Gingerbread House Fun

I hope everyone is having a fabulous start to December.  I'm not sure what it is, but it seems like there is magic in the air during the Christmas season.  Everyone is so cheerful and full of the Christmas spirit.  I have been blessed with my students this year because they are not portraying the "hyped up" Christmas spirit that is sometimes displayed by students during the month of December.  They have such a great attitude and disposition.  They work hard and I try my best to make sure we have fun while we are learning. Last week we did my "How to Build a Gingerbread House" unit.
 

We began the week by making making a real gingerbread house.

I must have forgotten to take a picture of the finished product.  Every student got an opportunity to decorate it.  I called a few students over while the rest of the class worked on different centers. This made it very manageable for everyone to add their own touch to our little gingerbread house.

Then we wrote about the process together on chart paper.

  Then I released students to their seats, and they wrote their rough draft.

After they finished their writing we had a conference about their writing.  Then they finished their final draft and completed their craft.

 Have a happy writing, crafting, gingerbread makin' kinda week!

Classroom Pictures 2014-2015

Well, here it is.  A new school is once upon me.  All of those late night firefly catching, tent sleeping, pool swimming, park play dating, roller coaster riding, fish catching, chalk writing, bike riding, movie watching, and sleeping in moments have come to a close.  Sigh . .

But with another ending of a season, begins a new one!  A new excitement stirs in me.  The longing to see the spark in students' eyes when they have learned something new is so rewarding! I am extremely blessed to love all of the teachers that I work with.  I believe it doesn't get any better than that! 

And with that being said . . . drum roll please! 

Classroom photos of my first grade classroom for the 2014-2015 year. 

My classroom theme is a mixture of different things.  It is owl/chevron/vintage.  Here is a picture of the front entrance of my classroom.

To the left of my door, I have a cute little art piece that was a gift to me from a former student.  I added a little fabric and some chevron border to tie it all together. 

This is my back to school owl bulletin board.  The background is a turquoise/tealish color that you will see throughout the classroom. It is my favorite color.  It reminds me of my favorite place. . . the beach. I bought a pad of scrapbook paper, and used it to create different frames, and then inserted my little owls inside them.  The border is a roll of gift wrapping paper that I bought at Wal-Mart.  I cut the paper and scrunched it for a 3-d effect.

 And here is a close-up of the title for my bulletin board.  The last couple of years I have used the same title, so I wanted to change it up a bit this year.  My daughter and I thought of the title. Don't you just love it? 

I am very blessed to have cabinets on two of my classroom walls.  I have a ton of storage.  This is the wall to the left when you walk into the classroom.  My Daily Five & CAFE posters are hung here. 

When you walk in and look at the right, I have a spot for transportation notes for my students.  The canvas board and tree are from Hobby Lobby. 

This is the front of my classroom.  To the right is my library, and gathering area. I have my calendar on the right side of my smart board, and my objectives are posted on the left side.  I have a small desk up front that I use to put some of the technology I use to teach. 

Here is a closer look of the right side of my classroom.  I do all of my guided reading groups at the table in front of the window. 

This is a picture of the back of my classroom.  I don't have name tags on the desk yet, because I will have students pick where they want to sit during open house. 

Another view of my classroom.  The door on the right side is our bathroom.  We are so blessed to have a restroom and sink in our classrooms! I have a small fridge, microwave, and my Keurig on the counter by the sink.  The table by the front door is where I will have my listening center.  This year my team and I are planning to purchase the Reading Rainbow app to have students listen to books on the ipads.  This year I will have seventeen ipads in my classroom!

This is the counter between my student lockers and my desk.  This is my writing center.  I bought those cute little buckets hung on the wall from IKEA.  The white paper tray is also from IKEA.  I am going to have different slots for different types of paper.  To the left of the paper sorter is where I am going to put different colors in its own can.  As I am using cans when I am cooking, I am covering them with different colored vintage paper.  I made a little white sign with directions for my writing area.  I am going to make posters that contain ideas for different things to write about.  I just haven't gotten to it yet. 

This is a picture of my word wall.  The word walls words contain Fry first one hundred words and are available on my tpt store. 

Here is a closer view of my desk area.  I covered the front of my desk with more wrapping paper that I bought at Wal-Mart.

I have two small, inexpensive book shelves from Wal-Mart.  This is where students store their book boxes when they are not being used.  I will use the bottom shelf to have students store their student binders.  Those are also available on my tpt store. 

This will be my word work area.  I bought this adorable cart from IKEA.  When I saw it, I knew I had to have it!  I am going to put more word work materials in the other shelves as I introduce them. 

Here is closer view of my objectives board.

And boy am I in LOVE with the way this frame turned out!  It was actually free!  Someone bought the frame from Good Will, and gave it to me.  The frame was bronze?!  Can you believe that?  It looks so much more beautiful in white. I just spray painted it to give it an amazing look. I made the student work poster, added some string, and a few cute clothespins. 

