Muesday...I mean, TUESDAY

Yes, friends it feels like a MONDAY! I am EXHAUSTED to say the least, but I am pushing through it. I have so many things I need to get done this evening and dinner is a top priority - even though I am blogging instead of cooking right now! :-/ Don't tell! Colin was up last night a few times with a stuffy nose. It was BAD! He was crying his nose hurt, I was crying because I was tired. I can't even believe I was ever considering having another baby. I am not sure I would make it!

Now, I know this blog isn't my "teacher" blog but I am so excited about some of the things I have been doing in my classroom this year. Not that I haven't been excited about things in previous years, but I am actually getting to incorporate more art into my classroom and my students LOVE IT! And really so do I!
Anyway, on with the show my friends! Most of these activities I got off of Pinterest, Teachers Pay Teachers (LOVE this site), and other Teacher Blogs! It is addicting to find this fun cute stuff! Plus I love doing it with my class and I think the more fun the better because fun = learning in my book. These are the things they will remember, FOR SURE! So if you are a teacher and you are reading, just try a few of these things or just start small with one.

We started in January with this activity when we were working on Compare and Contrast. We read two books, The Hat and The Mitten by Jan Brett. We created a Story Elements Chart and then we did a compare and contrast assessment. We also completed a venn diagram which isn't up. We added the Hedgehog as a fun craft activity, plus he was in both books so he was pretty important!
Since it is winter and we don't get snow in South Georgia we decided to bring the fun ourselves with paper! I cut paper for each student, white, black, and brown. I never told them what we were doing just had them follow oral directions from me! Then we put them on the paper using the sizes (largest first, etc). I let the students decorate the paper with a white crayon to represent snow. They LOVED this! If you look closely, you can see that each snowman is different because everyone tore different sizes! While the glue was drying on the snowmen we read the story, Snowmen at Night. We then created a web of what snowmen can do at night. The students came up with so many fun activities for snowmen to do at night. My favorite was shopping at the mall, haha! Then they wrote, If I were a snowman at night... These came out so cute!! I can't wait to do this again next year.
We also did a math activity with snowmen! This was so much fun as well! We had and have been working on money. My favorite!! This activity was differentiated for each of my groups and they all enjoyed it. One group had directions to use 5 coins to make 5 cents and they had to stamp the correct coins, the next page told them to use two coins to make 10 cents, etc. Another group had to come up with four different ways to make 25 cents. They LOVED using the money stamps and it was really a lot of fun.
This was probably my FAVORITE activity! Inferencing with David... OH MY WORD! It was so fun! If you haven't used this book for inferencing you most definitely should!
This blurry pictures shows our inferences that we made when taking a picture walk. One of my favorites was: When David picked his nose...
he flicked his booger on someone.
he ate his booger.
he wiped his booger in his mom's hair.
Only a first grade teacher would appreciate these!
Then they completed this activity independently! They had to decide which picture they wanted to use from the book. Lots of people picked, David was running down the street naked. Haha! Then they made an inference, using a starter word from the Anchor Chart (I think, My guess, I predict, etc. - I think David will fall and get hurt). Finally, they told how they made the prediction. (I know that if you run you might fall and scrap your knee). Of course they got to create a cute little David art project to go along with it!
We are now working on an Informational Writing on Abraham Lincoln. We started creating a KWL on the Smartboard. My students LOVE these! Then we read some books, watched a video, googled, etc. to find out information about him. We were able to answer all of our "What we want to know" on the W as well. Then we created this chart with what we thought were the MOST important things about him. Each student will be creating their own Abraham Lincoln on Friday and adding a writing sample as well.
Last but NOT LEAST, AMELIA BEDELIA!!
She started off looking like this. If you remember most of my kids have never read her books nor do they know who she is. So this was a FUN introduction to her!
We read two of her books today and we were able to get this....
I can't WAIT to get into the "meat" of Cause and Effect with my class this week! It is going to be so much fun with Amelia Bedelia!