Busy Time!

Ok, Ok... I know I say it all the time- but where has the time gone!??  I have yet to post this year and I'm not really sure what my excuse is.  I just seem so busy and never have time during the day to squeeze this is.  Here is my chance- we are going to start with some things before school even started.

I made some changes to my classroom this year and here they are.  The back corner of my room is still the library area but I also made it the calendar area.  I added some stuffed animals to the carpet area to make it a little more homey.  The kids can snuggle up with these guys when they are reading in the library.

 Here is a closer up picture of the calendar math area.  There is the calendar, a weather wheel, yesterday-today-tomorrow is part, and the math board which is new this year for me.  Right now I am filling it out after the students tell me the answer.  My goal is to have a different student every day fill out the information on their own then share with the class.  Also new to this area is the Author Study board.  That space was wall and not bulletin board before so I taped up some paper and hooked the boarder up with Stiki-Clips.  So far every thing is staying up.  It blends in so nicely I forgot it wasn't cork and couldn't figure out why it was so hard to push a tack into... oops!

 Another new area is the spelling/writing table.  Right now it is just the spelling table in this picture.  The spelling connection game is to practice weekly spelling words with a partner.  

 An idea I found on Pinterest was to practice making spelling words with letter beads and pipe cleaners.  Of course that sounded like fun!  The blue basket is full of cube letter beads and pieces of pipe cleaner.  Each week a new spelling list is at the table so students can look at the words and string the beads on the pipe cleaners. 

 I have always had a word wall but this year I tried to cram all of the words on 1 board instead of 2.  It's a little tight but we will make it work by the end of the year!

 The reason behind the squished word wall is because I made the other bulletin board into a Math and ELA vocabulary wall.  There are a lot of good vocabulary words we can look at and be reminded to use on this board.

Ok, now since I'm caught up on room changes time to start on the rest!

And here is our adorable class this year...

Adorably silly that is!!

~Ms. Anglin

Easter Activities

Here is the rest of our Easter celebration.  I hung the string art eggs in our windows, they looked so neat up there!

Then it was time for the big Easter Egg hunt!  The kids K-2 watched a short Easter video while some of the teachers hid the eggs on the play ground.  Here we are all lined up and ready to search!

Lastly, we enjoyed some Easter treats in our classroom.  We had Jell-O jigglers, juice boxes and CANDY!!

Hope you had a Hoppy Easter!
~Ms. Anglin

Are you sure it's spring?

It is COLD here still! We had spring for about 7 days then winter returned.  I mean, it snowed on my outside for recess yesterday!  We are still trying to be springy in our classroom though.  Easter is just around the corner and we have been doing some fun art projects to celebrate.

Here is our Easter Bulletin Board.  Look at my little chicks all hatching out of their pretty eggs!  And the saying is true- 1st grade is 'egg'cellent!!

We made this cool Easter Egg project to hang in the hallway.  First you smear shaving cream on the paper (I have used wax paper before, this time I used old flip chart pages that I was planning on tossing anyways).  Then I let the kids each choose up to 4 colors to drip onto the shaving cream- any more colors and it turns brown, lesson learned!

Then we used a Popsicle stick to swirl the colors around.  If you get too wild and crazy, this is where it will turn brown.  Luckily, none did this year :)

Next, press an egg shaped paper into the shaving cream and paint mixture.  You want to make sure that all of the paper is touching, or you will have white spots.  Let sit for a few minutes, then lift off carefully and let sit a couple more minutes.

After waiting a few minutes, scrape the extra shaving cream and paint off.  The directions I found for this project said to use a squeegee... Well, I do not personally own a squeegee so I just used a rubber ruler that I could get wet (to wipe clean in between eggs).  Here is this finished egg hanging in the hallway.  They turned out so nice!  Next year I hope to remember to make sure the paint is swirled as wide as the egg is so there are not so many white edges.

Our latest project was 3D string art eggs.  I blew up (barely) small balloons for the kids and had them wrap embroidery floss that had been dipped in a Mod Podge and water mixture around them.  It was a very, very messy and sticky project but once they dried over the weekend they looked pretty good!  Here are some of the finished products:

And finally, here is the class working on a project at the table together. They were painting so nicely!

Happy Easter!

~Ms. Anglin

St. Patrick's Day Recap

Here is how we celebrated St. Patrick's Day in our first grade classroom.  We made leprechauns to add to the bulletin board which reads "Ms. Anglin's Lucky Charms".

We made this decoration for the hallway.

On St. Patrick's Day, a naughty little leprechaun kept coming to our classroom.  Look at everything he did!

He tossed candy on the floor.

He threw our science projects like frisbees

He wrote this note on the board.

He gave each of our paper leprechauns a sucker!

He left us this long note.

He messed up the calendar and said it was December.

But he did leave us a nice snack- GREEN milk and all green marshmallow Lucky Charms cereal. Yum Yum!

Yes, Green Milk!

Hopefully he doesn't come back next year!

~Ms. Anglin

February and March catch up

I cannot believe the end of March is next week!  What a busy month we have had!

We celebrated President's Day in February by reading books about different presidents and their lives.  The students then wrote about what they would do if they were president.  A lot of them would go bowling :)

At the end of February was the school Spelling Bee.  Our whole class was very proud of Sydney, MaKaylah, and Cole on their awesome spelling skills.  Congratulations guys!

Our last month for Character Counts was March and we learned about Citizenship.  A good citizen is a good friend, someone who takes care of things like the earth and their belongings and someone who is honest and cares about those around them.  Here are the 1st graders who wore the color of Citizenship- purple.

The beginning of March marked Dr. Seuss' birthday.  We celebrated this by reading Dr. Seuss books, doing a Dr. Seuss themed Scholastic News and doing an art/writing project.  "If Thing 1 and Thing 2 came to my house..." I would play with him, make him leave, help him make a big mess.

We love to stretch out sometimes when we are working.  Here are some kids spread out working on math.

Thanks for visiting!
~Ms. Anglin