More and More Clouds

Well, wouldn't you know it?! It's been such a beautiful week that there has only been 1 day with clouds that we can observe! Just loving this awesome weather we are having in KS this week!

Just wanted to update with a couple more activities we are doing this week with clouds.

Yesterday, we made Cloud Dough.

*8 Cups of Flour
*1 Cup of Baby Oil

Mix with your hands until it has the texture of cornmeal.

We have a gluten-free kiddo -- but rice flour is a fine substitute for regular all-purpose flour!

 

Once you touch this stuff, you'll know why it's called Cloud Dough. OHMIGOODNESS, it's the softest stuff and so fun to play with. I put this in one of our centers for discovery. Big hit with the littles!

Today we read:

And then we made our very own cloud pictures based on the book. This activity was inspired by 

Mrs. Schmelzer. I just loved how creative the kids got with this!

Feel free to grab this printable I made for this. Happy Friday Eve everyone!

Spilt Milk

Techy Tip: Use Any Book For Your Listen To Reading Center!

When starting the Daily 5 this year, I was mostly concerned about the Listen to Reading part of the Daily 5. I don't have many books on tape or CD. No worries! I quickly remembered that I can easily record any book I want and put them on our class iPods!

This is a tutorial on how to use GarageBand to record a story and send to iTunes. I'm using a Mac. It's so so simple!

First open up GarageBand and select Podcast.

Next, give your project a name --- most likely the title of the book you are reading.

Once GarageBand opens, click on either Male or Female voice. To record your story, click the red recording button. I do ring a little bell to signal students to turn the page. To stop recording, click the spacebar.

This is what it will look like after you record your story.

Now you are going to want to add the cover of the book to the podcast. Go to Google Images and find the cover of the book you read. Click and drag the picture to the Podcast Track in GarageBand as shown. *The reason I bother to put the cover into the podcast is because it will show up on the iPod. This tells students they are listening to the correct book.

Make sure your audio of the recording and the length of your cover image match up. If you need to adjust, just click and drag to adjust the length of the image.

Now, you are ready to send this podcast to iTunes! At the top, click Share, then Send Podcast to iTunes.

Your podcast will automatically open up in iTunes. From there, you can connect your iPod and put the story that you recorded onto the iPod.

I especially love this because I can give students directions prior to reading and instructions on what to do at the end when they are finished! Plus, I'm no longer tied down to just the books that I have on tape! I can turn any book into one that can be used at a listening center!

Hope this inspires you to give it a try! Let me know how it goes!

LOVE those Cloud Inspectors!

Well the cloud inspectors I made were a bit hit with my firsties! I wanted to use them yesterday, but it was such a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky! We crossed our fingers this morning for afternoon clouds, and we got a few!

We ventured outside to inspect clouds with our official cloud inspectors! Yep, my kiddos know the 3 main types of clouds, but this inspector shows them all different types. The poem we added to our poetry journals this week (FOUND HERE) explains what Cirro, Alto, and Strato mean. The kids just loved observing the clouds and determining what kinds of clouds were in the sky. We saw a few cumulus clouds today, some cirrus, and some cirrostratus clouds!

To download my cloud inspector, click on the picture below:

And here they are in action!!

All About Clouds

This week is all about CLOUDS! So many fun things planned for my class this week.

Today we read:

Then, they students learned about 3 main types of clouds -- stratus, cumulus, and cirrus. By using gestures and the Whole Brain Teaching technique of Teach, Ok....my firsties were able to distinguish these 3 types of clouds.

We are working on this poem all week....I love how it introduces the other clouds as well because when we start cloud watching this week, they'll need this information! Our class motto is "We Can Do Hard Stuff!" If I teach the hard "college words", they just eat it up and love it!

Types of Clouds



Then we had a lot of fun painting puffy clouds! Combine equal parts of Elmers Glue and shaving cream.....use a spoon or popsicle stick to glob on the "paint" onto blue paper. This dries with a puffy texture and just looks too cool!

I have more cloud activities that I will post later this week! Happy Monday!

More Pete the Cat LOVE!

Thank you bloggy friends for introducing me to this super cute cat! My firsties LOVED I Love My White Shoes!

We wrote our own version of the story and made it into a little iMovie. A little online story of our adaptation of Pete the Cat. To view this, please go HERE. (linking to my classroom blog)

Happy weekend...woot!

This and That in First Grade!

This post is going to be full of randomness!

Our author study for this month is David Shannon. We've been loving all of his books, especially the David books! The kids drew David. So cute, right?

During the Daily 5, we've been talking about how important it is to select books that are a good fit. We compared hard, easy and just right books to riding a bike. We also worked on retelling and what a good retelling sounds like. The retelling anchor chart I adapted from Hello Literacy.

we

In math, we've been working on Tally marks! This little poem helps the littles SO MUCH when figuring out when to cross the 5th mark.

Finally, in Science we are learning about weather and the water cycle. We made these super cute rainbow-clouds to hang from the ceiling. They took all of 10 minutes to make and really brighten up the room! I found this water cycle song on proteacher.net. We sing this to the tune of She'll be Coming 'Round The Mountain.

