Dragon into School!

I really wanted to have a dragon themed classroom this year. I just couldn't get past the idea that the kids would feel like they were being dragged into school every day. Read on and lost somewhere in this post is my actual theme for the year!

Finally I have a class to call my very own! I have waited, prayed and hoped for this for a loooong time! I get to spend the whole day with first and now second graders without having to say goodbye at noon. I think that they are happy about that, too! Yesterday I announced that I had good news and bad news. Which did they want first? After voting to hear the good news first they booed when I announced it was time to go home! "That's two bad newses!" Said one of my new owlets! Awww such sweet words. Now a nice long weekend to recover from loosing my voice....from too much singing and resting my face that hurts from too much smiling! Want to see some fun stuff? Read on!

Of course this lover of all things pink would have a "sparckale" dragon! 

 I never knew there was a name for this...Guided Drawing! My owlets get quite excited when we do this. I'm not sure if there are rules for it. I start with a shape or two and then we make a list of what we think it is going to be. I don't give any hints and no idea about what it is is a bad idea. I cannot draw without following directions, so I have all kinds of step-by-step books. When we have finished I have the class add details of color and or put the character in a setting. Finally we add a sentence or two telling about the picture. I could do this every day. I only do it once a week...I want the kids to get excited when we do it and not make it part of our daily routine.

My "theme" this year is "Showing S'more Kindness" so we have
chocolate, graham crackers and marshmallows all over the
place. I love that this creative genius showed a kind dragon helping
a princess roast marshmallows!

On another neat note...My class had fun with cleaning wipes this week. You would think it was a free-time activity with the excitement you could feel in the room. It started with one owlet wanting to use a wipe to clean off some marker from their desk at free time. Pretty soon look what happened...

I'm off to enjoy some shopping, cooking and celebrating of my Cranky Bear's birthday. Need some resources for guided drawing? Check these out!

Mrs. Miner has some awesome resourses and many are FREE!

You Might be an Artist! Freebie!!

I was so inspired by my time in the National Art Gallery that I created a unit to go along with an art theme. I hope you enjoy it! If you click here it will always be free. If you are a follower it will always be available. If you want to buy it it will be available at TPT for sale tomorrow!

My owlets get so excited when I pull out one of these following direction pages. I hope yours will enjoy it, too!

It felt good to be back at school after being with wild and crazy 7th and 8th graders for a week. I'm sure a couple of my owlets grew while I was gone. It was so nice to be back in the company of sweetness. Only six more school days until the school year ends for me. I'm trying to really fan the flame of loving to read as summer approaches. I'm trying to come up with ways to keep in contact with my students over the summer to keep that flame alive. I get to loop with my students this year and I'm going to be teaching full-time next year...Yippee!

Out the Window I Can See...

Next year I'm moving into a room with a window. I'm so excited to be able to look out the window any time.  There are benefits to NOT having a window. I imagine that it is a cloudy rainy day and so I don't mind being stuck inside. We read the "Goodbye Hello Window" last week and decided we needed some windows in our classroom. Why not make our own? We brainstormed about all the things we would want to see if we could see anything at all when opening our curtains. We drew our pictures and then wrote about what was outside. The responses were quite eclectic! I found this one to be the very sweetest...

Wouldn't you love having your child write about how pretty, smart and talented
you are? His mom is quite special! 

This Red Wing hockey fan would love to have a bedroom
that looked out over the ice!

South Africa, anyone? Or maybe...

Paris in the spring!

Tonight when I looked out the window I saw this...

Does this have an effect on your students?

Leprechaun Fun and a Freebie

I have a naughty leprechaun in my classroom. Each morning Seamus has played some kind of trick on my owlets. They refuse to even try to make any fake gold because they like his tricks! They like finding the green sparkles he always leaves behind. They have written up some elaborate schemes for catching him, but I think they just want to be friends!

The first morning he spilled my coffee on the floor, then he left shaving cream at each person's place. Yesterday he left string that was attached at one end to a pencil and the other end  to a bag of Lucky Charms. They got to give their small motor skills a work-out as they wrapped the string around the pencil to find the treat at the other end. Tomorrow I'm thinking it is time to toilet paper the chairs.

We've tried trapping him with a tape and today we thought we might be able to attract him to a field of clover. We're all hoping that he'll like the company of other leprechauns.

 I was so glad to see Barbara's post yesterday. Her idea caused me to hear the words we love to hear..."This is the best day ever!" Go check out Barbara's post and follow the link to get your own leprechaun coloring page. Barbara, I'm sending you a little fun in an e-mail! I'm happy to share it with our other friends, too! Leave me a comment and your e-mail if you'd like a copy, too. If you'd rather buy it, you can HERE!!

The Kid in the Hat!

I love me some cat in the hat. When Tammy showed me how to draw my very own, I was elated. I could hardly wait to share my new found artistic abilities with my owlets! I didn't even tell them what we were drawing, which added to the excitement. The next day we turned ourselves into the cat in the hat and wrote about it which was pretty awesome, too.

If you have not tried drawing The Cat using Forever in First's version, what are you waiting for? We are going to add some color, but only a little at a time. Check out this photo dump for some sweet ideas for a rainy day!

My boys love anything that goes on in the bathroom!
This cat is standing on a toilet and holding an owl, among other things!

This project was so much fun for us all!

Roll and Read Freebie

The snow piles are still laying in piles all around town. They aren't as pretty or as welcome as they were when they first arrived in November. They have worn out their welcome and we would all be happier if they would go away and make way for spring. Spring is in the air. I can tell she's arriving by the way the birds welcome me each morning when I step out the door.  The sun is shining at a different angle and my daughter is on her way home for spring break. Spring, you can't come soon enough for me.

