Tag Archives: fun

Happy Halloween 2016!

This year Halloween is on a Monday, but our school decided to have our Halloween festivities on Friday instead.  We went ahead with our traditional Halloween Parade, which travels down the street near our school and snakes along the campus of Aberdeen Heights–a retirement residence next door.  We have a great partnership with them and love to delight their residents with our cute costumes, big smiles and happy waves as we walk by.

This year, however, instead of having a typical “party” after the parade, we decided as a grade level to have a more low-key afternoon, and just watch a movie and have a snack.  My kiddos seemed really excited about this (as excited as kiddos usually are for a “regular” party) and I was, too. Sometimes less is more. 🙂  I mean who doesn’t love some popcorn and a show?  Oh, and throw in a couple of Oreos and it’s even better, right?  I even heard a couple of friends say, “This is the best day ever!”

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At our school, kiddos bring their costumes and put them on just before we leave for the parade.  For us, that was around 1:45, which meant that they’d been waiting pretty much all day for it!  Sometimes (which I am sure is not surprising) this can mean that kiddos are little more amped up and full of lots of pent-up energy.

What was SO great, though, was that instead of that reality, this was THE BEST putting-on-costume time I think I’ve EVER experienced with a group of kiddos.  Part of it, I think , is that we really emphasized that costumes would be easy to put on and go over clothes (rather than having to have kiddos change anything), and so we could all just find a quiet spot in the room and quickly get ready.  Kiddos gathered on the carpet after that, and we even had time to read two books before they called us to line up!  Talk about efficient!  Forgive me for not having better pictures of the parade, but I was busy having a great time like the kiddos and couldn’t snap pics of it!

When we returned, however, we did have a chance to capture pictures of our great costumes!  We noticed that there were many costumes that went together, and so kiddos planned how we should group for our pictures.  Check it out!

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Superheroes!

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Warriors!

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Star Wars!

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Monsters!

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Miscellaneous-Amazing-Costumes-That-Are-Different-From-the-Rest!

We had so much fun!  Happy Halloween from Rm. 202!!

Global Read Aloud 2016

Last year I learned about the Global Read Aloud from a Twitter friend of mine named Tam Scharf who lives in Australia.  She is a great collaborator and friend to me, despite the fact that we have never really met, have only spoken in person once (well really it was over Skype), and don’t even live on the same continent or teach the same grade (anymore at least–we both taught 5th grade we first “met” in 2011).  I love that that story actually describes many teachers who are important parts of my professional learning network.

But anyway….the Global Read Aloud 2016 started this week and we are off to a running start already!  We began with a short introduction to what it is,

who we would be studying and what they could look forward to doing over the next 6 weeks. We watched a video and checked out the website of Lauren Castillo, the author and illustrator we’d be studying.  Very shortly they were hooked and SUPER excited to join the almost 900,000 kids who would be studying the same books!

This week’s book (as you can see in the video) is Nana in the City, and is all about bravery.  After we read and discussed the story, we got busy answering this question:

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We got busy thinking and drawing and I was really impressed (and a little surprised) with what they came up with.  Check out our work!

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We are excited to read more and write more and share our thinking!  There are some other friends in our school who are also participating and we’re hoping to share our thinking with them, as well.  Tomorrow we plan on joining a Twitter chat about Lauren Castillo’s books, too, so we can talk about what we like, what we think and who we are.  We may also build cityscapes to teach others about where we live.  The opportunities are endless!  I’m excited to share more and we go along!! 🙂

Our First MYSTERY NUMBER SKYPE!!

I was so excited to get my kiddo started on some “techy” type things and so today was a great day–we did our first MYSTERY NUMBER SKYPE!  What’s a Mystery Skype you ask?  What’s a Mystery Number Skype? (Check those out so you can get the big idea–believe me, they are one of the coolest things we do in Rm. 202!

