Five for Friday: First Week Back!

It's finally Friday! To all those teachers who had to come back this week from their holiday break...we made it! Now it's time to celebrate with a Five for Friday!

On Monday, we read Squirrel's New Year's Resolution to learn what a resolution this.

[Click image above to see it on Amazon.]

Then we came up with some resolutions for the class as a whole...

...and also came up with

individual resolutions while completing a New Year's flipbook by Teaches Third in Georgia.

I got (well, requested) a bluetooth speaker from the boyfriend for Christmas! While messing around with trying to figure out how to upload music to my iPad without having to use iTunes, I also discovered iTunes radio. Did you know that there's a "Frozen" station which basically plays Disney songs only? No commercials too! (Probably being its a station for kids). So while we were working on a birthday book for a classmate, the class got to enjoy listening to different Disney songs on iTunes radio via my new bluetooth speakers!

This week was also snowman week! Snowman week included labeling a snowman, writing instructions on how to build a snowman, and creating a torn paper snowman masterpiece!

We also started our geometry unit this week. The kids always love it when the pattern blocks come out, especially when they are told to just use them to build whatever pictures they want!

We also started our new science unit on air and weather. Means we are adding some new Science vocabulary to our word bank!

You've read about my week. How was yours?? :)

Late Post: It's Gingerbread Time!

So I started writing this BEFORE holiday break started and never got to finishing. Now that holiday break is almost over (wah!), I supposed I should get this done. Haha.

December was filled with the world of gingerbread. We read different gingerbread stories, worked on different reading strategies while reading them, and then planned and wrote our own gingerbread stories! Somewhat similar to the Cinderella Unit that I did when I taught second grade, but more tailored for first.

Some of the books we read are shown below. 

[Disclaimer: If you click on the picture, it will bring you to Amazon through my Amazon Associate link.]

          

While reading the books, we filled out a story elements chart to compare and contrast each of the stories and look at their settings, main characters, supporting characters, and "rhymes" (as I liked to call it) that the gingerbread characters say. I told the kids that this was part of our research as authors because we would eventually be writing our own version of the story too. In the end, we ended up with a wall of gingerbread anchor charts as we read through the different books!

We also used many resources that I found on TpT to help with our research including the ones below:

  

Click on the images above to see the full product on TpT.

For the planning of our own story writing, the students started off with deciding who their main gingerbread character would be. We listed off some ideas and then everyone got busy creating a picture of their gingerbread character on a gingerbread template.

     

     

After that, we decided on the setting and our supporting characters, and also did some story mapping before finally writing the story.

What I got were some amazing stories! After spending almost three weeks working on these stories, we obviously had to throw a publishing party to celebrate this awesome accomplishment! The kids learned a very cute gingerbread dance very similar to this:

They performed it for their parents while wearing cute gingerbread headbands that they made. 

After the dance performance, the parents joined the kids for the publishing party. The kids read their stories to their parents and then got to decorate a gingerbread cookie together.

Everyone had lots of fun!

And that's the end of my blog post on our first grade gingerbread unit! Hooray! Time to go sleep now! :)

Welcoming the New Year...Currently Style!

Happy new year, everyone! :)

Best way to celebrate on the blog is to participate in the Currently linky!

Listening - Since most of my current tv shows are on break, time to catch up on some of the shows that I don't usually watch. All caught up Major Crimes, now catching up on Rizzoli and Isles!

Loving -  OMG, can't even explain how much I enjoy sleeping in! Working at this new school means waking up at 6am. Being a night person, that is no fun at all!

Thinking - Lots has happened in 2014, ups and downs. Only makes me wonder what 2015 will bring...

Wanting - How ridiculous does that sound coming from a teacher on break?? We have a district visit the Thursday we come back from break. The principal wants everything on display in our rooms to be recent, which means I have lots to change! We get our own security codes to get on campus and I had wanted to go last weekend, but campus was closed that weekend due to construction. It was only supposed to be closed until Tuesday, but now that's been extended to closed until this coming Saturday. 

Needing - Weak Californian here. It's cold!!!

Yes - Living at home will definitely help with that.

Maybe - Living at home is great, but eventually I do want to move out and possibly move in with the boyfriend. I figured a good time to do it would be in the summer so that's something to think about. 

I Wish - I wish I had the creative juices and energy to make all the awesome products that I could possibly make in the near future. 

Alright, that's it for now! Look out for my gingerbread entry tomorrow! :D