Reindeer oh my..

So sometime last week on pinterest I saw an adorable pin that was from a first grade blog First Grader..at Last: http://firstgraderatlast.blogspot.com/2011/11/reindeer-games.html
She had a whole reindeer games unit, and the final part was a fill in the blank book, called, "If You Give a Reindeer some Root beer.." Well a fill in the blank is a little young for my kids so here is what we did instead. First on Monday we did cause and effect with "If You Give a Pig a Pancake.." then on Tuesday we did cause and effect with "If You Take a Mouse to the Movies," (by the way these were both great title because we just finished learning about alliteration; oh the tie in!!!) I'm getting side track. After doing cause and effect for both pieces we compared the two using a Venn Diagram. Well today we brain stormed first and then in pairs the students had to write thier own books entitled "If You Give a Reindeer a ________________." and they got to fill in the blank, but they had to use alliteration because that is one of the things the other books had in common. They also had to do Cause and Effect in their books. We accomplished this by doing one cause and one effect per note card then gluing the note cards onto the pages of our books. (I don't know about your kids, but if I had given them a blank book to fill, all the word would have been on one page). The last thing each of their books had to have was circular logic; the the "If You Give books" they need to come full circle and come back where they started.

Enough rambling about the lesson. Sorry I tend to be long winded and like the sound of my voice (maybe that's why I teach hmmm...). Well here are some picture of their books.

If You Give a Reindeer a Rap Set  - If You Give a Reindeer a Rocket - If You Give a Reindeer a Root beer

The books are so adorable I wish I could read them all to you, but I will do just one. This one is rather clever and so I thought you all would enjoy.

If you give a reindeer a rocket
He'll probably want some fuel
If you give him fuel
He'll probably ask for turbo boost
If you give him turbo boost
He'll want fuel for them too
and if you give him the fuel
He'll probably go into space
If he is in space
He'll want some company
If you give him company
If will be too cramped and he'll want to go back down
and when you come back down
he'll probably miss space
And when he misses space
He'll ask you for another rocket.

Alright, well that is strait from the plan book, I hope you can use it or log it away for another Holiday, "If You Give a Bunny a Blueberry" or maybe "If You Give a Leprechaun a Lemon," lol.

And as always thanks for reading and pinning.
Mrs. B

Chritmas Trees wishes, and gingerbread dreams

Hey everybody so I have some stuff for you all today. Oh yes, I am in the Christmas Spirit as it is our last week of school before break!!

This week and last week we have been working on decimal representation: word, standard, expanded, model, and fractional. I know ugh right! Well my kids don't think so, I have tried to be upbeat about fraction and decimals and it has seemed to rub off on them. Well today we, "Trimmed some trees with Decimals,"
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5AmFXrzxffpZTE4OTExZWItM2FhNC00ZDgzLWEwMWUtZWM4M2UzMDdkMGQz

that is the link to the template. Anyway each pair had three trees, they had to put the stars on top of each tree and then use the ornaments to do the other forms of the decimal.
star-standard
gingerbread man- expanded
round ornament - word
long ornament - fraction
presents- model

Then they had to paste the trees in order from greatest to least. Here are how they turned out.

I won't put a bunch of pictures, but everyone this time did it correctly and it was a fun way to see if they are getting it.

Okay, so also not to long ago I saw on Blog Hoppin' a teacher did a project for younger kids called turkey in disguise (sorry I don't remember the teacher, but she is so smart). So we decided since I saw it too late, to do Gingerbread men in disguise for our Christmas writing prompt. The students are currently working on stories about how they woke up and they found a gingerbread man running for his life and asking for help. In their story they must tell about how they disguised him, what they disguised him as, and how they helped him escape certain peril. They are having such a good time, they begged for extra writing time today. Anyway here are some of the gingerbread men in disguise, these are not all from my class. Our whole fourth grade is doing this project.

 aren't they adorable, these are just a few. There were way too many to choose from. Hopefully when they are done with the writing piece I can post some of those.

I hope you all have an amazing last week before break, and as always thanks for reading!

Mrs. B

New computer = more post, Hooray!!

