Countdown to Disney

Since my grand-daughter found out that we are going to Disney to celebrate our birthdays, she has been telling people that we are going tomorrow.  My grand-daughter will be five years old in April.  I will be five times ten. ;)

On Pinterest, I keep seeing Disney countdown ideas.  There are some really cool ideas.  I like to put my own spin on the pins.

Really Cool

This is a Favorite

The teacher in me wanted to make this a "teachable moment" for my grand-daughter. The countdown chain is totally awesome, but I wanted my four year old to be able to see the numbers and make a connection.  While I cut out the Mickey Mouse silhouette on my Cricut, she put the numbers in the chart.  She said, "It's a lot of numbers."  I told her, "That's because there's a lot of days before we go."

She takes this stuff seriously

The numbers were in order when I gave them to her, but occasionally she would put the numbers in the wrong place.  I pointed out the pattern to her.  Whenever she would mess up, she would stop and look.  She knew something was wrong, but she didn't know how to fix it.  I would remind her about the  pattern.  It was funny when she got to 66.  She put it in upside down. I told her to look at the numbers around it, and she fixed it.

She found the perfect spot for the chart.

Now she knows that when all the numbers are covered, we will be on our way to Disney.  When she comes to my house, she can see how many days are left.  She is very familiar with our My Disney Experience page, so she will probably know if I haven't updated the chart.  I think I'll put stickers on the numbers to set goals for when to confirm the details of our trip, confirm car rental, pack, and other trip details that come to mind.

My next project will be to make a Busy Bag for her.  Later I will make an autograph book. 

Coin Poem Poster

In order to make sure that my first graders were able to identify and know the value of coins, I usually use play money as part of my classroom management.  This year I decided to use the clip chart management system, at the beginning of school.   After Christmas, I integrated play money with the clip chart management system.  Several students had a difficult time with counting their money, so I needed something to help them.  We memorized the Coin Poem which I found on Pinterest.  I sent copies of the poem home with the students too.

Coin Poem

Someone had given me some extra large coins from Dollar Tree.  I already had the star border, also from Dollar Tree.  After I glued everything onto yellow bulletin board paper,  it was still missing something.  I found some coin stickers in my sticker drawer.  My Dollar Tree border turned into an original border.

I found my students using the poster throughout the year. They also reminded each other to use the poster when they noticed a classmate having trouble.  I only wish I had thought of it sooner.  Although I will not be using this type of behavior management in the media center, I thought it would helpful for other teachers.

I Speak For the Trees

This week has been full of Seuss.  We were able to integrate writing, math, social studies, and science with Dr. Seuss books. 

Dr. Seuss Math

Some of my most reluctant students showed off their writing skills with their versions of some Dr. Seuss stories.  A favorite was There's Wocket in My Pocket.  Thanks to Rachelle at What the Teacher Wants, my students were able to imagine a pocket creature that rhymes with pocket.  Students also wrote about their favorite Dr. Seuss books.  Our Thing One and Thing Two Glyphs were too cute.  It was my fault that they glued the hair on wrong, but they are still too cute.  Kimberly Edgerton's directions for the Dr. Seuss glyph were clear, but I failed to make a sample before the students did the activity. The students learned that a glyph is a display of collected information in the form of a picture instead of a graph.

We used One Fish! Two Fish! Red Fish! Blue Fish! to graph Gold Fish Crackers and to do nonstandard measurement.  We also used Oh, the Places You'll Go! for nonstandard measurement.  Marlana at Li'l Country Kindergarten provided a 100 chart picture of The Cat in the Hat.

Using toy cars to measure our paths

During our discussions, we made connections with modes of transportation when we read Oh, the Places You'll Go!  After watching a Sneetches video, students made a text-to-text and text-to-world connection with Freedom on the Menu and the civil rights movement.  I usually save The Lorax for Earth Day, but since I was The Lorax, and the movie started today, I just had to read it.  Thing One was quick to make a connection about how we need to take care of the Earth by planting trees and stop being wasteful.  I shared that the reason I choose to dress up as The Lorax is because my birthday is on Earth Day.

