Habitats!

Hey ya'll!

We do a HUGE 3 week unit on habitats! We study the Savanna, the Rainforest, and the Ocean. We do one habitat each week, and we focus the first day on the habitat, the second day on the animals, the third day on the people, and the fourth day we put it all together with writing! (And on Fridays we did an art project for that habitat)

This year I chose to organize the kids' units using file folders. They just glued a piece of paper that was divided into 3 sections on to a part of the file folder, and then each day we wrote in one section. Then the next week we glued another paper in. This kept them from getting mixed up and made it easier look at to grade, PLUS I could then put their 4th day writing papers inside the file folders when we were all done! Voila!

If I was more with it I would have handy dandy pictures to show you of a completed file folder, but I sent them all home during parent/teacher conference week!

I DO have pictures of a few of the anchors we created, though! One the ocean one, everything on the anchor they also wrote in their folder over the 3 days, and the other 2 weeks looked very similar for the other habitats.

Here is us working on a guided art project to make a picture of a rainstorm at sunset in the savanna! This was actually quite ambitious for me to do during the 3rd week of school, but they LOVED it, and so did I!

The finished products! They were all so beautiful!

The kids LOVE this unit! And they all learn SO much! Parents were really excited to get to take their units home, and I heard a lot of, "Oh! They came home everyday tell me about this!" My teacher heart was SO happy!

The First 2 Weeks

Hello!

Looooong time, no blog! But here I FINALLY am again!

Don't let the title fool you, however, because we are currently in our 8th week of school. I just have not found the time to get anything posted. Like, AT ALL. So, here is a quick (poorly photographed) re-cap of our first few weeks.

First off, in my last post, I showed you guys the cute frame I make that said First Grade on it from the first day of school. Well, here are a few of the interviews we did to go along with our pictures! They came out SO cute! I also (finally) got them up in classroom where I'm going to keep them all year, and then at the end of the year we'll do the questions again to see how they compare. :)

Secondly, we started Zoo Phonics this year! Kinder kinds started it last year, and then this year K and 1 are committed all the way! Let me tell you, it's AMAZING! I have never ever seen such strong spellers this early in the year. Such an awesome program!

As part of the beginning of the year review we built our own alphabet zoos! Each group had some letters, and they had to find pictures of animals or things that started with their letter. They LOVED this! Loooooooved.

For the first two weeks of school we do Fables and Folktales. We read a Fable or Folktale each day, fill in the chart for the story elements, and then do some kind of craftivity. Here is the chart partially filled out! We also did Peter Rabbit, Anansi the Spider, The Fox and the Grapes, and one more that I can't think of off the top of my head.

Here are our Anansi the Spiders that we made! We do this story last, so this craft just becomes that Friday's art project. :)

I also tend to read Rainbow Fish pretty early in the year because it's a fun and familiar story, and making the Rainbow Fish is always fun!

So there is a tiny peek into our first two weeks! In math we are working hard on subitizing and then we move into equality, and addition, and decomposing numbers. Then we just decompose and decompose and decompose so that we get TONS of practice with seeing what combinations make which numbers. It makes addition easier and faster, and makes story problems about a gazillion times easier too!

That's all I got for right now! I'm going to work my butt off to do more! I just could not find time between the start of the school year, moving from an apartment into a house, and starting grad school But now I have a better sense of my schedule and how to balance things, so I hope I can rock it second quarter with actually blogging regularly!