Seaweed Soup! (Plus Farm Freebie!)

Oh my what a week! I can't believe it was only 4 days! We had some good times and bad, but we ended the week on a high note so that's always nice! First, I have to share some cute things my firsties have said this week - things that made me grab a post it note to jot it down so I wouldn't forget!

One of my darling girls practices subtraction problems every night. We don't have homework (yet!) so every morning she brings me a scrap of paper where she has written down a few problems of her own to solve. On Wednesday, she came up to me and proudly told me she knew what 17-5 was. Of course I asked her what the answer was and she got it right! When I asked how she had figured it out, her eyes got really big and bright and she grinned at me as she said "I used my toes!"  How stinking cute is that?!

Later that same day another darling brought me an emergent reader which had icons above the words to give clues. She proudly read through the book, each page said "my _______" and the theme was geographical features like river, hill, mountain etc. The final page had a picture of the Earth on it, and she read it as "my future!" rather than "my Earth!" I was so tickled to realize that she equates an image of Earth with the word "future", what a powerful connection she has made!

Today one of my sweet boys handed in his paper, with his name (which is only 2 letters long!) taking up a good 1/4 of the page. Before I could even say anything he quickly blurted out "I wrote my name big so, you know, old people can see it!" How's that for thinking on your feet? I could have pointed out that it was highly doubtful that any geriatrics were going to be perusing our papers any time soon but I let it slide because I was trying too hard to keep a straight face!

Alright, on to the Soup part! We made Seaweed Soup in class on Friday. It was the end of our Ocean theme and one of the other teachers had gotten the idea from somewhere online but didn't actually have a recipe or anything.
I tried to get this book to read aloud, but although my local Hastings had it in stock, it wasn't on the right shelf and after 30 minutes of combing the stacks I finally had to admit defeat and just order it online to read later. From what I've read/heard from others it's a great book for one-to-one correspondence (some of my firsties are still struggling with that!) and sets.


Even without the book, the soup was a success. We used spinach leaves as the "seaweed", added salt since the ocean in salty, and tri-color pasta shapes to represent different oceanic items - the wagon wheel was our jellyfish, the shell pasta was a hermit crab's home, the spiral pasta was a piece of coral while the green penne were underwater caves where eels lurked to catch unsuspecting fish! Here's my ingredient list:

1 bag fresh spinach
 1 large can chicken stock
 1 1/2 cans water
Salt, garlic salt, and onion powder.
1 bag tri color pasta shapes

Oh, the onion powder was the sand while the garlic salt was crushed shells with pieces of algae. I let 2 of my firsties pour in a small palmful of salt, while everyone else got to put in 2 shakes of either the garlic salt or onion powder. We cooked the first 4 ingredients in my crockpot on high for about 3 1/2 hours, added the pasta and cooked it for another hour. Honestly, the pasta was overdone, so next time I would add it in the last half hour, but the kids didn't seem to care much! It smelled great as it was cooking too! I had 17 kids yesterday, plus myself and a grandparent, and this recipe made enough for us all.

I served everyone before I passed out the spoons so no one was tempted to sneak a bite first, plus it gave the soup time to cool down a bit. I talked to them about taking a "No, thank you" bite (taking a small bite to be polite when someone offers you something and at least tasting it before saying no) so we all took a bite at the same time. For the next few moments all I could hear was "Mmmmmm!" "This is really good!" "This is the best soup ever!" or, my favorite: "I didn't think it would taste good but it does!" In fact, almost everyone finished their bowls and about 1/2 of my firsties asked for seconds! They even ate the spinach!
Here's the permission slip I sent home to make sure there were no allergies to any of the ingredients - I didn't have any allergies listed on file, but I wanted to double check :)
Seaweed Soup




I know I promised pictures of all our crafts, but I totally forgot to take a picture of the HUGE ocean display I put up at the end of the day with all of our orcas, crabs, sharks and collage fish. I will make sure to take some on Monday.

 Next week's theme is going to be "Down on the Farm".  I am also going to be concentrating on cvc words (onset and rime) in reading. My firsties are beginning to be expert at ladders (like these from Fun 2b In First) so I went ahead and made another set of farm related ones.

Farm Word Ladder
I'll be working on some more math and reading farm activities, so check back soon!

More Ocean Freebies!

I know most teachers do an ocean theme in the spring time, but since my firstie teammate has a gorgeous beach themed room this year (I will see if I can get in there to take some pics - it is really just too cute!), she really wanted to do an ocean theme to kick the year off.  Due to testing and behavior issues (oh my word!) I didn't get to do as much as I wanted with this theme last week, so I am keeping it going this next week as well.

During our writing time this week, I realized that I had not made an ocean word wall yet! What was I thinking?! Luckily we had a ton of non fiction sea life books from our library, so most of the words they wanted to use they could find on their own, but I really like making a word wall poster for each theme so we can refer back to it later in the year if necessary. Here's what I came up with for my ocean word wall - I will just cut out and glue the words on a blue poster board, decorate it with fishy stickers and laminate it before putting it up in our room. All the photos came from the public domain btw :)

Ocean Word Wall

My firsties need some serious work on their subtraction skills. Half the time they forget and add instead lol. I have thrown all addition work out the door for now, just trying to get them to focus on subtraction since addition come so much easier. One of the things that is helping is watching this video every morning during calendar time. All my firsties love this song!

