Plants Mania! :)

After weather we dove right into plants. In first grade, the kids need to learn the parts of the plant and be able to describe the life cycle of a plant. Our first activity was a super fun craft project from a plant unit by Made for First Grade. The students had to make a flower and add the things a plant needs to live (sun, air, water, soil). They also labeled the plants and needs and its parts. Here's my example:

On the first day I showed the kids my example and had them cut and glue the parts to make the flower.

The next day I let them cut out the labels and glue them on their picture.



Here are a couple of their finished projects! :)


Everybody's flowers made our room look even brighter! :)

We also read four books from the plants part series by Vijaya Bodach: Seeds, Roots, Leaves, and Flowers. These books are perfect for 1st grade but also share a lot of great information along with providing beautiful, close-up pictures.

Later in the week we took a plant walk outside around our school. We used our sense of sight to see how many different kinds of plants we could find. Our school has a wonderful graden surrounding our portables so we found many different kinds of plants. We filled in a plant hunt checklist and found all the plants except for a cactus.

At the end of the unit I had the kids draw their own flower and label the parts. I also had them draw the life cycle of a plant in their science journals

As an extension activity, I had my kids write their own version of Jack and the Beanstalk. Instead of Jack, they got to be the main character. They came up with their own story of what would happen if they grew a giant beanstalk and climbed to the top.

I was really impressed with how much my kids wrote. They really enjoyed coming up with their own ideas for a story. Lots of kids climbed up to find a castles and a giant like Jack did. One kid found a house made of candy while another found Santa Clause! :)

A few of my kids even wrote about the life cycle of their beanstalk, starting with the planting of the beans.


Hope you enjoyed our plant unit! Coming soon...Apples Unit and a fun mapping activity! :)

Teacher Talk - Advice for New Teachers

Today's linky party from Blog Hopper is advice for new teachers. It wasn't long ago that I was a brand new teacher! I had a very,rough first year so I have PLENTY of advice to share. I narrowed it down though and here are my top 5 pieces of advice:

5. Find a venting buddy who is NOT a teacher (or at least not a teacher at your school). My best friend (and roommate at the time) had to listen to me cry and moan about how MISERABLE I was and she was a life-saver. It always helps to talk it out.

4. Ask for help! Don't be embarrassed to ask for advice from others. Teachers LOVE to share ideas and help each other out (well, MOST teachers haha) and collaboration with others is one of the best aspects of our careers. Also remember to share your ideas....and ask for others' to share theirs. Don't try to re-invent the wheel! (Teaching blogs are AWESOME ways to find new ideas for your classroom)

3. Have fun! Kids are hilarious...even high school kids. :) Remember to have fun with your students! Teaching is hard work, but make sure to work hard at having fun too!

2. Remind yourself that it gets better. Your first year might be horrible, but remember it DOES get better. Trust me, it does! Every year has been better for me and I'm only on my fourth!

1. Be creative! Teaching is such an incredible job especially because it is NEVER boring (if you're doing it right that is!) and you have the chance to be "an artist" in the classroom. One of my favorite parts of teaching is that I get to come up with fun and new ways to teach. Of course, I definitely use others' ideas often (see number 4!!) but I always feel so incredible when I plan a unique lesson that goes well. It's so incredible to have a job you love!

To all you new teachers out there, have a wonderful year!

Meet the Teacher!

I decided to join the Teacher Week linky party from Blog Hoppin'! Day 1 is meet the teacher so I thought I'd share a little about myself. Hope you enjoy!

Tell us a little something about you...

I'm Kim, a 25-year old 1st grade teacher from Austin. I work at a charter school and LOVE IT! I am about to start (IN ONE WEEK!) a masters program at the University of Texas (Hook 'em!) in curriculum and instruction with a focus on language and literacy. I went to undergrad at Southwestern University in Georgetown,TX. (I went from the smallest school of all time to the biggest!)

I'm originally from Ponca City, Oklahoma but I have also lived in Houston/Katy,TX and Lake Charles,LA. My parents are currently living the sweet retired life in Katy. :) My (not so much anymore) little brother goes to college at Oklahoma State where he is rocking it as a senior chemical engineer major (following in the footsteps of our dad).

My family :)

Me and my two best friends

How long have you been teaching?

