Valentine's

I was playing with my daughter today and we were looking at all the stuff she had in a gift bag from a recent birthday party.  One was a maze.  You know, the cheap little circular ones...

I thought I would buy a class set of these and attach a cute tag that says "You aMAZE me!" for Valentines for my kiddos.  

I am sure someone out there has thought of this before, but it is a great new idea for me!  I'll post the finished project when I get there.

Fact Families

I started my fact family unit by drawing a picture of a house.  I asked the students what it was... and who lives there.  I explained that people who live in the same house are related.  OOPS!  Half of these kids have one person, if not more people, living in their house who are not related!  So I backtracked a little and explained that who you live with is your family.  Ok, moving on.  I drew three numbers in the attic of the house.  The "daddy" number at the top point, the "mommy" number to one side and the "baby" number to the other side.  I asked them how they were all connected.  I explained that they each had something to do with the others.  The kids had a really tough time with this so I had to suggest that the two small numbers added up to the big number and if you subtract one small number from the big number you get the other small number.  Then I showed them the facts that belong in the house and sent them to their desk with their own piece of construction paper.  I told them to draw a house, I gave them three numbers and they were supposed to write all the facts.  I have 20 kids... .two got it.  A disaster! You think I moved a little to fast?  :-) - Back to the drawing board.

The next day I brought them all to the carpet and we looked at connecting cubes and squares.  I put 3 connecting cubes in one square and four in the other.  I moved both sets to a big square.  I showed them the addition problem.  I moved one small set back and modeled the subtraction problem.  I moved both sets forward and modeled the turn around fact.  I moved the other small set back and modeled the other subtraction problem.  I put them in partners with their own squares and connecting cubes.  About three more got it.  Ok, making progress!

I visited the house idea again.  Now that I had some kids getting it they were able to help me with the lesson.  I used a premade house this time (learned my lesson on that!).  I modeled using a domino to get the "mommy" and "baby" numbers and then adding those together to get the "daddy" numbers.  We filled out the house as a class.  Next, I paired those 5 with 5 who weren't getting it at all and put the others in partners as well.  I gave each pair a domino.  They had to find the three numbers in the fact family and then find the four facts.  If they were successful, they brought me the page and I gave them each their own domino and house to complete on their own.  Once they did that successfully they were able to color the house to add to our fact family neighborhood.

More kids were getting it, but we needed to catch the rest of them.  So I made up a wiggle dance.  They held 4 fingers up on one hand, and five on the other.  We wiggled our left hand and shouted four.  We wiggled our right hand and shouted 5.  We put them together and wiggled our whole body while shouting nine.  We did this over and over again adding the words "Four ::wiggle:: plus Five ::wiggle:: equals Nine ::body wiggle::"  We repeated this with the turn around and subtraction facts.  Super fun.  

The activity I did yesterday has been my favorite so far.  I made five sets of signs (just sharpie on white copy paper) Each set contained three related numbers, an equal sign, and a plus (one one side)/minus (on the other) sign.  I asked for five volunteers.  I gave each volunteer a sign.  First we looked at the numbers in our fact family.  We found the daddy number, mommy number, and baby number.  We reviewed that the mommy and baby add up to the daddy.  We made this number sentence with our signs.  Then we did the turn around fact.  I stressed that the daddy number stayed at the end of the number sentence!  Next, we did the two subtraction facts and realized that, again, the daddy number did not move and stayed at the beginning of the number sentence.  After this was modeled I split the class into 4 groups of five.  I gave each group a set of signs (each set used different numbers).  I assigned a scribe.  Their job was to find all the facts in the fact family, write them down and be ready to present to the class.  They LOVED this.  I walked around the room and heard lots of great explaining going on.  No one dominated the conversation or just directed people around (which is great, because that happens a lot)  When they all had their facts written down each group had a chance to go to the front of the room.  They had to state the numbers in their fact family and then arrange themselves to show us each fact.  This physical movement helped out a lot. 

