Pumpkin Patch

Last weekend was the fair. This weekend I used my free time from getting all my work done by Friday afternoon to go with the family to the pumpkin patch.

Victoria liked all the different wood cutouts they had to pose with.

Cristina went with her dad to do the corn maze (which was 4 and older) Victoria tried out each of the 5 different bounce houses.

Hay ride.

Train ride.

Pumpkins! Cristina went with the smallest pumpkin she had ever seen. Victoria walked right up to one and said this is the one I have been looking for. 

Fair Day!!!

I have been working really hard this year to finish all school work by the time I leave school on Friday. And I can't stay late on Fridays because Cristina has gymnastics practice, so I really have to work to get it done. I have been doing it. I leave my classroom with all plans planned, copies copied and filed and everything cleaned up and ready to go. This has left me free on the weekends to enjoy my family. Last week I did that my going to the fair with them. Here is our fair day in pictures.

Victoria has really gotten over her fear of animals and wanted to feed every animal in the petting zoo.

The girls really loved getting to pet this animal.

Trying out the Springfree trampoline is always a favorite.

The girls found these big pillow rocks on fake grass and thought it was the best playground ever. They really loved jumping and falling on them.

Victoria was harder to get a picture of, but I finally got one.

Dressed as a cowgirl.

Posing with a Big Tex head in the Big Tex exhibit.

The Little Hands on the Farm is another favorite.

He really wanted to get one of these last year but didn't. He made sure to get one this year. When no one thought he could finish it he ate it all to prove he could. He then didn't eat anything else the rest of the day. That is a lot of corn dog.

At the end of a long fair day it nice to have older cousins around to help tired little ones.

Catching Up Part 1: Donor's Choose and Hot Dot Pens

This year my schedule is crazy (as I have talked about before.) I really love doing math centers, and at the end of the year last year I had a set of centers and a rotation down that was working perfectly. Unfortunately the minutes are just not in my schedule this year. I may be able to squeeze them in my morning block of time soon, but in the afternoon I have 120 minutes to teach 55 minutes of reading and 90 minutes of math. Obviously that does not happen. The first thing to go was center time, and everything else just gets squeezed in. I may panic every time I look at the clock from 1:00 to 3:00, but my students and I make it work. Even with the time crunch I still have those early finishers. I was at a loss of how to handle it. Should I do some modified centers? Should I just have some early finisher activities? I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. Then my principal gave every teach $100 to spend. I scoured every approved catalog trying to decide the best way to spend my money. I came across Hot Dot Pens and thought that is something that the early finishers could do with no prep work from me. (We have brand new math frameworks for our math lesson this year and that is taking all my prep time and then some!) For $100 I got a set of six pens and a couple of boxes of flashcards. Being the ever greedy teacher, I wanted one for each one of my students. I went to Donor's Choose website. It was perfect timing because Kia was doing a matching promotion. I asked for 20 Hot Dot Pens and a whole bunch of flashcards and in a stroke of genius I asked for enough AA batteries for all the pens. The total including shipping and the donation to Donor's Choose was $666. By far the biggest project I have ever done on Donor's Chose. My wonderful parents donated some money and it was matched by a different organization. I donated some, and it was also matched. An anonymous person donated some and it was matched by a promotion at a local mall. Within 3 weeks 1/2 my project was funded and 1/2 was matched. What an incredible website with incredibly caring people who donate to it to help students they know very little about. A few weeks later I got this in the mail. Awesome!

It's like Christmas for a teacher! :)

I had to figure out how I was going to keep 21 pens safe. I was afraid of pens being thrown into baskets. The teacher who was in my room before had left these stands that she had never used. I put them together, bought some freezer bags, and stuck on some sticky hooks that came with my easel that I had never used. Then to add some extra education punch I put odd numbers on one stand and even numbers on the other stand. Its hard to see in the picture but on the blue strip above the hooks I wrote the number of the bag that hangs there.

Here they are being used. We have had them for a couple of weeks now and the kids absolutely love them.

