“Sale”ing to Hawaii

Well, I have finished my Hawaii unit. It is full of great stuff! The kids really had fun with it. I think their favorite part was taking on an Hawaiian name. Our Hawaii week is over, but they STILL want to write their Hawaiian names on their papers .

My favorite parts are the planning a trip and traveling pages. Showing the kids Google Earth and having them imagine how they would get there was so exciting for them. And the lists of things they wanted to pack were hilarious! No one remembered a toothbrush until I intervened!!!! Yipes !

Click here to buy the unit. -OR- You can wait a few days and purchase it on sale!! I’m going to be throwing a sale for Teacher Appreciation Week May 6-8th. Everything in my TpT store will be 15% off! Hope you’ll check it out. Just click the picture and it will take you to my TpT store.

Long… long…. ago….

We had a birthday day in our classroom! It was very fun. However, I have to come clean and say I have a hard time doing celebrations in class. I think I get SO excited and my mind starts going SO fast that we never get to do all the things I wanted, and I feel disappointed afterward… Anyone else feel this way? Anyone? I’m in my third year teaching first grade and I feel like I should have a better handle on it now… hmmph.

Anyway- Birthday Day was great (despite my feelings of not-doing-it-all)! Here are some things we did:

We all wore part hats! And decorated the room with a banner.

Then we put streamers everywhere, too…

We wrote about our favorite birthday. We blew up some balloons and played games with them. We tried to keep it off the ground as long as possible and counted when someone hit it (by 1’s, 2’s, 5’s, etc.) and then we spelled our spelling words the same way. Fun stuff! We also calculated how many candles they have blown out in their lifetime for math.

Then we made our “birthday cupcakes”. Since we celebrated our birthday AND Dr. Seuss’s brithday we made truffula tree cupcakes.

Here’s mine

Here’s a first grade creation

Super cute, right? We used HUGE marshmallows cut in half as the tree tops. It took 2-3 pretzel sticks to hold them up!! But the kids had so much fun eating them.

Here are the thing I wanted to do, but didn’t get to…

This is one I found in Pinterest from http://etadventures.blogspot.com/. It’s a cake made of some boxes and such. It looks sooo coool! And I really wanted to make it with my kiddos. But we didn’t have time. Boooo. Next year we’re making a cool cake.

I feel that there were other things we didn’t do too… I know we didn’t sing Happy Birthday to each other, but that’s because I don’t really like that song… Hmmm. I guess that’s the good thing about blogging months after the fact. You can’t remember what you didn’t do.

We have 3 weeks left of school. ONLY 3 weeks!! I’m so excited about the rest of our year. Its going to be so much fun! Hope you have a great week.

Hawaii- here we come!

I wish this post was about my husband and I going to Hawaii... Unfortunately, its not! But it is about the next best thing... We're studying Hawaii next week! Its going to be a great mini-unit. TCAP (our state testing) is going on next week so we'll have to stay nice and quiet in the morning while the big kids do their BEST on the TEST! In the afternoons we'll be rotating classrooms to teach Hawaii books. On Friday we're having a "beach reading" afternoon with beach towels, snacks, and pineapple juice with umbrellas! How fun?!
I am working on a Hawaii unit for us to use, and for me to sell on TpT. I've got lots of fun activities in mind, so watch for that to come soon! I really like using fun clip art in my units and I looked EVERYWHERE for some cute Hawaiian clip art... Sadly I couldn't find something that was just right... Too many bikini's c: So I am using the clip art provided in Word. I must say I'm impressed with some of the art I've found. Well done, Word! Even though you give me a headache...
Last thing: APATHY! Do you ever find yourself getting closer to the end of school and just not having patience for certain things anymore? If so, you're not alone!! I'm so there. I had given up trying to fix a problem, but no more! I am determined to make the best of these last 24 days. I will keep trying to find solutions even when I'm tired, because these precious kids deserve my BEST! And I expect their best, so I'd better do mine!
Words of encouragement: "So let's not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up, or quit." Galatians 6:9
Keep working, my friends! It will be worth it, even if we don't get to see the good crop :) Positivity and endurance! (I should get that tattooed on me...)

5 weeks left

Where did the time go? Wasn't it just Halloween?? I can't believe how quickly this year has flown by. We planned the rest of the year out this week and it is going to be a blast!
Next week will be a regular week. We're reading Dot and Jabber, which I love. Then we are having a super fun HAWAII WEEK!!!! We're going to be teaching four Hawaiian books in rotation so the kiddos get to visit each teacher's classroom. Our books are A is for Aloha, Pig Kahuna, The Musubi Man, and an still undecided one about ocean animals... I am so excited for this week! I will, of course, be bringing in my ukulele. We are even going to choose Hawaiian names to use for the week! I cannot contain myself. SO FUN!
Our last weeks will be focused on Charlotte's Web. We were going to do Wizard of Oz again but due to circumstances out of our control (until 2014 when it becomes public domain I hope..) we can't watch the movie. We considered just teaching the book, but I think it is such a huge book that the movie really helps them connect. With Charlotte's Web, they will already have some prior knowledge and connect to the book. It also fits in perfectly with our May field trip to the Ag Center! And.... on our last day of school we will have.... (drum roll, please) FAIR DAY!! Just like the fair they visit at the end of the book. I'm thinking corn hole, ring toss, tickets, prizes, cotton candy, sno cones, popcorn! Ok... I'll admit, my favorite part of the story is Templeton eating all the fair goodies :)
Again, our KY BFF Babbling Abby made an awesome unit to go along with Charlotte's Web that we can use. Also, Kriby had just started reading it to her students. Providential, right? And in looking further we found One Extra Degree's unit and Deanna Jump's unit that will fit right in!


Now, looong ago we had a birthday day in our room, and I promised a blog about it. It is in the works. Trying to get some pictures together and such. So, I haven't forgotten!
Have a great day!