The heat wave has broken! (Fall Freebie)

What a weekend!

We celebrated my youngest's 5th birthday and he loved his gifts (we had him convinced he was receiving cleaning supplies so he could start pitching in more around the house so he was very relieved to get toys lol!).  We went out to dinner which was great until I looked over to see my 9 year old drooling all over his seat. Mortified Mama was about to scold him for bad manners when I thought maybe he was getting sick so I got up to take him to the bathroom. As I reached him it hit me that he hadn't been acting sick and at 9 years old he's pretty good about making it to the bathroom on time if he is sick. At that point I looked into his eyes and saw the sheer panic in them and realized he was choking. I looked at my husband who was still in his seat, not realizing what was going on and I yelled out "He's choking!" at which point we were swarmed by half a dozen waitresses and busboys. Luckily we were able to clear his airway without the Heimlich maneuver, but I swear it took 5 years off my life!

Also, our heat wave finally broke (100+ degrees for 2 months!) so the kids got to play outside and I got to pull out my fuzzy socks! As a displaced Northerner, I really miss the cooler temperatures. It feels so weird to say it was only 86 degrees on Sunday, and the fact that the kids pulled out their hoodies is even weirder! There's something wrong when mid-80's feels cool enough for a sweater! The best part is that we will get recess this week! For the first 9 days of school we weren't allowed to go outside because of the heat index, and let me tell you, I really, really missed recess!


In honor of this new cool front (and in desperate hope that it lasts), I adapted a cute Fall poem into a pocket chart format, I will be using it as subtraction reinforcement. Next week I'm going to start doing an Apples and Fall theme, so I'll have to start working on some activities for that soon! Also, September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, so I am creating an activity for "ar" words, so make sure you check back soon!

Click the picture to get the pocket chart for this poem. The last page has the full poem, just substitute the numbers as you go down from 5 to 0 leaves on the tree!

On a side note, have you tried fun4thebrain yet? It's a great website with educational games that my firsties are loving! I pull them up on my Smartboard so we can all have a turn, so far we've been using the Language Arts games (the Popcorn Monkeys sight word game is hilarious!) but I'm going to be using several of the math games as well this week. Here's a subtraction game with a pumpkin theme, check it out!

Well, that's it for now, today is picture day so I better get in the bathroom and try to do something with my hair!

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!

Thank Goodness for 3 Day Weekends!

Oh what a week! I seriously need 3 days to recuperate! This week was our Ocean Theme, and it went swimmingly! I used a lot of cute ideas from Deanna Jump - so far we have made her shark, orca and crab crafts. We are continuing the theme next week, so look for pictures on Friday! My firsties jumped on board with the Ocean theme - it really spoke to them. I had 2 students bring in books from home to share, have to love it when they do that! I checked out about a dozen non-fiction books from our library all about sharks, dolphins, whales etc. so our Science center was therefore the most highly visited place in our classroom!

My firsties are loving my crate seats, in fact, they are in such demand that I will be making more this weekend. Luckily I got my id badge this week so I can sign up for the teacher discount at JoAnn Fabrics again! I'm also checking out Hobby Lobby for some more ideas, I love these shelves by Johnny in a Dress.

My kindergarten coworker accepted a job with an online charter school. Higher pay, working from home, no need to buy her own supplies! She had 27 little kinders and it was a tough first 2 weeks, so I totally understand her jumping ship to better herself. This does, however, leave me in even more limbo than before! We now have one K teacher and 54 students. Obviously we need at least 1 more teacher, preferably two (I really think K should be capped at 20 students).

So, will I be moved back to K or will they hire someone else? If they hire someone else am I forever in first or can I move back down next year? Kindergarten is my true passion, but I am enjoying my firsties as well - I had one little guy write about "pokey sea urchins" this week! My firsties are capable of so much more writing and reading, I think I would really enjoy seeing what they come up with this year.

Our behavior has started to improve as well. I got myself a "bucket" (clear vase) so I can add a pom pom every time my firsties fill my bucket by following procedure.  For the most part I have a very good class, and they are striving to fill my bucket each time we line up or come to carpet. I do have a few discipline problems though and it's those few that are really making me long for a new class of kinders lol!

One little darling decided that she didn't want to do her journal so she stuck it back in the crate without even attempting to do any of it- seriously, she pasted on the prompt and that was it! I promptly pulled it back out and gave it back to her to complete. Which led to an hour of crocodile tears and complaints of a belly ache. She had done this sort of thing last year (she is rather infamous at school for it!) so I kindly explained that even if she wasn't feeling well, since she didn't have a fever and wasn't throwing up I couldn't send her home so she had better take her mind off it by finishing her work. Well, we went to lunch right then and I could see the wheels turning as she stuffed her cheeks full of french fries (oven baked!). Sure enough, she heads to the bathroom with chipmunk cheeks and spends a minute spitting it all into the toilet - voila instant vomiting!

I sent her to the office to get her temp taken and it was 97.7 - sorry little lady, you're staying at school! Once she realized that none of her ideas were going to work the tears quickly stopped, she played at recess with no problems and when she came back in she completed that journal lickety-split! Game, set and match to Mrs. Knopf, but I really don't want to play that game again! I am trying to come up with ideas to nip this in the bud quickly, because it was seriously distracting to my tender-hearted firsties who really thought she was ill. Aside from taking her recess because she's too "ill" to play (I didn't have duty and really didn't want to spend my free 15 minutes listening to her moaning) what else can I do to discourage this kind of faking?

I am almost finished with my subtraction ocean activity. I will post it as soon as it is finished! My computer should be back this afternoon, so no more having to wait for my husband to be done so I can jump on his computer! I am off for some much needed retail-therapy now, hope you all have a great Saturday!