Jim Dine and Peter Max Inspired Artworks

Valentine's Day Party

Thank you the parents who brought in treats for the students' Valentine's Day Party. They had fun passing out their cards and munching on the delicious snacks. After eating, the students read their favorite poems aloud to one another thanks to the great idea of a parent.

Valentine's Day Math

The students have been working on the strategy of "Making Ten" to help them with larger addition problems. But, in order to do that, they need to know what addends make ten quickly first. So, we reviewed by adding dark and milk chocolates. You can find this template on my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

Making Ten: Valentine's Chocolate

To review the concept of adding to ten, the students colored a box of Valentine's chocolate as either dark chocolate or milk chocolate. They then added the two kinds of chocolate together and completed the corresponding word problem. They then compared their number sentences with their partners. Learning the factors of ten helps students when using mental math to add larger numbers. Fellow teachers, you can download this file from my TpT store to add to your files for next Valentine!

Valentine's Day Party

Thank you to all of the parents who provided the treats for the students' Valentine's Day Party. Here are a few pictures from the party:

Valentine Handprints

I saw this cute activity on Pinterest where students created hearts with their handprints. They turned out to be very adorable!

Mama Bear

For Valentine's Day, one of my students gave me a very funny gift... a teddy bear wearing a shirt saying "Mama Bear." So, you are probably wondering "why is that funny?"

Here is the story.... As a part of our classroom management, I tell the students that when they are misbehaving "Mama Bear" is going to come "growl" at them and that I would rather "Mama Bear" not have to come out. It is a light-hearted way (yet serious at the same time) to to remind the students to check their behavior when they start to make the wrong choices. As all parents and teachers know, there are times when we have to "growl" at the students. And when I say "growl" I mean giving them "the look" and "the speech" about how to behave and what I expect. I remind the students then when they misbehave and Mama Bear has to get onto them, they become grumpy like a bear who was woke up too soon from hibernation and so does Ms. Bishop. When the students see another student starting to misbehave, they quickly tell them "You don't want Mama Bear to come out!" This is just one of the many strategies I use as classroom management. The students really seem motivated to do what is right; they think the concept of Mama Bear is funny but at the same time they know they don't want Mama Bear to growl. Now we have a "real" Mama Bear to remind the students to behave!

Fellow teachers, what classroom management strategies do you use in your class?

Valentine's Day Party

We had our Valentine's Day Party on Tuesday. The students enjoyed tons of sweets and enjoyed reading the cards they brought for one another. Such a great time!

Homemade Valentine's

The students made homemade Valentine's for their families with ping pong balls and paint. The students first drew and cut out a large heart shape on white paper. They then placed their heart on a cookie sheet. They then dropped a ping pong ball that had been dipped in red or pink paint onto their heart. They then used the handle of the cookie sheets to roll the ball around leaving a design on their hearts. After the hearts dried, they wrote "Happy Valentine's Day" on them.

Place Value Hearts

This week in math we are extending our knowledge of place value to numbers up to 99. We are continuing to work on identifying the number of tens and ones as well as putting numbers in order from greatest to least and vice versa. We are also working on recognizing numbers in word form and expanded notation. For a fun Valentine's Day related activity, I gave each student a hundreds chart. I used the hundreds chart from Lil' Country Kindergarten. She has a large number of hundreds charts that can be colored to reveal pictures. We used the heart hundreds chart. Instead of having the students just read the numbers at the top and color them in, I called out various forms of the numbers for them to find. For example, I would say "Find the number that is 4 tens and 5 ones and color it pink." The students would verbally tell me that it was the number 45. I would then say "Find the number that would be 70 + 5 in expanded notation" and they would say "75." We continued until all of the numbers were colored in to reveal a picture. I have done similar activities to this in the past with Marilyn Burns' resources.

Valentine's Day Treats

Here is a picture of the Pinterest inspired Valentine's Day Treats I made for my students. The tag says "Thank you for making First Grade such a ball, Valentine!" I found the rubber high-bounce balls in the Valentine's section at Target (my favorite place) and put them in snack-size Ziploc bags. I then typed the tags in Microsoft Word. The ruler feature is very helpful in making sure the tags were the right size for the bags. I printed the tags at home and stapled them across the top. In total, the treats only took fifteen minutes to make! As a busy teacher, that was a plus! And, what first grader doesn't love high-bounce balls?!? In the version I saw on Pinterest, they filled the bag with gumballs, and although that does go along with our beginning of year bulletin board, I thought these were more fun. Parents, as a reminder, our Valentine's Party is this Tuesday, the 14th, at 2:45PM. You are more than welcome to come.

Valentine's Day Party

Last week the students had a great time at their Valentine's Day Party as you can see in the pictures below. They enjoyed cookies, fruit , and drinks along with passing out and reading their Valentine's to one another.

A scrapbooking design by Smilebox

What Love Means to Me

Today the students wrote what love means to them in honor of Valentine's Day. They wrote very sweet things! Take a listen below to their podcast:

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Valentine's Day

A snow day did not keep us from enjoying our Valentine's Day Party...even if it was a week later than planned. The students had a great time passing out and opening their Valentine's from one another. And, of course, they loved all of the sweet treats! Enjoy a quick slideshow of pictures from the party.

Make a Smilebox free digital slideshow