Veterans Day

At The Capitol School we have chosen to be in school the day of Veterans Day so we can have a special day to teach our students about our Veterans.  I feel it is very important for our students to meet local Veterans and learn about the many sacrifices they make for our country.  This year we had one of our student's grandfather come and talk to us about his time as an Army Ranger.  The students were amazed at his stories and really learned a lot.  

Showing the students pictures from his many deployments.

The students really liked getting to look at all the medals!

This year I wanted the students to make some sort of craft (I try to fit in crafts as often as possible!) that we could keep in our room to remind them of what they learned on Veterans Day. While looking on Pinterest the weekend before Veterans Day I found a blog where an entire second grade made an American Flag out of paper rings.  You can visit the blog here.  We had just covered patterns a month or so prior to Veterans Day so I thought this would be a great math project.  I knew my students would be able to do this, but I had no idea how fabulous it would turn out!

I LOVE the finished product!!!  It fit perfectly on this blank brick wall in my room.  The students were so proud of themselves.  I think the fact that it is HUGE really impressed them.  I nailed each strand into the ceiling (having my classroom in the oldest wooden structure in Tuscaloosa county came in handy!) and other than being completely covered in dust and whatever else fell from the ceiling and causing the teacher from upstairs to come downstairs and make sure everything was ok (she could hear me hammering away!) it was pretty painless.

Veterans Day 2012 was a wonderful day of celebration.  I am so thankful for all the men and women that have served so that we can live in this great nation......I truly felt honored to teach my students about them!

Happy Birthday Dr. Suess

In the U.S we celebrate Dr. Suess' birthday (March 2nd) by having a holiday called Read Across America Day / I love to Read Day.  In our class we generally celebrate this day by the kids wearing their pjs and having different guests come and read to our class throughout the day.  This year we ended up closing school at lunch due to possible tornado weather that afternoon (welcome to Alabama springs!).  The kids were heartbroken that we didn't get to do all of our planned activities.  So we rescheduled "I Love to Read Day" to some time later....and honestly, probably due to the fact that I've looked at my statistics textbook today for so many hours I can hardly see straight, I can't remember when we rescheduled it for....but bottom line we were able to reschedule and the kids were able to wear their pjs and share their favorite books.  It was a wonderful day!  I have LOVED to read for as long as I can remember and I desire so much to teach my students to love to read.

Here are some pictures of a few activities we did to celebrate "I Love to Read Day"

We read the story One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss and then used colored goldfish to practice our graphing skills.

one of my favorite Dr. Seuss quotes

The kids used their hands and red, white and blue paint to create their versions of Thing 1 and Thing 2. They really enjoyed painting with their hands and I thought they turned out so cute!!!

This was the finished product!

Valentine's in April

No we didn't really celebrate Valentine's Day in April.....I'm just blogging about Valentine's Day in April.  The reason I'm so far behind.......GRAD SCHOOL!!!  It has completely taken over my life....literally I feel as if it is all I do.....besides teach and tutor! But after sitting in a faculty meeting this afternoon where we talked about blogging and seeing that my last post hadn't been since who remembers when I decided grad school homework or no grad school homework I had to find some time to catch up on the happenings of the Hill/Box cluster.  So get ready....I've just had 2 full glasses of tea....I'm stressed about upcoming grad school finals & comps so I might get real crazy and publish several blogs tonight!  So forgive me because they probably won't be in ANY kind of order, but order is not a word I seem to know the meaning of these days!

OK back to the kiddos and the cute/amazing things they have been doing!

I LOVE celebrating ANY holiday or any special occasion with my kids....I love getting to come up with new, creative activities for them to do.

