Johnny Apple Seed Day

We had so much fun learning about John Chapman aka Johnny Apple Seed! Everything we did today was all about apples!

We read the story of John Chapman and then filled out a character map!

Before we had our apple tasting party we made a KWL chart about apples! After that we went on to snack and sip on some apples J

While we were enjoying our apple treats we watched this youtube video on Johnny Apple Seed! It’s a cute video my firsties really enjoyed it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm4xsHXrSGs

After we watched the video we then compared and contrasted the different kinds of apples and along with the apple juice!

We then made a graph of our favorite apples! Then kiddos filled out their own graph along with helping putting their apple on our big class graph!

To finish up the day we made this cute craftivity! They had to write what they would do if they had a basket of apples! Then they had to make this cute apple tree! After they got finished making their trees they got to do an apple word search!

We all had so much fun celebrating Johnny Apple Seed day!

Word Sorts

We have created this awesome word sort that aligns to the common core standards! Here are some pictures of my firsties having fun sorting words with their table teams! I put each word sort into plastic baggies and labeled each bag! You can purchase this unit on our TPT store! Check it out!

Brain Breaks

We have been doing some energetic brain breaks to get the day started each day! One of my co-workers found this great blog that has just dance videos for the kids to follow along dancing to! Check it out here http://mattbgomez.com/category/dance/

If you want to do different songs you can go to youtube and type in just dance then copy and paste the URL onto http://mattbgomez.com/category/dance/

What this website does is it gets rid of any advertisements and just plays the video!

Here is a pic of my firsties having a blast doing their brain break!

9/11

9/11

I know 9/11 is always one of those do it or don't kinds of things, however I was in upstate NY when the twin towers were hit and had many family friends living in the city, so for me it is definitely a do! I brought in a newspaper from September 11th, 2002 and told them about a few of the important facts. We also watched a great video from PBS about what really happened that day in (thank goodness) child proof explanations! We than talked about how people in our community help us stay safe and are there to help us in times of need. I always love hearing their thoughts on how firefighters, police officers, nurses, doctors, etc. have helped them. It amazes me sometimes how much these children have experienced at such a young age. I also forget that these kids were not even born yet when this happened so it is not as traumatic for them. I found this great Thank You For... sheet on TPT (it's down right now so I will link later!) and printed out blank flags for them to glue on the back. Right now they are on my bulletin, but soon they will make their way to the local phoenix fire department.  Here is a pic...

And in First Grade…

The day we will never forget! I didn’t realize that my kids weren’t even born when this happened!!!! I know it was twelve years ago and my kids are only six/seven but this is such a huge part of our American history. As we were sitting in morning meeting and my students were being shown pictures of what happened I saw their eyes get huge and they were shocked at what they were seeing. Some of my kids came and sat by me and asked me why someone would want to hurt people.

On our way to the classroom all my students could talk about is the pictures they saw and how sad it was.

I got my kids settled down and told them we were going to watch a video that would go over the events of the attack. The movie started and I have never seen my kids more quite and shocked! I had a student start crying because they were so sad at what happened. They were in shock with what they were seeing. One of my students turned to me and asked me if this was real. I told them yes. Someone really did plan an attack on the USA and flew planes into the twin towers and thousands of people died because of it.

After the video I read them some facts to help answer some of their prying questions they kept asking.

We did an activity which included making the American flag and writing a letter of who they would like to thank.

Solar System

Hey everyone!

Wanted to take some time to share about our solar system unit we just wrapped up last Friday. Me and my fellow Sassy Sista did this one partially together to mix it up a little. I purchased Solar System Flip Book by Lesson Plan SOS and created a slide show to use along with the note taking mini booklet. They each had to write down 4 things about each planet (This took about two days). I sometimes forget that it takes them a while to catch up to my expectations for note taking! After they finished taking notes, they were able to color in the planets. On the third day, I gave them a packet with a picture of each planet, the fact strips, planet name strips and the cover/title page. They spent about one hour of the third day coloring in the planets (some took longer), but I made an example as well as had them use their mini books to reduce the number of questions about the colors. :) The fourth day they had to finish coloring and write down one important fact about each of the planets. Than... cut, glue, voila! OH ALMOST FORGOT.... I folded and taped 4 legal sized construction papers together to give to one student. (This is definitely not something you want to put off to last minute!)

Learning Types of Sentences with Pigeon books!

Today we talked about the different types of sentences! I found this great pack on TPT by Anita Goodwin at http://ilive2learnilove2grow.blogspot.com/ 

My kids love the Pigeon books by Mo Willems! It doesn’t matter if they already heard the story before they bust out laughing every time! Today we read The Pigeon wants a puppy! My kids were laughing so hard that they started to cry! Before we read the book we talked about the different types of sentences and put them onto a chart paper. Throughout the book I would stop and ask them what kind of sentence this is. They had so much fun shouting out the answers.

After we read the book we did the sentence sort from the TPT pack. They had so much fun challenging themselves with the command and the statement. Command and statement was tricky for some of my kiddos but they got the hang of it when I asked them if someone was just stating something or was it someone telling them to do something.

My kids really enjoyed this lesson!

Wacky Wednesday

Wacky Wednesday!!!

What a fun and exciting day for my kiddos today! We had so much fun learning and had a surprise visit from Karate Dave! The kids had so much fun learning some karate moves and how to show respect to your teachers (LOVED THAT PART). 


We watched some really great educational videos on when two vowels go walking the first one does the talking. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o84ndBQU6vQ 

We also watched a great video on magic 'e'. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx6-xxkodS8 

We also started learning place value to the hundreds place! They started to get bored with only doing tens and ones and kept bugging me to do the hundreds spot!!! Ha kids who want to go above and beyond I love it!

SassySistasAz