Three Bears' Breakfast & Fairy Tale Fun!

Yesterday was our annual "Three Bears' Breakfast" and we had so much fun!

After my hilarious pre-April Fool's Day joke yesterday, my students joined another 2nd grade class in the cafeteria for the breakfast.  We had an amazing spread of fresh fruit, OJ, toast, and (of course!) oatmeal.  We made sure it wasn't too hot or too cold, but juuuust right!

After the breakfast, we headed back to my room and I read them the story Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal which is a super cool Cinderella story that tells the story of Cinderella by weaving together Cinderella stories from around the world.  It's a must have for any fairy tale study!

Then we broke into groups of three and went on a fairy tale scavenger hunt around the school.  Each group got a card with 5 items on it and the items represented a fairy tale.  After gathering their items, they had to present them to their teacher and tell which fairy tale they stood for.  It was SO fun!  One of my groups got a teacher's shoe for one of their items (for Cinderella) and couldn't wait to come and show me their REAL shoe!  Another group, for Hansel and Gretel, got a real boy from a classroom!  :)

These girlies have a clock, rag, pumpkin, and a shoe... which fairy tale do they have?

It was super fun!

After that, each of us showed a different fairy tale movie and the kids got to pick which one they wanted to see.

We had a great day!

You can grab the scavenger hunt clues here!  And I have a few more free files on my classroom website, including the unit outline for the genre study!

Pre-April Fool's Day Fun!

I've been laughing about this ever since last night...

Today was our last day before spring break, which I am now officially enjoying, and I decided to do a pre-April Fool's Day joke on my students.

I've done this in the past, but I didn't do it this last year because April 1st was on a weekend.  Well, I decided that it just had to be done this year, even though April 1st is on Sunday!

Anyway... it was a short week at school and we had our Three Bears' Breakfast today (more details tomorrow!), so I knew we'd be having too much fun to be bothered to do spelling this week.

So, my students came in and I asked them to get out their pencils and mini-offices so we could take our spelling test.  Well, my room immediately burst into shouts of "WHAT?!  You didn't give us any spelling words!" and "No way!  You said there was no spelling this week!" and "I'm going to fail!  You didn't teach us any spelling this week!".  Well, I usually run three spelling lists in my room, so I told the kids we were doing a spelling review and were all taking the same test... which relieved some of them!

I passed out my official spelling test sheet and commenced with my evil plan.

Number 1- there  "There is going to be a lot of sun today"
Number 2- is  "Today is Thursday"
Number 3- really "I am really happy to be here today"
Number 4- no "The answer to your question is no"
Number 5- spelling "Spelling words correctly is important"
Number 6- test "This is a test"
Number 7- today "Today we are going to have a lot of fun"
8- happy  "I am so happy today is our Three Bears' Breakfast"
9- early  "I went to bed early last night"
10- April  "April 1st is Sunday"
11- Fool's  "Fools are people who do silly things"
12- Day  "We attend school in the day time"
13- ha  "The clown told a joke.  I said ha"
14- ha  (But, Mrs. Bainbridge, you just said ha!)  "The joke was so hilarious I said ha, ha"
15- ha  (Ummm... again, Mrs. Bainbridge?)  "The joke was too funny!  I said ha, ha, ha"

Then I asked them to read the words... and a chorus of "Mrs. Bainbridge!  You tricked us!" and tons of laughter followed... most of it was from me!  I laaaauuughed and laaaauuuughed!  Oh it was too funny!

If you have school yet tomorrow, I'd highly recommend you try it!  The kids loved it!

Fractions are "SCOOP"er Freebie!

We did another fun fraction activity today.  One of my colleagues found this on Pinterest and we both did it today!  I'm not sure where she got the ice cream scoops from, but I'm sharing with you the writing paper and the hallway sign I made for us to complete the activity!

Here is the sign and writing paper:

 

I'd love a happy note if you like it!  :)  I'm sure you can search Pinterest for your own scoops and bowl pattern!  There is also a *much* cuter version of this sign in my "Fractions are SCOOPer" center set on TpT- and four great games for helping your kiddos master fractions!

