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Terra

I'm Back!

Well....I am back!  I wasn't sure I ever would be, but with a new school year under way, I thought, why not??? So I've decided to give blogging another try.

Here goes:

When students first come in in the morning, I have 15 minutes that I call Books and Puzzles time.  Parents are encouraged to stay with their children and help them with the various tasks I have placed out on the table.  Some of the things I have put out are: sorting bins, books, puzzles, beading, lacing cards, pattern blocks and geo boards.  As the year progresses I change this to sight word practice and morning writes.
Each morning students practice their names with a daily sign in sheet.  I am loving it!  Students (and parents!) are quickly learning that you only have ONE capital letter in your name.

 

They also check in on our smart board.  Each day they do their attendance in an interactive way that helps them practice (among other things) name recognition.  The students love racing in each morning to see what is going to be up on the smartboard!  The parents think it is pretty cool too.

Click on the picture to check it out in my store.  There are 29 different themes to last you the entire year for only $4.50!

 

Some days I have a graphing question up relating to things that we have been learning about.  We then look at and interpret the data that we have gathered.  There is so much great math work that goes on with this attendance!  This file is also $4.50.  Click on the picture to head to my store.

 

 

How do you do attendance in the morning?  I would love to hear from you!

 

Take care,

Terra

 

 

 

Spring...and my new Plant unit!

Thank goodness Spring is here!  I love winter and all, but I am so happy to move on.  Spring is definitely my favourite season.  The freshness of the air and all of the new life and growth make it special.  After being cooped up indoors so much over the winter it is nice to get outside and enjoy nature!

With thoughts (and dreams!) of Spring arriving, I have been working hard on a new unit about Plants and it is finally done!

It is my biggest unit yet: 73 pages full of 17 different experiments, activities and smartboard files that are differentiated to meet all of the learning needs of my students. 

The unit takes a closer look at soil, seeds and plants and lets the kids get a bit dirty, have fun and learn all at the same time...what could be better than that?!?
Click on the unit cover to head to my store to check it out!
Have a great Easter long weekend,
Terra

Student Led Conferences

Last Thursday we had our second set of formal conferences with parents.  This set is always my favourite because we have Student Led Conferences.  The kids are in charge and get to show their parents what they have been learning. 
After the kids left for the day and before the parents arrived (which was only a 20 minute window) I ran around and set up different stations for the kids to take their parents to.  I made little signs up for each station with the instructions at the bottom.  I laminated the signs, hot glued popsicle sticks in between the two sides of the sign, and placed them in clear plastic cups with little jewels to hold them up.  I thought the jewels added a bit of a magical touch :-)

When the kids came in, they went to the Welcome table where there was a clip board, a paper with the different stations on it, and stickers to put on the paper when they had completed each station. 

On my Welcome table I also had a Wishing Tree with different items that I would like for the class.  Its a great way to let the parents know what we need and the parents always come through and are so generous!  

 I had 8 different stations for the kids to take their parents to:

They did the Blubber Glove experiment and showed the parents their non-fiction books about Penguins.

 

They did a colour mixing experiment with coffee filters, eye droppers and food colouring.

 They played a rhyming game together.

They did some measurement experiments and showed them their Measurement Masters books.

They did an initial sound sort on the smart board.

 

I forgot to take photos of the other stations, but they also did:

* a gymnastics station where they showed their parents some of the balances and other moves we  learned

*an initial sound sort with different objects on the carpet

*a computer station where the kids showed their parents the blog that they do with their big buddies on Kidblog.

 

Once they had completed all of their stations, the parents wrote a note telling their child what they are really proud of. 

 

 It took the kids about 45 minutes to go through the stations with their parents, and it was amazing!  The kids were so proud and were really able to show off their learning.  I heard so many parents talking about how amazed they were at all that they had learned and could remember.
If your school doesnt' do student led conferences, I would highly recommend it!

 



Super Bowl Sale!

