St. Patrick's Day Treats!

I made some sweet St. Patty's Day treats for my class because they Sham-ROCK!!

Story Maps and Dental Health

It's another wonderful Wednesday here at Glenwood! We have been doing some cool stuff this week that I can't wait to share. Since finding the idea on Pinterest, I have been OBSESSED with story maps. Here is the one we made for The Lorax:

Each story map has the title, author, setting, author's purpose, characters, problem, and solution. Since making the truffula tree version, I have started making story maps for our ABEKA reading stories. Here is the one we made this week for The Old Fisherman:

We have also been learning about dental health this week. I bought some Wisps and we talked about brushing our teeth in the correct way. 

 My students were not impressed with the bubble gum flavor, but we had fun anyway!

We also made a Guess Who! teeth chart. Students had to guess whose teeth belong to who. This was such a fun activity that everyone enjoyed! Some students had trouble picking out their own teeth!

Read-A-Thon!

Last week we had so much fun with all our Dr. Seuss activities! Our grand finale of the week was our Read-A-Thon on Friday. Students brought blankets and pillows and wore their pajamas to school. I moved all the desks and chairs out of the room so we could have the ultimate comfy space.

We had independent reading time and partner reading time, but the best part of our day was having special guests come to read to us.

 "Doing the Moose" with JD's awesome grandparents!

 Acting out our emotions with Mrs. Melissa! (JD's Mom)

 Even my dad came to read to us! He read Hop on Pop and The Sneetches.

 My mom read Green Eggs and Ham and Are you my Mother? We made green eggs and ham cookies the night before to share with the class. Cookies are kind of our thing! :)

Ben's mom read Happy Birthday to You! to end our day in a fantastic way!

So until next year...Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!!

We Speak for the TREES!

This week has been so much fun! We have had a fabulous time doing all our Seuss-y actvities.

Carli and Mrs. Obert made us "Cat in the Hat" snacks on Tuesday!

Yesterday, we learned about illiteration. Illiteration is a group of words that have the same beginning sound. For example, Silly Sally Sung Seven Sweet Songs. The perfect book to go along with this lesson is Dr. Seuss's ABC.

After reading this super silly selection, we decided to make our own ABC book! I gave each student a square piece of paper with a different letter of the alphabet in the corner. Students had to come up with their own illiteration for their letter. It was hard work, but making this book was so much fun!

Today we read The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. Before reading the book, each student made a mustache out of yellow card stock and pipe cleaners.

Each time the Lorax said "I am the Lorax" or "I speak for the trees" students had to hold up their mustaches and say the words along with me. They loved speaking in the grouchy Lorax voice! After reading the story, we made a story map truffula tree. I got the idea from this blog:  fun-in-first.blogspot.com

Tomorrow is our Read-A-Thon and I can't wait!

Hats Off to Dr. Seuss!

Happy RAA Week! This week we are doing something fun each day to celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday and reading! Monday, we learned about the history of Dr. Seuss. We watched a short video to learn about the life of Dr. Seuss. Click here to watch it. Did you know it took his over 10 months to write The Cat in the Hat? It seems so simple!

We made a hat to record how many books we read this week.

Each time a student reads a book independantly or we read a book as a class, we put a tally mark in one of the stripes. I can't wait to see our grand total!

Our journal topics this week are also Seuss themed. Carli did a great job on her journal yesterday!

Today we all wore our favorite hats in honor of the Cat that we all love!

Of course we added whiskers too! Check back all week for many more fun actvities!

It's Blooming Synonyms!!

I have been teaching for three years, and from what I can tell, Language is the least liked of all the core subjects. Most of my students LOVE to write, however, when we get down to the nouns, pronouns, subject, and predicate stuff...I would better off asking them to go the dentist. That being said, I have made it my personal mission to make Language fun. This week we have been talking about synonyms, so I thought of a fun Spring activity. We made our synonyms into bright colorful flowers! I gave each student a petal that was divided into four rectangles. At the top of each petal, I wrote one of these 5 words: pretty, smart, big, small, and nice. Everyone that had the same word got into groups. Each group had to think of three synonyms for their word. They wrote each synonym in one of the rectangles then colored and cut out their petal. We put them in the hallway to show off our "skills." Check them out:

Mardi Gras!!!

Happy FAT Tuesday! I have really enjoyed teaching community celebrations. What a fun topic to learn about! Our class made Children's Day fish, talked about Cinco de Mayo, and best of all, celebrated Mardi Gras! I sent home blank mask patterns on card stock and asked my students to get creative and make a fabulous mask. I am always blown away by my students' work, and this assignment was no exception!

 

What's Mardi Gras without a good ole' fashioned King Cake?!? The plan was to make a homemade King Cake, but Publix came through and helped me out. :)

 Maddy found the baby!!

 Kaylee's shirt says, "My parents found me in a Kingcake!" hahaha I LOVE IT!

YUM!