Soon my owlets will be reading poems filled with flowers, birds, kites and leprechauns. To help them enjoy repeated readings of poems and words around the room I've been using a Roll and Read chart. My kiddos love talking in some of the silly voices that they've heard me use over the year. I hope that your kiddos  enjoy using this chart, too! Click HERE if you'd like to use this!

I'm helping Janet celebrate having 100 followers. Be sure to follow the link by clicking on the picture below to Janet's blog for a chance to win some great prizes!

National Day of Whispering and a Freebie

Did you celebrate today? My class celebrated Whisper Day all day. I'm not sure if this is an actual holiday or not but I'm sure it isn't as much fun as National Doughnut Day! I greeted my students today with a whispered, "Good morning and you get to whisper all day!" Somewhere upstairs during the night I lost my voice. I'm sure it had something to do with the headache and sore throat I had over the weekend. Now I have a VERY talkative class, but I didn't feel bad enough to call myself sick. Bless their hearts they whispered ALL day. Even my owlet who regularly hoots in his outdoor voice whispered.

It is amazing to me that when you raise the level of expectations, kids rise to them. They worked harder at Daily Five than I've ever seen before. And thank goodness for all the routine I've built into the day because I didn't have to give a lot of directions...They just did it! Even though I couldn't give a lot of verbal cues they have made such great progress that I could write information or directions for them to follow and THEY DID! I had such a great day with them that I think we'll make it National Week of Whispering!

All day I have been laughing over one owlet who(ooooo) I heard talking whispering to another. "Please stop parannoying me." She then changed it to an I message... "I mean, it parannoys me when you keep talking to me!" I went over and talked to them about it. What is parannoying I wondered out loud. Apparently it is even worse than annoying! This same student is quite artistic and asked why we didn't color as much in first grade as she did in kindergarten. So I came up with  a special worksheet dedicated to her. We are working with ordinal numbers, so this will be helpful for the whole class! Want one? Click on the picture and break out your crayons!

Presidential Parade and a Freebie!

After a four day weekend I was ready to get back to see my owlets today. Of course, I had an extra reason for being excited to see them. They had a special assignment over our mid-winter break. I gave them a piece of poster board with a hole cut out for their faces and asked them to turn it into a presidential costume. They all wanted to become George or Abe, so I had to limit their choices to any president but the very popular Washington and Lincoln. Here are some of our past presidents in action...

...and some close ups...

 I'd like to introduce Thomas Jefferson and Dwight D. Eisenhower!

Can you find Teddy Roosevelt, JFK, James Madison and Franklin D.?

Do you have a way to get your kids to read more? I don't give much homework, but I would love to get my young readers to read more.I have been searching for a good organized way to get my kids to do more reading at home. I finally gave up and created my own packet of materials that I introduced to my students today. They were pretty excited about hanging up paper backpacks in the hall to show how many books first graders can read. I'll let you know how it works. Maybe it is something you can use too! Click HERE if you want to give it a try. 

Hundred's Day Freebie!

Hundred's Day has come and gone again! For weeks I was trying to think of things that would make this 100's Day different, special and unique. I wanted to really wow my students. I was trying to plan THE BEST DAY EVER!! I'm so glad I realized that it is all new to my owlets. I feel like we did "the same old thing," but realized after hearing many, "This is the best day ever!"s that the same old thing to me is exciting for my class.  The smiles, the hugs and the excitement will never be the same old thing to me. They will forever be precious and meaningful! One of the things I love about six year olds is their enthusiasm... They love everything.

I did do one thing different this year. It got a little bit long, but they hung in there and finished! They had to follow the directions in a PowerPoint presentation to find a picture hidden in a hundred's chart.  We got up and moved around for a while half way through. I think I'll try doing some more of these for different occasions. Feel free to use this if you'd like! You'll need THIS and THIS!

We put the finished products on the back of our 100's Day vests which we covered with 100 little pictures 

100's Day wouldn't be complete without a visit from our friend Zero...

or 100 snacks!

My backyard tonight looks like this...

All this snow fell today! I'm wondering if I'll be awoken by an early
morning phone call!!

Our collections of 100 spread across the floor. 

Elephun! Give Away and a FREEBIE!

Have you seen this book? If you use the Treasures curriculum, maybe you even have it. It is an astonishing book! My students were glued to the pages. It is a book they have gone back to over and over.

We were thrilled to find the website where elephant paintings can be purchased. They were pretty sure I should buy one for the classroom for $600.00! I suggested we pretend to be elephants and paint our own picture. One thing led to another and we ended up painting an elephant...

The elephant is saying, "I'm a full-sized baby elephant. I am called
a calf. Do I make you laugh?"

Here my owlets are painting like an elephant...

Most of them agreed that they would rather paint like a kid, and that an elephant would have a hard time painting like a kid! I wouldn't sell the finished product for anything. I just love our little class pet. We're going to continue learning about elephants next week when we use a wonderful unit on elephants that I found on TPT! I wish I had waited for the big sale on Sunday, but I couldn't wait to get started using it. Speaking of sales...Don't forget to use this code on TPT on Sunday:  SUPER

While you are waiting for the sale head over to a new friend of mine Dinah. She has some amazing pictures to look at and she's having an awesome Give Away!

Here is a FREEBIE for you...I hope you like it! I use it often with my class. It is part of my students 15 book genre challenge.

You can get the whole unit on Sunday for 28% off!