The Super Bowl is officially underway and so is the SUPER sale at Teachers Pay Teachers!   My entire store is 10% off plus an extra 10% off from TPT when you use the code SUPER! And to top it off, my Snowman smartboard attendance was selected to be one of the 10 free downloads in this weeks newsletter!  Needless to say I was pretty excited to see my file when I openned the newsletter up.

We have been working a lot with the teen numbers over the past couple of weeks.  The kids loved this activity.  This activity is called Paint my Number.  First the kids made the number with cubes and ten frames.  Then they used a q-tip to paint the ten frames on their paper to match.   Here are a couple of pics of the kiddos at work.

 

This activity is one of 7 that comes from my Winter Wonderland math unit.  Click on the picture if you would like to go to my store...The unit is on sale for only $3.60 today!

I'm working on my next unit...We will be diving into measurement!  Hopefully I will have somthing to show you soon and a freebie to go with it!

Have a great week!

Penguins, Letters and Snowmen...Oh my!

 This week we did a multi-media art project with Snowmen.  We painted our snowmen with tempera paint, then we went outside and gathered sticks for the arms of our snowmen...the kids absolutely LOVED going on a stick hunt.

It actually tied in really nicely with math too as they had to measure their sticks to make sure they were the right size. I suggested that the stick be about the same size as their hand.
They then embellished their snowman.  They cut hats and scarves out of felt and fabric, they glued on the sticks for arms and buttons down the front of the snowmen, they drew on the carrot noses and cut squares of black sparkly ribbon for eyes and the mouth.  I think they turned out pretty cute!

We also started our Penguins unit.  The kids have been having a blast learning about the cute little creatures.  We started the unit off with a Mystery box which the kids loved!  They recorded their predictions on what they thought was in the box after 4 clues had been read to them.

We also learned about where they live, the climate in the Antarctic, we labelled a penguin , we learned about the adaptations that help the penguin survive in that climate, and we learned a cute little penguin poem.  All of these came from my Penguins unit.  You can click on the picture to go to my store if you would like to take a look at it!

With our big buddy class, the students used digital cameras to take pictures of themselves making the first letter in their names.  They had a blast doing it!  Next week we will be uploading them onto Kidblog and writing sentences about other words that start with that letter.

What are you teaching in your classrooms right now?
Hope you have a wonderful week!
Terra

Technology in the Classroom

So, as I type the post title, I'm thinking to myself:  I really have to get better at remembering to take photos of the kids doing all of our great activities...hmmmm.....I guess I have a ways to go with technology in the classroom!
Our school (until 2 years ago) has been in the dark ages when it comes to technology.  We only had one smartboard in the entire school, no IPads, a computer lab that worked only sometimes and only 1 or 2 computers in each classroom...SAD!!
Now, because of our WONDERFUL, AMAZING parent advisory council, in the past two years we have managed to get a smartboard in every classroom, have purchased a class set of cameras and 5 Ipads....Not bad considering the PAC had to pay for every single piece (and installation) themselves!

So it is all a bit new to me, but this is what we are doing:

Each morning I do learning stations: (basically math and language arts centers)  Sometimes we use the smartboard for one of the stations.  Last week kids had to sort pictures by initial sound.  They LOVED it.  I love when they can work independently and be successful at it!  Gotta love self-correcting activities!

We have also started taking photos with our big buddy class and uploading them onto the site Kidblog.  Do you know about that site...it is fabulous!  Talk about writing for an authentic purpose....real people read their blogs and make comments on it....the kids are amazed!  The big buddies helped my Kindies upload their pictures.  Then the little buddies dictated sentences to the big buddies about their photos.  Everyone was so engaged and both groups were learning.

There were so many great photos taken.

"Our ice castle is very pretty. The  sparkles are so pretty too. The ice castle has so many different colours. I like the colour pink with sparkles the best."

"Elyssa's Masterpiece: A green leafy hill.  There are yellow, orange and red leaves on the trees."

"I like the rock because there is a lot of moss on it and the rock is huge!"

This was our first attempt at it, and I think it went pretty well. Kidblog is free...you should totally check it out!  www.kidblog.org
That is just a couple of  ways we are using technology in the classroom.  What ways are you finding to use it in the classroom?  I would love to hear!
Terra