Well today was the day!  I hadn’t really made a big deal about it, which was fine because they didn’t know what it was anyway, but boy did they pick it up quickly!  I explained the general idea (we have a number and the other class has a number and we use a 20-Question type game to figure out each others’ numbers), and then we practiced with the number 18.  We talked about words we might use (like greater than/less than, tens place/ones place), and ways we could cross off the most numbers at once (we kept track together on a hundreds chart) and then matched up with a partner to plan for what we would ask.

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At 9:30 we were ready, and our Skype phone rang!

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We answered and got right to work.  Our first point of business (after we said hello, of course!) was to figure out who would ask the first question.  We did so with rock/paper/scissors!

We won (rock over scissors!) and asked the first question.  Eventually we will have jobs for each kiddo, and will keep track of our questions for future reference, but for now we were lucky to have Mrs. Sisul tweet for us! Here’s an example (and you can check out the rest of the session on our class feed at @jbeardensclass) of what happened!

Rm. 202 kiddos did such a great job and were SUPER excited when in just about 5 or 6 questions we got to the point where we could guess their mystery number!

What a great start to our Mystery Skyping journey! We are ready to go and excited for our next call!  Who’s in?  If you’re interested, please leave us a comment so we can get in touch with you!

Outdoor Adventures!: Light and Sound

Today was a half-day at our school (because of teacher professional development in the afternoon), and so first grade took advantage of an awkward schedule to have an outdoor adventure!  We have been outside with Rm. 202 friends before, but today were had ALL OF FIRST GRADE outside in the Robinson Naturescape learning and exploring together!

The teachers planned a STEM day focused on our current PLTW unit on Light and Sound, adding in the component of the AMAZING outdoor spaces we have in the back of our school.  We took out a tub with a variety of tools, like binoculars, magnifying glasses, color tiles, flashlights, mirrors and spectroscopes.  Kiddos had the job of exploring outside and discovering something new about light.  Eventually we will have to represent that learning (using iPads, drawing or building tools), but for now we were just out and about and having fun with wondering!!

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As you watch the slideshow with your kiddo (if you’re a parent!), ask them these things:

  1. What was your favorite part of being outside today?
  2. What was your favorite tool to use as a scientist?  How did you use it?
  3. What did you find outside while you were exploring?
  4. What did you learn about light?
  5. What do you still wonder?

We came in and as a quick way to debrief, I had kiddos share what they were thinking about after their adventure.  While you can tell that they were thinking of many things other than light (like dead animals–we found a DEAD RACCOON back there today!!), it was obvious that kiddos were thinking and having fun, and that they  LOVE BEING OUTSIDE!  I think at least half of my kiddos asked me when we’re going out again. 🙂  I’m excited to see how we can use this chart of great ideas in other parts of our learning soon, like for reading and writing ideas, topics for math and even further thingsto study for STEM or Genius Hour (which we’ll get to later on this year!).

fullsizerender-minWhat a great day we had! 🙂

Dot Day UPDATE: We Made Our Mark!

I hope that you have already enjoyed the story of our Dot Day 2016 celebration, but if not, you might want to check that out first, and then you will have an even better idea of how we got here.  This is an update–one thing I forgot to share (what??) and our amazing paintings that weren’t ready to share yet.  Believe me, these MARKS are amazing!

First our favorite parts of Dot Day (not surprisingly, it was the DOTS for most kiddos!)

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Now the BEST part.  🙂  We made dots and watched them splatter…and we wrote about them, too!

 

 

 

Happy in Our Skin!

For the last few years, I’ve started the year with creating beautiful things to hang in our room.  It’s so great to watch as our bare walls fill up with amazing creativity that spills out of our first grade minds!

This project is both fun and meaningful as it’s based on helping kiddos see that while we are all different that’s an amazing thing, and that within those differences we can celebrate ways we are also the same.

As with many things, we started our conversation with books.  We read Shades of Black by Sandra Pinkney and Happy in Our Skin by Fran Manushkin together.

