100 Days in School

I can't believe it's already the 100th day! On our 100th day of school all of us dressed up like 100 year olds! It was so much fun. I couldn't resist taking a "granny selfie". My student teacher did an AMAZING job with the planning on this day! Here are some of the fun things we did.

 There was a "100 survey" wall where the kids could go when they were finished with their centers.

 Each student brought in 100 things and made a sorting mat. They grouped them by 10's on the mat.

We used the app Aging Booth to make the students look like they were 100. We printed them out and they wrote about what it would be like when they were 100; they also got to decorate the frame around their 100 year old face. Here is a pic of what I turned out to look like....

They did a search of the room for numbers. They hi-lighted the numbers they found to find the mystery picture (it made a 100).  Each student made a 100 things hat. Each strip they either stuck 10 stickers or drew 10 things. When you add it all together it makes 100!

All in all... it was a crazy day BUT lots of fun!

How did y'all spend your 100th day in school?

-Libby

New Year, New Goals!

This year being a new mom I have set some new goals for myself so that I can better provide for my family and have some more creative outlets. I am privileged to have my assistant teacher serving as a student teacher in my classroom this semester! Since I'm not having to plan lessons it's opened up time for me to:
1. Upload my original games, lessons, printables, etc. to TpT (Teachers pay teachers)
2. Blog about what's going on in my classroom

So here's to new beginnings... I am now in charge of the bulletin boards and had a lot of fun with these. My assistant has had some great, fresh ideas to go along with lessons I've done in the past! 

You've got to love when your student's resolution is to listen to you! :)
I used a poster board cut in half to make the giant popper. Then I just stapled it on the board and stuffed wads of butcher paper in it. My assistant had the cute idea to add curled pipe cleaners to it.

 We already had the door done from before Christmas but thankfully it still "goes" with the cold weather. All of the snow globes turned out so cute! 

This is our outside bulletin board. It goes along with our Journey's Lesson 16 story Let's Go to the Moon! I made the rocket out of butcher paper and put my face and my assistant's face on it. I drew this picture of an astronaut last year and had the students draw their own faces inside the helmet. It wasn't very cute that way! So my assistant had the idea to add the aluminum foil around their faces to look like a helmet!  Each of the students used actual pictures of their to make their astronaut's faces but I've covered them up with apples for privacy sake. Way cuter.  The story is about Moon facts so they wrote a list of Moon facts on the blue construction paper next to their astronaut. 

We now have a classroom set of iPads for small groups (5 iPads) so we've all been racking our brains on how to use them! I found a great FREE app to help with understanding place value and using longs, cubes, and flats. It's called Number Pieces. I wrote numbers on cards and had each student draw a card, build the number with the longs, cubes, or flats, and then write the word. Then they circled the tens place and underlined the ones place. It was an awesome way to easily assess if the child understood place value... plus it was tons of fun! It worked well with my struggling students and the more advanced ones because they could move at their own pace.

Lastly, I just uploaded BAM! for Unit 4 to TpT! 

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/BAM-High-Frequency-Word-Practice-Game-Grade-1-Journeys-Unit-4-1655956

I hope everyone enjoys their long weekend! I've been able to create the BAM! game and add photos to the blog in between Miles napping. He just started crawling so we have been scrambling to baby proof all the extra places we had forgotten. Ahhh... the glamorous life of a new mom! :) 

-Libby

High Frequency Word Game called Bam!

I had a co-worker ask me about how to play the game "Bam!" the other day. It has become a staple in my classroom so I thought it would be fun to share. It's great for practicing high frequency words. We use Journey's as a part of our Language Arts curriculum. Each lesson has a list of high frequency to practice. I found that incorporating them into a game makes it easy and fun for the students to practice. You can download it for FREE from my TpT store! The download has color and black and white printables.

Please let me know how you like it! I am working on making a bundle of BAM! games that cover all the high frequency words in each unit.

Peace, love, and teaching!

-Libby