Little Miss E. Snapshots
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Snacks/Meals Worth Mentioning
Having children assist in snack/meal prep has so many benefits. It helps them become more comfortable with the idea of helping with meals as an adult. Tee hee! Truly, this cutting of summer sausage was awesome for C. Much needed confidence builder and works those finer muscles in the hand and worked with wrist strength and control.
Cookie Snack
Prior to the baby, we had gotten into a much enjoyed routine of Monday afternoons being cookie making times for Tuesday snack. They all loved helping me with the baking. So, trying to get into the routine again. We didn't get this done in the afternoon but it got done. Ha! A. was very much independent in creating these popular PB cookies. :-) The recipe we used can be found at Doodlecraft. The only thing I would say is maybe not to bake the quite as long, the first time. They were kind of dry..but still tasty!
Turned out beautifully! He was very proud of them!
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Morning Group
Idiom of the Week
"Don't let the cat out of the bag."
Definitely the older kiddos understood this was more of a ... don't tell about the surprise. However, the younger ones "got"... don't tell the secret. That's acceptable at their age. Love T.'s drawing....so any "firsts" in this one!
1) any body parts
2) mom is bigger than T.
3) mom is drawn with a skirt and there is a zipper on her coat.
4) both mom and T. have nostrils!!!
5) mom is drawn with a bun as well as the typical spiky hair
6) everyone has fingers and toes!
Dictionary Skills- ABC Order
Dictionary Skills- ABC Order
The next day....
Quite a few ABC order freebies at Teachers Pay Teachers! This particular one was created by All Y'All Need. I love the themes! We are working on adjectives quite a bit and this was a great way to introduce/review different emotion words. So often they stick to happy, sad, and mad. :-)
2nd Grade Culture Club
This sounds like a neat thing and they were all so excited to be included. It's wasn't a grand experience this time around and I was glad it was more of an "what to expect" session. Hopefully, next week goes a bit smoother! Anyway...we just moved our morning group to 10A, ate snack and used sensory trays to help keep them occupied during "down time" that always occur with class connects with us. She had a neat video to share though.
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Art
Art2: A River Runs Through
Riverscape...trees reflecting in the river.
Seascape...well both these kiddos were ahead of me with painting and though I discussed the reflection in the water when we started, I wasn't right there to remind them when they got to that point and they both forgot it. Oops! But, they still turned out well! They were given options regarding how to get boats on the paper. L. chose to draw them and T. chose to use paper. I absolutely loved that I didn't have to hardly review how we show distance! They did an awesome job choosing the sizes of their boats (I provided circle/oval stencils for the bottom of the boat) and positioning them so the biggest was up close and the smaller ones were between the biggest and the horizon line!
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Misc. Snapshots
Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.
Very sober and serious. A. told me he got goosebumps.
Brain Box
Choose a card, study card for 10 seconds (we did 20 seconds), pass card to next person, roll dice, answer the question at that number. If you are correct, keep the card...if not, put it back in the box. After 10 minutes, winner is who has the most cards.
That last "rule" may not work for us as we are all very evenly matched and usually have ties...which may be a good thing. I think we'll be able to think of multiple uses for these games! And there is a LOT more info on that card than one would think!
Silly Kids! And the one on the right would have nothing to do with the other three, of course. Ha!
I love this picture of L.-2nd grade, soon to be 8 yrs and C.-3rd grade- 8 years old. Their stances are so similar. Ha!
Brain Box
That last "rule" may not work for us as we are all very evenly matched and usually have ties...which may be a good thing. I think we'll be able to think of multiple uses for these games! And there is a LOT more info on that card than one would think!
I actually picked up three of these Brain Boxes recently, on clearance. I think I'm going to like them. Seem like they are going to really work well with multi-age groups!
Silly Kids! And the one on the right would have nothing to do with the other three, of course. Ha!
