St. Patrick's Day Activities!

St. Paddy's Day is around the corner and we are getting started with the fun here in 102!

We have a few stories we will be reading and re-reading this week! After we read, That's What Leprechauns Do, we retold the story using a sheet from Katie King's Busy Teacher unit. 

We also made these adorable leprechauns using First Grade and Blue Skies directed drawing. If you don't already own this freebie, you need to RUN over to her blog and get it. They are to die for!

 We also got to work on our first story problem booklet since I've been back! This one is from my Leprechaun Math unit.

And I let them work together and look at them go! I LOVED listening to them work together and reason with eachother as they got their answers. It was pretty awesome.

 Each month in my seasonal math units I have a different book of story problems with all types of problems to solve. Addition, subtraction, place value, elapsed time, etc. I am really working on persistence with my first graders and getting them to use all they have learned so far to solve the problems. I find when they work together, they are able to bounce ideas off one another (aka argue a little bit) until they get to the answer!

Tuesday we will eat and graph some Lucky Charms and have more St. Paddy's fun!

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Top of the Mornin' to Ye!

Yesterday was a FANTASTIC day!! For many reasons, but first and foremost... THIS:

Yes, yes, yes! The Parkster and I are having a wee little baby! We had our first ultrasound yesterday and the little peanut was moving around like crazy. We were immediately in LOVE with that tiny thing. I will likely be writing lots about pregnancy and baby in months to come on my personal blog, Late Nights and Lattes, if you want to catch me over there.

That appointment was in the afternoon so I was sure to fill my morning at school with lots of FUN St. Patty's Day activities!

We started out our morning with some Lucky Charms and green milk. I so wish I could share the kids faces because they were cheezin' big time with green milky smiles.

We played some fun math games with the help of Katie King's Busy Teacher pack. We have been working on making 10 and quickly noticing sets of numbers that make 10 in order to help us add larger numbers, so these 2 activities were just perfect!

 Making Rainbows:

If the two numbers equal ten, they can color in the rainbow. If the two numbers do not equal ten, they must cross it out.

Strike it Rich:

Students roll a die and figure out what number they need to add to it to make 10. They take turns coloring in the coins and see who is the "richest" at the end!

During our reading block, we read Jamie O'Rourke and the Pooka and completed Kelley's Story Element Shamrocks. We had completed these last year, so I knew they were a big hit! The kids got a kick out of making their own four leaf clovers!

And after lunch, I brought out some more of those Lucky Charms to graph some marshmallows! We used Jen's Marshmallow Math pack and the kids loved it.

I wasn't there for our writing block in the afternoon, but my kiddos wrote about how they would catch a leprechaun. It was a fun, exciting, and emotional (for me and hubs) day! It was perfect :)

Hope your class had a great St. Patrick's Day!

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A little bit of this and a little bit of that!

Happy Sunday folks!

My life has been crazy-busy lately! Parker and I put our first offer in on a house here in Vegas - EEEK! Wish us luck! We have heard that you are likely to put in about 10 offers before you finally get a house here, but our fingers are crossed nonetheless!

The day we made our offer, we stopped and got some smoothies to help us make our decision ;) 

You can't beat some fruit smoothies on a gorgeous day!

Inside the walls of 41B, we have been busy, busy, busy! I have some major thanks to give to a lot of my blogging pals for helping me through this crazy week. Here are some quick pics:

Gladys from Teaching in High Heels helped us out with her St. Patrick's Day O' Fun! pack. I put her non-fiction, St. Patty's Day book up on the smart board and we read it together. Well, the kids actually felt like they were watching a movie, so I played it up and read the book over the microphone. I then picked a few readers to read each page over the microphone, too! After the book, we recorded some facts we learned!

 

My fabulous friend, Kelley, has a super fun and easy project for the kids to practice their story elements. We read Fin M'Coul and then recorded the characters, setting, problem, and solution on the Story Element Shamrocks!

 In math, my kids are working on double-digit addition and subtraction.

 Here are a few of my kiddos playing a subtraction BUMP! game with multiples of 10. This game is in my Spring Math Games pack.

Last, but not least, my pal, Katie, has a ton of fun games in her Sporty Kids Common Core Math Games pack and my own sporty kids have just been LOVING Tennis Top-it!

This next week is Nevada Reading Week, so I will have loads of fun pictures to share! I don't know about you, but I am hoping this week flies by! 5 more days until I am lying by our pool reading home design magazines! That is how I plan to spend my Spring Break ;)

PS - We should find out by Tuesday if we get the house!

Have a great week!

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Persuade a Leprechaun!

Teaching first graders about holidays is always hilarious.

Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, a leprechaun - Whatever it is they swear they have seen it, held it, talked to it...

If I have to hear that one more of my students saw a leprechaun and held it in their hands before he tricked them and got away - I will go crazy!

To get them to stop talkin' and start workin' we wrote some letters to these tricky little leprechauns!

We have been working on opinion writing so I wanted to take it one step further and I introduced the word persuade. We talked a bit about what it meant and then I told the students to imagine that they had just caught a real-life leprechaun. Their goal was to persuade the leprechaun to give them their pot of gold.

The kids had a ball with this!

 First, we completed our graphic organizers and planned out 3 good reasons for the leprechaun to give up his pot o' gold!

 

 "If you give me your gold I will let you go. If you give me your gold I will never ask you to give me your gold ever again. I will give you a green apple."

Hmm.. I don't know about that green apple...

"Leprechaun wouldn't have to carry around heavy gold because I would have it. I could buy games and toys like XBOX! I could pay for my family and me to go on a trip to Lego Land!"

I love that his first reason is for the benefit of the leprechaun - genius!

Here were some of the letters:

 "Dear leprechaun, I think you should give me your gold because I will help you make your shoes. You should give me your gold because I am nice to people. You should give me your gold because I help people and my favorite color is green."

Can you tell we have been working on contractions? Love the application! 

 "Dear leprechaun, You should give me your gold because I will dance with you. I will hug you. Also, I will be your best friend. I have the best teacher in the whole entire world. Thank you."

Umm...who wouldn't give her all their gold!?! I may be a bit biased, but c'mon! A good dance and a hug?! SOLD!

 

"Dear leprechaun, I think you should give me your gold because there are a lot of homeless people in Nevada. I am really really really nice. I am a good kid. I have the best teacher in the whole world. I live in the desert and I am not tricking you."

This might be a good time to reassure you that I do NOT tell them to write about me... my girls are just sweeties who simply love their teachers. This little lady was so genuine when she read me her letter. She said she would use  a-l-m-o-s-t  all of the gold to help the homeless here in Vegas and that she would use the rest to do something fun with her family. Love!

These pages came from my Writing through the Seasons {Spring} packet and can I just say how thrilled I am that it is already Spring?!? The weather here in Vegas is reaching the 80s and I don't have to wear the same 6 sweaters on rotation anymore :)

My mini countdown til Spring Break:

8 more school days.

Adios!

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