March Recap [PICTURE HEAVY POST]

Hi friends! I'mmmmm back! Did you miss me? :D

I also didn't make Five for Friday like I had said because date night got moved to Friday so didn't get home until late. Spent the rest of the night preparing for the job fair on Saturday (more on that in a future post) so just didn't have time for it. 

It is now Sunday and almost the end of the month. Since I haven't written a post this month I thought it would make sense to just do a recap of what's happened in my classroom this month. I will warn you though, this post is going to long and VERY picture heavy so I hope you're prepared!

Read Across America

The theme for this year's Read Across America was "Oh, the Places You Will Go". 

We also did some free reading time with Dr. Seuss books along with some sequencing practice with the cat in the hat!

Friendly Visit

My friend from Canada came for her annual visit to my classroom. She comes every year to take pictures of my students with our published book. (Check out her photography skills on her website!)

St. Patrick's Day Activities

We read The Luckiest Leprechaun: A Tail-Wagging Tale of Friendship and talked about who we thought was worth more than gold to us.

Writing & Craft from The Teacher Wife!

We also did a directed drawing of a leprechaun from First Grade Blue Skies! Last year, I used educreations on my iPad to record myself teaching this to my class so that students who had been pulled out for resource during that time could learn the lesson when they returned. A year later, I just pull the video up, play it, and sit back and relax as I watch my new class create their leprechaun drawings. I need to do this more often!! 

We also read The Night Before St. Patrick's Day, which talks about setting out leprechaun traps. So I guess we needed to make some too!

From Second Grade Sweets

The kids couldn't wait to see if they caught any leprechauns. Unfortunately, their traps couldn't outsmart the leprechauns, who left quite a mess in the classroom.

But at least they left some pots of gold beads behind for each student to find!

Contractions
One of my favorite anchor charts that I've made so far (thank you pinterest for the idea)! We also made a flip book to help us practice our contractions.

Bombaloo
Our school is participating in Project Cornerstone and the character trait for March is self-discipline. We read Sometimes I'm Bombaloo which is a great book that talks about anger and dealing with it. In the story, a girl turns into Bombaloo when she gets angry after her brother knocks her castle down. As Bombaloo, she destroys everything around her. You'll have to read the book to find out how she turns herself back into her. :)

After reading the book, we talked about what we would we do when we turn into Bombaloo and how we can turn ourselves back to our normal self.  

I actually really love how we have read the book because now kids will come up to me during to tell me that someone has turned into a Bombaloo (displaying bad sportsmanship). Sometimes I will have students in the classroom who will get upset and I remind them that they need to turn Bombaloo back into themselves. It really works!

Math
Math has been all about place value this month. We talked about two-digit numbers, how they are composed of tens and ones. We then spent a week practicing different ways to find 1 more, 1 less, 10 more, and 10 less of a two-digit number. Using a math tool to figure it out was simple enough for the kids, but doing it mentally took a lot more practice.

Freebie Activity from K. Almaraz

Freebie Worksheet from Grella Monsters

Spring Birds
A directed drawing lesson on drawing a bird using oil pastels and then watercolors for coloring everything in. I was pleasantly surprised at the results! Thanks to Deep Space Sparkle for the idea!

And that concludes the March recap! Congrats to all who made it through the whole post! I will be back for the currently in April. See you then! :)