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Just seeing what my new blog looks like and  seeing if it changes my text :) lots more posts to come on this beautiful design :)!

“OW” “OU” That hurt!

Isn’t it fun to make your administration dress up for you and your kiddos to beef up the impact of their learning?!  I decided to pawn off my teaching this week on my principal and assistant principal. They were perfect /ou/ /ow/ teachers.

My principal got the easy part.  He just had to wear an OU (University of Oklahoma) jersey covered in Band-Aids that said “ou.” 

The scenario I gave him was:

You’ll come in kinda out of breath maybe or limpy/sore and tell them you just had to come down to first grade because you learned something very important last night and when you were telling it to Miss Schmidt she thought her first graders should really know about it. You were walking on the OU campus when you saw some OU football players scrimmaging/playing a game of football on the grass. You thought I just worked out (insert flexing :) I can play football with those guys, so you asked if you could join in. Man were you good for awhile too you were tackling those football players and sacking them left and right and you know what those OU football players said every time you sacked them “OU”! (insert pointing to the shirt) The thing is they were pretty good at sacking you too, so in the morning you realized that you were pretty sore and every time you moved you said “OU” too. You realized oh my gosh most of the time when you come across the letters “ou” together they say /ou/. You just had to tell them this important reminder to grow their brains! Just remember OU football players say OU when they get tackled! (insert passing out Band-Aids that say “ou”.)

My Assistant Principal didn’t get off as easy…she was a clumsy clown with “ow” Band-Aids all over her. (She loved it though and wore it most of the morning ;)

The scenario I gave her was:

I’m going to tell the kids that I went to my niece’s birthday party last weekend and I saw a friend of mine there who was the entertainment! She was the clown! Being a clown has always been one of her lifelong dreams. She learned a very important lesson being a clown though and decided Miss Schmidt’s first graders really needed to learn this lesson to grow their brains.

You’ll come in and tell the kiddos:

Oh my Gosh! I just had to come down and tell what I learned being a clown! First things first, I just love being a clown because of the wonderful costumes! They are so brightly colored and so much fun, plus they just make people smile! On the other hand though big shoes are hard to walk in and glasses are hard to see out of and well your just kinda clumsy as a clown. Plus, I love doing tricks like juggling but sometimes they don’t always happen like they’re supposed to and I find myself saying “ow” a lot. Then it hit me! I’m a clumsy clown that says /ow/ (insert pointing to bandaids on your costume) A lot of times when you see the letters ow together they say /ow/. I thought this was a super important reading and spelling tip to teach Miss Schmidt’s first graders to help you grow your brains and become better readers. I’ll leave you with a reminder that clumsy clowns say /ow/ (insert passing out band- Aids with ow on them)

The clown was inspired by a unit called Clowning Around (“Ow” and “Ou”) I got off of TPT from the…

 

I love the activities and the inspiration!  We’re doing some more of the activities from the unit this coming week.  We just had the visitors on Friday, did a word sort of “ow” and “ou” words whole group, and then they completed a little book of “ow” and “ou” words. That’s one set of dipthongs down…now what to do for oi/oy? Pretty soon I’ll have to teach that “ow” can say the long o sound too and “ou” can say ou like in soup…darn pesky English language !

Reading=Chick-Fil-A

I sorta went on a blogging hiatus after only a few short posts!  How pathetic : )! What does it say that it bugs me that my background/title doesn’t look the way I want yet, so I avoid blogging?!  Ridiculous!  I need to get some learning on, on one of my upcoming breaks.

I don’t have much to share (cuz I feel like I need pics and it’s getting late, so I’ll share again tomorrow) except that Eat Chick-Fil-A with your Teacher Night totally rocked !  13 kiddos came out!  Let me tell you some kiddos who have been a little lackluster with their reading logs certainly filled it out this month to get Chick-Fil-A!  They had so fun playing in the play area with their friends that milkshakes were an afterthought.  You’d think they never saw each other!  The parents now want an adult night : ) – I secretly love that they are getting to know one another!  That’s kind of been my dream is to get these parents to bond and know one another, so maybe they will help each other out, share ideas and questions, and just not feel alone, but attached to the people and the school (I have a theory that that’s how you suck them in to volunteering and participating more : ).  I know not all parents feel alone, but their kid is going to be with some of those same kids for the next 5 years in the same elementary school. I think I ‘d like to know who my child was around all the time. Plus, I love anything where I get the community involved.  Once I have the idea I run with it…I just need the idea first and I need to get up the gumption to just ask.  I’m learning it never hurts to ask (businesses)…all they can say is no, but they could say yes!

Anyway, Chick-Fil-A is awesome (all I did was fill out their donation request form) so sweet and free milkshakes (adult smalls! those are big milkshakes for little bodies)! 

Humphrey and Rex

Whew! I have been so busy printing, cutting, and re-cutting out of laminating that it’s left me no time for anything else!

