Sunday, May 20, 2012

Birthday cards to a soldier

My mom's cousin (what does that make him to me? My 2nd cousin? 3rd? Uncle?) is a chaplain in the army and he was going to be overseas when his 40th birthday came along.

Well, there's little you can do from thousands of miles away to make a 40th birthday special. His wife had the idea to have everyone send separate birthday cards to him so he would get a SLEW of cards in the mail to make him feel as special as possible.

I told my classes about him and they wanted to participate as well. It took me about one second to go "Why not?"

So I pulled out some construction paper and asked them what were some things they wanted to know how to spell and I'd write it on the board. They also wrote their own sentences. I had to explain to them that a chaplain was someone who was like a pastor or preacher for the Army. He read the Bible and prayed with the other soldiers. I felt like that's about as far into it as I should get in a public school. I've got many children who are avid church-goers with their parents, so they helped fill in the gaps. (Have I mentioned I LOVE these kiddos?)

Here are some of the most adorable cards they made. I HAD to snap a pic and share these! Enjoy!

I love the "have a good time"! Yeah, war is a reeeeeal good time. I love their innocence!

Last sentence "I hope you and my daddy have a guard dog". So sweet!

"I love you so much. You are in my heart like Jesus and God. I love God and I love Jesus. The mean people are not nice to God are not nice to Jesus." Future pastor or chaplain? Perhaps so!

I love how the cartoons are saluting!

My favorite one! Spelled perfectly, actually says happy birthday, and says "I hope you win!" hahahaha There's a tank, a guy with a tiny gun, sunshine, clouds, and a guy with a bow and arrow.
A-freakin-dorable!


Thank you, Jesus, for making such cute kids!

Dr. Seuss/Open House

Alright.

So. I LOVE Dr. Seuss. I think he is brilliant beyond brilliant! Sad thing: most of my students had never seen or read a Dr. Seuss book. Therefore, I read Dr. Seuss books to BOTH classes for two weeks straight. AND THEY LOVED IT! YAY!

Apparently in past years, the kindergarten teachers would decorate the hallways for Open House in a "Texas" theme. Since we are all now K/1st grade, that was shot down - and also we have less TA's who have less time to decorate the halls, we had to do it on our own. We needed something fun, cute, quick, and EASY.

So here I am, the newbie in the back going "Ooo ooo! I know! Dr. Seuss! Dr. Seuss!"

And they all approved! SCORE one for the Temple team!

It all started with a Cat in the Hat hat door.

Since I'm the math teacher, I figured I ought to do a little bit of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.
This is the unfinished fish bowl my AWESOME Ready, Set, Teach! student made for me! (I'm sooooo lucky she's artsy!)

The fishbowl was 1st grade's BIG project. Every day one week, they each colored 2 (or more) fish. We had been practicing skip counting to 100, so I thought we'd put 100 fish in a GIGANTIC fish bowl! Why not?!

This, I am quite proud of. I came up with this on my own! No help from Pinerest, thank-you-very-much! This is what inspired one of my co-teachers to tell me to start a blog!
In 1st grade we were also working on our addition facts, so what better way to show what we know than turning it into a fun project based on The Lorax?

Here's what some of theirs looked like. :) So proud!

First grade also made hand print Thing 1 and Thing 2's. They LOVED it! So did I! Shhhh!

I put them all inside my classroom as a little extra decoration!

Kindergarten created some fun Cat in the Hat plates! Just a little pre-cutting some shapes, printing out a hat template, and ba-da-bing ba-da-boom! We've got 19 Cat in the Hats! Perfect!

Hung those suckers up! Decorated with one of my favorite Dr. Seuss quotes! I've got about 20 favorite Dr. Seuss quotes. His books are chocked full of great, inspirational, thought-provoking quotes. Love it!

In Kindergarten, we were learning about 100 - counting, what it 100 things looked like, etc. So we put 100 real, live Goldfish (the crackers, of course!) in a small fishbowl.
I scooped out some of the rainbow Goldfish to each kid and had them sort by color. I passed out the graphing sheet and had them graph according to THEIR portion. Easy, colorful, meaningful, math, lovely.