How did so much time go by????

I can't believe I haven't sat down here since September 21! I have had things to say, just not the time to write it down. How does it get to be so late at night each day without everything getting done? I WILL get better about that. But not now. Ha! Its time to leave to go to school. Here's a peak at what I will be writing about this weekend.
Donor's Choose - I got a project funded!!! Check back to see what I got.
Some fun activities for place value and open number lines. (Some are available on my TpT store)
My Review the Rooms are going really well.
We got a dog!!!
Skate Night at Cristina's school.
We are going to the TCU football game on Saturday and The State Fair of Texas on Sunday.

So much to write about!!!

See you soon.

Review the Room, Marshmallow Math, Main Idea

       We had a fun filled week with many activities and lots of learning. Last year I started making review activities for my students to use the day before a math test to review all the concepts that would be on the math test and see who needed some reteaching before the test. I shared them with my teammates and they began using them, too. Over the summer I tried to figure out how I could expand the idea. It finally dawned on me as I was driving down the road that I should do them to go with each of the reading units. That was the beginning of my Review the Room units. (Which can be found in my TpT store here.) My vision was to use them the way I did my math Review the Rooms last year. I would hang the problems up around the room, and students would walk around answering each questions. Then they would come to me to have their paper checked. My students looked forward to these very much. They would be so excited when they would see new problems hanging and couldn't wait to get through reading to start math. Well, my students and my schedule are very different than last year. So, the way I utilize them has changed, too. Instead of hanging the problems up, I print out black and white copies for each set of partners and they students stay in one spot to answer all the problems. My morning class has done very well with this and I now let them choose a spot in the room to work. Of course I forgot to take any pictures of them working. I did snap a pic of my afternoon class working. They are still working at their desks.

They share the Review the Room paper between them. They each have their own recording sheet, but they work together on the answers.

I am hoping to eventually move towards using them as a get up and move around the room activity as I intended, but until then I'll do what is best for each class. 

       Another really fun activity that we did this week was Marshmallow Math. I was looking for a way to inject some fun into my math lessons. I read Amy Lemon's blog this week and she talked about Abby's Marshmallow Math and it looked like just what I needed.

I took her paper and tweaked it to make it work for what I was teaching. We were learning word form this day so I added a spot for that on the page. And you know when somethings are just meant to be? We are in the fourth week of school and I still hadn't been able to get my document camera to work. I had asked two people to help but they couldn't remember the steps for the fix. I hadn't gotten around to asking anyone else. On a whim I decided to try it again because it would have really helped to model how to set up the marshmallow math. It worked! and it worked all day for both classes! That made the lesson go so much smoother.

I set up the marshmallow place value under the document camera.

Here is what the screen looked like. Don't ask why I took a pic of the laptop  instead of the Promethean Board. I don't know why. But you can see how the students could see my marshmallows, how to draw it on their paper, and the dice we were using to generate the numbers.

The students are working hard to complete their work, so then they can eat their math tools. :)

You can see where I added a line at the end where the students wrote the number in word form.

In reading we are working on main idea. My student loved these main idea trees. They are also from Amy Lemon's. 

I love how the exact same tree pattern can turn into so many different trees. They each had their own opinion on where the leaves should go.

       On a totally random note, my youngest daughter has become a rather picky eater. Picky meaning she would rather pick cookies, candy, cake or ice cream than any other food. I gave her a banana with her lunch today. She likes to take the complete peel off, but then today she didn't touch it at all. I asked that she eat at least one bite (so I didn't feel like it had been a total waste.) She asked if she only had to take one or if shehad to take more. I said one would make me happy. When I walked back in this is what I saw. 

I don't know why but the bite out of the side of the banana just struck my as totally funny. Like proof that she took ONLY one bite. 

What sunshines and giggles filled your week?

Free Saturday Fun at Toys R Us!!!

