Happy Halloween!

I can't show you the pictures I took of the kids today, because I photographed their faces. I will save those for the yearbook-or post them whenever I locate the permission slip for a photo release! I can show you MY costume though!

I was an iPhone. Thanks to my 13 year old for taking the picture this morning.

I even had a logo on the back.

The kids were adorable in their costumes. We had two Marios, a Rapunzel, Cinderella, Ariel, Fiona, 2 witches, 2 ninjas (and one Ninja Turtle), a Native American Indian, a spider, a Clone Trooper, a cowgirl, Picachu, Princess Leia, an A's player, Iron Man and Superman, an FBI agent, the guy from Scream, an angel princess, Elvis (thank you, thank you very much), and a cat. They were super cute!

Friday Art

On Friday, we used these strips and made...


...this! Little strip pumpkins. I cut so many strips that the kids had the option to make two pumpkins.


I totally forgot to take pictures of the pumpkins, so during PE, I took a few pictures.




They turned out really cute! These kids sure love art! I sure love seeing their finished pieces.


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We Project!

I figured out the document camera and the projector!!





During DOL, I did not have to write the sentences on the board! I got to write right on the paper!





See??? Pretty huh? That's Brandon's lizard, Ned, hanging out up there.


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Catching Up

Happy Diwali! We were treated to a great presentation, by Ashmit, about Diwali. The holiday started yesterday, and lasts five days. Ashmit did a wonderful job!

He, and his family, had one of these cute candle pages for everyone to color. Ashmit said his grandpa wrote "Happy Diwali" on all of them. Mine is special, which is the formal word for the holiday. At least I think he intended this one for me-I never actually asked, I just took it. :-) I'll ask tomorrow.

We got a package today! Can you guess what it is????

Yay! Cheers all around for our new projector!! The kids were psyched. Can you see it? It's on the stool. It's so pretty. I plan on making a trip to Ikea this weekend, to find a table for it, and our document camera.

The projector and the document camera finally get to meet! I haven't figured out how either device works as yet, but I will figure it out tomorrow! Gone are my days of having to write DOL, and other stuff, on the whiteboard! I am a lucky teacher!

The kids were very impressed with Math today.

This is our lizard Gimpy, in a cube. These kids have all KINDS of ideas.

This was from Tuesday. I told the kids I would post it. I'll let them explain the lesson to you.

Because my project for my projector was funded, I will be sending home permission slips for photo releases. As part of my thank you package, I need to include pictures of the kids using the projector, and they will write thank you notes as well.

MAGIC

The kids had their first MAGIC lesson today! MAGIC stands for Music, Art, Geography in Concert. Today's lesson was all about Italy. The kids learned about the country's animals, food, music and art. It was a great lesson! Thanks to Mrs. Dadd, our MAGIC docent.

MAGIC always consists of a lesson about the country/area, and is followed up with an art project. The kids made stained glass windows! There was contact paper attached to the black paper, and the kids filled in the "window" with cellophane pieces. Super cute! I am filing this idea away, for future use! Thanks Mrs. Dadd!

The kids were busy adhering their pieces.

Some even cut their cellophane pieces into smaller pieces! So cute! Looks like sprinkles!

They are going to hang in our windows! They are so pretty.

In other news...

Thanks to Mrs. E. Long, 4th grade teacher, I have a new idea for positive behavior modification! I went to the Dollar Tree yesterday, and purchased packages of these lizards. The kids each have a lizard on their desk. The lizard is a reminder about making good choices and modeling excellent classroom behavior. If there are no behavior issues, the lizard remains on their desk. If there are issues, I take the lizard for the day. At the end of the day, everyone who still has their lizard, gets a sticker on their game board, and the sticker gets them closer to the treasure chest full of prizes. Plus, at the end of the year, they get to take their lizards home! We are especially working on our talking during transition time. All I have to say is, "Who is going to lose their lizard?" and the kids immediately settle down. They LOVE their lizards! Oh, and if you are worried that they will play with the lizards, don't worry. They know they are not to fiddle with their lizard, unless they want it removed. It gets to just sit on their desk, watching them, all day long.

I think we may name and write about our lizards tomorrow!

Working on Writing

During our Daily 5 instruction time, the kids get to work on writing. LOTS of writing, and they love it!

These are just a few of the empty books I created. They need filling! The kids also have ideas about books, of their own, so they have been leaving me post-it notes with ideas for more books! They are being very creative with the books.

Since Halloween is almost here, I added some writing prompts related to the holiday, and popped them into this cute Jack-o-lantern. I have promised the kids new prompts and new festive containers each month.

These are just a few of the ideas the kids can write about. We brainstormed the ideas together, and I wrote them down. When they think of new ideas, they add their own post-it notes to the pumpkin (minus the sticky-they've been trained to cut that part off). They are having a blast with it. The more the kids write, the better their spelling, vocabulary and sentences develop! It's a win win situation.

Library Time!!

Every Monday our class visits the library!

Ms. MacRae is our librarian. When the kids come into the library, she reads them a story, then excuses them to check out books. We get to check out THREE books each!

Library cards are waiting for the kids.

Books! Books! Books! The library is a great place!

Parents, library books can be taken home, but they need to be returned to school on Monday mornings, in order to check out new books.

