Let it Snow 2018 and 100th Day 2018

Happy New Year Everyone!!!
I can't believe it's been almost a month since my last post.  I had full intentions of posting during our winter break, but I had so much family stuff going on. We did a ton of cooking, movie watching, game playing, furniture refinishing, pantry organizing, and just plain chillin'! I loved every single minute of it. It was all low key, but it was the best!
I want to share a couple of pics of our Grinch day! It was so fun and the kids had a blast! We got to do almost everything in my unit! Take a peek!

Such a fun day, and the kids did do a little learning along the way!!! :)

Last week was a review week in science, so we decided that because of the "chance" of snow, we needed to do a fun activity to celebrate snow!

While thinking about that, my awesome teammate mentioned that you could get snowballs at the local Bahama Buck's, a shaved ice place.  Genius!!!

So, of course, I went a got some!!

For these little Texas kids who don't see snow very often, I knew they were going to love anything we did to go along with snowballs!! I made up a quick little science review experience.

Kids loved the science activity and review, and loved working with snowballs (thanks to Bahama Bucks!) cause it never did snow! :(   Maybe this week!! :)

I know a lot of you are getting way more snow than you ever wanted (thinking about you all!!) so you probably don't even want to consider any kind of snow science, but give it a try anyway!!! You won't need to go buy your snowballs!

I have included this little activity in my snow unit. Other fun things included are...

If you would like a copy of this little unit, simply CLICK HERE!

Coming up soon is our 100th day of school!  I added a couple of things to my unit!

If you can use a refresh for your 100th day, CLICK HERE for the free updated unit!

OK!!!  This post was a little longer than I meant for it to be, but considering I haven't posted in a while, I guess that's alright. I'll be back soon!!!  Thanks for your patience and thanks for stopping by!!  

Have a wonderful week!!

Joyfully!

Nancy

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MLK, Living and Non, adverbs, poetry, Oh My!

Hello Everyone!
First of all, I want to thank Feedspot for naming this little blog one of the top 30 Firstgrade Teacher blogs on the internet!!  What??? So honored! I haven't been blogging that long, and simply started as a way of sharing what we are doing in first grade. It has grown into a passion.  I love teaching and I love sharing. To be honored with this award is so cool!!! Thank you!!!
What a crazy busy week we've had!! And a busy weekend coming up! I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like I need more hours in the day!!  Both at school and at home.  The juggling continues. But I feel like as long as I'm making every moment count on both fronts, it's all good!! 
This week we finished up our study of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And talk about making every moment count, the lessons learned from the study, will last in the hearts of these little firsties.  I have shared my unit before, and will include a link a bit later, but I wanted to show a few pics of where our hearts took us.

I always include an impact lesson comparing the insides and outsides of apples.  On the outside, the apples all look different. On the inside they each contain a star!  Just like people. We are all different on the outside.  Every. Single. One. Of. Us.  

That should not ever stop us from letting the star on the inside of each of us shine brightly!!! 

As a teacher I try to help each kiddo find his inner star and shine!!! I strive to include many, many activities that nurture the learning styles of each little star!

I extended the apple lesson by having the kids create a star with their handprints.  With little direction, they were able to express themselves with color in a very hands on way. 

As we have worked through the MLK study, one early insight my students had was that they have dreams too.  Some of their dreams were that all kids would have books to read, food to eat, and clean water to drink.  

I love this picture so much! Even though our lives are very different from those during Mlk's time, I believe these kids are going to do everything they can to make their dreams come true!! Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that "If I can't do great things, I can do small things in a great way."  As teachers, we are doing small things...that will hopefully turn into great things!!! Thank you, MLK for your leadership!

If you would like my MLK Unit, simply CLICK HERE!!:)

In science, we finished up our unit on living and nonliving.  We have had so much fun comparing the two.

After learning about how we know if something is living or nonliving, we created and described pet rocks!

And as a culminating Sci Fri we were able to compare three things that looked similar, but proved to be very different....worms!!

I loooove that after learning about living and nonliving things, most of these sweet kiddos were not afraid to hold an earth worm!!  Again...small things!! :)

To get a printable of my Living vs. Nonliving unit, CLICK HERE!! :)

Finally, I wanted to share a bit of what we've been working on in writing! POETRY!!!  I love it so much and am so amazed at the fun we've been having with language, word choice, rhythm, etc.!   One of our first poems was a shape poem about winter, written with our senses.  Here's our brainstorming! Thinking about winter through our senses brought some deeper thinking!!

We have done so much more than what I was able to capture in a photo.  And we have just begun!! Most poems we are writing will be added to an anthology, and recreated in a visual. 

We turned our study of adverbs into a shape poem!

I love how these are turning out!!  And you should have seen those stars shining!!! First graders are poets , and they didn't even know it!!

I shared my poetry unit a couple of weeks ago.  Simply search above for poetry. And the snowball adverb study that we made into a poem is in my snowball unit that I just shared!!!

Wow!! This post turned out to be longer that I thought it was going to be!! But I have one more thing to share!!

Our 100th day of school is coming up in 9 days!!!  I reworked a few things on my unit and added a couple of other things!!! Even if you already have it, please download the new and hopefully improved unit!

HERE'S THE LINK TO THE UNIT! CLICK HERE!!! :)

Ok! that's it for today! Hopefully you got a bit out of this post!! Please know that the comment gadget is not working for some reason, but you can always e-mail me with questions or concerns about anything! We are all in this together!! 

Thanks for stopping by this window on wonder!!

I appreciate you!

Joyfully!

Nancy

firstgradewow@gmail.com

or nancyvb1@gmail.com

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