Statue of Liberty

For Veteran's Day, my first grade team decided to teach about American symbols. We set up centers (1 per classroom) and rotate our students through. My symbol was the Statue of Liberty. I showed a video from Brain Pop Jr and then we made crowns and torches.

For the crowns - cut out the inner circle from a paper plate. Cut the outer strip to fit as a headband. Cut the inner circle into 8  pie pieces (if you have the time, the kids could do this and you could use it to talk about fractions!). You only need 7 for the rays on the crown. Staple the rays on the outer strip and viola - crown!

For the torches, I used a half sheet of white paper. I had the kids trace their hands on orange construction paper (you need 2 hands - they can be the same hand). They cut out their hands and glued them to the top of the white paper (short side). Roll this up and tape for the torch.

My son loved that I let him make one too (he's in 2nd grade) and he was my model.

Pockets!

I needed chair pockets but didn't want to spend $200 out of my budget for them. I found a pattern online to make them. My sweet sister-in-law offered to make them for me. They turned out great! The pockets are sturdy enough for lots of use and they are roomy enough for all the things my students put in them. Now I have some clear bookshelf space and they can save time by having supplies right there!

Fact Families for Halloween

For Halloween, I found a cute idea. My class needed help and practice writing fact families. One way to do this is to have them make candy corns. They drew the number bond on the top layer, then the addition and subtraction problems on the other layers. I made a mummy using toilet paper for the bulletin. To show how the activity correlates with the CCSS (which are posted in my room), I wrote the standard on a sentence strip.

I had parent volunteers which made this project easier and allowed the kids to do more than they would have done with just me. I had them fill out a fact family worksheet first, then have it looked at by me. For each correct fact family, they could make 1 candy corn. For my high kids, I assigned fact families (up to 20 and beyond). The others chose an addition fact from an addition chart (up to 10). It worked out really well for differentiating and all of my students felt successful. It also helped them on their test.

Ahoy! Treasure Ahead!

A fun way to end a social studies unit on maps! I dressed as a pirate and my principal came in as my captain. I made a treasure map of the playground and my principal led the kids on a treasure hunt. They did a great job of reading the map, finding the symbols, and knowing the 4 cardinal directions.

Welcome new year!

Made it through the first week of school (well, 1/2 week as we started on Wed). It was fun. I have a great bunch of first graders and know we will have fun. Just need to keep on top of it with planning and all. I'm hoping for a parent volunteer to help out in my room as I have lots of stuff to do. I miss having an aide (only kinder teachers get aides). I am excited for this new school year.

Shadows for Mothers

Happy Mother's Day!!

My class made larger than life silhouettes for Mother's Day. I used my projector for a light, then traced their shadows with a white crayon. My aide helped me get each student's hand prints then we used this poem: "This is to remind you When I have grown so tall, That once I was quite little And my hands were very small."

They turned out so great!

Bunnies!

This is late coming. I have been very busy lately. We did a great Easter/Spring writing project. All about bunnies. We did a plan which I got off of Teachers Pay Teachers to tell what they know about bunnies. Then they wrote a bunny paper and we put it together with bunny parts. So cute!