Have all of my kids mastered fact families?  NO!  Tomorrow I am going to split them into groups again and give each group an addition number sentence.  They are going to work together to find the other three facts in the family.  After that, I'm out of ideas.  Anyone else have any???????

New Year's Resolution Writing

Alright, so the entire class isn't done, but half of them are!  The other half... most are almost done.  So I thought I would post about it!  We read the book (remember?  Squirrel's New Year's Resolution)  We talked about what resolutions were.  Then we brainstormed what we did well in 2011 and some things we would like to do better on in 2012.  They used this organizer to help them with each paragraph:

This is what I gave them to write on:

The next step with this organizer will be to have more yellow and red sentences in a paragraph, but starting with just one is OK with me!

After they were done with their final draft, we pasted it onto black construction paper and dazzled it up a bit.

We have sparkly New Year's resolutions!

I think they did great.  Don't you?

Just a Hello

I really wanted to show pictures of our New Year's Resolution writing... but it's STILL not done!  The kids are working so hard on them, and I expect a lot, so it might take awhile.  I saw a lot of people that posted pictures with cute art and then one sentence attached (or maybe two) about their New Year's resolution.  If I put something like that out I would be in trouble!  It would not be near the rigor expected (not saying that those aren't good activities that I wouldn't LOVE to do).  My kids are writing two paragraphs.  The first is about what they were good at in 2011 and the second is what they want to get better at in 2012.  We are using the stoplight writing organizer to help them.  (Green, main idea... yellow, detail about main idea... red, more about yellow... green, back to main idea.)  I have some kids on their final draft, so maybe by tomorrow i can post some pictures of their work and decorations.

We are also working on a fact family neighborhood (pictures to come... when we get it done).  Everything a work in progress, nothing finished yet.  That's good though, right?  Projects that make you think more take more time...right?

Snowman Fun

Students first day back and the kids were perfect!  I expected some time would be needed to review expectations - and we did, a little, but it was just small reminders.  Of course, I had 3 kids absent so maybe that helped the class seem so calm.

We worked today on estimation, skip counting, and adding with a very large snowman.   I started the lesson by introducing estimation.  I asked if anyone had ever heard the term (they hadn't.)  Then I explained what it was - a good guess.  We looked at a bucket full of bottles of glue.  I carried it around the classroom and let everyone take a glance in the bucket.  I asked them to talk to a partner and estimate how many bottles were in the bucket.  They decided 15 or 17.  I asked them why they didn't choose 500?  They said it wouldn't fit.  I asked them why they didn't say 3.  They said it was obviously more than three.  I helped them make the connection that they were making a good guess by using what they know about buckets this size and the size of bottles of glue to estimate how many might fit into the bucket.  The actual number was 11 - I think they did pretty good!  Next, I pointed to a 6 foot snowman that I had made in the front of the room.  I told them we were going to cover the lower half of the snowman with snowflakes, but before we did that we needed to estimate the number of snowflakes that would fit on the snow man.  I gave each one of them a snowflake and let them come up to the snowman for 30 seconds just so they could see the snowflake next to the snow man and get an idea.  Then I passed out paper to everyone and they wrote their name and their estimate on it.  We put them all into a bucket and then put them aside.  I will check them to see who was the closest and that student will win a little prize (we ran out of time to check today.)

Next, I laid the snowman on the ground and we all sat around it.  I asked them how we should go about putting on and counting all of these snowflakes.  Of course they said just glue them and count.  I suggested that perhaps that would take a long time to count all those snowflakes one by one.  I asked them to think of a faster way to count the snowflakes.  We've worked a lot on skip counting, so I wasn't surprised when someone said we could count by two or five.  Then another student said it would be hard to keep track of which snowflakes we had counted.  I was really enjoying this discussion!  I asked how many snowflakes we would glue on if each student glued on 10 snowflakes.  Many of them looked at me like I was crazy, but then one sharp kiddo started counting by ten and pointing to each student.  The other students counted on and started helping her.  We came up with 120 snowflakes (some kids were in pull out - I don't usually have that small of a class!).  They thought that was too many.  So I said, ok, how about one each.  12 - nope that was too few.  So we finally settled on 5 each.  We all glued on 5 snowflakes each, I had a student write 50 on the board - but we still had more room.  We discussed more and decided that everyone putting on 5 more each would be too many so we should try just 2 each.  We each glued on 2 and I had a student write 24 under the 50 (get where it's going...)  We continued skip counting and deciding how many each person should put on until we had the snow man filled.  It took a lot of discussion to come to a consensus each round.  When we were done we added up all the numbers - 108 snowflakes in the end!