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Apple Art

It's my favorite time of year --- the air is cooler, I can wear my boots, and anything pumpkin and apple makes my heart sing. I LOVE everything about fall!

My class made these pretty stained glass apples last week. I make them every year and they are one of my favorites! Our room just looks so bright and cheery with these hanging in the windows.

If you haven't made these before, you'll need wax paper, half and half white glue/water mix, tissue paper squares, and a shape as a base. Tape the shape base to the wax paper. Pour some glue on the wax paper and have the kids spread it around with a Q-Tip. Then they can start layering on the tissue paper. I have my kids do two layers of tissue paper....this gives it a bit more durability.

After they dry, peel the art off of the wax paper. This does take a little bit of time so you don't rip the tissue paper! But the end result is worth it.

Happy Fall, ya'll!!

Daily 5! How's it going?

Check this out!

We reached our goal of 20 minutes!! YAY! I love hearing comments from the kids like "WOW! That did not feel like 20 minutes!" or "I could have read a lot longer!"

We are also focusing a lot on schema this week. We made the following anchor chart...and this is terrible, but I can't for the life of me find the originator of the content of this chart. If it was you, please let me know and I'll give you credit! I just loved the wording!

I taught my students actions to go along with this chart....

"Good readers ACTIVATE (throw your hands in the air) their SCHEMA (put your hands on your head) to understand what they READ (open hands like a book). Our SCHEMA (put your hands on your head) GROWS (use arms to show expanding) and CHANGES (roll arms in a circle)."

I also made this poster that we will use all year. It's at the height where a student can stand under it. Before reading, I have a student stand under the poster and we write the schema they have about the book. AFTER reading, the same student goes up and we can see how their schema grows and changes!

I'm just LOVING the Daily 5 -- it's my favorite part of the day and the kids love it too!

How To Record Lessons in SMART Notebook

Hello everyone!  One new thing I'm trying this year is posting reviews for tests on my classroom blog. To do this, I use the built in SMART recorder in my notebook software. An easy way to record lessons and reviews to post!

To find your SMART recorder, go to your SMART Board Tools, or you can do what I did, and click the gear under your floating toolbar, then drag the recorder to your tools. Makes it handy for you in the future:

Then, open up the SMART notebook lesson that you want to record. Once you have it open, click the recorder and it will come up like this:

Now press record and conduct your lesson. The recorder will not only record everything on your SMART board, it will also record your voice and anything you do on your desktop. So this means, your can open documents, open internet browsers and all of it will be recorded. So cool! 

Here is an example of a StudyCast I did to help my first graders review for their math test. I got the idea from fellow techy teacher, Mr. Coley. I received a WONDERFUL response from parents, so I will be doing many more StudyCasts in the future. So yeah, I know I'm almost 30 *gulp*, but I sound like I'm 13 in the video. :) Hope you'll try out this feature in SMART notebook! I'd love to hear how you use it in your classroom!

Eight Planets Around the Sun...

Happy Monday, everyone! Hope everyone is having a great start to their work week!

Last week, I posted a poem titled Planet Roll Call. You can find that printable HERE. I decided this would make a super cute little Reader's Theater for my firsties. 9 different parts...I can get all of my students participating if we do it 2 times through. Perfect!

I made little planet hand puppets....I guess you can call them puppets, but they don't do anything but slide over the little hands of my firsties. :)

We will use these for our reader's theater. I think overall they turned out pretty cute! The kids love them and that's all that matters!

I modified the Planet Roll Call poem to be read as a reader's theater. Feel free to download! It messed up the original font I had, but it works. :) Enjoy!

Planet Readers Theater

We also read this book today:

And made this graphic organizer about astronauts -- inspired by Abby at The Inspired Apple!

Out Of This World Art Activity!

Sharing more of the space unit I've been teaching this week! Check out this fun planet art we made today:

Directions:

1) I traced different sized circles onto an 11x17 piece of paper. I ran this through the copier, and each student used watercolors to paint the planets. They tried to paint them how they were shown in our science text. Once dry, cut out the planets.

2) Take a 12x18 sheet of black construction paper, some watered down (washable!) white paint, and a toothbrush. This is the best part! Flick the toothbrush to spatter the 'stars' across the black sky!

3) Once dry, glue the planets on the black paper.

Star Walk App -- a Must!

We continue our study on space with stars. After learning about stars and constellations, the students made their own constellations. Super easy activity, but one that really made them remember that big "college" word -- constellation!

Then we set outside to see some real constellations! I am lucky to have an iPod touch in my room for class use. The Star Walk app is one of the best --- and for only $2.99, it's well worth the download! With this app, "users are able to easily locate and identify 20,000+ objects in the night sky. The 360-degree, touch control star map displays constellations, stars, planets, satellites, and galaxies currently overhead from anywhere on Earth." (vitotechnology.com) It uses the GPS in the iPod touch to show constellations that you should be able to see on a clear night from your exact location. SOOOOO cool!

This is an example of the on screen display:

"OOOOH There's Ursa Minor!"
"I see Mars!"

 "Cool! There's Pegasus!"

What are some of your favorite apps for school?