I'm finally back!

We have been so busy since the end of October! We have had a student teacher in our class! We have been helping her to learn how to be a teacher. She is wonderful and we have been having a lot of fun with her!
We did some fun projects and we even had a Mad Hatter's Tea Party! We are all going to miss her when she goes back to the University. We hope she will come back and visit with us later on in the year. Here are some photos of all the fun projects we have been doing over the month of November and the beginning of December!

Puppy Pallooza! Feeding our puppies sight words and reading to them.

More reading to our puppies! 

Puppy Paintings!

We are SUPER readers! 

Super Reader! 

Winter art project to go with the Poem about colourful snow! 

Colourful Snow poem to practise our sight words! 

Puppy poem!

                                                                      Puppy art!

Mad Hatter's Tea Party! This was the wrap up of our Alice in Wonderland study! 

We went to the live play at the High school and then we read a simple adapted story and then we watched the Disney cartoon version of the movie! 

So fun! 

Here is the party food! It was funny to watch the children take a bite of the cookie and pretend to GROW and then drink the tea and pretend to shrink! It was so funny! 

The children sequenced the characters appearance in the story, around the bottom of their MAD hats!

It was a FUN, fun Friday afternoon event! 

Pumpkin Investigations!

We were Pumpkin investigators this past week! It was lots of learning fun! We weighed a pumpkin, used a string to go around the middle of the pumpkin to guess it's circumference, counting the "bumps" on the pumpkin, scooping out some seeds and counting our scoops, seeing how tall the pumpkin is using unifix cubes and seeing if a pumpkin will sink or float. 

The sink and float station was my favourite! I loved watching their faces! They all guessed that it would sink because it was so heavy. Their faces were priceless when they saw it float! Some of them had to do the experiment more than one time, just because they didn't believe it! Then one little guy said "I have a question! Why does it float?" So we had to discuss why they thought it floated. They decided it was because it has air inside it and because it is hollow. Then another little guy said, how come apples float and they don't have a "hole" or air inside! Love it when they think and apply their learning! Higher level thinking at it's best!!  

We are going to carve our pumpkins next week! Then we will have them for our Halloween Party! Yay! 

The Batty "at" family!

I love to make things and do art projects with my kids! I usually try very hard to tie a skill to the art project so it is kind of like covering more than one thing they need to learn or that needs to be reinforced, with one project! 
That is how this little project came about! I saw these adorable little bat craft kits at the craft store and I thought, "Hey! that would be great to teach the "at" word family!" So, I bought them and we did a whole lesson about the "at" word family. We brainstormed all the "at" words we could think of, we read a book called "Pat the Bat" and then we made the little bats and attached our bats to our lists. So cute and they remember the "at" family words! YAY!

Conscious Discipline....

I have been dabbling in Conscious Discipline for the past few years after a chance meeting with Dr. Becky Bailey a few years ago. Ever since meeting her I have wanted to study with her at her Summer learning institute. Well this past summer...I got the chance! I was so excited to go! It was the most amazing experience! I learned so much about the brain, how children learn and how important self regulation and emotional well being is to learning! I now have totally embraced Conscious Discipline in my entire classroom and it has changed how I teach! Here is a look at some of the important components I use in my redesigned Conscious Discipline classroom!

This is our classroom Safe Place. It is a space where children can choose to go when they need to get a hold of their emotions. They learn how to use the safe place properly so it becomes a very special place in our classroom. It is comfortable and cozy. Frank the bear and Brownie the bear live in the Safe Place. The green basket has photo albums of our family members and the purple basket has all kinds of tools for children to use to gain their composure. There are specific steps for the children to follow when they go to the Safe Place. So far my children have embraced the Safe place! 

This is the Welcome bulletin board for the first day of school. We refer to ourselves as The Groovy Grade One Classroom Family. 

This is our "Heart" board. Each day the children arrive at school, they bring me their heart and I am the safe keeper of their heart for the day. 

This is our "Good-Bye ritual" poem. At the end of each school day we say this poem together then the Good bye wisher of the week says "Have a good night" to each child as they leave. I also wish them a good night and tell them that I will see them tomorrow. 

There are many, many things I do through out the day in relation to Conscious Discipline. I will try to take some photos of other rituals and routines that we do. 

I LOVE Conscious Discipline! Thank you Dr. Bailey for changing my life so I can help my students to become better learners and better at handling the ups and downs of life! 

This is Dr. Bailey and me! She is so awesome! 

A new school year is here!

It has taken me a little while to get myself organized so I can create a post! I've been so busy with things in my personal life! Anyway... The new year is here and I have a lovely little bunch of kids in my class!
Science has always been one of my favourite subjects to teach! Here are photos of my little sweeties being scientists! We are working on the colours unit, so what a fun way to explore colour mixing with mini explosions! So FUN! Look how engaged they are!

How can you get the piggy into the pen?

We have been playing with science again! I love science with young children! 
We explored FORCE and MOTION. 
Not really officially part of our curriculum, but it can be part of science inquiry, so I think it fits! 
So I asked my children...How can you get your piggy into it's pen? 
Then I gave them a straw, a pompom and a paper plate. 
The children then "experimented" and tried out various ways to get the pig into the pen. It was fascinating to watch! Some tried to swat the pom pom with the straw and others tried to scoop the pom pom.  Then, quite by "accident" one of the children was playing with her straw and sucked the air out and picked up the pig and put it on the plate! She was so excited she jumped up and told everyone exactly how to do it! So cute! Then everyone tried it. 
Then one child discovered that the paper plate can move when you blow a cushion of air underneath the plate! So exciting! 
We decided to have races down the hallway using the paper plates, straws and taking the piggy pom poms for a ride! SUPER FUN!

Look! I did it! 

A cushion of air underneath the plate and it can MOVE! COOL!

Word Surgery!

We turned into doctors and performed word surgery! 
These particular words were having some pain, so we needed to remove part of the word and "stitch" the words back together with an apostrophe. 
We were working on CONTRACTIONS! 
To make it more fun, we wore special doctor masks. It was a lot of fun! 

Leapin' Lizards!!

As the year winds down, we are still in full learning mode! This past week we had a wonderful visit from A Reptile Show! It was great and the children learned so much! The presentation focused on the needs of these unique animals and just how difficult they are to care for. 
The man doing the presentation,(Jason) rescues various reptiles and cares for them and then finds them a new home or keeps them and takes them around to teach children about reptiles. It was excellent! 

This tortoise was rescued and brought back to health

This monitor lizard was raised from a tiny little lizard and he could get even bigger! 

This beautiful snake is almost extinct! There are very few left in the wild.

The children got to touch each one of the animals. It was interesting to listen to the children talk about how the animals skin felt, words like smooth, bumpy and cool.  

Most children were surprised that the snakes were not slimy at all! 

When pigs fly!!!

Our piggies are finished and they are up and flying around our room! We worked on painting them and adding in special details to make our pigs UNIQUE! They are so adorable! 
We began by painting them a bright pink! We hot glued a curly pink tail and then added things like ribbon rosettes, fake flowers, glitter and other details! One even had a Viking helmet made out of paper and one had a cool eye patch! He was a pirate flying pig! 

hot gluing the tails on!

3 little piggy tails!

Painting our piggies.

Add more paint!

Cover up all those white spots! 

Look how cute we are!!

Waiting on the drying trays before we take flight!

Flying pirate piggy! Notice the eye patch!

Flying around the room!