Anyway...we were watching/listening to SchoolHouse Rock regarding the 3 Branches of Government being like a 3 Ring Circus. How fitting. Ha ha ha! :-)
So, I was surprised to see this when I opened the box expecting a CD. :-D
Kind of a cool little gadget. Put in a battery, plug in headphones and ta-da! :-) Doesn't quite work when you planned more than one child with the book...but neat nevertheless. :-)
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Language Arts
Dunk the Cookies Contractions
What an awesome freebie! It as created by Mrs. Tucker and can be found at the TPT store.
Bugging Out---Contractions
Another matching activity. Has a variety of contractions. Was great to see which ones we hadn't introduced but she figured out on her own. :-)
There's a youtube video about contractions called Beware of Contractions by Melissa. It was reinforcing that the apostrophe eats one or more letters. :-) Very fast paced and there is some reading of the speech bubbles so watch it first to see if it'll work for your students. We did have fun "eating the letters". :-)
Let's Spell!
1st grader has started her spelling unit. :-) Right now we are in the process of seeing where to have her start. Both of these first two units have been relatively easy for her. I was really trying to catch a snapshot of her when she was pumping the air with a "Yes!". Of course, my camera wasn't cooperating. Ha! But every single time she got a word correct on K12's online spelling review she was say "Yes!" with one or both hands in the air. :-D
Both the 1st and 2nd grader did these particular activities. 2nd grader's pic didn't turn out for either one of these practices. :-(
I shared this page at the beginning of the school year but we didn't use it all that much because the child that would benefit most from this began doing spelling practice at home. Now that we are bringing it back here...I pulled it back out.
Multi-syllables and schwa sound
I provided her with index cards with the words from her lesson and 2 different sizes of foamie circles. The goal was for her to read the word, use the larger circle for the accented syllable and the smaller circle(s) for the unaccented syllable and then show me what vowel was making the schwa sound. Simple and sweet--the best kind of activities! :-)
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Math
Incorporating money review into his multiplication lesson.
I found this simple "snake" skip counting pages at The Lunchbox Season.
We were able to review value of coins- quarter, dime, nickle, penny and even a 50 cent piece; he started by placing the largest of the 4 common coins on the board. 25, 50, 75, 100. How many quarters in a dollar? 4. Then went to nickle...because the size of it is larger. 5, 10, 15....100. How many nickles in a dollar? Then to dimes, etc. Great coin review and skip counting at the same time!
Using a game mat for independent practice.
One downfall to not having a large amount of peers is that there really isn't anyone available for a little "friendly competition". We ended up using these mats as a quicky way to practice fluency. He rolled the dice, moved his marker and said the complete multiplication sentence with the goal of saying the answer immediately after the word equals. :-) 2s and 10s were no problem. 5s, a bit more of a struggle...but we'll keep a going. You can get the mats from ________________.
One downfall to not having a large amount of peers is that there really isn't anyone available for a little "friendly competition". We ended up using these mats as a quicky way to practice fluency. He rolled the dice, moved his marker and said the complete multiplication sentence with the goal of saying the answer immediately after the word equals. :-) 2s and 10s were no problem. 5s, a bit more of a struggle...but we'll keep a going. You can get the mats from ________________.
Steps for L.
1) put the hands up in order on the wall.
2) place your hands on the handprints as you skip count by 5.
3) Start at first handprint and state the multiplication sentence.
1x5=5; 2x5=10, etc
4) Use the x5 game board for extra practice.
A little extra "hands-on" goes a long way!
Here are two short videos he watched also.
Printed this one off on whim also...it had a mixture of 2s, 5s, 10s.
I actually had him write the answer in pencil on this page. Each one he got correct I put a conversation heart candy on it...he was welcome to enjoy those throughout the morning. Then I had him go through the ones he got incorrect and try to fix them. Any ones he still had incorrect we went through them together. This is much more visually appealing than multiplication fact after multiplication fact in rows on a piece of paper/worksheet. ;-D And I have found math done in "short and sweet" sessions work a whole lot better than any other way! Love that smile by the way!