Teacher Must Haves

Just like Oprah has her favorites, I have mine too!

Teaching Favorites

Vitamin Water Spark my favorite flavor

Colored pens

Desktop computer :)

Discover Boxes (get them from  Discover Cards about 1/2 way down the page)

iPhone I can blog right from my phone. (It is so I don't  forget the  interesting things the children say!)

personal laptop

Materials for my week go in here (copies and books needed)

Okay, so the smell is for me :)

I keep all of my office supplies in here.  I can see where everything is.

I use these plus the cut out ones for  my CAFE board.

Sharpies every size, shape, and color.

Need I say more? :)

This is the home to some of my stamps

Venti Vanilla Latte

Tag Readers.  I received 6 of them for my class. I piloted them for LeapFrog last year.

Keep materials inside

Everyone should join!

Binders

Dry erase markers

Sheet protectors

Pampered chef tool turn about- I keep these on my tables for supplies. Being a Pampered Chef consultant has its perks!!!! 

Crayola twistables they don't break as easily.

Cameras- one for me and one for the students to use.

Foaming soap. (Although before they had this, I used my Pampered Chef Suds Pump for the same effect!
 I was the coolest teacher with the awesome soap!)

I would love to hear all about yours!  Please feel free to share yours too :) Hop over HERE to see more!

Polar Express

You must head over right now to get this FABULOUS  Polar Express Unit


I love love the Polar Express.  I set up our "train" in a storage closet and we listen to the recording. It is dark and a little bit cold in there, so it is perfect for this activity.


In addition to a bell taped under their chairs, I also make them a ticket. I have a parent volunteer make hot chocolate while we are gone. The children are amazed! :)

Hmong New Year/Thanksgiving

One of our rotations was to make egg rolls. We read this poem:

 Here is a first grade teacher showing us the yummy filling.

 We practiced with felt wrappers.  We pointed one corner to our belly buttons.

 We added some pretend filling and folded one point to the center.

 Then we folded another corner in.

 Now here is our envelop and begin to roll.

 And roll

 And at the top, we put pretend egg whites to seal it.

 Now we have the real wrapper.

 We get to add filling.

 Roll.

 Fry (teacher does this)

 Another station, we listened to this book. Each time we hear, Nine-In-One we growl.

 We began our story cloths.  We color them in and then make a border.

 Another station we had was pumpkin pie. I am loving the  Classic Pampered Chef tool!

 Here is the filling with pumpkin, pudding, and spices. All of the students got to smell all of the spices.

 Here is our recipe.

After discussing that we were ALL humans we went off to our groups. One of the stops was listening to the story Nine in One. Everytime we heard "Nine in One" we growled "grr grr"

Today we were handing out  name tags that had Hmong names on for all of the first graders. A nametag was handed to a young lady and she said," We aren't Hmong we want to be humans." First grader said to us after we changed our names to Hmong names. Today we are learning about Hmong New Year and Thanksgiving. We are having 4 stations. Making egg rolls, games, pumpkin pie and storycloths.

Art Museum trip

The k-2 children went to our local art museum and made these elephants:

Thanksgiving

With Thanksgiving quickly approaching, I created this little activity.

 I  created paperwork for the students to write our theme words for this unit.

I printed these icons out and wrote our theme words on sentence strips.  The children write the theme words on the line. I used Pilgrim girl, Pilgrim boy, Native girl, Native boy, turkey, corn, scarecrow.

What Teachers Make Final Moviebk2 0001

Comment about a story

Tortoise and the hare story one child says I think I can oh wait wrong story. :)

Burning the Midnight Oil

This week we talked about Nocturnal Animals.  On Monday we talked about what it means to be nocturnal. We learned that some animals stay up all night long and sleep during the day. We learned that bats, foxes, owls, moths, mice, hedgehogs, skunks, raccoons, koalas, and spiders are all nocturnal.

The 2-5th graders are working hard to figure out a nocturnal word for every letter of the alphabet.

The K-1 children brainstormed different animals that they could remember.  I tried to draw them... key word being tried!!!I tell my student's that they need to try their best, so I do as well.


Here are two science logs featuring drawings of nocturnal animals:

I wrote a book then made it into little books for my first and kindergartners. 

 The first graders had to draw the pictures.

 The kindergartners had to color in my pictures.

They all had to write "a" and "is" on every page.

 After they read the book, then they had to show me their favorite  page.

These are some of their favorites.

 We talked about owls and we made this chart

 You must check out Deanna's Owl Unit for other great ideas :)

We made a graph of our favorite nocturnal animal. I used our name tickets (2x4 slips of paper) to create this graph.  We talked about which had the most votes, which had the least, and which ones were the same.