In addition, (lol!) I made this Subtraction Fish Bowl game that we will be playing during our math rotations. It has 2 levels so I can play it with my firsties who are really struggling as well as the handful that are starting to get the concept of subtraction. I used clip art from kpmdoodles and the public domain.
Subtraction Fish Bowls

I did some retail therapy yesterday and got a few more ocean themed books for my classroom library. Here are my favorites:

This non fiction book has gorgeous illustrations, tons of insets and diagrams and enough quirky facts to keep my firsties engaged!












 This is a great craft book, with everything from pirates, mermaids, and dolphins to Halloween, Christmas and Winter ideas! This week we are going to make the hand print mermaids and the collage fish for sure, plus the octopus mobiles if we have time. I will post pictures of our creations at the end of the week!









Oh and look for some changes to my blog coming soon! I have been working with Kelly at Kelly Avenue Designs since I won her giveaway for a new blog design! She is having a 20% off sale for full blog designs until September 14th so be sure to check it out! I can't wait to see what she comes up with for me!

Math Monday!

I just adore the mermaid clipart that I got from kmpdoodles, so much so that I had to create another game with them! This time it's a math game, but it's the same rules as the cvc word sort, so it shouldn't take my kiddos very long to catch on and be able to play independently! I am really stressing number sense this year, so this game should be a perfect reinforcement.
Number Ocean Sort


Head over to love2learn2day to check out the links to more fabulous math ideas at the Math Monday linky party!

Ocean Freebie!

I am doing an ocean theme this week and my fabulous firstie teammate volunteered to do the lesson plans for both of us! This left me with some free time this weekend, so I created a Mermaid CVC Sort game. I want to send a special shout out to Kirsten at kpmdoodles who makes sharing things like this so easy! Not only does she give a free set of clipart for every 2 sets you purchase, she also gives a 10% discount for teachers (just enter "teacher" in the coupon code box at checkout). Her terms of use also allow us to share out games and such for free on our blogs (in pdf format) without having to buy a license! I love sharing, but I really can't afford to pay licensing fees to give away my creations, so I will be sticking to more budget-friendly clipart sources :)  Another source is Trina over at Digiscrapkits - her stuff is super cute and you can share your creations for free!

Anyways, here's a preview of my game. As always, the preview doesn't do it justice, it looks much better when you download it I promise!
Ocean Word Family Sort


Now I'm headed to Heather at Heather's Heart to grab her free Lips the Fish Grab and Go game! I purchased the baskets and large popsicle sticks while I was out shopping today. Now I'm going to spend the rest of my evening laminating and cutting - I'm making one set for me and one set for my teamie!

This and That (Pete the Cat freebie)

I just had to share a few things with you all this morning. Mrs. Patton shared about using Voki technology in the classroom and I had to try it. Here's my little chipmunk for my class, I think they'll love it!


Also, my friend tried out a "Two Headed Monster Clean Up" idea and I had to take pictures a) because it was so funny and b) because my baby is in her class! The premise is to take some huge xxxl shirts and stick 2 kinder students in each one. They then have to work cooperatively to get the cleaning done. There was a lot of falling down (that's my boy in the orange shirt on the floor in most of the pictures) but my friend is convinced that with practice this can be done - it sure was fun for the kids!

Finally, just a few notes from the first day of school:

One of my students from last year threw a fit in the morning, refused to get off the bus, punched the principal in the stomach, took off his shoes and socks and threw them etc. The counselor came down to my room and asked if I could go up the hall to see him and she'd watch the rest of my firsties. Well I walk up to see him on the bench, the principal poised to keep him from bolting or flailing and the bus driver trying to talk to him. He was obviously having none of it. I knelt down, and said "Hey remember me? It's Mrs. Knopf, you're coming back to my class again. Let's go!" and picked him up in my arms. The prinicipal asked if she should come down to my class, but I told her it'd be fine and IT WAS!

Once I got him to my room it took about 40 minutes for him to stop crying and actually put his shoes back on, but at after that he READ A BOOK and TALKED to me! Now, with you not knowing this child you have no idea how huge this is, but trust me, I was amazed. He called me by name and he gave eye contact! At lunch time he even volunteered to eat and got his own tray! He wouldn't sit at a table or do any work, but when we made our Jitter Juice he asked to try it! He even did some dancing with us! I am still going to have him tested because he has lots of issues, but I was so pleased to see that he is going to be much easier to work with this year!

Another first day treat was having my youngest across the hallway from me! His teacher has taught him to give me a thumbs up and mouth "Thumbs up Mama!" when he sees me in the hallway, it is too cute! I caught him one time looking in my room from the hallway and showing me off to one of his friends "That's my mom!" lol.

The funniest part happened in the afternoon. His teacher sent him to my room to ask me for something. He has a speech impediment, so to me it sounded like he was asking for a "back soapy". I tried getting him to repeat himself but it wasn't any clearer. I asked if she was washing something and he said "No, a back soapy for writing!" Ohhh! A black sharpie! Maybe he wasn't the best choice of children to come ask for something lol!

A little while later he marched back in the room, came up to me and gave me a hug and a kiss and I asked him what his teacher needed. "Nothing." he said, and walked back out of the room. After school I asked if that had been a sanctioned visit and his teacher admitted that it was not. The first she knew of it was when he was walking back in the room lol. I had to give him a little talk about not leaving his class without the teacher's permission!

Finally, a quick freebie. I have been printing off all the Pete the Cat materials I can from everyone's blogs and decided to make a quick roll the dice math activity to go with. Click here to grab it!