Tomorrow is our annual "Three Bears' Breakfast", fairy tale scavenger hunt, and movie party!  I'm super excited!  I'll fill you all in with pictures later!

Have a great night... one more day until spring break for me!

One of those days...

Today was just one of those days.  My kiddos are squirrely and ready for spring break and a few are so upset about not being at school for a week that their behavior is not fun.

Whenever I have "one of those days" where I can just feel myself starting to freak out, I always read this quote that I have hanging on my board.  It's so powerful and true.  When I came across this as a first year teacher, it brought tears to my eyes.  I thought you might like to read it too!

“I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.”
― Haim G. Ginott

The thing that strikes me the most is that it is my daily mood that makes the weather...  How true is that?!  I have a sweetheart this year who has, at times, given me a run for my money (and sanity!) but when that kiddo has an off day, it is because I have set a bad tone or because I don't feel like I have the energy it takes to give that student the attention they need.

We have a tremendous responsibility and this quote just sums it up for me!  I hope it can be inspiring for you as well!

Poem Predictions Freebie & K-2 Reading Interventions

Happy Sunday!

As promised, here's a great poetry prediction activity you can use in your classroom!  If you grab it, let me know!  :)

I used this on Friday with my K-2 intervention group.  We have 8 intervention groups that run for 30-minutes every morning.  They are combined K-2 so we can pool our teacher resources.  We have a group doing Road to the Code, K PALS, 1st Grade PALS, sight words, word attach strategies, low fluency, high fluency, and I teach a CAFE inspired comprehension group for high readers.  I have three K and about 30 1st and 2nd graders in my group.  We work on deeper comprehension strategies and it has been so fun.  We used to do our groups by just splitting the kids up according to their DIBELS results, so this is our attempt at a truly RTI structured intervention program.  We've been doing it for about 2 months now and really liking it.

So, my group started by just talking about books.  We played a LOT of "Fiction Go Fish" and I loooooved walking around and hearing kiddos talk about what we had read together.

Then we mastered the "somebody-wanted-but-so" summary and now we're working on making and supporting predictions.

Anyway... on with the freebie.  It is 6 "what am I" poems and a recording sheet for students to write their guesses and support them with proof from each poem.  I did it as a "Scoot" type activity where I put the kids into 6 groups, each group went to a poem, read the poem, wrote their guess/proof, and then "scooted" to the next poem on my signal.  It was fun and interesting for me to see the difference in the thinking between the three grade levels!  My K kiddos didn't quite get the "proof" thing, but the 1st and 2nd graders did well on that!  Not having taught K before, being with the three littles that are in my intervention group has been fun!

Ok!  No more rambling- here is the file:

Aaaaaannndddd... I'm having sales at my TpT and TN shops too!  I can't believe that I have 1600 followers (especially because I just celebrated 1500!)... and that many people care about what I think and what goes on in my classroom!  I'm slowly but surely building up my TpT shop... TN has much more stuff on it right now.  If I were more organized I'd have contacted some of my bloggy friends to help me to a huge giveaway... hopefully I can stay on top of that for 2000!  :)

TpT     Teacher's Notebook

Alright- enjoy the freebie!  I'd love a happy note if you enjoy it!  How do you do interventions in your school?  As this is our first go at cross grade level interventions, I'm sure we'll be tweaking it for next year.  I'd love to know what you think!  How do you make sure you're moving kids and keeping your groups fluid?

Thanks!  Have a great Sunday!  Only for more days until SPRING BREAK for me!!!!!!

I think I just saw a tumbleweed blow through here!

Everyone must be SO busy right now!  I know I have hardly updated my blog in the last week or so and my blog roll has only changed in the slightest of ways since Wednesday!

Where is everyone?!  I'm sending Michigan bloggy love to you all and hoping all is well!

I'm off for my monthly scrapbooking today with the rest of the SWANS (Scrapbooking Women At New Stores).  Yes.  We have a name.  And a logo!  And t-shirts!  HA!