I am really super excited about some things going on this week!  First of all have you ever read this book…?

 

I had a teacher friend from another school who I play Bunco with recommend this book to me as a read-aloud. Oh my gosh! The kiddos loved it!  It’s from the point of view of Humphrey the Hamster, the class pet of Room 26.  I’ve read Junie B. Jones and some other funny, cute books, but let me say, even if you are wary because it’s a  fourth grade level book, my students soaked it in!  They would beg me not to stop even after 20 minutes!  There’s a whole series of Humphrey books and one of my little high readers is devouring them!  We finished it Friday and now I don’t know how I’m going to choose another book that will live up to it.  Today they were telling me if their predictions had come true, were commenting on funny parts, and did a fabulous job retelling the story. I loved it!

What I even loved more was that this book was a perfect segue into something I started last year!  I’d had this book and idea before last year, but when I moved to first grade and got a student teacher, I knew I had to try it out.  I know a lot of people do take home bags – which I am totally going to start doing doing.  I know Erica Bohrer at

has a bunch of mascot (Pete the Cat, Scaredy Squirrel, Skippyjon Jones) related take home bags kinda like the one I’m going to share. I love it when we bring stuffed animals and other items in to make learning more meaningful for our students. Just like Heather at

did with Cranky Crab and Flora Flamingo ! I totally found a new blog to stalk  !

Anywho….sorta got off track…a long time ago I found this book…

It’s a short picture book about a class pet: Rex the chameleon.  Everyday someone  in the class gets to take him home and write in a journal about what they did with Rex. The illustrations are fun because some of them are drawn as if the children actually drew them in their journal.  I love how the book ends with, “What would you do with Rex if he came home with you?” (that’s not completely exact but the gist).  I like that it’s open-ended and a perfect segue into the kiddos getting to take their own Rex home (he’s our “class pet”) and journal about Rex’s adventures with them.

I bought this beanie baby off Amazon.  Then created my own journal…it’s kinda not as cutesy as I would like it, but it was even worse last year.  I did it at the last minute last year, so it wasn’t all done up, but I wanted to keep the same journal so my students from this year could see and read what my students did last year.

I added some car stickers this year and a pic of the book.  It’s not beautiful but it’ll do : ).  Then tonight I attempted this…

This is not all that cutesy either, but I was drawing a blank.  Actually, you could say this is my second attempt because the first time I had this black bag made out of a funky material I’d bought real cheap somewhere that I’ve learned does not like to be ironed. Let’s just say I bought a new iron tonight and a new bag at Hobby Lobby that I made sure was made out of cotton canvas.  Other than still learning what material can be used for iron-ons, I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with iron-ons.  It looks better than the Toys-R-us recyclable bag I’ve been using!

The first kiddo went home with Rex today!  I’m excited to see how much effort they put into it this year!  Last year I had some kiddos take pics with Rex all the places they went and glue them in the journal.  It was pretty cute!  I’ll have to take some pics of some journal entries later.

Hope you enjoy the books as much as I do!

The Other Things I Dressed Up For This Year…

I’m going to thoroughly embarrass myself with this post, but I’m gonna do it anyway : )… I already posted a pic of myself for Pirate day - here are some other things I dressed up for…

I found this too cute “Chunky Monkey" rap online during my blog stalking this summer, but now I don’t know where I got it.  It was all about teaching kiddos to chunk up words.  So, I decided to dress up like a rapper and “rap” (sort of – more like spoken word : )  I tried to get my team to join up with me, but they said, “Tag your it.” So, I was kind enough to do it for the whole first grade…the pic is pretty awful because I took it myself in the mirror (that’s what happens when your single)…

I couldn’t stop laughing at myself  thus the funky face ; ) (plus I was playing old school rap in the background and I was just cracking myself up !)I found the monkey mask at the dollar spot at Target and bought the hat and running suit at Wal- Mart…the chains came from our art teacher.  I took part of a morning and went into each classroom with my boom box (playing MC Hammer’s Can’t Touch This) and groovin…then I chunked up some words with them and left their teacher with an activity to chunk up the words.  I’m going to have to find where I got this Chunky Monkey activity from because everybody should use this!  I swear I still have kiddos coming up to me telling me that I was Chunky Monkey and all I have to do is say, “What did Chunky Monkey teach you?” and they say, “Chunk, chunk, chunk up words.” Love it!  Don’t love this picture I’m letting everyone see, but it’s the only one I’ve got.

The other time I dressed up was for Super Hero day during Red Ribbon Week.  My team and I dressed up as Super Teachers!  One of my teammies found the free iron-on on Teachers Pay Teachers.

You can download a copy by clicking on the link:

 Super Teacher Iron-On.

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This is another not so good pic of me that my roommate took at like 11:00 at night when I finished making my outfit.  I had no make-up on, so thus I chose to leave my face off I decked out my outfit with a black cape from Party America (more vampire-ish than superhero but I made do), a belt, black running shorts, black leggings, and my leopard Sperry shoes – which of course is a staple for all jungle-themed super teachers).

