My Truth Monday

I'm linking up with Sunny Days in Second to tell you about MY perfect vacation! 

Now join the fun! What is your idea of a perfect vacation??????????

                                      

New Look and More Measurement

I have been having so much fun sprucing up my blog! I am learning so much and in the process getting more and more addicted!
We are still measuring up a storm in my room and this week we've moved on to comparing measurements. As I've mentioned before we are in the middle of revamping our curriculum to align with the new standards so we are all scrambling for resources! We did A TON of hands on learning and math discussions in math this week. I think the only time we took out our pencils was to measure them. I started the week by taping down this measuring line.

I used a scrapbooking 1" hole punch so each circle is an inch long. I taped down with packing tape and  plan to add numbers next week so that we can compare how tall we each are.

                        

We rounded up a bunch of random things and compared their measurements. We used sentences like:

The water bottle is 3 inches shorter than the board game. 

The cup is 5 inches longer than the coin. 

This anchor chart helped them remember terms during math talks.

We also made turkeys but before we put them together we made sure to get some more measurement practice in...

I am hoping these next 2 days go by fast! I LOVE Thanksgiving and can't wait to celebrate my son's first. What are your plans?

Freebie Friday!

Boy was I happy to see 3 p.m today! This little post will be short and sweet because Alyse from Keep Calm and Apple On is visiting this weekend and we are working together to fancy up our blogs! Yup exciting Friday night for this dull teacher!

We have been writing book reviews so I thought I'd share the organizer I made to go with what our units ask us to do. In our book review we have an introduction which tells the book and the author, a short summary, our opinion of the book, and if we'd recommend it and to who. If you want to do an anchor chart for book review the download also includes labels for an anchor chart. Click the pic and it's yours!

Five for Friday Link Up!

I feel like I should do FIFTEEN or even FIFTY for Friday because it's been a while since my last post!

I have been crazy busy and here's why....

A blog post last weekend just wasn't going to happen. My hubby, myself, and our baby boy were ALL in a wedding! Our best friends got hitched! Our weekend was filled with wedding festivities. I'm telling you I was so busy I barely snapped any pictures! Luckily others did. Here's my family at the wedding...

It's blurry and I have some scary eyes but love this pic that was snapped by a friend.  We are dancing with our sleepy boy!

This kid loves the dance floor. 

New. Favorite. Picture. 

 The wedding festivities did not have a happy ending. The hubs and I  as well as many other members of the wedding party all got a NASTY stomach bug. No fun and another reason I have been gone from blogland.

We read The Giving Tree this week. This story makes me tear up every time. We talked about how characters change over time and analyzed the tree and the boy. Found this version on youtube which the kids enjoyed. 

This next idea could very well been a genius plan I had all along OR it could have been laziness on my part....haha! We have been working on measurement so I had the kids measure and draw out their OWN graphic organizer instead of pre-folding them like I usually do. This took a good 30 minutes or so and we really had to work step by step but they did great and they got some measurement practice in!

After making our own graphic organizers we discussed the different changes the tree and the boy went through and wrote a sentence to describe the character at the given time in the story. 

 We are also currently conducting a little science experiment in our classroom inspired by the story/riddle Pumpkin in a Jar. We have this story in a Houghton Miflin book we use at our school but if you follow the link it will take you to a very similar version.

We planted 3 seeds in a jar (and by jar I mean giant cheese puffs tub that's the same shape as a jar).

 Can't wait to see what happens!

I introduced measurement a couple weeks back. Before we measured anything I wanted to have a discussion about why standard units of measurement were important. I told them a story about how another teacher wanted a purple rug like ours and needed the measurements to see if it would fit. I divided my students into 5 groups. Each group used ONE students' foot to be their unit of measurement. I chose that student to make sure their were variety of sizes. Surprisingly no one noticed me walking around examining students' feet!  They worked together to trace, cut out, and measure a rug with their feet. 

                                        
I had them each record their measurements on a their slates.

Surprise! Surprise! We all had different measurements. I had them discuss and try and figure out why and then we watched How Big is A Foot.

We have also been singing this FABULOUS song created by Bethany over at Polka, Dots, and Sticky Glue Spots. It's sung to the tune of Oh My Darling Clementine. So cute!

Finally my grandma wrote a book!!! It was released last week. If you or someone you know enjoys historical fiction you've got to grab a copy! Click HERE to read more about it and get a copy!

                                             

Monday, Monday, Monday

Linking up with Sunny Days again for My Truth Monday!

We are back working with characters this week and character analysis. I used this anchor chart today and plan to use it all month long!

I left spaces for post-its so that we could reuse it with different books. Have I mentioned that I love post- its?

Good night all!

Pumpkined Out!

 How do you like that word I made up?! Seriously though, by yesterday I don't think anything I was saying was making sense! To say it was a LONG week just doesn't paint the picture well enough! Anyone else out there think that Halloween should ALWAYS  be followed up with a 3 day weekend?!

Anyway, Halloween in our classroom prompted the following comment from a volunteering parent...

"I don't know how you do this everyday. How are you not exhausted?"

Haha! Trust me, I'm exhausted but the kids are not normally this crazy! Halloween brings on it's on madness each year, combined with a change in weather, and to top it all off their not -so -sane teacher planned a PUMPKIN day that they were OVER THE MOON about! They were LOUD. BUT they were excited and they were learning so as hard as my head was pounding that day and as tired as I was am I am going to chalk this experience up as a WIN :) 

Here's what we did....

We started the day in the computer lab. The lesson started off as a glyph using the Paint program with  pumpkins. They were having so much fun that when they were done they were asking if they could add more detail to their pictures... How can I say no to that?!

Our school's math coach asked me earlier in the week if she could join our pumpkin day with a pumpkin tasting seed activity! Ummmmmm....yes please! *Warning* These pics are not the best...

They got to taste 4 different flavored seeds .

They described the seeds. 

Then they graphed their favorite seed! We also learned that Pepita is the Spanish word for pumpkin seed!

At the end of the day we measured our pumpkins inside and out! We focused on choosing correct tools and making estimates.

Measuring Activity Book that I finished at 4am on Halloween : /

Weighing pumpkins

How Tall?

Roll Away Pumpkin! Measuring how far their pumpkins roll.

Cleaning out our pumpkins!

Measuring seeds. 

Finally we counted our seeds!

I wish I could say that we are DONE with pumpkins but I have another pumpkin investigation planned next week.. Check back in to see!

Have a great weekend!