On their tables for Open House was their Dr. Seuss folders (held a bunch of activities done in both my class and their reading/writing class) as well as a Cat in the Hat hat pencil holder!

I LOVED this Open House theme! I could SO do this every year!

Valentine's Day

Here are a couple photos from Valentine's Day!

Heart multi-colored crayons!

Super easy! Here's what you do:
1. Find and peel the paper off of old crayons (Crayola works best).
2. Chop (or break) them up into small pieces.
3. Heat oven to 250.
4. Put crayon pieces into silicone heart-shaped ice trays (the cupcake trays were a bit too big for crayons, I thought). I got mine at the Target Dollar Section!
5. Pop 'em in the oven and keep an eye on them. Mine took about 15 minutes to totally melt.
6. When totally melted and in the wanted heart shape, take them out, let them cool, then pop them out of the tray.
7. TA-DA! Brand new, heart-shaped crayons for your babies!

I made a LARGE Valentine to go on my door! I put it down low so the kids would see it as soon as they walked in. They loved it!

From Christmas....

Here's a post from Christmas ("holiday") time!

I LOOOOOOVE Christmas! Especially with kids! I do not have any of my own yet, but I'm so glad I'm teaching a TON of them!

Christmas is SO exciting with these little guys!

Here are our first adventures with Ronny, our Elf-on-the-Shelf:


This is Ronny the first day he showed up as a gift from Santa at the North Pole.

This is our graph for voting for his name. I was really hoping Nick would win because that's my boyfriend's name and that would just be TOO funny!

It took them a long time to find Ronny's new hiding spot on day 2. They kept saying "he's a tricky elf!"


Day 3. The kinders said that he must have gotten thirsty on his trip to and from the North Pole, so he drank my very last Diet Dr. Pepper! Again, "he's a tricky elf!"

I've found lots of good ideas online for hiding spots! Can't wait to try more of them!

Here are a couple Christmas crafts we're going to be doing:

A Santa wind catcher for my kinderbabies.


A Swedish St. Lucia Day hat for ..... I'm not sure which grade yet.


Here's another view.

I hope to have more pictures up of LOTS of fun holiday stuff we do! Especially with tricky Ronny the Elf!


MORE CHRISTMAS:

Ronny cruisin'.

Ronny readin'.

Tricky elf vandalizing my easel!

Bad Ronny made a flour "snow angel". What a mess!

I ended up doing the St. Lucia hats with the 1st graders and it was awesome, easy, and perfect!

Pattern Christmas trees! SO easy!
After I took this picture, I added a red oval at the bottom to look like a tree skirt and wrote "Temple's Tanenbaums". Super cute!

My super-sweet volunteers (my mom and grandma) made snowman doors for me and my partner teacher! I LOVE being in the holiday spirit!

A New Adventure Awaits

Hello, blogging world!

So. I tried a blog once before but didn't really do anything with it. How boring. What's the point of having one then, right? Right.

One of my co-teachers said "Blair, you should really put some of your cute projects and ideas on Pinterest!" And I thought "How on Earth would I do that?" Then it donned on me: a blog, duh.

So here I go, trying to blog (even though the school year is nearly over, yeah, I know). I'll post some old posts I tried on my old, crappy blog as well as some new ones with some of my other ideas.

I would LOVE to learn how people go about making their cutesy little worksheets and units. If you know, will you please leave a comment with your e-mail address and your blog address so I can pick your brain on how to do it?! THANKS!



I guess I should initiate my blog with some answers to "who is this girl?"

Hi, I'm Blair. :)

I teach kindergarten and 1st grade math/science/social studies in a Title 1 school.

I live in the great state of Texas.

I graduated from the BEST university in the world, Texas A&M University! WHOOP! Yep, I'm an Aggie!

This was my very first year teaching (for real teaching, not student teaching. That's nothing like the real thing).

Teaching is my passion!

I love my job and I am trying to balance the negatives and positives... it is HARD to do, people! STAY POSITIVE! Much easier said than done, although we all have to try at it.

A little background on the name of my page...
No, I do not have any children of my own.

BUT many of my students think I am their mother. haha Can't tell you how many times I've heard "You're my Mom!" or something similar.

Kids are funny!




Welp, LET THE BLOGGING BEGIN!