Open House Project

Whew! Open House.  It's "done."  

Every year, for Open House, I've always done a "Guess Who?" activity. You can see my first one I blogged about here when I taught 2nd grade{here}. It has since evolved and changed since I teach 1st grade now, and my love for Kid Art has grown immensely.  I mean, look how stinkin' cute these are!

I used the directed drawing from {THIS} book to help teach them how to draw a person. Then they colored and "sharpied."  I tell them to leave a little bit of white trim, some are better at it than others. lol

Then we review our list of adjectives...and they get to write 4 words about themselves. 

Oh my gosh. I just love these!  The parents always just think they're so cute! 

If you would like the "Who Am I?" paper, click the picture below for your freebie!

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Pout Pout Fish Week

Short i week was fish-filled fun! 

I really did a lot with Pout Pout Fish. He's so cute, and the kids really like him.

These are the books that I really focused on... during our Ocean Week at the end of the year, I bring out even more fish/ocean books.

We started off with some summary planning. 

Can we just take a moment and admire that Mr. Fish up there on that anchor chart?? ha!!

Then the kids took the plan and turned it into sentences.... again, this is only our 2nd time doing this, so we really worked together on it.

On the back, they glued their drawing of Pout Pout fish. I hung them in the window, so the drawings are showing out of the window, and the writing is facing in the classroom.

Last year, they hung on the board in my room.

The directed drawing comes from Deanna's Pout Pout Fish pack. 

Then we did the cute little craft to hang with the character change. You can grab this for FREE in First Grade Blue Skies' store HERE. 

The character change paper comes from Deaana's pack.

After reading Pout Pout Fish Goes to School, they sequenced the story. 

You can find the activity in THIS pack. 

Our theme snack for Fish Week was so yum!

each kid will need:

1 whole Graham Cracker sleeve

Cream Cheese (dyed blue)

dot sprinkles

gold fish

I gave them more than a few goldfish and told them they could put a few, or do whatever they wanted...some made a School of Fish, since we read Pout Pout Fish Goes to School...lol. So cheeky.

Click HERE to read more about my Pout Pout Fish Goes to School pack. 

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Teddy Bear Day

So, after YEARS of reading about Jodi's Teddy Bear Day, I finally did it! It was so fun! All the kids loved it! I will definitely be doing it next year.  Although, since it was my first time, I will be tweaking some things, for sure.

So... This particular day, I happened to wake up with absolutely NO voice!! That was great. Luckily, I had a parent that had offered to come in and help the day before. I wasn't going to have anyone come in, but sure! I can always use help, right!??  THANKFULLY I did, because she read the Teddy Bears' Picnic to the class for me - and the other book, I happened to have on CD, so we just listened to that one...so my other Teddy Bear books did not get read that day. Oh well. 

Then we did our Teddy Bear Adjective chart.

And put together our folder...

Most of the activities come from Jodi's Teddy Bear Day pack, but I added some other ideas too...

like the directed drawing page.  This one comes from THIS book. My kids are really into the drawing activities this year. I'm so glad!!

In the box under the step by step, they drew and measured their bears. On the page to the left, we drew it again and labeled the parts of a bear.

My parent volunteer did the Teddy Bear Math activities. So glad - because I would NOT have been able to talk to all my groups and do this activity with them. 

Some didn't have teddy bears, so they brought whatever animal they did have....this dinosaur is so fitting for his owner. lol

Later on in the day we compared real bears to teddy bears. I would have read a book first, BUT I had no voice.

And I wanted to do a science experiment with Gummy Bears, but I didn't have a voice, so I skipped that and we just did the Estimation Station. 

Oh Nelly, we've got a long way to go with estimating - hahaha.

So that was Teddy Bear Day. We did it during our Little Red Hen week, AND a 4-Day week. Oy! What a week! It was so fun though. Definitely give it a try! Even if you have Kindergarten or TK that does it - because I guarantee, it won't be the same, and the kids will love to do it again.

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Little Red Hen Week

During our Short E week, we did a little bit of Little Red Hen. It was a 4-day week AND Teddy Bear Day was that Friday, so we really didn't get to do the whole Farm Unit like I like to do. 

I always like to read and compare all the different versions of the story.  The kids really get into after we do the first 2 and whenever I read the next story, they're already telling me in the middle of the story how it's similar and different.

Here are some of my favorite versions of the book (click the pictures to get them on Amazon):

We did our FIRST summary! We did this ALL together. WE do it a few times before I start letting go of the reigns a little bit...but they really get the hang of it and can start doing it by themselves eventually!

For the pictures, I taught them how to draw a hen using Ed Emberely's Drawing book. 

and then they added details in the background to match what they wrote about. 

We also talked a lot about the lesson you can learn from the stories. 

And the cute little hen craft. 

 I never miss a week of Little Red Hen! Such great lessons to be learned!! 

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