Thanksgiving

Although we have already had our Thanksgiving, I know that American Thanksgiving is coming up soon. I have been working on making brain breaks for each holiday and have completed my Thanksgiving ones.. Check them out.

Thanksgiving Brain Breaks

 Once I complete Brain Breaks for all of the holidays I will Bundle them all together along with my Yoga to make a package for the whole entire year!
Mrs. Dunn

I'm Back!!!!

Well it is hard to believe that my little one is already two months old!! I have been enjoying my time off, and missing school only a little bit.

The puppy and the baby!

So now that I'm not as exhausted and babe is taking some nice little naps, I've been working on some school activities. I haven't made a lap book before but really like the look of the project and thought I would use this form for an Advent project. I think it is a great way to show the theme for each week all in one spot. All you need is a file folder and the activity pages. Try it out!

You can get the activity pages here.

Mrs. Dunn

Flooding- NO SCHOOL

This is kind of unheard of, we go to school even if it is -40 and the roads are terrible in the winter. Today schools have officially been closed in Calgary! The flooding is unreal, and it is even worse in some surrounding communities as well (Canmore, High River others). 

Thoughts and prayers with the 75000 people evacuated our of their homes and hoping everyone stays safe today. 

Looks like a movie on the couch in PJ's kind of Friday!

Mrs. Dunn

Father's Day Part 2 and.... MICE!!!!!

After firing our Father's Day plaques in the kiln, we finally got to paint today and they turned out AMAZING!

First we used Tempera paint and did the entire thing yellow. Then I mixed acrylic with some white and water (a super suggestion from my artsy partner teacher) and painted the word DAD in blue. We then painted the face, and used sharpie for the hair and dots on the eyes. The kids were so proud of their work!!!

On a completely unrelated note, after we finished painting, we had a visit from a . . . well . . . rather unwanted visitor today. MICE. Cue children and their teacher running and screeching and hopping up on top of chairs. Yah, so not a lot of productive work can get done when this happens. Trying to complete agendas amid shouts of "It's over there!" "AHHHH I just saw it" does not really work. 

So I decided to try and get it. Because really, how will we get anything done otherwise. After a few tries, I finally got a bowl over top of the mouse and the children shouted hurrays, as of course this makes me very heroic (this will make an awesome story to tell parents tonight, oh boy) Then one student goes, uuuuhhhh I think it escaped. So, I go over and sure enough I see that little guy out and about. I couldn't figure it out so I lifted the bowl and BAHHHH there are two of them. I  shouted in terror told the students to remain calm and put the bowl back over the other one but still one escaped. This went on for a while trying to catch the second one until finally it was time to go home, and the custodian came to round up the mice.

Talk about an exciting afternoon.

Mrs. Dunn

Father's Day

I found this amazing project just in time for Father's Day from the amazing Gail (That Artist Woman). Check out the inspiration here. They turned out super cute, each one really looked unique.

I have also created a Father's Day resource based on the "If you give a" stories. Check it out!

If you Give a Dad a Marshmallow

Mrs. Dunn

Urban and Rural

Sometimes I find Social slightly challenging to make... enticing shall we say... to the students. It usually depends on the topic and their experience with it, but making some things relatable to a six year old when they have never seen it before can be a challenge. I am trying to mix it into other subject areas, such as art, to achieve this. Our latest and greatest topic is centered around urban and rural. Of course we have discussed, read stories, made charts, watched videos but I wanted to tie everything together with a fun art project to go into our Social Alphabet book.

U is for Urban. In the city I can see...

Here is the art project: We painted the sky in yellow and red swirls and then glued the silhouetted buildings onto it. Next time I think I will have the students add other things we find in the city, but we are just plain running out of time!!

R is for Rural. In the country I can see...

We used straws and painted half the page blue dots and half the page with green dots.

Then the students picked an animal and made it out of these shapes.

Here is an example of what the project looked like when completed

Mrs. Dunn

Mother's Day

Although Mother's Day has come and gone, I thought I would post the cutie cards that we made. The kids made frames from clay, wrapped in tissue paper, and then we put these cupcakes on top as a card.

Turned out super cute. Kids could pick any special lady in their life, I had a different card for each (sister, Grandma, etc).

Check it out here, along with a mini descriptive writing booklet.

 If you give a Mom a cupcake

Mrs. Dunn

Eric Carle and Spring Centres

This month's centres have an author focus on Eric Carle, of course so many of his books fit perfectly with springtime and the units we study in Science.

Puppet Centre

Students were making caterpillars, which also fits with building things as students need to make this kind of a puppet (accordion style)

Listening Centre

Students sequenced the story "Mixed up Chameleon" after watching it on the Smartboard. They LOVE this story, such a good one.

Thematic Book

Students wrote their own version of the very hungry caterpillar story. 