GOOD NEWS!! My DonorsChoose project (up there on the right sidebar) has been funded! Thanks to three of my friends, and Chevron, we get a projector for our document camera! I am beyond excited about this! Also, since I've had a project funded, I gain points at the site, so that I can post more projects! I already have my eyes set on iPod touches or new computers!!!! Yay! I can't wait until the projector gets here!

Wow, That's Heavy.

During Math yesterday, we had a lesson on pan balance scales. I happen to have a pretty good one, thanks to the teacher next door to me, who gave it to me.

This little scale comes with its own little weights, but it's more fun to measure real things. We were choosing items that we thought were of equal weight. This toilet paper owl weighs as much as two dice in dice! It was fun to choose objects and try to balance both sides. Oh, and "Dice in Dice" is my name for the dice. There's a little die inside of a bigger die, hence: Dice in Dice.

This was equal in weight as well, one dice in dice and 4 weights were equal to one dice in dice, a bigger weight and a big paperclip. We also had a little competition in which the kids could choose what to weigh. They were very clever. It was Juliana who won the whole thing by placing her Reading Anthology on the scale, tipping it in her favor over a pencil box full of supplies. It was a very loud lesson. The kids were very impressed.

The bad news for yesterday's lesson though was that I was supposed to show the kids a spring scale, but I don't have one of those. We talked about it, and looked at the picture in our Math book, but it just wasn't the same...but THEN....

Today Maxine came in with a spring scale from home!! Her family has one! And it looks like an owl! We used it to measure our Reading is Cool metals-one of them, and then ALL of them! Plus we weighed the globe! That guy was almost 4 lbs!!! Super cool! Thanks Maxine for bringing in the spring scale!

Vocabulary and Math

Mondays are busy days! It's the introduction day for our new Reading story, and along with the story, there are vocabulary words, and spelling words too.

The kids like to do vocabulary in this manner. I hand out the words for the week, to some students. They take their word and hold it in front of them, for the rest of us to see. This week there are 6 words-that's the most we ever have.

Then I hand out the definitions of the words, and the kids with the definitions get to find their match. The rest of us sit back and check to make sure that the words and definitions go together. If they don't, we reorganize until they do.

Once the words are correctly defined, we have a student place them on our pocket chart.

The last step is for the kids to fill out the vocabulary paper, to go home with their Spelling/Vocabulary Packet homework. They write out the words and their definitions. I do have plans to teach the students how to look up words (this WEEK, in fact) in a dictionary, but they LOVE to assemble and figure it out this way. Vocabulary is FUN!

In Math, we are working on subtraction number stories. I had kids act out the story problems. For this problem, the boy in blue (Ryan) played the part of "Martin" and he had 7 markers. The boy in orange (Jayden) played the part of "Carlos," and he had 4 markers (poor Carlos). The question asked us how many MORE markers Martin had than Carlos. It was a nice visual for the kids, and fun too. Math is FUN!

This is Malik (playing the renamed part of "Keisha" as "Kevin" because he's a boy and not a girl). His problem was about grapes. We didn't have any grapes so we used dice, and it was perfect that I had the coordinating colors. "Kevin" had 8 green grapes and 5 red grapes. How many more green grapes did he have than red? 3 of course!!

Parents, I hope your kids did their Spelling Word Shape dance for you. They were trained and told to dance for you. If they didn't show you, then ask them to demonstrate. :-) Spelling is fun too.

We Like to Rip Stuff

What do you get when you use the above supplies, some glue, and fingers?

You get a fancy background, and ripping.

Lots of ripping and glueing, fancy glueing apparently.

And even more ripping while sporting a perfect shirt!

All that ripping = pumpkins!!

Using only their fingers (the kids were not allowed to draw their pieces ahead of time), the kids ripped pumpkins and faces for their pumpkins. They were allowed to rip as many (or as few) pumpkins as they desired, and then they glued them onto our fancy, four-color backgrounds! I wanted to hang these up, but the kids really really wanted to take them home, so home they go. The deal we made is that the next pumpkin activity stays at school, to decorate our walls. The apples are coming down tomorrow.

Fun With Verbs!

We are all about verbs this week! Before going home, I called on kids to demonstrate verbs. In case you forgot, or in case you are a very young reader, verbs are words that show action. They demonstrate something that you can do. Here's what the kids came up with...

Running.

Cutting (props were a MUST for this one).

Punching (don't worry the students all know it is ok to punch air and not each other).

Sitting.

Dancing (John Travolta style-ah ah ah ah stayin' alive, stayin' alive!)

Thinking!

Reading.

and the best one...HIDING!!

I told the kids to think of some at home, and be prepared to share them tomorrow.

Finished Leaves and Medals

I was able to peel the kids' leaves off of their plates today, after yesterday's watercolor fun. The colors faded a little, but the leaves still look great!

So many leaves, and every one unique. My job on Monday is to get them hung up on the wall.

Our Reading is Cool supplies arrived on Friday! I showed the medals to the kids. All were very impressed. We then decided to hang them up, you know, for extra motivation. These are really nice medals! There are medals for October through April, and one medal for Reader of the Year. This program is run by the San Jose Sharks. The medals are super cool, but we are all working together, to get a visit from Sharkie, the Sharks mascot! Read, read, read, and log, log, log those pages! We want Sharkie!!