Teacher Appreciation Day and Mother's Day Craft

Today's post is two in one!

First off, today is Day of the Teacher so our lovely parents provided the teachers with a yummy lunch. There was so much food is was crazy! I wish I could've taken pictures of the food. It was very delicious. The dessert table was even longer! Best dessert ever were these tiny s'mores bites. I have to learn how to make those! The parents even gave us take out boxes to pack up the leftovers to take home. Didn't have to worry about dinner today! :)

Every teacher also got a gift box. Instead the box was a t-shirt (Keep Calm and Teach On) and a collection of cards from students and parents. I even got a letter from a former student. That made me really happy. So sweet! :)

So enough of feeling special today...it's now time to talk about Mother's Day! (Special tidbit: I have the honor of sharing my birthday with Mother's Day this year.) Last year, we made tissue box books for as our Mother's Day gift. I did again this year with the kiddos but wanted to add some more. (For a video on how to make tissue box books, click here.)

Thumbprint heart! Cute? :)

When I think of Mother's Day gifts, I always think of this ceramic handprint I gave my mother when I was really young. Of course, I don't remember making it at school, but that thing hung on their bedroom wall for a loooong time. So naturally, when I think of Mother's Day presents, I think of handprints. I found the perfect gift on pinterest! 

Are they cute or what????? Check out the pin here!

If you don't have something figured out yet, this is super easy to make! It took my class one 50 minute session to get this all done. More effort was actually spent getting all the supplies!

I can't get over how adorbs they are! I bet the moms are going to LOVE them! Now it's time to go and wrap these wonderful gifts! :)

Teacher Appreciation SALE!

Happy Teacher's Appreciation Week! Hope all the teachers out there are surrounded by the feeling of being appreciated. Our PTA has been feeding the teachers every day with some treats. Monday was bagels and cream cheese. Today was donuts and strawberries. Tomorrow is the big teacher appreciation lunch so I'm definitely looking forward to that! TpT is throwing a sale to appreciate all the awesome teachers out there. While I don't have many products in my store, I decided to join in on the sale too (a little late, I know, today is almost over). All my products are currently 20% off! Since I joined the sale a little late, my sale will end on Thursday instead of tomorrow. So shop away! :)

Five for Friday (Sun edition)

Is it too late to Five for Friday??? I originally wasn't going to do it because I was too tired from Friday's events and then Saturday kind of just flew by. But now that I'm finally transferring pictures from my camera to my external, I am seeing the pictures that I took for Five for Friday and feel like I have to share. So I guess here it is! Five for Friday...Sunday style!

1. Our caterpillars are growing like crazy! The picture below really doesn't accurately show what they look like right now. That picture was taken on Monday. By Friday, those buggers were HUGE. I'm hoping they will be in chrysalis stage this coming week. How exciting would that be??

2. We had an instructor visit from a nearby Arts and Science center to teach the kids an art lesson. This lesson was focused on Molas from the Kuna tribe of Panama. When the lesson first started, I was a bit worried because it just seemed like a big gigantic mess with all the color mixing and painting going on. However, the end results turned out pretty nice!

 

3. Wednesday was Principal's Day. The principal actually ended up treating the staff to a meal but we still thanked him with a card, a nice bottle of wine, and gift certificate to a nice restaurant. My class also made a card for him.

4. Thursday was our art lesson with our awesome art parent. We started a new topic on perspective this week so she introduced the concept to the kids by having them draw landscapes. We started with a horizon line and made very sure to differentiate the size of the objects in our foreground and background!

5. No pictures for this but I had two evening school events this week. Thursday night was Music Night. The music teacher planned a performance for the kids to do with their voices and barred instruments (aka xylophones). Friday was the first grade pajama party that the first grade teachers donated during our big school fundraise, the auction benefit. We had 28 first graders in their jammies making crafts, eating pizza, playing with the parachute, touring the school in the dark with glow sticks, and watching a short video while munching on some cookies, strawberries, and popcorn. Tons of fun! Tiring too!

Okay, whew. I got that over with. Still find it hard to believe that it is finally May. It's strange to see other bloggers mention how they only have numbers-in-the-teens days left of school. We only just hit the 30 day mark last week. We are now on 28 days left! Still pretty crazy! :)

May Currently

I knew today was the first day of May, but with everything else going on...I almost forgot about Farley's Currently! Good thing I checked my Feedly (Google Reader replacement?!) and was reminded by the many blogs posting their Currentlys. So here is mine!

Listening - CSI! I think I watch too many tv shows. 

Loving - The weather has been wonderful lately! We are in the 80s this week. This means it's pretty awesome to be outside. However, hot weather also means muggy and warm classrooms. Only the portable classrooms have AC. The classrooms in the building (like mine) don't so we depend on the many fans we have strategically placed in the classroom. Doesn't really do much but we try our best! 

Thinking - Is is really May?!?! Last full month of school! Also means, a plethora of school events! Music Night, field trip, my birthday party (yes, I sneak that in there), Open House, Science Fair, Volunteer Appreciation Night! Music Night is tomorrow. Woohoo. So much fun! @@ Plus, I have also been summoned for jury duty the day after Memorial Day. Not sure how well that is going to work out...

Wanting - I am leaving for Asia with the family the week following our last week of school. That means I only have two business days after the last day of school to get my classroom all packed up and organized. Eek! I've been trying really hard this year to keep things as organized as possible so I don't have to clean so much at the end. But of course, piles of papers and things are still showing up. Wouldn't life be easier if things just organized and packed themselves?