 I GOT A NEW COMPUTER!!! PRAISE THE LORD!!! okay anyway down to business.

I wanted to post I writing prompt that I did with my students a while back. While readying the book Shiloh, when my students went out of the room for related arts I put a picture of a puppy on each of their desk. (The puppy pictures are from the dailypuppy.com) When the returned I gave them the prompt.

Just like Marty you have found a puppy, now you must convince your parent to let you keep it. Before we started writing we went over the different ways to persuade: guilt, flattery, etc. After writing and proofreading, I had the students glue their final drafts along with their puppy picture to construction paper and decorate. Here are some of the pictures. The students really loved it and it was a great way to get them into persuasive writing.

 Alright this my a cool thing that actually one of my students came up with. So for erasers I buy lots of felt because it cost like nothing and this is what they use to erase their practice mats (my alternative to white board: just a piece of card stock inside of a sheet protector). Back on track Cassie Focus!! Okay so the felt we use for erasers. I am checking their practice mat one day, and I notice one of my sweet angles has attached the felt to the end of her marker with a rubber band, and BAM dry erase marker with an eraser. So now all my kids have one except for those who can not handle the rubber band, their felt is hot glued on.

OoOoOo!!! Right!!!

Thank you all again for stopping by and please tell you teacher friends about my blog!! Thanks for following!

Mrs. B

Tis' the Season for cramming before break.. fa la la la la :)

Snowman DOOR, Snowman DOOR!!! How cute you are in my classroom!

Okay for ideas now, cause that's what you want.

Well have been studying the water cycle, and we did a song and anchor chart and so on. Then I had the students write from the point of view of the raindrop, telling someone about their life in the water cycle. I required them to use their vocabulary words. Then they got to color and decorate their raindrop. Here is a pic.

I love his hat and bow tie.

I also change up my class a little bit. Part of our rubric for TAP evaluations is to an classroom environment evaluations. So, I thought I would Jazz it Up! So to speak.

I added this to the wall behind my Guided Reading table, the different color books represent my different reading groups. The are attached to clothes pins. My kids are really enjoying hanging there small group work on them.

I also added these bird clips in the back, to hang up anchor chart. It makes them easy to switch out and I can hang a bunch of them. I have them on my other back wall too! I am obsessed, and my students like to put them up there, it is their new favorite job.

Okay last on promise, out in the hall I did the same thing so that I could hang up those big poster we let the kids make on butcher paper. I don't know about you all, but I can never get them to stick with anything, so you can imagine my excitement when this worked.

Alright tune in soon for our fourth grade Christmas activities: Reindeer, Gingerbread men, and snowmen oh my!!

Praying for a new computer

So my laptop is soooo old, and it has been very very sick lately. This is not good for blogging. Well there are a lot of things I have wanted to share with you all. So we will start off the week with Geometry.

First, The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns. This is one of my favorite books. I love going cross-curricular. tee hee! Well anyway I must focus. We did an activity with this book. We read the book first, and if you know anything about it on the pages it will say, "and much, much, more!" talking about all the things the different polygons could be. So my students were put into groups, and were asked to add the much, much, more to the book by thinking of all the different things that each polygon could be (real world examples) there were four groups quadrilaterals, triangle, pentagons, and hexagons. The penta- and hexa- groups got five minutes on the computer after 5 minutes without computers since theirs were harder. Here are some of the things they came up with. I was really proud of them.

BeyBlade Screw Hexagon

inside of the Star of David- hexagon

Maids apron- hexagon (this one I thought was clever)

Fire hydrant side bolt- pentagon

Superman symbol- pentagon

these are all the triangles

Sorry for all the pictures I just get really proud, and sometimes it hard to explain what they did if you can't see it.

Okay so also I wanted to teach you all the polygon song that I teach my kids every year to help them remember the prefixes that goes with the number of sides. I am a proud Power Teacher so I do gestures, but you can just do the song if you like here it is if you would like to use it!

So I will hopefully have some more post this week if my computer will allow it, and I hope you can use these!! Thanks again for following, oh and pinning my blog on pinterest you all are the best!!