Thematic Units

I'm finally back in the teaching world. I had baby W. He just melts my heart!

Now I feel ready to get back to tell you all about what's been going on. I came back to work on October 12 and I hit the ground running! This year has been a little different because I'm implementing a theme every single week along with a blend each week. I started to create units based on what we are teaching each week and honestly, I feel like my students have made major gains. 

Why do thematic units?

Imagine a kids brain is like a computer. In the old days if you wanted to switch programs you would have to shut the computer down. It was a 10-15 minute project. That would be 10-15 minutes of learning time what we would lose. By the end of the year, it could be an entire weeks of learning that you've lost.

How do you do themes?

I choose a theme based on the book for the week. I will use the week of Halloween as an example for our themed week.

Theme: Witches

Blends/digraph- ch [ I have 1-2 a week]

Math-we were working on matching tens and numbers together so the game had a boiling pot with the base tens, and then a witch for the number. It literally just had the cute fun game with a witch on it.

Writing- we wrote a "how to" book on several things. 1- how to make your own stew [or potion] (if you were a witch, of course). 2- how to put a spell on someone 3-(not a how to but still works) how to be the best witch of them all. They were a lot of fun to write and we enjoyed reading what everyone's stew (or potion) would do to people.

Reading- during reading we read Piggie Pie. Have you read it? It's so cute! That was for our interactive read a loud. Then for shared I wrote a book called something witchy and we read that several times along with identifying the ch on each page. The kids love these little books because they add them to their "paper" Baggie and are able to read from there anytime they want. We then read a poem called Witches. I wrote it and we read it everyday and then we were able to place it on our poetry journal. 

Themed weeks are such a huge hit! At the end of each week, the students get a brag tag that they can add to their necklace that says they are an expert on that topic. All my kids get one because they all worked equally hard to learn about the topic.

October themes:

Bats, spiders, fire safety, witches

November themes:

Voting, Veterans Day, thanksgiving 

Come back monthly to check out our new themes!

Do you do themes in your classroom?What are they and what do they look like?

Dr. Seuss Week Part 2

Hello everyone,

What a week!! Dr. Seuss week is over and we had a blast. I know I posted about the balloons last week, but our week continued and we were having such a great time!

On Monday, we watched "Oh the places you'll go" and it was read by John Lithgow. We created our balloons! ( See previous post) They came out so cute. Surprisingly, I didn't take any pictures of them...

Tuesday, we started the book "Green Eggs and Ham" and we created our own persuasion story if you should eat Green Eggs and Ham. They came out super cute and while we were writing our stories, we also ate "Green Eggs and Ham". 

What did I use? I used Waffle Pretzels, vanilla frosting, and green m&m's. My husband was such a great help, and these are actually a picture of his because mine came out looking awful! 

On Wednesday, we read the book "One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish". We actually created our own "aquarium." We made our own fish and then we wrote rhyming sentences on the fish. Of course, since my kids are in first grade...they totally did not want to color it red and blue so they colored it whatever they wanted! 

On Thursday, we read the book Sneetches, and we ALL wore yellow shirts. My entire team wore yellow, and so did almost ALL of the kids. We put green stars on our bellies and became Star Bellied Sneeches. I luckily remembered to grab a snapshot with me and little baby Eyre.

On Friday, me and a co-worker wore matching shirts that said "Thing 1" and "Thing 2". Of course, with my big belly, it looked like the baby was Thing 2! haha

We all made blue hair!! We used bulletin paper and then cut the ends so it looked like it was hair.  

Here is another one of us wearing our blue hair. In the back, you can see the aquarium. We have little fishes and we have our cute blue hair. Notice that everyone in my classroom is wearing a red shirt! It's because they were all things.

Here we are wearing our blue hair and our thing shirts! A huge thanks to this amazing girl! She helped make my dream of being "things" come to life!! She made the shirts because she knew I couldn't be trusted with it! haha

Thanks Jen! I love you to the moon and back!

 I hope your Dr. Seuss week was just as successful as ours was! I can't wait to hear your comments of what you did for Dr. Seuss week!

100th Day

What a relief to be over the 100th day!

It was super fun- but I went home and PASSED OUT!!! It exhausted me like crazy. I wanted to share with you some of the really cute things that we did as a class.

 In this picture, we made these really cute 100 count hats. We put a sentence strip around their head and then we used 10 pieces of construction paper. We then did 10 different designs on the hat itself. 

 Here are the things that we put on the ten strips:

10 animal stickers

10 math facts

10 sight words

10 thumb prints

10 books we read

10 hearts of love

10 things we learned this year

10 I'm a star sticker

10 of their first name

10 of any of their own design

We then created a 100 snack bag. It was really fun and good. We had a ton of food (and leftovers) that we ate some the following week. We made a little bag and then we watched a hundred day video while eating our yummy snack.

Here is what was in our snack bags:

-raisins

-marshmallows

-chocolate chunks

white cheddar popcorn

-cheerios

-fruit loops

-m&m's

-Teddy Grahams

-Vanilla Wafers

-Pretzels

Of course....there was ten of each snack in each grab bag.

Things I forgot to photograph that we did as well:

We made a big banner that had 100 compliments,

100 math facts,

and 100 words that we know.

By the end of it...

We were like this. We were exhausted and we all relaxed. 

I hope your 100th day goes super smooth and you enjoy it. Leave some comments on what you did during your 100th day of school.

Dr. Seuss Week

It's almost Dr. Seuss Day!

I am super excited, especially being in primary. I am able to have so much fun with my little babies. Each day next week, we will be participating in some events daily. One of the events that I created today and I wanted to share IMMEDIATELY was this adorable goal setting balloon. As you know, Oh, the places you'll go! is about going off to great places even if you are scared. I created a balloon file that you can use to set goals with your kids. 

One of my besties colored her balloon, and already set her goals!

I love how they came out and you can get them for yourself on Teachers Pay Teachers. The first person to respond to this, will get this document for free!!!!

Click the link Dr. Seuss- Oh, the places you'll go! to purchase this fun document! 

xoxo

Voting and Veteran's Day

Hello everyone!

Today, I want to tell you what's been going on in room 3-109! Last week, our school was closed because of voting. Our state voted for Governor on November 4th. We did some awesome things to teach about voting. I created a "USA" Corner of the room. 

Look how cute it is! The little box on the left, is actually the "voting" box. Our kids did some really cute voting things. 

First, we read the books Duck For President and Grace for President.

After we read it, we discussed the difference between the two. We made the kids really think about who they would want to be their president. We of course told them they cannot discuss politics in school. We then taught the kids Amendments. That had to be my FAVORITE part! Our amendments were as followed.

Amendment 1- You must wear red shirts Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays.

Amendment 2- Students will get 65 minutes of recess daily.

Amendment 3- Everyone must eat 5 broccoli, 3 celery, and 1 carrot every meal. 

Amendment 4- Everyone must wear earrings.

Amendment 5- All students must read 2 books a night.

Of course, none of these were actually taken into REAL action but it was really fun to do. 

Our voting ballots looked like 

If you want a copy of this, then leave a comment and I will absolutely send it your way! :)

Not only did we vote, but we also went to the polls in our school and they gave us a ton of stickers that we were able to give to the kids!

One last thing before we go. I want to show you the anchor chart that we are using this week for Veteran's Day. I am very proud of it.

This week we will be reading The Wall and we have some books that kids will be reading as well. I am very happy to be teaching them the value of voting and our Soldiers.

Have a wonderful week!