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!

2012 Lantern Festival

This year the Hill/Box cluster was able to host our second Lantern Festival.  To read about our celebration last year check out the blog post about it here.  We learned so much from our celebration last year and I believe this one was the best yet!  One thing we changed this year is that we were able to order "lantern making kits" directly from Germany.  I was able to put the together for the students.....with only one minor injury......in case you were wondering, yes a glue gun will burn a hole in the end of your finger!

We did change this one part of the lanterns.  The kit came with tall candles that you placed down in the bottom of the lantern.........the thought of big lit candles hanging down in a lantern being carried around by 27 kids ages 5-7 didn't seem like a good idea so instead we hot glued these little candles down to the  bottom part of the lantern......and fortunately no lanterns, grass, trees OR kids caught on fire during the night!

The children decorated the sides of the lanterns which were made out of parchment paper.

This is the final product.  The kids had wooden sticks that had a little hook on the end so they could carry them around.

We borrowed tables from the library and covered them with white paper and let the kids decorate them.  The kids loved decorating the tables and really felt like they had a part in preparing for the Lantern Festival.

Our plans were to eat dinner together first and then walk around Capitol Park with our lanterns, but the one of our local news teams showed up and wanted to film us so we quickly gathered all the students and changed plans!  We gathered around a fire pit, lit the lanterns and then made a lap around the ruins while singing some of the traditional German songs we learned.

After we walked around the park we all came back inside and had dinner together.  It was so nice getting to spend time with all our families and learn about this wonderful tradition!

Our PTA was selling Boston Butts and chickens with a white sauce so that was our meet for the evening.....it was really yummy!

I believe everyone that came had a nice time.  This is a new tradition that I hope we will be able to participate in for many years to come!

Election Day

One of my favorite things about our school is how all of our students interact with each other.  When our students go outside they are able to not only play with students from their class, but also students from the two older elementary clusters.  On election day the middle and high school students wanted to do a presentation of all the presidential candidates to each of the elementary clusters.  After the middle and high school students made their presentations, our students were able to vote for the candidate of their choice.  The older students did a wonderful job campaigning for their candidate and itt was a wonderful learning experience for our little ones too!

Here are some pictures from the day.

Happy Halloween

One of my favorite things to do as a teacher is to plan activities on special days.  This year the kids wore their costumes to school and we had a party that afternoon.  Since there are so many kids (you really don't know what you're missing if you haven't spent 8 hours a day with twenty seven 5 & 6 year olds!) and we have two rooms.....we had 6 different centers (3 in Margaret's room & 3 in mine) for our party.  I have to brag........we have the most amazing group of parents (which makes sense since our kiddos are so wonderful) and we could not have made it through the party without them!  A special thank you to Hayley for running to the store when we ran out of q-tips!!!!

This was our morning snack....it is supposed to look like candy corn.....the bottom layer is pineapple, the middle layer is mandarin oranges and the top layer is cool whip.

One center was to make a ghost......we had to keep the centers simple and ones that the students could do in about 10 minutes because we were trying to keep the party to about an hour long.

Making pipe cleaner bracelets.

These are the cupcakes I made for the class.....I had this grand idea of making a Frankenstein cake, but then I figured having to actually cut a cake would just take up too much time so I made spider cupcakes instead.  This also served as one of the centers.....the kids looked so cute with green icing all over their mouths!!!

One of our parents brought us the ingredients to make apple cider (Margaret's room smelled so good!!). I found this idea on Pinterest so we used these cups so the kids could sample some apple cider.

What Halloween party would be complete without a game of Halloween BINGO.

This activity went along great with our study of the human body.....these did take a little longer than 10 minuets to complete, but fortunately we are flexible and had parents that helped!!!

At the final center we had the students make Halloween bookmarks.  Our kids love reading so much that I thought it would nice for them to all get a new bookmark.

These are just some pictures I took during the day.......the kids seemed to have a great time!

Batman

making bookmarks

making skeletons

Dinosaur

making ghosts

making bracelets

drinking apple cider

making a skeleton

Obi Wan Kenobi

Dragon

One of the parents told me that I must have such a fun job......and I really do.  Yes teaching can be exhausting sometimes, but I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world!!  I feel so blessed to get to do what I love each and every day!

Handwriting Without Tears

Here are a few pictures of some of the students using our HWT program.

working in our workbooks

working in our workbooks

Using the wet, dry, try method

Mat-Man