Journal

Students did some writing about spring time. I always give them a picture to glue on otherwise they spend the entire centre drawing pictures and colouring instead of writing!

Guided Reading

After reading and discussing with the guided reading group, they did a response in their booklet.

Working with words

I found this ridiculously cute word family craft on Teachers Pay Teachers from Susan Moran- TGIF here. Makes for easy differentiation just change the word family or the number of words they need to write!

Writing

One of my amazing partner teachers gave me this cool activity to go with the mixed up chameleon. The kids pick which creature they would be if they were the chameleon and then glue on the body parts and write about it. So cute!!

Last centre is just sight word BINGO nothing too exciting there.

Also, we did a little craft to do some retelling with the mixed up chameleon. The kids made coloured the chameleon and cut out the centre of his body.. I will laminate and put on popsicle sticks. They created the background with all the different places the chameleon goes for the retelling.

Mrs. Dunn

Another video! Skip counting

Every morning in math since about November I have played a flash it game with my students to develop subitizing skills and number sense. I put groups of objects, starting small in different arrangements and groups on the smart board, and flash three times. This way the children don't have time to count and must recognize arrangements quickly. After we practiced this lots, we have now started working on using flash it to skip count. Again, it forces the students to group and count because there is not enough time to count each individual object.
After we count the objects, student make groups of two students (peanut butter and jelly) and then tell each other how many they saw and verbalize how they know the number based on groupings and how they counted. 
I think this all sounds a bit confusing, watch the video below to see how it's done!!

Mrs. Dunn

Spring Art

It seems as though we have had all four seasons in the last week here in Calgary; it snowed last week, today is 20 degrees, I think it also rained a little while ago. So confusing, especially trying to teach seasons.

Anyways, we did a "spring" art project that turned out cute. As always, took step by step pictures and put on the SMART board.

Making different shapes we created this person, I cut out the umbrella, the kids made the rest.

Then we tore and glued ripped pieces of tissue paper, in different shades of blue for the background. After we modge podged it.

Mrs. Dunn

Gingerbread man story- Better Late then never

Well, this happened a long long time ago. And I meant to post about it, but didn't. And now it is spring. I suppose better late than never right?

So we did a super fun story writing activity based on the book:

Basically, we rewrote the story, but what was unique about this was that we used mapping skills (with a map of the school) to see if we could find him, and so after writing each page, we would go in search of the gingerbread man in that location.

 Title page, sorry for the blurry, I laminated and bound the books so the shine didn't quite work out.

 Beginning of the story. this was VERY scripted.

Here is where we used our social studies map skills. I copied a school map into the story, and before we wrote each page we went to see if the gingerbread man was in that location. Then we would come back and write and colour that page. This is a great way to make things interactive and get a little DPA in there too!

WARNING: I may have built this part up... a little too much... like ooo I think I saw him run past, we need to be super quiet so he doesn't run away. We also found notes that he left us in each location. I built this up so much to the point where when we got to the library children thought they had found him, and someone said they say him run past the library window. Why is this a bad thing you may ask, keep reading to find out.

We then made missing posters just before going to the office to look for him. We brought our missing posters to the secretary to see if she had found him, which by chance she actually had.

Here is the reason for the warning. The children were expecting a real, live, running, talking, singing, dancing, magical gingerbread man. And we found... a paper laminated copy. Needless to say, there was some seriously disappointed faces. What a let down.

Anyway, all in all it was a fun story writing activity. Although I know the season is over, if you are interested for next year, here it is to purchase:

Teachers Pay Teachers 

Mrs Dunn

Teaching Basic Mapping Skills

I find my students have a lot of difficulty understanding where we live in relation to the rest of the world, so I made these nesting maps out of different sized tin cans so they would all fit together.

We started with our school, and then put it into the Calgary container and so on. I used whole brain teaching to talk about each one, so we mirrored as we went and then the students taught each other. I think we are moving closer to understanding. I really feel that this skill is developmental, so I continue to look at different ways to present the concept throughout the year.

Mrs. Dunn

Let's Get Acquainted Linky

Flying Into First

I am linking up with Flying into First Grade for a favourites linky party.!

Favourite Place to Shop

Hmm, well I think clothing wise I would say probably dynamite, but I'm actually not a huge shopper so that's about all I can come up with.

Favourite TV Show

I really really love this show. Like A LOT and I watch it over and over again, including all the bloopers I can find on youtube. So amazing.

Favourite Sweet Treat

Peanut butter confetti square. Because it is peanut butter, and marshmallows and I could eat a whole pan if given the chance.

Favourite Food

Lasagna, and most things that are Italian like. MMM cheesy, meaty noodly goodness.

Favourite Restaurant

I'm not huge on eating out, but when we do one of our go to places is an Indian Restaurant called Tamarind. So yum.

Mrs. Dunn