We have been working on a Polar Animal unit this past month.  Students have been learning about penguins, polar bears and walruses.  I'll admit it, I'm a Teachers Pay Teachers addict now.  So many cute ideas already prepped!  Our polar bear tree chart comes from an arctic unit by Deanna Jump.  The kids did an amazing job writing nonfiction stories about the animals we were learning about.  We have some great visuals and shared writing for the students to go back and reread in the classroom!

100th Day of School!

Best 100th Day ever!!  Thanks to Deanna Jump from www.mrsjumpsclass.blogspot.com, she posted about dressing up like 100-year-olds on the 100th day of school.   In a rut with our 100-day stuff, I decided to go for something new.  I hate Halloween and dressing up in costumes, but this was so worth it!  The kids were SO cute!  I brought extra dress-up clothes from my own kids' stash at home, so everyone was able to participate if they wanted.  I had morning bus duty on the playground, so I welcomed the students as Mrs. Auby, but got "called away" during their breakfast (thanks to a parent helper and my student teacher for covering the class!) and transformed into Granny Auby.  I read Wilfred Gordon Macdonald Partrige in my "granny voice" and the kids were such incredible listeners...good to see they respect their elders!  Mid-morning I forgot to use my granny voice and one of my kiddos said, "A-ha!  I knew you were really Mrs. Auby just dressed up."  Oh my...that made it worth it!  We made self-portraits of ourselves as 100-year-olds and wrote a "bucket list" of things we want to do before turning 100.  I think we've got a new tradition for the 100th day!

We kept our snack simple...they had to create the number 100 with their string cheese and "flips" before eating.  Toss in a snack-sized 100 Grand Bar and a juice box, and the kids were thrilled with their special snack.

Penguin Poems

I wish this picture had turned out a little better, but here's another poem activity we did last week.  We had been studying penguins throughout the week and students had just finished their non-fiction writing about penguins.  It was time to lighten things up and make some cute penguins to decorate the room.  And, since we had just written adjective poems a couple weeks before, it was time to think of some verbs for this poem.  We brainstormed all the verbs we could think of on how a penguin moves:  sliding, slipping, swimming, waddling, etc.  I was very impressed at how they recalled words from our non-fiction read alouds and shared reading texts from throughout the week!  They wrote their poems on the penguin's belly.   The kiddos were so creative as we watched a couple of inches of snow come down while creating our poems.

Hot Chocolate Poems

One of my favorite winter writing activities has become our hot chocolate poems.  We had been learning about "juicy" words to help make our writing more interesting.  In order to best describe hot chocolate, we of course had to sip on some while thinking of our adjectives.  The kids loved the warm treat and their poems turned out great!

This past summer I set up a donors choose project to create a quiet reading area in our classroom.  We didn't have any comfy places to sit to read. We have an old large-group rug, but other than that, it's the cold, icky tile floor.  The bookshelves we had were standard bookshelves we had purchased ourselves throughout the years.  It was difficult to keep books organized by level on standard-sized bookshelves.  We recently received all of our items--2 large bean bag chairs, a large bookshelf made to hold the long plastic book boxes to sort and level "good-fit books" and a new small area rug.  The class loves to come into this area and snuggle up with some good books.  It's so great to see!! 

The day before break, we wrote about how to make a Grinch smile.  Students came up with 3 creative and cute ideas on how to make the Grinch smile.  This one says:  First, give him some coffee.  Next, give him some bells.  Last, give him some berries.  Students came up with all kinds of great ideas from singing, giving him chocolate, presents, even mac and cheese!  So creative :)

This is how some of the kiddos' snowmen turned out.  So cute!  I was able to have a parent helper at each table to help students out during both phases of the project.  That was a HUGE help!  The first day, we covered our bottles with the tissue paper.  The second day, we decorated.  Students made gift bags with a dark blue bag and used cotton balls to create a snow scene.  Some were very abstract and creative, but they all turned out very neat.  The snowmen sat on our counter for a few days before they were sent home--it looked like a scene from Snowmen at Night.  We read through that book and pondered what our snowmen did when we all went home from school.  I've already gotten a couple more Pom juice bottles to start collecting for next year!