A few updates. . .

So I have figured out that I am only able to blog/blogstalk during the wee hours of 2:30 and 5:00 a.m.  My school computer has been acting up when it comes to blogs, and of course from the moment I get home from school my attention, time, and energy are focused elsewhere!

Last week Sol insisted on wearing one of my vests.  Finally I decided to just let him wear it around the house!  Christian had on a gray one, but he was too busy flying through the air like a "superhero" to let me get a picture of him!

O.k. first things first.  So we had a fun little "reveal" party last weekend with family and friends.  I cut the cake first then we watched my 3D/4D sonogram dvd to check out our new addition.  

It's a BOY. . .and he wasn't one bit shy!  We're not sure about names yet, but we have a few in mind.  

If you haven't checked in at Kohl's in a while, they have a great new selection of books by.  

You can get more information here.

Last week we finished up our graphing unit, and I tried a few new things.  .  .

I dumped the m&m's into a baggie so that I could assess a few things without m&m's flying all over the room.  

I checked out sorting. . .

counting. . .

 and graphing. 

The students also had the chance to create their own pie graph. 

Here are a few pictures of some graphs/charts that the students worked on in small groups.  They surveyed the class, analyzed the information, and recorded it in the form of a bar graph, pie graph, or picture graph.

  

We read "Sam's Sandwich."  In this story Sam puts just about "everything" on a sandwich that he's making for his little sister.  Each student voted on their favorite kind of sandwich.

My class also worked really hard to write reports about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  I was so proud of all of the information that they learned and how sensitive they were in response to the class discussion and literature.

brown egg

white egg

inside they look just the same. . .

I love this TLC project.  You can find the instructions here.  It's a link on Little Giraffe's.

Have you ever taught a topic so much that you dreamt about it?  Well, we studied "rocks" and "soil" for about four weeks!  The reason we stayed on the subject so long is because we teach science and social studies every day.  So instead of going back and forth between the two of them, we spend about 20-30 minutes on both of them every day.  One of my teammates used to be part of a land judging contest so she is very very very knowledgeable about topsoil, clay, sand, silt, pebbles, and just about anything else that has to do with rocks!  I tried to keep it interesting for my kiddos. . .here are a few of my favorite activities.

Every day we shook this tennis ball container with cookies in it to show the process of "weathering" and "erosion."  I didn't do a good job of taking pictures along the way, but little by little we could see the transformation from "rocks" to "soil."

We made some snowman "sand" art pictures and brainstormed the *many uses of rocks!

And of course. . .after studying rocks and soil for all that time we deserved a treat, so we made dirt cups!  The class enjoyed eating them while watching "Magic School Bus Rocks and Rolls."  I wish I had a magic school bus!

That's all for now. . .happy teaching!  

Morning Message

Before

Here is a quick explanation of how I do morning message each day.  It's the second page of my calendar math flipchart.  Every morning I write the students a message with information about the day or I let the "star student" of the day help me think of something that the class needs to remember!  This was our message on Tuesday.  I chose this one because we're focusing on graphs in math, and I knew it would be perfect to lead up to the graphing activity that I had planned.  We read the message all together, the students turn to their "thinking buddy" to talk about things that can be corrected, and then students come to the board to make corrections (unless we're running behind on time or have an extremely busy day ahead of us-I make the corrections as students tell me what to fix).

Sometimes the message is a list of things that we have to do that day.  Sometimes it's a letter, and sometimes it has a "math twist" like a graphing, counting, or problem solving activity embedded within it.  It's really quick to change every day since all I have to do is clear the old message and type in the new message or activity.  

After

(I made the corrections today-we had our weekly trip to the library right after calendar math time.)

This is a little chart that we've been working on since Monday.  It's incomplete right now because we're adding information that we learn each day.  When we finish there will be examples of each type of graph/chart hanging around the chart so that students also have a visual representation.  Most of the time I chart information on the Promethean Board, but if there's a chart that I want to hang around the room for future reference, I still break out the handy dandy chart paper and Crayola markers.

This is the activity that we completed today.  There was almost an argument about whether or not I "needed" to have a girl since I already have two boys.  Of course the boys were quite certain that having a girl in your family is not a necessity at all!

This was the independent practice activity for the day.  We read and "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and thought of all of the fruit that he ate while he was growing and changing.  Then we graphed our favorite fruits.

 Each student created their own graph.

 The last part of the activity was discussion and data analysis where the students answered questions about the graph.