May Morning Work!

Whew! I've been VERY productive on my day off! Dropped the dog off at the groomer at 9, got my hair cut, went to school to run all my copies for next week, hit up the dollar tree, picked up the dog, and I've been working on my May Morning Work all afternoon! It is FINALLY finished and up for grabs on TpT.

I'd love to give away some free copies! Leave your email address on my facebook page (click the button on the side of my blog to get there.)  I'll pick TWO winners Sunday night.

We *Heart* the Earth

Earth Day has quickly become one of my favorite holidays at school. I've always been a recycling nut, especially at school. I found this awesome activity while blog surfing a few weeks ago, and knew my firsts would LOVE making it. You can find the activity HERE (for freeeeeee) on TpT.

Check these bad boys out!

I checked out a TON of books from the library at school, then we talked about ways that WE could reduce, reuse and recycle. My FAVORITE response, by far... "I just reduced, because I went to the bathroom!" Sort of true, but I wasn't in the mood to explain that one.

I thought this part was going to be too hard for my kiddos, but they REALLY enjoyed themselves! They look pretty snazzy in the hallway, too, if I do say so myself...

Each student also wrote about ways that they were going to try to (or already do) reduce, reuse and recycle.

I also read The Lorax, which is my most favoritest book in the whole entire world. Last year, I had my kids make Lorax mustaches and write about how they would change the world. Unfortunately, I won't have enough time this week to do it, since we have FRIDAY OFF! That's right folks, you heard me right. It's a snow make-up day, and thank God we didn't have enough snow to need it. I know I'll probably end up at school anyways, trying to catch up on that giant pile of papers in my "to file" pile... Ugh. It never ends.

Do you have any favorite Earth Day activities? I'm always looking for new ideas!

Ducks in a Row

I've got an Earth Day post in the works, but I had to share this first...

Our school has a pretty awesome enclosed courtyard in the middle of the building.  Think of the building as a rectangle with a hole in the middle. You get the point. ANYWHO, for as long as this courtyard has been in place, at least one mother duck will fly into it and lay her eggs every spring. When I first started at my building, I thought people were kidding, and that the janitor planted eggs there or something ridiculous. No, no, no. They're totally legit, and it's pretty much the coolest thing ever... Check these little guys out!

When they first hatched, our janitor put out a little wading pool for them... Adorable.

When their mother is away, they can usually be found huddled in a little heap sleeping in the sun... Again, adorable.

And as if they couldn't be any cuter, they now have a little ramp leading to a makeshift swimming pond. Oh. My. Gosh. When you see these little suckers running up and down the ramp, it's pretty stinking awesome.

We pass the ducks every day on our way to lunch and special, and it's always cool to see my little firsts poke their heads out the window to see what their ducky friends are up to! In a week or so, our janitor will open the doors to the building and let the ducks waddle down the hall and out the front door.

HOW.

COOL.

IS.

THAT!!!!

Sorry, I'm pretty much a little kid when it comes to these things.

10K, Check!

JUST got back from my 10K. Finished in 52 minutes and 14 seconds. Thanks to all my wonderful blogging friends for your encouraging comments! Our run took us all throughout Hershey, including Hersheypark. The hardest part was running past Starbucks and not stopping! (Which is why I'm currently rewarding myself with a dirty chai latté!) I'm also taking the day off from any and all school work. Those spelling tests can wait!

ALSO. My little blog hit 100 followers a few days ago, so thank you, thank you, thank you!!

Tomorrow I'm going to dive back into my May Morning Math Work. If you snagged my April Morning Work, what other skills would you like to see addressed?

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Let's Go Fly a Kite

If you're a Pennsylvania blogger, you're currently sharing my hatred enthusiasm for PSSA week! I'm very thankful to have first graders that are not required to take the test, but our entire building's schedule has been turned upside-down. Reading in the afternoon instead of the morning, specials in the morning instead of the afternoon, earlier lunch, you get the drift... I've got the first lunch slot now, which means it was just me and Mr. Bones in the faculty room for awhile today. 

ANYWHO, My firsts filled their warm-fuzzy jar the other day, so I've been thinking about what I wanted them to choose as their reward. You know what I mean, give them a few options but make one seem WAY cooler than the others? They're so awesome that way. I knew we'd gotten a Time For Kids about flying, and that it touched on kites. I snagged a kite over the weekend, and we finally got the chance to fly it today! It was perfectly windy and my kiddos loved getting the chance to fly a kite, many of them for the first time, which really surprised me! They had a blast!

