Halloween Spiders

Good morning all!

Today is Halloween. This is the first year I won’t have a trick-or-treater. My boys have now grown out of it. 

We are doing several Halloween activities in class today. But, I wanted to share the treat I made for my students. I say I made them, rather loosely. My parents and I sat at the dining table for about 2 and a half hours on Saturday creating them. 

They turned out so cute. 

We used 4 full size pipe cleaners, googly eyes, and a regular sized Tootsie Pop. 

These were inspired by She saved. Check it out! 

Can’t wait to give them to them at dismissal.

Enjoy your day!

Pumpkin Verbs

 My first graders have been learning about verbs.

We started by brainstorming a list of verbs that pumpkins do, or that we do to pumpkins.

I got the idea for the poster from Zig's Class.

Then we made pumpkin puppets. Students loved decorating their puppet. I just used materials I found in my classroom. Some old foam pumpkin shapes, and some die cut pumpkins. Googly eyes make everything more fun!

Next we went through the list of verbs, and students acted each of them out. 

I'd point to the word "carve". We would say it together, then we would pretend to carve our puppet. Then I'd say "what kind of word is carve?" Class would say "it's a verb, it's an action". Then we would do the next one.

Then they went to their journals, and wrote 2 sentences about their puppet, using verbs from our list.

They seemed to really understand what a verb is by the time we were done. 

I then took them and displayed them in the hallway for all to see.

Engaging, interactive, repetition, makes meaning!

Welcome!

 

Welcome...Welcome...

I am so excited about coming back to blogging. Back when my children were tots, I wrote a blog about our adventures. I included the things we did, and how I encouraged learning with my toddler and preschooler. It was called Lessons from the Boys. Feel free to visit and look around. I can't edit it any longer, because the email address from that blog no longer exists.

My life changed drastically soon after my last post, at Lessons from the Boys. My husband and I separated and then divorced, my boys grew up, Alligator is now 14, and Monkey is 17. I went back to teaching, 4th and 5th grade for a few years, and landed my current position as a 1st grade teacher, which I love.

This blog will mainly include things I am doing with my class. Of course, updates on my boys, myself, or managing a home as a single mom, will inevitably be included. 

Enjoy, I hope you'll find it interesting, and maybe occasionally helpful!

Oh...and by the way, I have just started playing around in Canva... I created the above "photo" using it. You should try it out!