Let's Go Fly a Kite

Today was a BEAUTIFUL spring day.  The sky was the most amazing shade of blue, the wind was blowing, and it was cool enough you needed a jacket...well cold natured me needed a jacket!

This afternoon as all of the elementary students were outside playing one of the teachers mentioned that it was "perfect kite flying weather".  Fortunately Mrs. Spencer remembered someone had donated some kites to her class some time ago.  So she got the kites and after we put them together we let the kids have fun!  It was a wonderful afternoon.....to me there's no better sound than hearing my kiddos laughing and having a good time.  I took some pictures from my phone...because of course I didn't have my real camera at school today....so these pictures might not be great quality, but I hope you enjoy!

What a great afternoon!  I love (and am so thankful) that I work at a school to where we are able to do something like this.....it was a perfect afternoon!

A Little Bit of Science

First let me say has anyone noticed that this is my 5th blog post for this weekend?!?!?!  So I know that doesn't make up for the lack of blogging over the past few months, but I am gradually marking off some of the items on my never ending list of things to blog about!

Margaret teaches science to our kiddos and she does a FANTASTIC job!  I am always amazed at how she is able to take these advanced concepts and teach them in a way in which 5-7 year olds can understand.  Here are some pictures of what the kids have been doing in science over the past several weeks!

 One activity that the kids loved was painting with air.  Paint was placed on the paper and then the students used straws and air to create a picture.  They turned out really pretty!

While our intern, Ms. Wynne, was with us she taught a unit on seeds and plants.  These next few pictures are activities that Ms. Wynne set up as "shelf work" for the students to do.

bean sorting

labeling the parts of a plant

coloring and naming the parts of a plant

flower grid math game

some of the students planting some seeds

Ms. Wynne reading the kids a book about plants.

These next 2 pictures are from several months ago, but I thought this was a great activity so I wanted to share it with you.  In the fall, the kids learned about states of matter.  During this lesson the kids had a huge bowl of water that they had to place different items in to see if they would sink or float.

So that is a brief overview of what we have been doing in science the past few weeks.  Right now the students are learning about caterpillars.  I need to start writing down all the ways the word caterpillar has been said over the past week.....so far I think my favorite is "calladiller".  Margaret ordered a few dozen caterpillars that will in a few days hopefully change into beautiful butterflies.  In math we are studying about measurement so I'll try and get a few pictures of that as well!

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!

Singapore Math

During the 2010-2011 school year the teachers at The Capitol School had an inservice day where we had an intro course to Singapore math.  For those of you that aren't educators or have never heard of Singapore math let me give you a brief overview......

Singapore is from...you guessed it Singapore.  According to the Singapore math website (which you can visit here) back in the late 1990s a group of researchers began studying how students from different countries performed on standardized tests.  It was noticed that over several years students from Singapore consistently scored higher in mathematics than other countries throughout the world.  So obviously they were doing something right and these individuals wanted to bring this type of math education to the United States.  The Singapore math program is a variety of workbooks, textbooks and manipulatives that have been taken from Singapore and developed for students in the United States.

picture taken from Singapore math website

So after all of us teachers spent an entire day of learning about this "new" way to teach math, we decided that this was a program we felt would benefit our students greatly.  One thing I love about our school is that we are able to adapt what we do to best meet the needs of our students.....so if something doesn't work....we change it!  So in our class we use Singapore math, but we also use a lot of Montessori materials, as well as games/activities for different math topics (money, time, measurement etc.).  Singapore math is very visual...which is wonderful because it helps explain your basic math concepts in a way that students really get it.  In 2010 the New York Times wrote a really great article about some schools in New York using Singapore math....the article gives a great overview of the program as well as some pros and cons of using it....to read this article simply click here.

This is what our workbooks look like. Since we use many different ways to teach math we use the 1A book for students that are in our class for the first time (generally students that are 5 and will turn 6 within the school year) and the 1B book for students that are in our class for the second time (generally students that are 6 and will turn 7 within the school year).

This is an example of what one of the workbook pages look like.......they often have a math problem written as a word problem with lots of visuals & manipulatives to help the student determine the answer.

So right now we use Singapore math.....if it doesn't work in the future we will change, but right now I am really enjoying using this and I believe it is very helpful for my students.  I will try to take some pictures of the kids using Singapore math and upload them on another post!

Pinterest....my new favorite teacher addiction

So for those of you living under a rock or not one to do trendy things on the internet, Pinterest maybe something new for you.  Pinterest is basically an internet pin board.  Each person can create their own "boards".....you give your board a name and begin pinning.  What you pin is websites, blogs, or basically anything that you find online that you one day might want to revisit.  If you haven't heard of Pinterest and want to know more, the best thing to do is to visit the website here.

As most people my age that have a Pinterest account I have the boards for my "future home", "future wedding", "bucket list" and all that, but what I really use Pinterest for is teaching!  I have found the cutest ideas for things to do in our room through Pinterest.  Rather than go on and on about all the different items I have found, I thought I would just add some pictures and let them do the talking!

great for teaching place value

to help remember which is the minute hand and which is the hour hand

Horton Hears a Who

We actually made these "Thing 1" and Thing 2" hands....I'll try to add the pictures to another blog post....they were beyond adorable!

one of my favorite Dr. Seuss quotes!

Roll & Draw a Love Bug

odd/even coloring page used for Valentine's Day

 These are two activities that I plan on using this summer for my "Wild Wacky Weather" class.

One aspect of Pinterest that I really like is that you have access to tons of great teacher blogs.....often times people have their blogs blocked to where you can't find them by doing a google search, but if someone pins it on Pinterest then you can find it....I have found a lot of great ideas this way.

So that is my short and sweet version of Pinterest......it is wonderful....it is VERY addictive, but the fact that I use it for work makes it not that bad....right?

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!