Happy Dance!

Yeah! I got my first two followers this weekend. I literally jumped out of my chair and throw my hands in the air because I now feel people are actually reading my blog so a huge thank you to Holly at Crisscross Applesauce and Haily at Following Optimism. Seriously you two made my day!
First up here are the photos I have been promising!

Judge the right way. Notice the radiant smile!

Juj the wrong way. Doesn't he look silly?

Here is our praying mantis castle.

Every day I was getting asked "I'm done what can I do?" And everyday I responded the same way rattling off the same list of things. This was fine except I would do it multiple times a day for the same students. Needless to say I was getting sick of what felt was listing off the specials of the day and some of my students were tired of having me repeat them so I created this lovely poster.

It is magically I tell you. I have not had to share the daily specials anymore. Students even direct each other to the poster! Bonus I have more students filling each other's buckets. This always make me happy to see!

Thank you to all those having sales at TPT. I got more than my share and everything is fabulous! Can't wait to use it in my classroom! I am SO excited and gearing up for the holidays adventures in my classroom. I honestly don't know who is more excited me or the students!

Teaching Moment

I have to share an aha moment from yesterday!! Yes I had school yesterday and not just half a day- the whole 8 hours at school. Some of you might be thinking that's a lot of time but it is still not enough to fit everything in. I know you are all SO jealous, but this moment made it so much better.

So my first grade friends struggle with some of the tricky spellings of sounds...and really who wouldn't. I mean they just mastered that when you hear the j sound you are to write j but then... so let's change it up if you hear a j at the beginning of the word it is just a j, but at the end of the word it is -dge. CONFUSING!

I know I am rambling- so I am getting to the point I promise! We were reviewing sounds including bossy r and h brothers and j and -dge. I keep using the word judge since it has a beginning and ending j sound. I wrote it judge and then juj to say how silly juj looked. Then one of my precious student raises her hand and says "Miss. Lang it looks like a man with a silly mouth." And the best part was she was exactly right so I turned it into a face. Laughs broke out but it seemed to work but my students got it. YAY!! So I said I was turning it into a poster so we could remember this. Lucky for me one of my other students took over that task and made a poster for each -the right way to spell judge and the wrong way. Even though the teacher and creator in me who loves fonts, colors, and clipart wants to use my computer to make my own I will be displaying my student's. :)

Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures - forgot in the craziness of yesterday. I promise I will have those on Monday for you.

I want to tell you about a fabulous giveaway from Crisscross Applesauce in First Grade! Check it out! I discovered Holly and her FABULOUS blog a few weeks ago. I love her Holly and can totally related to her especially since she is a fellow Michigan girl :) She truly loves what she does and her students definitely check out her post of Influential People.

Thankfulness!

I love this idea and couldn't wait to get some time to join my first linky party- especially since it is about being thankful. So here I go (and I will try to keep this short with no rambling :)) 


1.  What are you thankful for in your classroom?

My students. They are a caring and creative bunch of individuals who surprise me in ways every day. Like one day someone split their water bottle and all of them grabbed some paper towel to help that student. They are one of the few groups of any group of people I know who would do that. :) They also push me to do more as a teacher. Other things I am super thankful for that I use daily are sharpies, my smartboard, and index cards. (I swear I could make just about any center using sharpies and index cards. )

2. What person are you most thankful for? 
The short answer is my family. 
The one I am actually related to and the one I have created out of dear family friends and life long friends of mine and the ones I have never got the chance to meet. For each of them has had a tremendous influence on my life. I am reminded daily of someone by a song, food, or even a saying. They have made the person I am today. 
And also my work family. They are so supportive and helpful and also know when we just need to have a laugh. I have had the best time working with all of them!

3. What 3 blogs are you most thankful for? I am new to the whole blogging scene and LOVE it!! The first blog I ever came across was First Grader...at Last. I ABSOLUTELY love Sarah's ideas! The first idea I ever borrowed was her reward binder and it is a huge hit in my classroom. 

I adore The First Grade Parade!!! Cara's blog was the second blog I came across and I have been a faithfully reader ever since!! I get so inspired reading all the activities and happenings in her classroom. 

I have been blog stalking Heather's Hearts. She has many great ideas that are so simple to use in the classroom. She often has been free activities and printables to use too!! And they are fantastic I have used a few. 

