Synonym Socks

This year, our Dr. Seuss celebration included silly sock day. It is always so fun to be able to take off our shoes and wiggle our toes once in a while. Any child who could independently put their shoes back on, was aloud to keep them off in our room ALL day.

We were learning about synonyms. (I love how that word comes out of their little mouths much like cinnamon!)

Each page featured a pair of socks. On the cuff of one sock, I had written a word. Each child colored their silly socks like a matching pair as they thought of a synonym for the given word. I then went around and added the great synonyms to the other sock each child was making. 

We turned our synonym socks into a matching book. The pages were laminated and Velcro dots were added to each page and sock. Students remove the socks from the envelope that was bound as part of the book and match the socks. They can then read the synonyms they matched.

Truffula Trees

This week we will be celebrating Dr. Seuss.

I decided to make Truffula Trees from the The Lorax to put on the student tables this week.

Here are my finished trees. (still in my kitchen since it is Sunday evening and I am not at school yet for the week.)

I looked on sites for ideas then combined the best of several different posts to make them my way.

First start with a $1 toilet plunger  from the Dollar Tree. ( I am quite certain these plungers would be ill equipped to handle the job they were equipped to do, but they work great for this!)

Supplies for one tree:
One plunger
Duct tape
10 pieces of coordinating tissue paper
Electrical tape
A scrap from a plastic party table cloth large enough to cover your plunger end double thickness
Twist ties (two extra long ones or several regular sized)

Cover the plunger handles with duct tape.

Then split a long piece of contrasting duct tape in half lengthwise. Twist it around the covered handle for the stripe.

Cut a large circle from two thicknesses of the plastic table cloth. (14" circles worked best for the plungers I had)

Pull the plastic up around the plunger end. And secure with an XL twist tie. (Or twist more than one together end to end  to make an extra long one.)

Then cut off any extra long pieces sticking up. Wrap duct tape over the exposed edges.

Next make the tissue paper tops like you would any tissue paper flower except start with square pieces of tissue paper. (These do not have to be exact.) I jut piled up the 10 pieces of coordinating tissue as evenly as possible. I then cut them all at once into the largest squares possible from the pieces.

 Accordian fold the pieces all together. I then rounded off the ends and cut about 2" off each end. Secure with another XL twist tie. 

Being very careful, separate each half in half again and pull apart as much as possible. 

Then begin separating each piece very carefully.

One completed half looks like this. Continue with the other half.

Then I seperated the flower and used electrical tape ( red in this picture) to secure the pompon to the top of the stick and wrapped duct tape around the electrical tape and twist tie. 

 Fluff up the pompon again and you are good to go!!!

Finished Truffula Trees

In my classroom. Waiting for my kinders to arrive.

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

100 Day Fun

Today was our 100th day of school. That is such a fun day for kinder kiddos. They LOVE to dress like they are 100 years old. They hoot and holler when they see the teachers participating too. Here are our great Kindergarten teachers who dressed up with the kiddos today.

One of the new activities this year was graphing 100 gum balls. The kids did a great job keeping up with their graphs as we drew "gumballs" from the special container. As they were drawn, I used bingo dotters to add "gum" to the gumball machine.

This allowed for great discussion of many math concepts related to comparing columns on our graphs.

Each child completed an individual graph.

If there is one thing we learned today...........it is that 100 is A LOT!!!

Bucks or Ducks

After many snow days, we were happy to be back to school (with a 2 hour delay).

In our classroom it was Bucks and Ducks Day. We dressed in our scarlet and gray (or green and yellow if you must) in support of our Buckeyes in the National Championship game. 

We created a graph to predict what our class thought would happen during tonight's big game. 

We were hoping our graph was long enough for all the Buckeyes we had to add to the graph. It was...just barely!

Two of us want the Oregon Ducks to win.

22 of us wanted the Ohio State Buckeyes to win the big game!!! (go Bucks!!!!)

When we looked at our data this is what we learned.

Only time will tell.......

50s Day

Today was 50s day. We had a great time.  A parent of a child in my class brought in his 1950s candy apple red truck. The kids loved getting their picture taken with it. They were  also amazed that it didn't have heat, AC or seatbelts. The manual windows were also a hit.

Today's agenda included:

Hoola hoops

Root beer floats

A sock hop

Board games and 

Bubble blowing

What a great time we had!

Listening to Reading

I was looking for a way to extend my "listening to reading" portion of the Daily 5. I searched the internet for listening response sheets that were free and best for my students at the time. I made Response Logs for each student by alternating 4 different response sheets.

Before I introduced the response logs, I exposed the class to each of the different response sheets. As a class, we listened to a story and completed the response sheet together for that story. Each of the next three days we followed the same process for another response sheet and story.

After all four different sheets were familiar, I split the class into Daily 5 groups. We again used all four response sheets, but this time we used a "jigsaw" approach.  Each group has a "helper" (It is a life saver during typical Daily 5 operations) and  was given several copies of one of the response sheets. After listening to a story with the whole class, the groups each completed their response logs individually asking questions of their helper or other group members if necessary. (Each child had a response sheet identical to his or her group members.)

After the forms were completed, the groups reviewed the response sheets of all of their group members. The groups voted on the one paper that best exemplified the expectations of that response sheet. The groups then presented the exemplar paper and told what was best about it without revealing the author.

     These peer evaluated exemplars were then hung in the classroom marked with the title "Ask an Expert". During our Daily 5 time then the class used these response logs. If at any time they could not read the sheet or did not remember what to do, the child could refer to the displayed papers.

The names of the helpers for each group were listed with the exemplar papers since all members of that group were somewhat "experts" on that response sheet.

Daily Math-Set up

      I recently paid a couple dollars for this mailbox structure. It had been listed on line from a district getting rid of many things.  I had not actually been able to see it before I bought it. I wanted to make it into a place to store game boards for Daily 5 Math. So here is what it looked like after I had removed some of the sticky debris. ( I forgot to take a true "before" picture.)

So I have begun to transition this into something that will compliment my classroom. Here is the progress. I am pleased so far......