This is my fourth year teaching. My first year I taught a multi-age kindergarten/1st grade class. My second year I taught 1st grade and last year I taught kindergarten. This year I am back to 1st grade and with my same students from my third year. I love having my students for two years. It's incredible to see them grow so much and it saves so much time at the beginning of the year.

You might not know...

I have wanted to be a teacher since I was 4. My grandmother was a teacher for over thirty years and she was my major inspiration for wanting to become an educator. She passed away in 2010, but I was so thankful she lived long enough to see me become a teacher.

Granny and her grandkids

What are you looking most forward to this school year?

All the growth my kids are going to make! I already see it and we have only been in school a month. 1st grade is a HUGE reading year and I know we have a long way to go, but my kids are such hard workers I know they will get there!

I'm also looking forward to working with my team (as always). This is our third year to work together and I am continually BLOWN AWAY with their awesomeness. Not only are they amazing teachers, but they are amazing friends! I love to hang out with them during and out of school. :)

What do you need to improve?

My main focus this year is on language arts (reading/writing). I wanted my focus in grad school to be in literacy mainly because I feel like its the area I need the most improvement in. I love teaching math and science. They are fun and easy to plan for. I also love reading and writing but I struggle with planning for all my kids individual needs. I started using the Daily 5 in my classroom and it has been fantastic! :) I can already see growth in my kids in their ability to read to themselves, work on their writing independently and read with each other. It's exciting to see them grow as readers and writers.

What teaching supplies can you not live without?

My computer. :) I love making spreadsheets, looking at teacher blogs and publishing my kids' work. My computer can do so many wonderful things!

My doc cam...it has made my life SO much easier. My kids are so much more focused when they have my example displayed where they can easily see it.

Sharpies and labels and binders and post-its....I love school supplies, especially ones that help you organize!

My plan book...I have started typing my plans on the computer, but I still use my plan book faithfully because I just don't feel prepared without it. HOWEVER there are always those weeks when my plan book is empty on Monday morning. ;-)

BOOKS! I have hundreds and hundreds of childrens' books and I don't plan on stopping the collection any time soon. I love to read and I want my students to love it just as much as me! I want them to be surrounded by books so I have been collecting books since I started college. Many of them are very worn-out and falling apart, but that just means they are being loved. :)

Weather Unit

At our school, we are blessed to be able to come up with our own scope and sequence for the year. My team really tries to integrate our social studies and science units throughout all subjects. Our first science unit this year was weather. We touch on weather everyday in math during calendar time. We talk about what the weather is that day and the kids record the weather in their monthly weather graph. At the end of the month we will tally up the totals and find out which has the most, least and which ones are equal. I have a FEELING that sunny/hot will be the most in August, but I'm just guessing. ;-)

The main part of our unit took place during our science time. We started out reviewing the four seasons and talking about what the weather is like in each season. In their science journals, the kids drew the weather and wrote weather words that went with each season.

We also talked about the water cycle and how water turns to water vapor, clouds form and then rain falls back to the earth. I even introduced the words condensation, evaporation and precipitation. Big words for 6 year olds. :) The kids recorded the cycle in their science journal and a few even wrote the big words down!

During shared reading, we read a poem called Who Has See the Wind? We read the poem together and talked about how we know the wind is there. The kids then got to decorate their poem and circle the sight words they knew.

We decided that we can't see the wind, but we know it's there because we see what it does. On the back of the poem, they wrote about what effects the wind has on different objects.

The wind blows the trees and the leaves away

The wind is really fast. I don't like it.

During a read-aloud I read Eric Carle's The Tiny Seed and had the kids make a graphic organizer showing what the seed was doing during each season. Our next unit was on plants, so this was a great segue into the parts of the plants and what a plant needs. This book goes through the seasons so we talked about the different kinds of weather in each season.

During writing, the kids worked on a weather book all week. They wrote and drew pictures about activities they would do in different kinds of weather (sunny, windy, rainy, snowy, etc.) I forgot to take pictures of these, but believe me, they were adorable. :)

Our big end of unit project was a Season brochure. The kids got to choose their favorite season and write all about it.

In the brochure they wrote about activities they do in that season, what they would wear and special holidays. They also wrote down the months that occur in that season.

