Christmas Projects

Christmas break is coming to an end and I am ready to get back at it at school!  I didn't put these pictures on before Christmas because they were of the gifts we made.  Here is a look at the Christmas gifts we made for the special people in our lives.

We made ornaments and used them to decorate our tree until they were ready to go home.  The beaded wreath was a super easy project the kids loved to make.

We also made Christmas tree ornaments.  They turned out cute and very individual :)

When I was in elementary school I made a pencil holder for my dad for a gift.  To this day- 20 some years later it is still there, on his desk.  I want to recreate that scenerio for my students and someone in their lives.

 

The kids spent a long time making this next project- 2014 calendars!  We had to write in the days and draw a picture for every month.  There were so many good drawings and I'm sure they were adored!  I only managed to get one picture, next time I'll get more!

My favorite craft of the Christmas season is this super cute picture frame. 

 

Happy New Year!
~Ms. Anglin

Science and SS galore!

It appears that I need to do a little catch up with Science and SS!  I forgot a couple things that we have done lately...

Last chapter in Science we learned about different kinds of animals.  Our final chapter project was making animal magnets.  We have horses, deer, a frog, a giraffe, and a dog-- oh my!

In SS last chapter we learned about needs and wants, transportation, jobs, tools, and saving money.  To learn more about needs and wants and to check for understanding the difference between the 2 we made needs and wants posters.  In groups the kids found things in magazines and had to decide if they were a need or a want. 

This chapter in Science we are learning about animal habitats, food chains, and how they stay safe.  We made a paper chain to demonstrate how a food chain actually works and is connected.  The parts of our food chain were the sun, grass, butterfly, dragonfly, frog, and heron. 

This chapter we also made animal habitat dioramas.  First the students had to choose a habitat from forest, safari, ocean, and polar regions.  Then they had to choose 2 animals and decorate the inside of their shoebox to look like the habitat they picked. 

We are learning our double facts in math.  I made this posters so there was a visual representation of the doubles.

Our Christmas concert was last week.  They all made me so proud!  They clean up pretty well huh?

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!!

~Ms. Anglin

Christmas is creeping in!

I can't believe its almost Christmas!  We are in full Christmas mode here at school!  We are fortunate enough to be able to celebrate Christmas in our school, my heart goes out to those who can't.

We started the winter season off with a pretty good snow, even had a snow day!  Here they are all bundled up and ready to go play in all of that fresh snow.

The tree is up and finally all decorated!  We make some of the ornaments so that takes us a little bit to finish. 

We wrote stories explaining what we would do if we found Santa stuck in the chimney.  We had every solution from just pulling him out to crying to using a little soap and water.  This project always looks so cute hanging in the hallway!

I am not sure what happened but all of a sudden one day, the kids turned into tiny little elves.  Luckily I took their pictures before they turned into grown 1st graders again!  

We are counting down the days until Christmas in our room by making Santa's beard grow.  Every day someone glues a cotton ball on the date.  Every day we watch that big puffy beard grow and grow!

Our bulletin looks extra festive with our cute and very unique gingerbread cookies :)

I'll be posting the Christmas gifts that we are in the process of making after Christmas.. Have to keep it a secret! 

~Ms. Anglin

We continued our Character Counts this month by learning about Respect. We talked about how to show respect to others, ourselves, property, and the environment.  We watched some YouTube videos about Respect that the kids loved to sing along with.

We wore yellow to celebrate Respect!

Our school hosts the Veteran's Day program for our community every year.  We start off the program by having Kindergarten through 3rd grade say the Pledge of Allegiance.  Here we are lined up to go out to the program.  It's a little blurry, I'm not sure what happened...

We also made an art project to hang in our room to decorate for Veteran's Day.  These star mobiles really brighten up our doorway and window out into the hallway.

 The cutest turkey crafts EVER are all over my classroom. We painted bowls and toilet paper rolls to make these turkeys.  We made a list of about 100 things we were thankful for and could choose only 8.  Let me tell you- it was a hard choice to make!

If I don't post again, have a great Thanksgiving!!

~Ms. Anglin

Halloween is out, Thanksgiving is in!

Well, all of my jack-o-lanterns and ghosts have been put away for the year.  Just a few more things to show you then we are finished with Halloween!

Here they all are dressed up for Halloween.  Notice the scary Halloween faces :)

We went trick or treating to the Nursing Home, Assisted Living, and the rest of the school.

In Reading last week we practiced reading out loud to a partner. We read lots of science related books with partners. Partner reading helps them become more independent readers because they can't just look at the teacher for help. They have to try a little harder on their own.

Give Me 5, Turkey! The Thanksgiving bulletin board features turkeys and counting by 5s.  I got this idea from Pinterest, of course :)  Each student made 2 or 3 turkeys by tracing their hands.  Then we practiced counting by 5s to number them.  Each turkey is unique and individual just like each of these awesome 1st graders!!

In Science we are learning about animals. We learned about mammals yesterday and are creating mammal posters by cutting out pictures from magazines.  

Today we learned about insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and fish. Whew, that sure was a lot to learn but we did great at it!  Our animal project today was making foam bugs.  I never thought I'd say this but... Aren't these bugs so cute!

Thanks for catching up with us!
~Ms. Anglin

Halloween Craziness!!

Halloween is next week... it feels like yesterday was October 1st!  I can't believe it!  The classroom is looking particularly spooky this time of year and I love it :)

We are all Spook-tacular 1st Graders.  They loved making their own ghosts.  Some are on skateboards and some are wearing clothes and jewelry!  So creative and SpOoKy!

 

I saw an idea on Pinterest and really wanted to do it.  I felt a little crazy for thinking of trying it with 6 and 7 year olds.  GLITTER pumpkins.  This is by far my favorite way to decorate pumpkins right now!  I don't like carving them, and we usually paint so I wanted to try something different.  It turns out all we needed was some patience and a little Elmer's Spray Glue and we were good to go!  I think they look like pumpkin shaped Christmas ornaments. And who doesn't love Glitter!!??

 

We teamed up with the 2nd grade class and made a Halloween treat.  Halloween Hands!! Made from gloves, candy corn, pop corn, and a fancy spider ring.  Here is our whole group with their completed hands.

Last but certainly not least-our Eerie Silhouettes for the hallway.  This is such a cute project, definitely one of my favorites.  I took profile pictures of each child, placed a clip art hat on their picture on the computer and printed.  Then we traced, cut them out, and glued to paper that we painted with water colors on.  I keep telling myself to by a cheap witches hat for this project but never remember.  Clip art does just fine!

 

 

 

Happy Haunting!

~Ms. Anglin