The kids had so much fun doing this. It was a great way to help them see how to use skip counting for something useful and great practice on estimation.  Each time we glued on more snowflakes they had to estimate how many more would need to be added into a smaller space.  So many skills were being used at once!  One girl started counting by fives to guess how many would go in the space left and another student asked her why she was counting by fives, then proceeded to explain to her why she should count by one when estimating unless she is picturing 5 snowflakes (she had been using her hand to size out the empty space and her hand is about the size of one snowflake).  I don't know if they actually needed me in the room :-)

The other first grade teachers on my team did the snowman estimation too.  One did a "Snow Boy" and the other did a "Snow Woman."  We had a little snow person family.  So cute!  

Well that was my fun for the first day back.  Anyone else have amazing discussions in class when you were expecting chaos???

The Mess

"If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?"
--Albert Einstein

I am a stacker.  Given the chance I will stack piles of papers, books, folders - anything, anywhere and everywhere.  So today, during our work time in the classroom, I took out my desk.  It was a big step.  A desk is like, security.  Your place for your things.  I didn't need it though.  I never went near it when the kids were in the room and when they were out I always sat at a table to grade papers, or do other work, because my desk was always stacked a mile high with junk!  My cousin donated a bookshelf with sections and I used it to organize everything.  It actually worked out so that I had space to put everything in an organized manner with room to spare.  The best part, there is no way to stack anything.

I still have my space but I take up about 6 feet less of prime real estate in the classroom and I have to be organized.  Forced organization is the best way to keep it straight.  On an even more positive note, I was able to put up pictures of my babies on the side so I can see them every day.  Much better then knocking over a frame all the time.

I also found a great tip for organizing construction paper on a blog called "Two Things In Common."  I filed it all away in my hanging file folders so it is not falling all over the place sitting on top of the cabinets.  (This is her photo, not mine, but mine looks exactly the same!)



I love having the time to organize some of the classroom.  I may be a stacker, but all of those stacks stress me out!  Life is so much calmer when everything has its place.  Any other ideas on organizing the classroom?

"Out of clutter, find simplicity."
--Albert Einstein

New Year's Resolutions

My fabulous winter break is over - welcome to the new year!  I've been spending my time with family and haven't really done anything about school. I did search the internet for some great ideas to use in the new year. Today I sent my husband on a mission to the library to find "Squirrel's New Year's Resolution"

I have seen a lot of posts about using it in the classroom so I thought I would check it out.  I read it to my daughter - she seemed to enjoy it.  She's two, so the discussions of resolutions didn't really happen. However, with my first graders it will!  We will talk about resolutions that we can make and ways we want to improve ourselves.  I also want them to think of some things they did well in 2011 - it shouldn't be all about what we need to work on.  The perfect writing project for our short week back.

My resolutions for this year?  My personal one is to feed my family healthier food.  My professional one is to really look at my centers and small groups to see what I can do to make them more meaningful.  From a management perspective the classroom runs smoothly, but I often feel like the center activities are sometimes filler and the small groups are just choral reading.  Ok, so it's not that bad, but I just want to improve it.  Suggestions are welcome!  I have two more...I am making a resolution to blog about all of the amazing work we do in my classroom :::big smiles::: and maybe, just maybe, start a store in Teachers Pay Teachers.  I also resolve to keep all of my resolutions.  The last one's a loftier goal, but hey, go big or go home.