I Speak for the Trees

There was so much to do, that we weren't able to finish our Oobleck.  The students who were able to make Oobleck today, also had to mix colors to make the color green.  That was not intended to be part of the lesson, but the students were able to witness some problem-solving in action. I might as well get a big bottle of green food coloring so we can finish this project and be ready for St. Patrick's Day.

The whole school celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday by dressing up and decorating bulletin boards.  Teachers switched classes and read a Dr. Seuss book. I enjoyed visiting kindergarten, because I was able to see who might be in my room next year. 

Calculators

Not only do I get some great ideas by blogging, it also allows me to reflect while sharing what's going on in my classroom. After a math activity today, I am wondering why I haven't introduced calculators before now. I assumed since my first graders are surrounded with Wii's, ActivBoards, iPods, PDA's, and Smartphones, they knew something about calculators. I let them explore before presenting the problem.

"It's not working!" is what I heard when I told them to add the numbers in a pattern. One student was confident that he had the answer. When I walked around to see what was happening, most of the calculators had, 53535353. Yikes! We were a little late for class pictures while we went step-by-step to solve the problem. The students were amazed when they finally pressed the equals key, and the number 32 appeared.

Lesson Learned: Introduce calculators like it is a brand new form of technology. One student insisted that calculators would make a great phone. :) After we learn more about calculators, a few will be put in our math centers for students to practice independently. I'll be looking for and sharing some calculator math activities.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

We started our Dr. Seuss celebration by reading One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.  Then we sorted and graphed Goldfish crackers.  After coloring in the graphs, the students answered some questions about the information.  They ate the crackers as they worked. 

Mouthful of Math

We have been busy learning about teeth and integrating it with math.  A wonderful dental hygienist brought Alli Alligator to help her tell students about dental care. Our first grade classes made a line plot with the number of teeth lost.  We used the line plot to make an interactive bulletin board. 

Students also did a cute and fun activity using marshmallows.  Before gluing the marshmallows on their self-portraits, the students answered some story problems.  The story problems featured a few of their classmates.  Finally, the students completed story problems and number sentences to go with their self-portraits.  I think we'll finish up with a healthy snack.

Here is the worksheet that students completed before creating the self-portraits. I used my students' names. Feel free to change the names. 

100th Day & The Wolf's Chicken Stew

We had a 2-hour delay on the 100th day of school.  We didn't get to do everything I planned, but I did have time to make these chicks to use with a math activity.  The idea was adapted from a Mailbox Magazine (Dec. 2007-08) activity.

I read the story, The Wolf's Chicken Stew by Keiko Kasza.  I divided my class in half (well 5 and 4).  While the other half of my class went with another teacher to do a descriptive writing activity, my group skip counted by 5's.  As the students fed their chicks 5 cookies, the group counted by 5's.  After we counted 100 cookies, the students counted how many cookies each chick had.  I had to participate with the second group.  The second group counted by 10's.  When I did this activity with a team member's class, we counted by 10's.  I asked them, "If all 8 chicks get 10 cookies, how many will be left?"  One student was quick to tell me, "20."  I then asked what we should do with the left-overs.  They said to count by 2's until they were all gone.  When they counted their cookies, they realized that some chicks had more cookies than the others.  We decided that 100 cookies could not be shared equally between 8 chicks.

Who Took The Cookies?

After reading Who Took the Cookies?, we made our own version of the book. My goal was integrate writing and math. The students drew 12 cookies in the cookie jar. They picked a card with a number from 1-12 and crossed out that many cookies. To act it out, the students took the same amount of construction paper cookies from a "cookie jar", and counted what was left. Then they were able to write a number sentence and story problem. Some students used the number words in their story problems.

 Crumb Snatcher

I assembled the book in order from 1-12. A picture of each child taking the cookies from the jar was placed on their page. I had to have it for evidence ;) The class picture was on the last page. Of course we had cookies and milk for snack.

So Tempting!

 

Trying to Wipe Away the Evidence