I can't believe that I'm almost at 1600 followers already after just hitting 1500- thanks for caring about what I have to say and reading my posts that, at times, are extremely long and rambling!  :)

To celebrate, I'll be sharing a great predicting freebie tomorrow that I used with my K-2 reading intervention group this week- as well as explaining a bit how we do K-2 interventions at my school.

And, last but not least, "Jersey Boys" was great!  Hubby and I had a looooong discussion on the drive home about our favorite shows we've seen and, though it didn't make it into either of our top five, the person who played Frankie Valli was INCREDIBLE and hit those crazy high notes like nobody's business!  It was a really fun show!

Ok- off to scrapbook!  I'm working on finishing my pics from our trip to NYC last summer and making file folder scrapbooks for my students.  I only just started them, so I'm waaaay behind this year!  Yikes!

Blog at ya tomorrow... and let me know that you're still kicking out there!

Fraction Fun Friday & Magic Tree House Goodness!

Today we had "Fraction Fun Friday" for math!

We made fraction kites... you can download the file for free on my class website!

 

We also counted, fractioned, and pictographed colored marshmallows!  You can snag that freebie at my TpT shop or Teacher's Notebook!

Now... for the Magic Tree House goodness!  I applied for a grant to receive free Magic Tree House books and fact trackers in my classroom and found out earlier this week that it was approved!  I got $160.00 to spend on Jack and Annie books!  I'm going to order sets so I can use them for my reading groups!  If you haven't seen the grant, you can get more info here.

Hubby and I are going to see "Jersey Boys" tonight!  I'm psyched!

Sneezing! Hot! And Whining About It!

That's right.

I can't stop sneezing.

It's March.  In Michigan.  So, why is it 80 some degrees outside?

I'm just whining today.

But seriously... is it Friday yet?

PS- 3Bs and a C was a great success!  :)

3Bs and a C

That would be basketball, books, BINGO, and cookies!  Tonight at my school, we're holding our 3rd annual 3Bs and a C that my teacher friend T and I organize together.  One of the groups in our town generously gave us $200.00 which we promptly went and spent this weekend on fabulous prizes for BINGO (who doesn't love spending someone else's money?!  AND Wal-Mart has a new $0.97 spot- take that Target- and it had some really great stuff in it!) and our teachers at school were so kind as to donate milk and bake the cookies for us!

Last year we had about 250 people so I'm super pumped about seeing everyone tonight and hoping for a bigger crowd!


Check out our prize tables:

This year we split up the prizes and have some covered up so we can reveal more every 30-minutes... that way everyone has a shot at a good prize.  You get a sneak peek under the paper on the 6:00 and 6:30 tables!  Lucky you!

And these books my library was getting rid of so we swiped them and everyone who comes can have one for free!  We are also having a book fair as part of one of the Bs... so I guess, technically, someone could argue the whole "free" thing we've got going on here.

After 3Bs and a C, I have to drop my car off at the mechanic... squealing + hot smell + co-worker touching the wheel and screaming over his burnt hand = UGH.  I've had an SUV for a few years now and am SO bummed about having to drive the car tomorrow.  :(  BUT... after dropping the car off, hubby and I are going to Barnes and Noble so I can buy screen protectors for my Nooks which ALREADY ARRIVED!  We got them yesterday and I spent all night playing with them and getting them set up for my kiddos.

Newsflash- you can have up to 6 (I think it's 6) Nooks on the same account, so I hooked my student ones up to my account... but when I realized they'd be able to access my "US Weekly" and read about Snooki being preggers... well, I had to set up a classroom account for my classroom Nooks!  :)  So, once the protectors go on tonight, they can start using them tomorrow!

I'm so pumped about having them!

Anyway... 3Bs and a C is a super fun night and a great way for us to reach out to our school in a totally non-threatening way.  Does your school do any free family nights?  I'd love some more ideas!

Linky Party!

I love linky parties!  What a great way to find new blogs and make new bloggy friends!!!!

Kindergarten Lifestyle is hosting a K-2 blog linky party... so go and add yours to the list if you haven't yet!