What I am most excited about is that as I was blog stalking tonight on this blog…

I found out she has a Sup-ER-Heroes Unit (Adding –er and –est ) and an Action Verb Unit that is super-hero themed on Teachers Pay Teachers!  Voila!  Another time I can use my awesome Super Teacher outfit!  These units are perfect for the Super Teacher motto: Growing brains every day! (ok, not really a catchy motto, but I do tell my kids everything we do is to grow their brains )

She also had someone dress up as a clown for the dipthongs: ou/ow (which I’m contemplating now) but we are also very near to The University of Oklahoma or OU and in the past I have taught my kiddos that when OU football players get tackled they say /ou/, soooo…someone could dress up as an OU football player.  Hmmmm…principal maybe?!

I’m going to improve on sneaky e next year and get someone to really dress up in a disguise or wear a mask to come in and sneakily attach themselves to cvc words and change them to cvce words.

I want more things to dress up for!  This has become a little  too fun and addictive and such a great hook to get my kiddos engaged!  I can’t wait to find out more ideas people have to dress up for!

Love My Kiddos!

This post isn’t going to say much except to say that I love my kiddos! After a library lesson on fact and opinion.  One of my kiddos told me it was her opinion that she thinks sometimes I work too hard, so it was a fact that she was going to bring me something special tomorrow. Love that concern and perception!  My kiddos really have surprised me this year with some of their comments…earlier in the year one of my students told me – “it must have taken you a long time to make all these counters Miss Schmidt…thank you” in reference to a bunch of lima beans I had turned into ghosts by drawing eyes and a mouth on them (we used them in math).  You don’t always get that recognition from kiddos for the work you put in  - they really impress me!

Pirate Party and Eat Ice Cream With Your Teacher Night!

Today was such a fun day!  We had a “Pirate Party” day to celebrate and learn about the /ar/ sound because everyone knows pirates say, “aaargh!” I totally used all of the activities from the wonderful Babbling Abby’s TPT Pirate Mark unit (click on the words and they will take you to her TPT site), which is FAB-U-LOUS!!  We made the Pirate Mark craft (which is great to use if you need time to do individual assessments – the kiddos are busy crafting and your busy assessing!), had an "ar” word hunt and received a treasure of candy bars and pirate tattoos when we found all the words.  We also read her too cute Pirate Mark story and listened for words with /ar/ in them.  I wish I could post pics of all the stuff we did out of the unit because it was oh so cute, but your just going to have to go to her blog to see pics of what she did.  Just find her quick link for r-controlled vowels! 

I even dressed up like a pirate like she did!  Plus, I let the kiddos dress up too- about 7 of them did, but I let everybody make pirate hats anyway.  This /ar/ sound better stick! The pic below is with one of my awesome teamies who dressed up too!  I’m really getting in to this iron-on thing! The first time I did it was earlier this year for Superhero Day, my fellow teammies and I did Super Teacher shirts…pics of that will have to be posted too!

Mrs. B is making a hook with her hand…me…quite frankly I’m not sure what that pose is…let’s just say the camera and I are a little awkward together and not the closest of friends .

I’m not posting pics of the activities from Abby’s unit, but I will  post pics of some of the pirate decorations I got from the dollar spot at Target (love that place!) and from the Dollar Tree.

I hung this over each of my table groups!

Party has /ar/ in it too!

I used these Ziploc baggies to house the game pieces for the /ar/ game in Abby’s unit.

 Mrs. B loaned me her Lakeshore treasure chest to house my baggies of candy bars and tattoos.

It’s kinda fun to go all out, the hard part is coming up with or finding ideas for everything else.  Do something with popcorn for the /or/ sound ?

Tonight was also Eat Ice Cream with Your Teacher Night at Braums.  Braums does a book buddy program where they will give kids free ice cream for reading.  Last month was Eat Pizza with Your Teacher because Pizza Hut does the Book It program and gives free personal pan pizzas for reading.  I base the reward off of my kids monthly reading logs.  In the past, I had always just handed out the certificates and that was it, but I noticed the certificates stayed in a lot of kiddos folders and never got used.  So, I decided what better way to get people to use them, but schedule a night to do so!  Plus, you get to eat with your teacher and classmates at night!  The squeals as kids see each other makes you think they never see each other during the day!

I did the first one in December and it worked out really well – six kiddos came and had pizza.  Tonight eight kiddos came and had burgers and ice cream or just ice cream.  It’s perfect, because I don’t have to spend any money (which I do a lot of normally), I need to eat, and I don’t cook very much! Voila!   It’s also kinda fun to interact with my kiddos and their families outside of the school setting.  I’m going to have to go hunting for other restaurants that will do rewards or we may have to just rotate pizza and ice cream each month.

What a day!