We talked about how each of us looks different, has different talents to share and brings many different things to our classroom community.  Also, we have many things that are the same because we’re all kids.  We all want to be loved, to belong, to contribute, to learn.

We wanted to create beautiful images of our unique and different selves to hang on the wall, and we did so with lots of different creative things in our room.  We also borrowed a mirror from our friends in Ms. Turken’s room so we could see some of the close-up details of our faces.

Now they hang along the top of our wall and we can see them smiling on us every day!  We are definitely learning to celebrate the beautiful skin we live in, and appreciate how different we all are!

Bike Rodeo 2016

I am pretty sure we have the best school ever, with teachers and community members who plan THE BEST things for our kiddos to do.  Case in point–last week we participated in a Bike Rodeo during our PE classes, where everybody brought their bikes to school (or shared if they didn’t have one!) and got to ride around the blacktop!  There was an obstacle course, and I heard that kids had a GREAT time going down the big hill on the driveway.  There were LOADS of kids who learned to ride without their training wheels, too!  Officer Stemmler (our School Resource Officer), Mrs. Morgan and Mrs. Moffitt were such troopers as they braved the sun and heat and helped our Roadrunner ride and ride and ride!  Thanks to all the parents to helped make it happen, too!

I wish I had pictures of the actual bike riding to share, but these will have to do.  Just imagine kids zooming around really fast (see, there’d be blurry pictures anyway) with giant smiles on their faces!

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#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week 5

I feel like I should be sure to say thanks to Jillian Heise for the fabulousness that is #classroombookaday on Twitter.   And I am so truly sorry if I ever seemed like I created it–I think I just started using it in my title so I didn’t have to retype it when I tweeted out my posts.  Anyhow, what a great thing this has done (and is doing) in my classroom (and so many others!) to promote literacy, introduce readers to new books and to create so many great memories between me and my students.

Ok…this marks Week 5 since we started tracking our reading, and something very special happened–we hit 100 books!!  I haven’t done it yet, but I feel like I should mark that book with a star or something (it was the Light and Sound book just for the record!), and also begin more seriously planning what in the world we’ll do when we fill up our door.  The way the math is working, that will happen in about 6 weeks!  That’s not even the halfway point of the year yet!

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Picture Day Perfect!

I wish I would have taken a picture of everyone together (yep, it was in my plan but the day got away from me 😦 ) because we were all so beautiful and handsome in our Picture Day best.  Alas, I did not, but I was able to capture some cute pictures of some sets of twins and triplets we found in Rm. 202 today:

img_4146img_4147img_4149img_4150How do you not smile with all that cuteness?  Hope your Friday was great–our was Picture Day perfect!!

Ten Black Dots Makes a…

…really great book to challenge first graders with their creativity!  Last week I shared how Mrs. Berger is doing some lessons with first grade and this week was #2.  First she shared the book Ten Black Dots by Donald Crews, which was a great connection to our current math work as well as a great stretch for our creative brains.

Then she asked me to do something that I guess I knew was coming but had forgotten about since last time we did this (2014): use 10 black dots to create something.  I usually appreciate doing things that my students are asked to do, as I know that understanding the struggles that may come up helps me support students through them, but I had forgotten how hard that task is!  I came up with something, but let me just want you it was a little less than stellar. 🙂 Ok, sorry, I know that is a very fixed-mindset thing to say…I take it back.  I just believe if I worked at it I could create a much more imaginative picture with my dots.  (Thanks to Chase for being the photographer while I was working on this!)

After my demonstration, kiddos were given an office and a paper, chose 10 red dots and got busy on their creation.  They worked for about 10 minutes on their 10 red dots, including writing at the bottom to tell about what they made.

And just like with the drawing starts, kiddos did a great job of seeing those dots as so much more than they were!

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Another great example of stretching your brains, Rm. 202 friends!