A Few Things

The other day this is what I saw when I entered my classroom.  I was less than thrilled to find out that my heat was on full blast and that the poor man could not make it stop.  Bless his heart, he was there bright and early and promised that the heat would shut off and even though it was 81 degrees now, it would cool off.  Since that awful start I have not had another hot day in my classroom.  Now that we sort of have a spring season starting the air conditioning has been turned on.  Now the air blows all the time.  It is a chilly and breezy most of the day.  I taught in a classroom today where the kids had on winter coats.  Ah, to be able to control the temperature a little better.

On a totally different note...this is my new favorite obsession.  Peanut butter is a favorite of mine I have had to cut from my diet and I needed a replacement.  To be truthful I am not a nut butter fan.  I am very much a peanut butter person.  I have tried over the years to find other options but they just never made it past the first try.  So I was really excited to fine Justin's almond butter.  To top of the amazing taste there are something like three ingredients.  Love it!

Finally, a field trip

We have a limited budget for field trips in our school district, as I am sure most schools do, so we wait until the spring with our plant unit to go to the botanical gardens.  Thankfully, the weather cooperated and we finally had some sunshine.  It might have been in the high 40's but the sun was shining.  There were a lot of plants already flowering and some with full buds popping open.  The kids really got to spend some time talking about observing the tops and bottoms of plants.

Here we were talking about the parts of bamboo we can use in our homes.  We found out the garden gives the bamboo they cut down to the zoo for the pandas.  The kids were very excited to here that news.  Nothing like animals to get them excited.  

The warmest place in the gardens is the Climatron.  It is an indoor rainforest that has the most beautiful plants that are always in bloom.  The kids got to thaw out their hands and see gorgeous flowers and giant leaved plants.  It was a great place to get pictures.

I love a beautiful orchid. They are always asking to have their picture taken.

When we finished with our tour the students went to play in the children's garden.  I had never been to this part of the gardens and the kids LOVED it.  They played forever climbing, sliding, chasing, steering boats and more.  It was great fun for the adults too since there was only one way in and out.  I love a fenced in area!  When we returned to our school we scooped up the lunches and walked across the street to the park to have our lunch and of course play more outside.  

Tonight I am in recovery mode.  Relaxing and playing with the dog.

Have you ever had a student teacher in your classroom?  Over the years I have had many, some good and some that needed some more time to practice.  But right now I have an excellent student teacher for the semester.  Yep, she has been in my room since January 15th and will stay until May 10th.  I am very lucky that she is so willing to learn and work hard.  She is the best kind of student teacher.  It has been easy to transition out of the classroom for parts of the day since I know she is able to manage the students in a positive manner.

Spring has not quite sprung and so we needed to boost up our winter blues behavior.  So we implemented classroom dojo and the kids love it.  They are super excited to see how many points they can get on their avatar each day.  After spring break we are going to give each student a punch on a punch card each day they met their goal.  When they fill their punch card they will get to pick from a catalog of items to do.  Sarah over at First Grader...at Last! has a wonderful catalog she created that her students can choose from when they fill their punch card.  You can see it here.  She has great ideas!

Our 120th day of school

The 120th of school came on our first snow day of the school year.  Then it was icy so we missed the 121st day of school.  So on Monday, when we finally returned it was technically the 122nd day of school but hey we are in first grade so we pretended all day that it was the 120th and went so fast I barely remembered we had had school that day.

The kids had a blast as we built our way to 120 counting by 2's, 5's and 10's.  Together we made a pizza counting by 5's.  Then we made a monster counting by 2's.  We got into small teams and made towering ice cream cones and counted by 10's.  It was a lovely way to start the day.

We made our own trail mix that had some of their favorite treats. The students had to be able to make 120 using the amount of ingredients in their snack bag. They loved the snack and it was a good way to see who could make 120 with multiple addends. Many students kept it simple by putting 10 or 20 of each snack type but others made it way more challenging by adding my 5's.

We spent some time making a crown that showed 120 dots.  The crowns either had 10 streamers with 12 dots on each or 12 streamers with 10 dots on each one.  They students loved making them and wore them all afternoon.

Celebrating day 120 was a nice alternative to the 100th day.  Our kindergarten classes have a huge celebration on the 100th day numbers so it was nice to make this a special day for our first graders.  Common core has first grade learning up to 120 so that is how we chose this number to celebrate this year.  The best part of celebrating for the kids was taking a well deserved break from the normal routine.  We love a reason to celebrate!

I Finally Did It!

Today is the first official day of my blog being up and running.  I have been nervous about starting a blog and I wanted it to be just right and something that I will want to share with others.  I am excited about the possibilities this blog brings, challenges, inspirations, encouragements, and secretly improving the quality of my writing.  I look forward to sharing my ideas or inspirations from my classroom and life.  There are so many possibilities of what might happen that anything might show up on this blog.  I hope that you come back often as I work to share whatever comes my way with you, my new friends.