Puppet friends help me teach!

I like puppets. They are so fun and make learning much more "magical"! My students really enjoy the puppets in my classroom. My puppet friends help me to teach many different concepts. This week, my class will be meeting Eagle Eye, he's one of my reading strategy puppets. Next to Eagle Eye is Tryin Lion, Lips the Fish and Stretchy the Snake. I have many more, like Flippy the Dolphin to flip the vowel sound from long to short, Skippy the Frog to skip over the hard word and keep reading to figure out what the word may be and then skip back and reread. I have many more! 

Each week I introduce the puppet and what strategy he or she teaches us and then the children make their own paper bag puppet version with the reading strategy on the puppet's tummy. The children LOVE doing this and it really helps to make the reading strategies stick!

 This is Wizard of Words and the King of "ing". I use the Wizard of words to help with the words on the word wall. The King of "ing" helps with teaching about adding "ing" to words.

 My Punctuation Pals are below. They are so funny! When I use them, they speak like the punctuation that is on their shirts. Pete speaks in statements. Ella is super excited...about everything! Quinn always has a question or sometimes more...Do you think this is a good idea? They sit up above the word wall in the classroom and the kids can see them from anywhere in the room. When the children are writing and need to add punctuation, I just use my pointer or my hand and show them which puppet friend is watching their writing and hoping they add the correct symbol to the end of their sentence.

Pattern Centers!

We have been learning all about patterns! 

So I made up 5 different pattern centres and put them into plastic bins. To keep it simple, I rotate the bins through each table group. The kids are also very good at helping me remember which bin they have not had at their table yet. The kids LOVE having pattern centres! I kept the centres fairly simple. 

Bin one has daubers of different colours and long strips of paper. 
Bin two has foam happy faces, markers and long paper strips.
Bin three has foamie stickers of fall leaves and long strips of paper.
Bin four has play dough and number cards. (I love the smell of play dough!) 
This bin actually has more to do with numbers than patterns, but it is good fun and good practise!)
Bin five is totally hands on building patterns with Unifix cubes.
I also have an "extra bin" for fast finishers that has smelly markers and blank "Elmer the elephant" papers. The children make patterns all over the elephants! Super cute! 

Soon the kids will have visited ALL the bins and I will need to change them up to match our next unit, numbers! 

I LOVE Science!

Well, not ALL science, just the super fun experiments! I do A Lot of experiments at the beginning of the year, because I find that it really motivates and excites the children about school! 
I always wear my rainbow lab coat, which I think just adds to the magical quality (plus it just looks cool and I love it!) I got it a few years ago from when I went to a conference and Steve Spangler Science was there. 
I also made a class set of lab coats for my students! On the back of each lab coat I wrote the name of a famous scientist or the name of a scientific theory. I have Dr. Schrodinger with a picture of a cat, Professor Bunson Burner, Dr. Jeckyl, Dr. Atom, Professor Beaker, Dr. Einstein and many more! Every time we put the coats on the children spend the first five minutes reading the coats to find out who they are! It is wonderful and fun! 

All my students in their lab coats and me in my Rainbow lab coat! Preparing to do the mentos and coke experiment!

One of my faves!

This shows the back of one of the kids lab coats. This one says: Professor Saturation! 

Little Scientist at work making "Mini- Explosions!"

Welcome to my blog! I am very excited to be embarking on this new journey! I am not very techie at all! I just like to share ideas and show what I do in my little corner of the world. 
First of all I call my grade one class Groovy grade one and one of our first big projects is to the dye t-shirts. It is not really traditional tye dye. What I do is clip the shirts to the fence in our playground and then the children squirt the dye onto the shirts with bottles. 
I have them do it like a little assembly line! I start at one end with one bottle of colour. The first kid sprays his shirt then passes it to the next kid and so on. Soon ALL the dye bottles are headed down the line. Once all the shirts have been sufficiently sprayed, I come along and put the shirts into plastic zip bags. Then the shirts sit in the bag for a few hours. Then I take them home and air dry them and then put them in the dryer and they are good to go! 
I have been doing it this way for the past few years and it works pretty well! 

                                       






This is one of my boys enjoying squirting the dye!

                     



These are 2 of my girls loving the discovery of the spreading colours!






I have to thank my Educational Assistant for her help and my good friend (who is also a retired teacher) for her wonderful help! It would not have gone so smoothly without both those ladies lending a helping hand with our  Tye Dye day! It was alot of GROOVY fun! We will wear our shirts when we go on field trips or for special school events!