The white book shelf on the left will contain my math centers.  The little numbered tubs are from IKEA. The shelf on the right contains materials for students to use.

And here is my calendar area.  It looks a little plain, but with time we will add different math concepts to it as I teach them.  I made the posters on the top, and the numbers for the calendar.  The calendar was at the teacher store, but it didn't have any cute matching numbers, so I made my own. 

I love my objectives board.  I am going to insert the paper with the objective inside the clear plastic sleeve on the paper. 

Here is my science bulletin board.  These posters are also on my tpt store. 

Here is my vocabulary board.  I made my own sign.  I tried to make it a little bit unique by making the letters out of scrabble letters.  The boarder is the same scrunched up paper from the bulletin board outside my classroom.  It is used throughout the room. 

And oh do I love my new map! Sometimes, life is 2-d not a big round globe. I made my own social studies title.  The postcard on the bottom of the map is from California.  We are going to pen pal with another class, and they have already sent us a postcard.  I can't wait to show them on the map!

This bench is beside my library.  It is also from IKEA.  My mother-in-law made the cushion for it.  I still need to find big containers to put inside the shelves.  I am going to put all of my animal books in there.  I have way too many of them.  This is the perfect solution. 

Here is a close-up of my library baskets.  The labels are from School Girl. 

And here is my guided reading area.  My mother-in-law also made the bucket seats.  The material on the bucket seats are from two years ago. I use the bookshelf and baskets on the left of the table to store my guided reading materials.  On the wall to the left of my desk is a little spice rack I bought at IKEA.  Are you tired of hearing about IKEA yet?  Sorry, I absolutely love this place.  I live two hours away from it!  So sad.  Anyways, I placed colored mason jars in it.  I am going to store all of my writing utensils inside the jars.  This allows me to have more space on my table.  Last year I had a basket with lots of writing goodies on my table, and it.drove.me.crazy! I like for my students to have more space during our guided reading time. 

These are my student lockers.  The owl name tags are also from School Girl. 

I also put vintage scrapbook paper behind my emergency procedures to spruce them up a little bit. 

And this is the view from my desk.  I hope you enjoyed the tour of my classroom.  Please leave me some comments and let me know what you think!  

Five For Friday & Singapore Math

1.  Recently my school was extremely blessed to have someone come to our school for a whole day and give us training on using "Singapore Math" techniques. I learned so many things and look forward to blogging about what I learned.  I'm not sure how familiar everyone is with number bonds, but I began to use addition using number bonds in the beginning of the school year.  However, after our training, I felt like I had a deeper understanding on how to use and teach number bonds.  This week I used number bonds to teach my students the different ways to make ten.  During our training I learned just how important it is for students to have the mastery of 10.  It is the building block for math the rest of their lives. 

Bad picture.  Sorry, but I wanted to share a visual.

Something else we learned was the power of the bracelet!  Below is a picture of a bracelet made of pipe cleaners and beads.  We used this bracelet to as a visual for students to see how you can add two numbers to equal ten.  After I introduced them to the problem, I completed flipped the bracelet around to show them that 3 + 7 is the same thing as 7 + 3.  You will keep on getting the same answer.  We used the wording "turn around fact.  Ideally I should have used two different color beads.  Five of each different color.

We also made renkenreks.  Below is a picture.  Once again we used pipe cleaners and beads.  We also used craft material to attach the pipe cleaners.  It is another manipulative used to teach students how to add. I will blog about that more on a later time.

2.  Greater Than, Less Than

We also used different Singapore Math techniques to learn greater and less than in our classroom.  I created this tpt unit with different printables, visuals, and methods to teach greater and less than.

 You can click here and it will take you to tpt to see a preview of this unit. Below are some pics of a game we played in class to learn greater and less than.  The directions are in my unit if you are interested.  

I created this cube using a Boggle Junior game cube.  I just wrote the words on the cube on labels.

Look at these cuties having fun.

3.  Number bond bulletin board. Isn't it adorable?  

I differentiated this lesson by using splitting my class into students who could add to 20 fluently and those who could add to 10 fluently.  The craft is really simple and cute.  I used my silhouette to cute flowers out. Students wrote numbers on the flowers, we added green tissue paper, and a ribbon and viola.  Adorable!  

4.  Easter

I hope everyone had a blessed Easter.  I was blessed enough to spend it with my sister and her family.  We husband is in ministry so we moved and don't live close to family.  We have fallen in love with our community, and are happy here.  But holidays are no fun without family!  

5.  Legoland

Recently during our spring break my family and I went to Legoland.  It was AMAZING! My overall review of Legoland is that  I would recommend it to anyone.  No matter the age!  I think the online reviews did not give it justice.  We have such a great time with all of our children.  The best part is that is very reasonably priced compared to other parks. Below are way too many pictures!  I thought people might want to see some images since the park is somewhat newer.