Hop Scotch and My Kings and Queens

We played a bunch of fun games today. I find during this time of the year the kiddos are so antsy and therefore need more active/involved games. These are two of my favorites.

1. Hop Scotch
We play this a bunch of different ways. Today I had flash cards with different sound spellings on them. A child stands behind a chair and tosses a bean bag onto the mat. Then they hop to the bean bag, reading the cards along the way. It was great fun!










2. The Crown Game
I saw one of our kindergarten teachers playing this game, and had to find a way to use it in my class. They LOVE it! We used it to review our spelling words. I choose one King or Queen at a time to come sit in the royal throne. They put on a crown with a little pocket in the front. I put one word in the pocket, so they can't see it. The class spelled the word, and the King/Queen had to guess what the word was. In Kindergarten they did it with sounds. The class said the sounds in a word, and the King/Queen had to put them together and say the word. Either way, tons of fun! Any other ideas on how to use this crown?

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Honey Bunny Studio

I read about Honey Bunny Studio on a couple other blogs and I was so excited! There are super cute prints for homes and schools. I absolutely love all of her work, and it didn't take long for me to decide to buy a couple of prints. It was hard to decide what posters to order first, but I finally settled on these two: She was so wonderful to work with, and gave me a great deal. The best part for you is, she is having a sale AND a giveaway. You can get any 8 1/2 x 11 print for 40% off. If you are really lucky, you can win an 8 1/2 x 11 print! I already bought two, but there are so many more I want!

ps These would make GREAT teacher gifts. :)

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Antonyms

A couple weeks ago we used The Foot Book to learn about antonyms. I got the main idea from Mrs. Carroll and the posters idea from Ms. M. The children traced their own feet, or a partners feet, and wrote/illustrated a pair of antonyms on their feet. It was a lot of fun, and the kids had a great time!



I let them decide where to put their feet, which is why there are two random pairs in the big toe. :)

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Place Your Vote!

I loved all the field trip ideas you fellow teachers do. I only wish we lived closer to a city with such fun places! Unfortunately, there isn’t much to do in our area. The first grade teachers at my school have narrowed our field trip down to three options:

1. We can go roller skating for 2 hours and have a picnic lunch at a nearby park.

2. We can go to our city’s lake. It won’t be filled with water, yet. We will do a garbage cleanup of the park, a nature scavenger hunt (we’ve gone before and the children think it is so cool to be in the lake with no water), and have a picnic lunch.

3. We can go to the movie theatre and have some pop and a popcorn.

So parents/students, please place your vote to the right and then we will make our final decision!

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Field Trips

Our first grade team is trying to decide what to do for our end of the year field trip. I'd prefer a somewhat educational field trip, but we usually do something to celebrate how hard everyone worked and the progress each child made. Some ideas include: miniature golf/bowling, movie theatre to watch the G rated movie of our choice, nature walk, picnic, walking trip around the city, dairy farm, zoo... I want to get some input from other teachers on what you've done, and also from the parents on what you'd like us to do. Parents, feel free to comment/email me a suggestion. I'd love to hear what everybody thinks! :)

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Winner!

The winner of my 200 follower - Dr. Jean giveaway is:

Comment #75

which belongs to

Congrats, Brenna!

Please email me (janaevanorman@gmail.com) and let me know for sure what e-cd you want and I'll get it you!

Thanks everyone for entering. T-Minus 70 followers until the next giveaway!

If any of you want to sponsor a giveaway on this blog, feel free to contact me.

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funny

At the end of each page in our handwriting books it has something random to write about. This is what one boy wrote:

Translation: "Apple bottom jeans jeans, boots with the fur, with the fur".
For those of you not familiar with this song, it is a rap song and I love it. It was just random for this sweet little boy to put this as his favorite song.

:)

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we've got rhythm, yes we do

{update...due to copyrights, I cannot give out the ddr powerpoints.  sorry!}

we've got rhythm, how about you???

This week in PE Miss Anderson is teaching about rhythm. She started off having them repeat simple rhythmic patterns with sticks.



Then the REAL fun began.
Dance Dance Revolution... PE style!!!
She used homemade mats and showed the class how to dance along with a PowerPoint. It started off REALLY slow, but then got too fast for me to keep up! Some of these little children have some rather impressive moves! Of course there were a few who decided they would rather make up their own moves, rather than follow along. Ha. As long as they had fun, right?

A few notes about the videos:
-I didn't realize holding the camera sideways would make it stay like this. I don't know how to rotate it, so sorry if you strain your neck. :)
-The first video's a little weird, because I had to move around the few who weren't allowed to be filmed. After this one, I just had them go to the other side of the gym while I filmed, then switched.
-As I've said before, if you are concerned about this video being on YouTube, I made it so it is unlisted - people can only view the video from this blog. It is not 100% public. People can't search for it and find it. Hope this is okay. Please contact me if you have a question/concern.
-Miss Anderson took a video of me dancing, but I refuse to post it. Ha! I am the least coordinated person on the planet. :)







This is by far our class' favorite song. It was so funny to watch them dance and sing along with JB. One boy shouted out a few times, "It's Justin Bieber, This is Justin Bieber". It was funny. I had to remind a couple of children that they were supposed to dance, not just stand there and sing. :)

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{...giveaway...}

Click here to view the music.

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If you give first graders pancakes...

... they will eat them up!

Last week we read "If You Give a Pig a Pancake" and followed a recipe to make blueberry pancakes.

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GOO!

To help learn all the different spellings for the oo sound, we made goo! We had a parent helper, and it was really nice to have three adults move the process along. It was quick, easy, and relatively clean! After we made the goo, I had them spell different oo words with their goo. It was a great time. One little boy couldn't stop screaming out, "It's goo! It really is goo!!". It was so funny. :)

Afterwards, they completed a Goo Monster word sort. It was a lot of fun!

Goo Monster Word Sort

Directions for Making Goo

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