Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We wanted to share some pictures of the wonderful leprechaun traps that were created in hopes of catching a leprechaun.

This free digital ecard created with Smilebox

Dr. Seuss, Leprechauns, and Another Snow Day!

This was another shortened week as a late winter snow storm gave us a "snow day" on Tuesday.  Also, I was absent from the classroom on Thursday afternoon while attending a workshop.  We are beginning the end of the quarter assessments and things are a little hectic!  The kiddos are getting very excited at the thought of the leprechaun visiting our room very soon, and are busy designing brightly colored, sparkly traps.  Some traps have already been brought in to our classroom which has added to the fun of the season!

We celebrated all things Dr. Seuss this week by reading many of his wonderful books followed with response activities.  Two of our favorites were "Oh, The Places You'll Go! and "There's a Wocket in My Pocket!"

Students designed a balloon and wrote about a place they would like to go and why.

After reading, "There's a Wocket in My Pocket" we practiced substituting the first letter of an object to make an imaginary character name.  Then, the girls and boys created their character and wrote a rhyming sentence.

In math this week we played a fun game called "Piggy Puddles" to practice adding with the "doubles" strategy. Students rolled two dice, added them together, doubled the number, and colored in the matching sum on their picture.  The first person to complete the picture was the winner!

Each day we always allow plenty of time to browse through books and some of our favorites include 3-D pictures of insects, body parts, and microscopic organisms.  

And finally, an activity we always look forward to on Friday is our "Brown Bag Book Club".  This week we discussed an Irish folktale retold by Tomie de Paola titled "Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato."

Everyone enjoyed popcorn as they shared their favorite part of the story.  Then, they worked as a team to answer questions about the story in a fun contest format.

The leprechaun will visit our classroom next week!  Visit our blog again to view pictures of our fantastic leprechaun traps and to find out if we catch him!

Authors, Adding, and Adjectives

It was an exciting time at our school this week when children's book author, Blake Ross, came for a visit and talked with students about the process of writing and illustrating books.  On display were many of his sketches and paintings. There was a question and answer time at the end, as well as, book signings.  Everyone was very excited to get to talk with a professional author!

We love to practice math with our friends!  This game reinforced the "doubles" math facts.  

A big "thank you" to Kathy at First Grade a la carte for this "cover-up" game.

We began celebrating all things Dr. Seuss with this little activity.  First, we read the infamous "Cat in the Hat" book and brainstormed adjectives that could be used to describe the main character.  Then, students chose a different word to write on each section of the accordion folded "body" of the cat.  

Another fun activity this week involved making words from scrambled letters.  It is always so amazing to see how fast my kiddos can come up with words and fun to watch as they turn everything into a "competition" with their peers.

Stayed tuned for more Dr. Seuss activities next week!