All summer we kept meaning to go to the free Saturday morning activities at Toys R Us. Once school started we finally remembered to go. This Saturday was out second time going. The girls had such a good time, and it was completely free. Each girl walked away with both hands full, and we didn't even spend any money on anything else there.

Lego Table

The girls got to build an Ice Cream Cart. Two weeks ago they built an airplane.

Victoria did really well. I would point to the directions and she would find the piece and put it on. Cristina did the whole thing on her own.

I didn't get any pictures of it, but they also had a table for making bracelets. You weave little rubber bands together and add a tiny s hook and you have a bracelet. 

After those two fun filled activities, they had a Thomas event. It started with coloring crowns for the new movie King of the Railway, followed by a scavenger hunt that let to games and a puzzle prize. 

Cristina was really into the scavenger hunt.

Victoria lost interest in the scavenger hunt when we walked by the Thomas game table.

Rubber Band bracelet, Lego Ice Cream Cart, Thomas crown, Thomas puzzle, Thomas poster

and two happy girls!

Popsicle Sticks

          We are now three weeks into school. I had a rough start to the year. It felt like I couldn't learn all 41 of my students names much less get to know them. Well I feel like I do know them now. I don't know a lot of personal things about them (family life, favorite things to do), but I do know them as students. I know which quiet kids aren't answering but know what is going on, and which quiet kids aren't answering and don't have a clue what is going on. I know which ones need extra time but they can do it themselves, and I know which ones are going to need extra help. I also know which ones get bored easily and need constant things to keep them busy so they don't get in trouble. 

          I also have found the key to keeping the noisy class quiet. I have a morning class and an afternoon class. The morning class is vying for the quietest class that I have had in my 10 years. Three weeks into school and they can write quietly for 20 minutes. I can give them an assignment and have to watch carefully for the ones who need help because they will work quietly on it. Even when they help each other, they do it quietly.

        For every bit of quiet that my morning class it, my afternoon class is loud. For the first two weeks of school I don't think there was more than a few seconds that went by that someone didn't say something. Out of desperation earlier this week I stopped in the middle of class (which some didn't even notice because they were talking to their friends) and gathered up some containers I have stashed in my cabinet. They are the tall thin containers that Crystal Light drink mix comes in. I put one at each group and grabbed a handful of Popsicle sticks. I gave each group 5 Popsicle sticks. The whole time I haven't said a word. I finally have their attention. They are trying to figure out what on Earth is going on. What are we doing with Popsicle sticks? My theme this year is superheroes. I told my class that whenever they did something that made me happy (taking out their journal without everyone talking, opening their book without everyone talking, using their connecting cubes correctly) I would give them a stick. Whenever they did something that made me unhappy I would take a stick away. Whichever group had the most at the end of the day was the superheroes for the day. One student immediately asked if we win what do we get? I repeated they get to be the superheroes for the day. They asked why not stickers or a prize. I counter why would I give you something when you have been bad. I have to put the Popsicle sticks out because you are being bad. You don't get stickers for being bad. That made some kind of sense in their head (and I wasn't really sure it would, I thought they might say but if we had the most we were being good) But I was trying to stress that the reason I had to get the sticks out wasn't a good reason so getting the most didn't translate into a prize. Well it worked like a charm. It worked better than I could ever imagine. They must be the most competitive class ever because they will do anything to earn a stick. I try to dole them out generously so that the positive behavior is constantly rewarded, but I also take them away as much as needed. The best part is I have done this several days in a row and it has continued to work. The winning group does get to line up first now, but I still refuse to reward the winning group with a material reward. I want it to become intrinsic and not cost me anything. 

         Now for a new challenge. For the next three weeks my morning class will come to me in the afternoon and my afternoon class will come to me in the morning. (It has to do with the dual language program and our schedule this year. The student only get writing once a day. Sometimes in English and sometimes in Spanish. My class has only had English writing so far, so it is time for them to be in the Spanish teacher class during writing time.) This means some new procedures. Most things will be the same, but things like backpacks and getting ready to go home will be new. Hopefully it will all go smooth.