Mystery Flower

This month my class has been watching a plant grow. What do you think?

This was the day before I wrapped yarn around it to keep the stems standing, lol.

Christmas Dinner

No, this isn't from home, this was dinner at school. Do your students get served Christmas dinner at school? Ours was yummy!

Crafting for the Christmas Concert

Four days ago I shared pictures of ALL the decorations at the Christmas Concert. Today I want to highlight the ones my class made.

I popped FOUR bowls of air popped corn to make these Popcorn Santas with my class. Never again!

Too many of them look like old Ninjas.

Too many kids didn't get the concept of dipping the corn in he glue, and ended p with GLOBS on their papers.

The smell of these mixed with tons of glue resulted in a not pleasant smelling room until they were put up in the gym.

However, the overall effect is cute, lol.

Our other concert craft were these very simple to decorate musical Frosty the Snowmen. I'll definitely aim to make these again.

I found both of these crafts on Pinterest. Find these and more on my boards HERE.

Merry Christmas!

Decorating for Our Christmas Concert

At our school decorating for the Christmas concert is a whole school effort.

Below you will find some of the crafts we put up and other decorations in our gym. Please enjoy and be inspired by this wordless (from the point the pictures start, lol) post for next year.

Christmas around the World 2014 Continued

As I shared in my previous post, I've been doing Christmas around the World with my Kiddos this year. I also did a lot of awesome crafts for this theme last year too.

Christmas Around the World 2014 part 1
Christmas Around the World 2013

I didn't manage to get as many days done this week as I'd planned, in fact, we only did two our last week due to all the other things we had to do and school traditions.

Day 9: Christmas in Brazil.
I couldn't find a good book to go along with our PowerPoint, so if you have one to suggest, that would be awesome for next year. For Our craft we made these tinsel birds, which we used tissue for because I had no tinsel. I don't know anyone who even uses tinsel anymore, do you?

Day 10: We celebrated Christmas in Mexico. My kids had a hard time concentrating on our Legend of the Poinsettia book, as the story is long, but I hope they liked the craft we made at the end.

As you can see, throughout the month I added each country to our classroom tree. My kids kept going back and looking at the ornaments, and asking me if they could have the candy in the cracker, lol.

Day 11: I was sick with a flu going around our community, so I had our sub tell the story of Christmas in Bethlehem. from the Bible.

After their craft they made these cute Jesus in the Manger hand print crafts. Not too much trouble, and they turned out pretty cute!

Day 12: I came back and we did Christmas in the Philippines. I have no story, and forgot to take a picture of their star parols, oops!

The rest of our week was too busy to do any other days around the world, but I hope my kiddos got something out of it.

Did you snow Jesus Loves you snow much?

Our grade 2 teacher is responsible for this lovely seasonal bulletin board this month. I love how she's making use of the snowflakes from earlier this month.

Sight Words bulletin board

Our LNC has filled another Bulletin board in our halls with sight words to engage the students. I like it, what do you think? 

Reminds me of up!

More Guided Reading

I've posted about our New Guided Reading Routine Before and showed pictures of my guided reading corner. But here is a bit more about what's going on with my kiddos.

This Chart shows where every single student from 1 and 2 are placed on our guided reading levels (We don't use a standard leveling chart, our board uses an alternate designed  by another board several years ago.)

As you can see from this chart from a few weeks ago, I'm working with two of our Emergent Literacy Groups. Students in these groups have one or more section left to pass on our boards Emergent Literacy Test. Our LNC teacher tries to test and pass as many of these kids as she can every week, and I try to give them the skills needed to pass the sections they have yet to master. 

Each student gets a Large Ziploc with their name on it that the staff member they are working with can place the books they are reading and the running record when they are ready. We also put in sight word pages and other printed activities done to coordinate with the book. Inside is a book list so that students can record which books they've done at which level so when they switch groups but maybe at the same level the new staff member can ensure they aren't studying the same book for several weeks in a row.

Two activities I've done with my Emergent Groups.

Most of the Kids still in our Emergent groups are having trouble with sight words still. They need to know at least two to pass that section of the test. I've made several of these worksheets up to practice finding our sight words. This is just one of many activities we do. Did you see my slap words game? It's a modified version of a paid product in my tpt shop.

The second is the Intervention page for the Oral Language Component of the test. At this point I think only one student has yet to pass this section, but hopefully he will in the new year. The EA in my class is his Auntie. He won't consistently talk to any other staff, but he will to her, so we're hoping he'll be able to pass the test if she administers it.

Gifts for my Class

Do you give you class Christmas gifts?

I do every year. This year I decided to do it Goody bag style with a bunch of prizes from Partycity.ca.

There are SO many different gifts a teacher could give her class, that the possibilities are endless. What do you give?

In the past I've given books. I found a great deal on mini Robert Munsch books so bought a class set, twice.

Last year I gave a few dollar store goodies and cookies.

But I've tracked down so MANY cute idea. Here, check out my favourites:

1. Rainbow Noses

Source: A personal Touch

2. Framed Wordels

Source: Hojos Teaching Adventure

3. Sharpie Mugs

Source: Happygoluckyblog

4. Snowman Chocolate and mitt hats

Source Unknown. Broken Pinterest Link

What are you giving this year?

First Grade Christmas Doors

Here are the doors that myself and our other first grade teacher have both put up to Celebrate Christmas. Since the day I put ours up, my kids have been asking me when they get to bring the Gingerbread man with their name on it home.

I think that means they like it!