Up Next....Plants Unit!! :)

First Week of School

I can hardly believe we are in the fourth week of school! Since I had most of my kids last year in kindergarten, on the first day of school we jumped right back to where we left off last year. This is the time of the year when looping is awesome! :)

Even though we have been in school for almost a month, I wanted to share a few of the things I used for the first week of school. Most of the ideas came from the fabulous Fun with Firsties unit from Babbling Abby.

We started out by reading the book First Grade Jitters and reading a poem called Jitter Juice. We talked about how sometimes we feel nervous coming to school, and how to get rid of those "jitters." I had the kiddos circle all the sight words they knew and draw themselves drinking jitter juice. We then made jitter juice by using the recipe in the Fun with Firsties unit. It's basically sprite, sherbert and some lemonade powder. The kids loved it! :)

We did a lot of all about me activities. Even though I have my kids from last year, my class size went up from 16 to 18 so we had a couple new students. I did several of the activities from Deanna Jump's back to school unit.

The kids drew themselves on the first day of school, and of course, I had them draw me. :) I also included an assessment (phonics and math) in the packet to show parents at beginning of the year conferences.

My favorite activity of the week was making our paper mini-me's. Here's mine!



The kids had a blast decorating them. I left them go to town on the face and hair and BOY did they turn out adorable.





The kids also decorated an all about me book and we stapled it to their mini-me.

For reading, we dove straight into launching the Daily 5 . If you have not read the Daiy 5 or CAFE books, you should check them out! I have absolutely LOVED implementing it in my classroom. Basically, the Daily 5 fosters independence in young students during the literacy block. Each day the kids get to choose from read to self, read to someone, listen to reading, word work and work on writing as their literacy centers. During the first week of school we worked on building our stamina in read to self. We started out doing 3 minutes of reading and have worked our way up to 20 minutes. We have also started work on writing and reading to someone. Next week we will add word work and finally listen to reading.

For math we started our calendar binders and worked on an all about number packets that showed many different ways to make the numbers 1 through 10 (tallies, number sentences, time, ordinal numbers, etc.)

For writing, I had the kids write about what they did over the summer. I always model writing before I send the kids off so I wrote about my fun day at Sea World with my teacher friend Katie.

Here is a couple examples from the kids:

(First story: This summer I went to New York. In New York I went to the beach. I loved it. I had a great day. The end. Second story: I went to Sea World. I saw a killer whale. It was good and they got water on me.)

At the end of the week we worked on a my first week in first grade book from the Fun with Firsties unit. Here's a few examples from the kids:

(It was my birthday during the first week of school and the kids spoiled me rotten.)



(translations: hand print fish - the kids LOVED making the hand print fish for our ocean bulletin board)



(translations: warm and fuzzies - i have a jar I fill up with little "warm and fuzzies" when the kids do something awesome. if they fill it up, they get a prize. this girl put worms instead of warm...haha)

Hope you enjoyed our first week of school! Stay tuned for posts on our weather unit and plants unit!

Under the Sea

I have been SO bad about blogging this year. It is already the third week of school and I wanted to get in the habit of posting once a week! Oh well, better late than never I suppose. I have a lot to catch up on, but I suppose I will start with my sea themed room!

I had never done a theme before in my classroom so I was excited to try one this year. I have several students who love ocean life (one boy in particular is OBSESSED with squids! haha) so I decided to make an under the sea classroom!

First I tackled my student work display board, which I decided to name Star Students and decorate with starfish. I will print out pictures of the kids and glue them to the clothes pins. I love having the kids work all over my room!

My own creative idea was to make seaweed hanging from the ceiling. I stapled DJ inkers sea life to the sea weed to make it more "ocean-y"

I added more DJ inkers sea life to our door.

Our classroom library looks very beachy, especially with the chicka chicka boom boom tree. :) I love the crab pillow from Target's dollar spot. The cute beach mats from Target didn't last long (what did I expect since they were only a dollar). We got our new rug from DonorsChoose so we don't need the mats anyway! :)

I added some ocean fun to our calendar wall. I used an ocean theme from Littlest Learners.

My favorite part of the room has to be the bulletin board we made! I got the idea for the craft on pinterest! We basically used our hand prints to make sea animals. First we painted our hands and placed a hand print on paper. I let them choose between a fish or a jellyfish (they used two hands for that):

After it dried, I had them decorate it by adding eyes, a mouth and gills:

I put them all up on our board and added a snazzy title! :)

Will be posting more soon! :) Stay tuned for first week of school activities!