 One activity that our intern, Ms. Wynne, came up with was an adorable box for the kids to put their Valentine's in.....and fortunately subway (one of the places the kids could order lunch from that month) sent the kids' lunches in these perfect sized boxes.  Ms. Wynne collected enough boxes for our class and spray painted them white (on her on time I might add).  Before our party Ms. Wynne (her name is Hallie, but you get used to calling someone Mr., Mrs. or Ms. when you teach!) brought in several different items and let the kids each decorate their own box.  The kids LOVED doing this.....they took so much care to where each and every sticker/paper/stencil went.

finished "mailbox"

Another great idea, and this one came from Mrs. Hill (see it is double hard for me to call her Margaret...#1 I say Mrs. Hill in front of the kids.....#2 she was my teacher....and it's just hard to call her Margaret...)....she went to the store and bought enough helium balloons for each child to have one and filled our room with them.  It was a wonderful idea!  When the kids arrived at school that morning they were so excited to see all of the balloons!  And I must say it did make everything a little more festive.....I mean who doesn't love a room full of balloons! The kids did a great job too.....once the "newness" wore off we were actually (believe it or not) able to get some work done in our room full of balloons!

Since I teach math, I always try to find fun math related activities for each of our special days.  We had just recently talked about odd and even numbers so I was really excited to find a odd/even Valentine coloring page.

Another math activity that Mrs. Hill did with our kids was finding a kiss on the 100s board.  Before "work time" Mrs. Hill hid several Hershey's kisses around the room....each kiss had a number (from 1 to 100) written on the bottom.  The kids had to find the kisses and then figure out where they went on the 100s board.  I'm not sure we found all the numbers.....I have a feeling a few were eaten before they made it back to the 100s board!

This picture is actually from one of the kids I tutor, but it was a valentine's activity so I thought I would share it.  This art activity had several hearts drawn on a piece of paper that overlapped.  Each heart had a color written on it.....the students used torn paper or tissue paper and glued them on the hearts......if the hearts overlapped, the student had to decide if the colors (of the two big hearts) were mixed together what color you would get.

This cute little game my students really enjoyed.  I don't know what it is about 5-7 year olds but you can get them to do just about ANYTHING if you tell them it's a game or a competition.  Almost everyday after lunch I say "I want to see who can clean up the room the fastest".....you would think I had told them I would give them all the chocolate in the world some of them move so fast!  This game was called "Roll and Draw a Love Bug".  A student would roll a dice and depending on the number they rolled, they would get to draw a body part of their "love bug"......the first person to completely draw their bug won!

So that in a nutshell was our Valentine's Day.  I'm sure I left out so much, but after more than two months those are the highlights! It was a wonderful day.....I believe I had more Valentine's gifts and was told "Happy Valentine's Day" more than I ever have been before.  Being with these 23 kids will make anyone feel special and loved!

February Work

I am a bit no I'm very behind on my blogging so even though I just posted what we did in January this post is about what we have been doing in February.

ice cream blends

One new "shelf work" activity we have is called "I Scream for Ice Cream".  This template can be found here.  If you have never been to the Teachers Pay Teachers website I recommend you giving it a try.  In addition to activities/games/printables that you can purchase there are also TONS of freebies!  For "I Scream for Ice Cream" the student matches the different ice creams (which have words on them) with the ice cream cones that have different letter blends on them (sh, th, ch, wh).  This activity also has a sheet of paper where the students can practice writing the words.

Race to 50

This February math game is called "Race to 50".  The students have some sort of token (we used candy heart erasers).  Each student starts on 1 and rolls a dice.  The students moves the number of spaces on the dice.  This helps the students learn addition of higher numbers by saying the addition problem out loud.  For example if a student was on the number 35 and then rolled a 6....they would say "35 plus 6 is 41".....then the student would move their token to 41 and then pass the dice to the next player.

This is another math activity that our wonderful intern created for our students.  This math game is called "Bang" and the students love it!  Bang can be played with two or more players.  One great thing about this game is that it is simple to make and can be adapted for many different abilities.  On large craft sticks write some sort of math equation on the majority of them (we used addition) and then write the word "bang" on a few craft sticks.  The first player draws a stick and answers the math problem.  If they get it correct then they get to keep the stick.  If the students gets a "bang" then they have to put all of their sticks back into the container.  The first player to reach 5 sticks wins!

Another "shelf work" activity we have out for February is making patterns with hearts.  I also found this at TPT.  I printed out this template onto cardstock, colored it and then laminated it.  Pattens are found throughout math and it is so beneficial for our students to be able to recognize them.

The following pictures are of some other activities we are doing in our room....enjoy!

arranging flowers

heart shape cookie cutters & play dough

pink & red jewels to help with math

heart punches