeans writing craftivity.

We celebrated our 50th day with a round of root beer floats and did a little how-to writing craftivity to follow it all up.

Our little “How to Make a Root Beer Float” organizer.

The kids made their own float shaped how-to’s and took home all their work in a little 50th day fun pocket.

All of these activities came from my little 50th day unit. You can check it out HERE if you’re interested.

It was a BIG day! I’m DYING that we’ve got 2 weeks left until Thanksgiving break. Where’s the year going?!?! I mean, I’m definitely not complaining, but ohmiword. FLYING.BY.

I’m so looking forward to waking up to my favorite little red cup in the morning.

Oh how I LOVE this time of year!!!

Cloudy and the 50th Day

So, my plans to post last week were thwarted when I was thrust into becoming a CSI detective. Let me just tell y’all that I would make an EXCELLENT investigator should anyone ever need a private eye. For real. I successfully caught someone impersonating someone else & TOTALLY trying to scam one of my friends on Facebook! I SO felt like I was living in a Lifetime movie last week!! I had NO time for anything other than sleuthing. Now that that whole saga is over…*I think for now anyway*…I’m ready to play catch-up.

We learned all about clouds and the kids had a BLAST!!! Actually, I think I might’ve had a *little* more fun than them :) I don’t know why, but I LOVE teaching about clouds and the weather! SO fun!!

I was inspired by my sweet friend, Abby, to make these fun little cloud guys. These were such a great visual to get my kids to understand what kind of clouds are high/low in the sky.

We also made little cloud anchor charts that my kids used throughout the week for writing.

We described clouds…

And we even made little cloud flip books…inspired by the fabulous Anna Brantley over at Crazy for First Grade …and practiced labeled them, too.

For word work, we practiced writing our popcorn & spelling words in the clouds :) This was definitely a class FAVORITE!! I thought of my grandpa ALL day…the classroom smelled JUST like him ;)

The activity that had the class talkin’ for DAYS after it was over was this great little craftivity we did after we read the book, “It Looked Like Spilt Milk”. The kids did a little writing… “Sometimes clouds can look like...” and then we followed it up with a little “get-your-hands-dirty” kinda craft. We just mixed equal parts glue and shaving cream together and painted it in the shape that we wrote about. When the mixture dries, the cloud stays puffy and it gives a little when you touch it. It was the COOLEST thing!!!!

This was the cloud my sweet student teacher made…

And this is one from one of my sweeties…

We made our “Very Busy First Graders” spiders and hung them from the ceilings. Last year we put them on the door, but I’ve yet to touch the door since the school year started :)

We also learned about bats!!! I didn’t take pictures of most of our work, but here’s our little “bat cave”. I made a big giant bat full of bat facts we collected as we read several different non-fiction bat books. I had the kids make little paper bag bats and then write two facts on the pink strip {we did this for writing one day}.

We’ve definitely kept ourselves busy these last few weeks! Now we’re getting SUPER excited about the 50th day next week!!! Woo hoo!!!! I’m pretty sure I lived in the fifties in my former life {ha!!} because I SOOOO love anything and everything poodle skirts and cuffed jeans. We’re excited about celebrating our halfway to the 100th day! I’m getting all my fun stuff ready for next week when we enjoy the 50th day festivities!!! Here’s just a little sneak peek…

If you’re interested in incorporating some of these craftivities into your 50th day plans, you can check out my newest little mini unit on TpT… “Cruisin’ Through the 50 First Days of School”. I included the templates and directions and several other fun little activities…

It’s usually $5, but you can grab it for $4 until Thursday! EVERYTHING in my little shop is 20% off ‘til Thursday. I’m giving away this little mini unit to the first person who leaves me a comment and correctly guesses my favorite 1950’s artist and/or song. WOW…that covers A LOT of ground ;)

Alright now…time to watch my boys WIN!!!!! GO RANGERS!!!!!!