What types of activities do you use as whole group rewards?

This one time...

So, this one time, I went into school on Saturday to work on report cards... On the way, I made the mistake of stopping at Wal-Mart. Never again. I bought lots of things and instead of working on report cards, I ended up rearranging my entire classroom. Granted, I'm very pleased with the way it turned out, but I am NOWHERE near having my report cards done by Tuesday!

ANYWHO, check out some of the fun things I found! These little Adirondack chairs were less than $5 a pop! So clearly, I bought 6. The matching tables were around $6, I believe, but I couldn't pass them up. I mean, look at them.

You know those little foam rectangles that you can find in any craft section? Well, I've been wanting to make some bunting for my windows, and found the perfect supplies! I took those tricky little buggers and snipped them down to triangles on the paper cutter. A few hole punches, some twine and a few command hooks, and VOILA! I especially like how sturdy the foam pieces are! Fun and easy.

My favorite part is our new reading area...

Have a happy Monday!

April Currently (and a give away!)

First off - my blogging friend Cindy at Granny Goes To School just hit 500 followers on her blog and is having quite the give away!  There's 2 chances to win GIANT bundles of goodies.  She was kind enough to feature me in her give away, and I'll be giving out one free item of choice from my TpT store.  Head on over to her blog and check out the rafflecopter for details!

Aaaaaaaaand, I'm finally getting around to April's Currently with Farley at Oh Boy 4th Grade.  Here we go!

Listening - I've always loved Pandora, and the Lumineers station is quickly becoming my favorite station to listen to while working on the computer.  Very chill.

Loving - My awesome wife has really been diving into healthy foods, and dreamed up the most amazing smoothie today... Check out her blog, Light Up Living, if you're a foodie like me!

Thinking - Seriously. I ran a half-marathon in October. I can do this. Granted, I trained much harder for the half-marathon than I have been recently. I did 4 miles this morning and wanted to rip my legs off when I got home. 10K in a week. Crossing my fingers.

Wanting - I had the opportunity to observe in another first grade classroom in my district. This lady is seriously my first grade idol. She's amazing, and I'm trying to convince her to dive into blog land because she has so many WONDERFUL ideas. ANYWHO, I digress. I've been wanting to explore Daily 5 for quite some time, and our director of elementary ed. suggested that I watch this lady in action. I desperately want to adopt it in my classroom, but am struggling with forcing myself to wait until next year. I know so little about it, and don't want it to be a train wreck. Wait. I can wait.

Needing - I have a coffee obsession. I have a coffee mug obsession. I unfortunately also have an obsession with forgetting to wash said coffee mugs. There's like 7 of them sitting on the counter begging to be cleaned. Oops.

Advice - I do it every single flipping marking period. Why? WHY do I always wait until the weekend before they're due? Report cards take forever. If I would just do little bits at a time the few weeks before they're due, I would be way less crazy. But here I sit. Blogging instead of reporting. Story of my life.

Enjoy your weekend.

Graphing fun!

Happy Wednesday, everybody! I hope you're all having a super-dooper week! We just started talking about data and graphing in math, and my little firsts really enjoyed making this graph as a group! Sorry for the terrible pictures, all I had was my on-the-fritz iPhone. Seriously, I'm due for an upgrade next week and it just started acting up...

Anywho, terrible pictures aside, we graphed our favorite book characters as a warm-up to today's lesson. I let them all choose a character to color, then we talked about the best way to organize our information. I was SO proud of them for pulling out that background knowledge and screaming "WE CAN MAKE A GRAPH!" Yes. Yes, you can!

*If you're a Mo Willems fan like I am, you'll see why I squealed with joy upon finding this little gem... Mind you, I gave them just a standard pigeon, not holding anything in his hands.*

She gave him a flipping hot-dog!  made my day. After making our class graph, we moved onto today's lesson. We use EnVision math, and today's lesson started with a bar graph that I asked them questions about. Every question I asked was along the lines of "looking at the graph, how many..." or "on the graph, what can we..." You get the point. I jammed the word graph down their throats.

5 minutes into the lesson. Hand goes up.

Me: "Yeah, what's up?"
Captain Obvious: "IT'S A GRAPH!"

Yes. Yes, it is.

We also just planted our brassica seeds (we use FOSS kits.) We're really hoping they sprout soon, because looking at soil is getting a little boring. Do you use FOSS kits or something similar? I'm struggling with keeping it exciting, and am looking for input!

Have a good night!