We're Going out of 1st With a Bang!

Do you find yourself walking around blogging inside your head?  I seem to have a constant "post" going.  The only thing is sometimes by the time I sit down to put it on "paper" my thoughts have vanished or don't sound quite a good on "paper" as they did in my mind.  Right now I have some many posts and ideas going on inside my head that there aren't enough school days left to capture them all before the final bell rings.

"We're going out of 1st and into 2nd with a bang!"
If you look closely, you can see me with my twin sister..
Super Reader!

A teacher friend said to me the other day, "You mean you're still teaching?!"  I said that I was and that first grade was going out with a bang.  We are doing the "pop a balloon every day until the end of school" activity that has been all over Pintrest.  I took some of our favorite activities and wrote them on slips of paper.  Then I placed the papers into twelve balloons and had my twelve owlets blow the balloons up.  They pop one each day at the end our time together to find out what we'll do the next day. I draw their names to see who gets to do the popping. So far we've had free-time, a walk in the woods and tomorrow... a morning recess... Yep, I'm getting a lot of teaching in!

I must mention that this nature-lovin' teacher used the walk in the woods as a great opportunity to talk about endangered species.  Most children think that endangered only applies to animals.  It was with great excitement that we discovered three Lady-Slipper orchids growing in "our" woods.  We were also able to collect Monarch caterpillars to observe and we learned a little more about tree identification!

Sooo beautiful!

Actually we did accomplish quite a bit today.  My owlets love "I have___ who has___?" activities, so I came up with one that has a worm in it to finish up our worminess!  I looked for a book that I used to  have called Under the Sky.   I could find a picture of it...But not the book!

I remembered enough of the book that I was able to write out the gist of it on sentence strips.  I passed them out and let the fun begin.  I created a document that will allow you to have some fun in your room, too!  We practiced it a couple of times and tried to get faster and faster.  This really helps my students who have trouble staying on task or listening during group instruction. Everyone has to be ready to read their statement so the next person can jump in with theirs.  If you've never tried a sequencing activity like this, give it a try! The Under Over Story!!  

This may look boring, but it's good clean fun!!

I ran out of pockets!!

Don't forget to enter my give-away! One day left!!

Owl Yours,

Jenny