I am also a big fan of The Inspired Apple and Fabulous in First and CrissCross Applesauce in First Grade (she is a fellow Michigan teacher)! And many others I seriously read as many as I can. You all are the reason I joined this blogging world. There are so many amazing ideas!! This blogging world is such a source of inspiration for me. 

  

4. What guilty pleasure are you most thankful for?
My new one is Pinterest! Seriously it might be bordering on addiction! So many good ideas and now just need to find the time to do them because as teachers we have so much free time. 
Sports is my guilt pleasure especially college basketball. I could watch it all day long (and that is not an exaggeration).  I admit to being an ESPN junkie. Go Michigan State!!

5. What are you most thankful for?

Family, friends, and the outdoors these are my three pillars and without them I would not be able to do what I LOVE every day- TEACHING!

One of my favorite places in the world!! When I go here everything feels alright. 

"You're the Queen Ant of the Classroom"

What a week! I swear I was getting sick because I couldn't last any longer than 8:30 each night, which is not like me at all. I work later into the night usually- not always by choice.

We are learning about different types of animals this week which puts me on overload as I love to us Planet Earth clips and also I found a bunch of Planet Earth flashcards at the dollar section of Target when I was student teaching plus Magic School Bus episodes about insects. My students were just as excited as I was. They couldn't wait to read the flashcards and see the amazing pictures of the animals. We used the flashcards to sort animals into the different types. We build our own insects to help understand that every insect has 3 body parts and 6 legs. Otherwise many would still think a spider is one. I only had cotton balls available but next time I am using tiny styrofoam balls I think it will work out much better. Still my students were VERY proud of their insects. One of my students after learning more about ants told me as I was tying his shoe, "Miss. Lang, you are the queen ant of the room." I love how they save some of the craziest but also knowledgable things at the right moment. :)

My wonderful aunt found a praying mantis ootheca (their version of a chryalis) which she gave to me. My students were THRILLED to have a class pet (as they call it)! We have to wait for spring to see what will happen with them and it could be a long wait for some.

We built a castle this week for a social studies unit and they decided the castle should be for the praying mantis. That is why there are P's on all the flags. Still have to put the finishing touches on it but it looks fantastic.

The castle wall in progress.

The towers waiting for the main castle and keep to dry.

In math we have been working with money and trying to begin doing addition and subtraction mentally. We have been pretending our hands were statues so we didn't use all of our fingers but tried counting in our heads. This is really hard things for many of my students to do but they are working on it. A game I have had available all week for the students in a store game. One version is just with coins using only pennies and nickels. The other is using dollars but only $5 and $1. The students take turns being the storeowner and buyers. They have to use the least amount of coins and dollars that they can. (If I didn't say this they would be giving each other 11 pennies instead of even thinking about using nickels.)

November

So right now it feels like Halloween was months ago with all the conferences, report cards, and assessments that have taken over my life leaving little time for anything else. Plus I was introduced to Pinterest and needless to say I found another way to get great teaching ideas. Here is my teaching idea board if you would like to take a look :)

We have been busy this week with projects including making Veteran's flag similar to those from The Inspired Apple. We made turkeys to decorate our room. I have to say I love how these turned out.

To wrap up our communities and Ancient Greece unit we created a mural where the class was split into three teams -one to complete each part. The teams worked so well together and recorded many ideas we didn't even review about communities. Plus the fact new markers were added to the marker drawer added to excitement.

Halloween and more

We all survived the wonderful Halloween Monday!! I do believe it is a cruel trick to play on all teachers. Once again I used ideas I have found from blogs I am following for my Halloween activities. Unfortunately it was so crazy I hardly had time to take any pictures.
We started the morning by making applesauce. Oh my goodness...this was a great idea. My students did better at cutting and peeling then I anticipated. They worked really well together too which always makes me happy. The bonus is the fact our classroom smelled delicious all day long!! I might start making applesauce more often just for this added bonus! :)

We did The Candy Corn Bandit Activity from Abby at The Inspired Apple. It was a wonderful activity! Students made great predictions and were delighted to find out treat not eaten or at least completely eaten by the bandit.

For our reading time we read The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Everything. We worked to retell the story and made these cute scarecrows out of pipecleaners to help us remember how the story goes. The students really liked the story as they can help read it with you.

I also came up with this sequence activity we just did in science about the lifecycle of a pumpkin to help with understanding lifecycles but also with sequencing. After they got to the pumpkin stage they had to decide what they would do with their pumpkin. I really like the pie one student came up with!

Happy November!!