Needing - What can I say? My shoulders are sore. :)

Summer Bucket List -  I think those three words say it all. I will be in Asia with my mom and bro for three weeks (Singapore for one, Taiwan for two). I also hope to make a weekend trip down to Disneyland with the boyfriend sometime in the summer. Of course, now that I've started to dab into creating lessons and products, I would like to spend some time in the summer really focused on creating things. Not sure how well that will pan out, but let's hope for the best! And of course, relax. Need I explain more? :)

Whew! Good thing I made it! Now...back to my CSI! :)

Five For Friday (Sat edition AGAIN)

I'm actually on a mini weekend vacation now, but I just HAD to post because I actually made the effort to take pictures for Five for Friday so I wanted to make sure I posted it! Sometimes, writing a post on Friday is so so hard to do especially if you are coming home exhausted from the week. But after a fun day at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk with the boyfriend today, I'm ready to make my Five for Friday post! :)

1. Monday was Earth Day. I wanted to get our Earth Day bulletin board up BEFORE Earth Day so we had started on our writing and craft the previous week. Unfortunately, we didn't finish our stuff until Earth Day. But that just means I get to mention it in this week's Five for Friday! :)

More about this can be read in my previous post here.

2. For the last week, my class has been working really hard on a big writing project...creating a book that will be published into a hardcover bounded book! We finished everything and shipped it off to the publishing company on Tuesday. It's a very exciting moment for all of us. I consider it to be the big project that my classroom is known for and it definitely makes for a wonderful keepsake of first grade. The best part of it is....it's FREE (to publish, you have to pay if you would like a copy of the book)!!! It's also a great way to build a class community and get everyone to work as a team! Below is a preview of two of the pages in our book: (Read more about this in a previous post).

3.  We're back to addition and subtraction after a month's break (we were studying geometry, patterns, and data and graphing)! Now it's time to get the kiddos ready for second grade math by introducing two-digit addition and subtraction! It's crazy to see how much the kids have learned this year.

4. In Science, we are learning about solids and liquids. We've investigated different types of solids and talked about some properties. This week, we talked about properties of liquids. The kids are really getting it!

5. Finally, the first grade circuit decided it would be fun to do a butterfly unit with the kiddos so we ordered dome painted lady caterpillars and they arrived on Friday! I haven't shown the kids yet. They are going to be in for quite a surprise next week! :)

That's it for this week! Hope everyone else had an exciting week! Next week we are going to hit our 30 day countdown. Can't believe it!

How to Help Save the Earth

Happy belated Earth Day! Sorry this post is so late. First, I forget to take a picture. Then, I forget my camera. After that, I get too lazy and forget to post. (Like my use of sequence words there?)

In celebration of Earth Day, we created coffee filter Earths! First they used blue and green markers to color the Earth on coffee filters, completely covering it with marker ink. (Make sure to have something underneath the coffee filter to catch all the ink that seeps through!)

After coloring our Earths, we created magic by spraying the coffee filters with water.

Once they dried (and they dry pretty quickly!), we glued the Earths along with our writing (prompt and paper provided by A Cupcake for the Teacher) on black paper. 

This made for an awesome bulletin board! :)

Can you guess what's wrong with this picture?

Hope everyone else had a wonderful Earth Day! :)

We're Publishing a Book!!

If you haven't heard of Studentreasures Publishing, I highly recommend you check it out! It's the perfect way to create an awesome first grade keepsake that will last forever. It also allows students to get an truly authentic experience the writing process. 

What exactly is it, you ask? It's a free publishing program that will take your class created book and publish it into a hardcover bounded book! They also publish individual student books which is probably better for upper grades. By the way, I am not getting paid by Studentreasures to say awesome things about them. Just thought I'd get that out of the way. :)

I discovered them last year during my first year of teaching. How? I don't quite remember. However, after getting a sample book (a book published by some other class), I decided to give it a try. There was some incentive for getting a book published before the end of November so I went ahead with it. I worked with my class to create a Thanksgiving-theme book, Turkeys in Disguise! It was hard work and as a first-timer both as a full-time teacher and with the program, my timing wasn't great. We ended up spending three full days straight working hard on creating our book. But it turned out awesome! Below is a video of the class reading their published book.

I was so proud of my class! I even bought a copy and mailed it to my 2nd grade Master Teacher (who taught me everything I know). (By the way, parents are given the opportunity to order copies for themselves.

Well, this year, I decided that I wanted to wait until we get closer to the end of first grade (after we have developed our writing a bit more) to work on our book. This year's class book's focus is on helping others. This time, I made sure to spread the work out. We spent a little more than a week working on our book by going through the entire writing process. I don't really have pictures of them working on the book besides them illustrating...I was too busy playing the role of editor!

This book was definitely a team and partner effort! The kids brainstormed situations in which someone or something needs help and asks the reader "What would you do?". Rather than posing questions only, I had the kids also answer the questions. So they worked as desk partners. One person wrote the question while the other person answers the question. The illustrations were when the real partner work came in. I told the students that they have to work together to make their illustrations make sense (each student had their own page so they draw their own illustration). They needed to discuss what the characters in their scenario looked and dressed like so that the pictures go together. Everyone did a wonderful job with that. The illustrations turned out great!

There are other ways in which we worked as a team and had to make class decisions together. However, I kept going on, this post would never end! :)

We finally finished everything today and it has all been shipped off to Studentreasures. I'm can't wait to see our book when it returns to us!

Here's a quick preview:

Cover

Yep, I took these in the car! Realized that I forgot to take pictures before shipping them off! :)