The World Premier of the Wonderful Whales 2012-2013 DVD

It has become a tradition in my class, that at the end of the year my students get a DVD of our school year.  (Slide show of pictures set to music that will make even the toughest man cry.)  I am not the type of person to just hand the DVDs out at the end of the year, give hugs, and say goodbye.  No, no, no, that would be too easy!  Instead, each child gets a gold ticket to the "premier."  We walk the red carpet and get our pictures taken by the paparazzi.

Here are a few photos from our movie premier.  There will be NO best and worst dressed awards given at this event...just smiles and hugs.

Piggy Tales

To keep my students engaged with all the excitement of summer I have been giving each week a different theme.  This week was farm week...Yee Haw!  (Can I just say that I love my job...where else can you show up with jeans, a flannel shirt, and pigtails and no one even questions your sudden new look.) 
To go with our farm theme this week we read three books where the main characters were PIGS!

 

 

 

We used these stories to inspire us to create our own PIG TALE!  After we wrote our story, we made a PIGGY TAIL craft project. 

Check out some of our stories and the cute craft project to go with.

 

 

 

 

 

Click the image below to get your free piggy TAIL and piggy TALE project!

 

 

 

 

S'more Writing PLEASE!

We had so much fun during our camping week, but we especially loved making S'mores! However, before I would let my little campers make S'mores, they had to write step by step directions on how to make a S'mores. To introduce the concept of writing directions, I had students write directions that would explain how to get me to climb up the pole and slide down the slide on the playground. (Idea adapted from Mrs. Madden's Second Grade) I had a few chuckles and a few "how easys", but that all changed when I attempted to follow their directions and could not get up the pole or only sat at the top of the slide. However after many attempts at climbing the pole, callused hands, and lots of revisions I started to make it up the pole and down the slide.

WE were FINALLY ready to begin writing our S'more directions.
Before we began I wanted to make sure that all my students had the same "schema" when it came to how to make a S'mores.  So I showed this YouTube clip, with the sound OFF.  This showed them visually how to make a S'mores.



I gave my students a S'mores planner that I found for FREE on TPT. They had to share their planner with three of their peers before their could write their final copy onto the S'mores stationary that was with the FREE TPT document that I found. (Got to LOVE free!)

On Friday, I set up the S'mores maker...yes we used fire! (I only told my principal about it after...better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.) I took turns reading each students directions aloud and following them step by step to see if I would get a S'mores. They did SO much better this time. I had to tease a few that they had to eat the stick, or that I had to try and roast the marshmallow with my hands, but all in all we had GREAT S'mores directions!