Even and Odd Spooktacular Fun!

Is it just me or does this little ghosty crack you up?! I absolutely adore him.  

This week we were learning all about even and odd.  

Back when we first learned about digits, we did learn about which digits were even and odd.  We did this by first finding a partner. Then I told them that I had different food items.  If the items were even, which means if they can be shared fairly and everyone gets the same amount, then the students could eat them.  This brought a great concrete idea to the concept of even and odd.

<<<<<Sorry! I didn't get a picture of this activity.>>>>>

This week was all about learning how to know if a number greater than 10 is even or odd. 

Here is a peek at our week...

First, we played a game called prove it. In whole group instruction, each student created a game board. Then the students passed their game board to a partner and had to prove whether the numbers on the board were even or odd.  

The next day, I let the cats out of the bag.  I told the students the story of two haunted houses where there were little black cats who loved pumpkins. In one haunted house, cats could only live there if they could share their pumpkins evenly with another cat.  In the other house, cats didn't have to worry about being even.  We then sorted the cats into the even or odd house.  (We did a couple as a whole group and then I had the students go off and prove it on their own.) After proving it, the students put their number in the even sort or odd.  Once everyone finished, we all came to the carpet and took note about patterns we saw in the sorts.  We made the conclusion that you have to look at the ones place to tell if a number is even or odd. 

The 3rd day, we read this fun story. 

We then in the spooky spirit made "Even Gleeven and Odd Blodd."  Monsters that either like everything about and around them to be even or everything about and around them to be odd. 

On the 4th day, we did a quick sunflower cut and sorting activity.  Then the students played an even and odd game. 

Finally, we received our "check point" from our Unlocking Number Sense fun.  We all worked to show what we knew about even and odd numbers.  Hopefully on Monday we will receive our clue!! 

Whew! What a week! 

Now off to a day of football watching and errand running! 

Happy Saturday :) 

More French Fun!

Today was our 3rd week of learning all about France! 

Last week, we talked about the French flag, made connections with it's similarities and differences to our American flag, and created our own French flag!

Today, we talked about where France is like on a map and what it looks like.  We then used oil pastels and decorated a template of France. The only directions I gave were to decorate it and boy, the students were SO CREATIVE! Some took what they knew about the France flag and colored their template to look like the France flag.  Others thought about the fact that France is known for flowers and they drew flowers.  

I loved this activity because of the connections they made to the things that they previously learned about France and their creativity really shined. 

We also have been learning new French words and sayings each week.  They are LOVING these new sayings.  So far we have covered...

• Bonjour - Hello
• Je m'appelle - My name is 
• J'adore - I love
• Je voudrais - I would like
• Au revoir - good bye
• L'eau - water 

C'est la vie!

It is so important to accept others and others cultures.  I started spending some time with my class doing an activity each week to help us learn about other places in the world. 

This month, we are in the midst of learning about France!

We started by learning that many people consider France to be an absolutely beautiful place because of all of the flowers and gardens.  We learned that when in France people often gather in the gardens to picnic, chat, read, and even paint! We learned about French painter Claude Monet and that he painted the exact same place over 200 times! It is that beautiful and he wished to capture the scenery as much as possible in every season.  

We then made our own versions of Claude Monet's Water Lilies! 

Add some finger painting, take off the tape, and Voila!

J'adore!

Au revoir!

Land Ho!

Y'all, today was an ABSOLUTE BLAST!

Here is what led up to our fun for today...this week we have been learning all about explorers!

We began by learning all about explorers, creating an anchor chart, and writing about where we would like to explore as an explorer.

I found the cute templates for the boy and girl templates here and made the paper to fit the writing prompt.

We then learned all about Christopher Columbus. The students were amazed that this happened over 500 years ago!  After reading the books, we made these great sequencing boats.  Tip: After having the students cut out all of the sails, have the students find a spot in the room and lay out all the sails.  Then teach them how to sequence them (put one behind the other) and read each sail many times until they are able to sequence them.  

Our morning work. 

 Finally, TODAY, we packed our bags, created a map/telescope, and put our hats on for a journey to a new land!  I found this idea from Jodi and isn't it THE BEST?! My students absolutely LOVED IT!!!! They were so into it! So many adults commented on how impressed they were with deep understanding of facts that the students knew about the voyage! Now, my goal was that the students understand the risks, sentiments, preparation, and trading that goes into exploring. BUT the students were so into this Columbus Day voyage that they also were all about learning certain "Columbus trivia" facts - such as 1492, the 3 names of the ships, etc. 

A couple of tips...

• I did not have 7 volunteers so I took out a couple of the items to be traded for and kept pumpkin (pumpkin muffins), cotton, feathers, popcorn, and cinnamon (cinnamon rice crispy treats). 
• Also, we didn't have another room available to go visit, so I had my natives sit on picnic blankets outside and when we arrived, I had the students sit in groups of 5.  
• Once everyone had traded in that group (and the group had talked about what the item was, how the item is used by the natives, what it feels like/tastes like/looks like/etc) we would rotate to the next group.
• We completed the voyage day book altogether and once we finished I gave them some time to color.  
• Before the voyage, I told the students that, like Columbus, we would be writing about our exploration and what we found and then sharing our exploration with our loved ones back home (they were supposed to read it with their families at home).

Happy Columbus Day (almost!)  

Creative Choice

Having plenty of purposeful activities for the students to do is so important in the classroom.  I thought I would share what I have for my students who finish their work quickly.  

Each of the sticks (in the blue cup) have a student's name written on them (I took this before school started so I hadn't written names yet).  When a student finishes his/her work, they can be creative and choose an activity to do: their anything & everything journal, a math tub, computer work, word work activities, ipad work, and/or work on writing. 

When they pick an activity, they can put their name stick in the pocket that corresponds with the activity.  There is one rule though: there can only be 4 people at a choice. 

 The activities on this board are ones that are differentiated & that the students also do during other times of the day.  For example: work on writing also happens during literacy stations. This is great because the students can work at their own level and they don't need any instruction because they already know about them.

Typically, I wait until about the 4th week or so of school to introduce Creative Choice.  Before then, I have the fast finishers work in their anything & everything journals - they can do anything (school appropriate) in these journals: write a story or poem, draw, practice their handwriting, create math problems and then solve.