December Fun

The month of December is always my favorite teaching month of the year! So many fun activities and events taking place in such a short amount of time. This month we worked on lots of art projects but two of my favorites were the ones below. First we spent some time working on a Christmas tree directed draw. Each child drew his or her own tree and then we watercolored them after coloring the tree decorations in with crayons. Second, we worked on a very special parent gift for each child's parents. The kids painted their hands green and made a circle wreath, finishing it off with a red hand-painted bow and red fingerprint berries. They turned out so cute I even decided to make one with my own girls over the break!

November Math

Our class has been using the Bridges math curriculum to find and explore patterns in numbers. Our first graders made a sea star quilt and our second graders worked on counting and multiplying by 2s using pictures we drew of our eyes. 

Solar System Unit

We finished our unit on the planets of the solar system this week. We ended our unit with a fun art project. The kids did a great job drawing each of the planets in order and coloring them. We then painted over our pictures with black watercolor. I think they turned out super cute and the class seemed to really enjoy creating them.

Art Literacy

On Friday, Mrs. Bittner led us through a super fun art lit lesson on Bev Doolittle. The class spent lots of time looking at Bev's paintings and trying to find her hidden pictures. Each child then had a chance to create their own camouflage drawing where they tried to hide certain animals in their art work. The class loved this lesson and had so much fun creating their art pieces. A big thank you to Mrs. Bittner for all her help in our class last week. 

Candy Corn Bandit

We had some special fall pencils sitting out in our classroom as a treat to earn and the Candy Corn Bandit showed up and took them while we were on our field trip Wednesday! We found a clue in our room that led us around the school and eventually back to our room where were found treats and candy corns all over our tables! We are still undecided about who our mystery Candy Corn Bandit might be. :)

Moon Projects

We have been very busy working on lots of projects about the moon. We learned about the phases of the moon and wrote stories about what we would do if we took a trip to the moon. 

Feeling Blessed

Today was my birthday and I was completely spoiled my class and my family! 

My husband and girls sent the most beautiful flowers to school this morning. Then my class surprised me with an afternoon party complete with cake and balloons! My class was so sweet and they all went in together to get me a gift card to Disneyland (our very favorite place to visit) wrapped in the cutest little 1-2 Buckle My Shoes theme! It was a perfect day spent with my most favorite people in the world and I could not be more thankful for all of those who went out of their way to make me feel special today. Thank you!

I Want To Learn About...

Our class is in a unique position this year because we don't really have any set themes or units to follow. We have the freedom to pick and choose what we would like to study and learn about! 

I gave each child a piece of paper today and let them write down at least five things they would like to learn about this year. Our top three class choices were ocean animals, outer space, and farm animals, with volcanos as a very close fourth. I have already begun to create some units around these themes and I am excited to tie in some of the less popular list items as well. 

Here are few of my favorite lists from today. :)

Ready for Day One

It's been a long time since I worked all Labor Day weekend but I was very thankful to have the extra time to get my room ready for the first day of school. I am SO excited to see my kiddos tomorrow and to have the whole day to enjoy our new space together. It's been a great summer but now's the time to get back in the swing of school. Classroom is all set, first day notes are written, lunch packed and I'm off to bed! Here we go first and second graders....it's going to be an awesome year!!!