Thursday, December 6, 2012

Meet Snowflake, our Elf!


Check out this cute little guy!  He has been up to shenanigans all week in our classroom but he sure is fun!

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Bat Caves and Halloween

It has been a whirlwind of a couple of weeks in our classroom and I have a feeling things are not going to settle down until after the holidays.  Two weeks ago we made bat caves to go with our bat unit.  This involved getting very messy!  Some kids loved the slimy paper mache mess but others were not quite so pleased.  My favorite quote of the day from one of my girlies was; "This is the worst day EVER!"  This was said while her  hands were covered with starch and flour. :) 


 This is probably my favorite picture of the day! Are these two cuties having fun or what???!


Then, to top off the morning we made Fruit Bat Kabobs. Delicious!



To celebrate Halloween in our classroom, our amazing room mom planned five fun rotations. We painted pumpkins that were generously donated by Lilly's parents, played a mummy wrap game, painted our feet to make adorable trick or treating bags, made bagel jack o'lanterns, and "Frankensmores."




Frankensmores!




  Trick or Treat, Smell my Feet!


Painting Pumpkins


Bagel Jack O'Lanterns





Little Mummies

Saturday, October 13, 2012

WE ROCK! (Literally!!!)

We start off each morning by rockin' it out to the tune of One Direction's What Makes You Beautiful but with different lyrics adapted by a very talented teacher named Hope King.  We have been singing this everyday since the first day of school and we sound AWESOME!!!! Check us out:


We also studied Christopher Columbus this week and made these very old maps.  They show the journey that Christopher Columbus took from Spain to The New World.





For a little Halloween fun we created portraits of Frankenstein.  They turned out ADORABLE!






   













Sunday, September 30, 2012

Books from Kiwanis and Scarecrows

Thursday was a very special day at Alpine Elementary because Alpine Kiwanis donated a book to each and EVERY child at our school.  WOW!!!!  The kids LOVED their books and asked to read them all afternoon.  Some of the kids even brought them out to recess! Thank you, Alpine Kiwanis for your generosity!







We did a little art this week and drew and painted these scarecrows to welcome fall into our classroom.  Aren't they adorable?  We have some very talented artists in Room 2!



Monday, September 24, 2012

Superverb!!!!

It is all about verbs in Room 2 right now! We are learning all about these action words and are doing some activites to help solidify the concept.  What a better way to learn about verbs than through music and movement!  We did different actions like clap, blink, smile, kick, run, walk, and leap all while dancing to "Let's Move it!"  We talked about action heroes are like verbs, always doing actions.  Then we made these super cute "Superverbs!" 


Sunday, September 16, 2012

Powerful Sentences, Read to Self, and a Noun Hunt!

We had another fantastic week of school!  The kids are doing a great job with "Read to Self" during the Daily 5.  They have been introduced to reading into an iPod to help work on their fluency.  They are encouraged to read a page, play it back and listen to themselves read, read it again, and listen again until they think it sounds perfect.  What a great way to build reading fluency!









We are also learning to build "powerful sentences" during Writer's Workshop.  Check out this very powerful sentence we wrote about a mouse:



We are all about nouns in Room 2 right now!  On Friday, we went on a "Noun Hunt" around our room.  We worked with a partner to distinguish if the noun we found was a person, place or thing.  







Friday, September 7, 2012

The Best First Week EVER!!!!

I think that this may have been the best first week I have ever had in my teaching career.  I am totally and completely in love with thirty precious children.  They are so sweet, kind, smart, and very respectful.  I am feeling like one very lucky teacher!

Here are a few things we did this week:


We discussed and charted our goals for the year and did this adorable "craftivity" to go with it.  I love that Kennedy said her goal was to be proactive which is one of our leadership traits.  The one that made me laugh was to find gold at recess and turn it into the office!  And guess what???? The next day two friends did find gold on the playground and turn it in to the office.  Miss Denise said they could keep it.  Lucky boys!

We also wrote about our first day of school.  I eased them into writing before I tortured them the next day with a writing assessment which I will have so much fun grading this weekend!!!
We read the book, Stand up Tall, Molly Lou Melon and made these sunflowers describing why we are special just like Molly Lou.  (Thanks, Amy Lemons!)


Okay, I know I already went on and on about how great my class is but I had no idea they would actually live up to this bulletin board. (Thanks to Teacher Wife for the BB idea!) They are the SWEETEST!!!!!!  Here is what happened today to prove it:  We had a few minutes of free choice at the end of the day (which they desperately needed after all of their hard work) and about six kids were playing dominoes.  They spent quite awhile lining up the whole tub in an elaborate arrangement.  When they were done, they had the obvious problem of who was going to get it knock it down.  BUT, there was no arguing, only unanimous consensus that Elias (who was playing legos at the time) should get to knock it down since it was his birthday!  The group called him over as well as the entire class and we sang Happy Birthday to him before he had the honor of tapping the first domino. I was one proud teacher!

We ended our week by making "The Snack Mix of Champions."  We have been learning about what it means to be a champion all week by talking about the Olympics and singing a super fun song.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Here we go!  I am so excited to meet my new crop of second graders today. I have a fun week planned of learning our classroom procedures, setting our goals for the year and establishing a student centered learning environment   We will be kicking off our school year with a thematic unit on the Olympics!

Sunday, March 18, 2012

St. Patrick's Day











We celebrated St. Patrick's Day with a healthy, green snack.  We had everything from pickles, to edamame, to grapes and even seaweed snacks.  THEN, while we were at PE, a naughty leprechaun visited our room.  What mess he made but he did leave us chocolate coins!