A Little Less Cutesy

I recently attended a GATE training with John DeLandtsheer through Lompoc Unified. I have to say it was probably the best training I have ever attended. It was labeled as a GATE training; however, his book/seminar promoted making ALL kids smarter.

I learned over the past six years I have been doing a lot of "cutesy" things in my class; rather than deep level thinking. Cutesy can be good sometimes, but not the majority of the time.

I am an avid pinner on Pinterest; however, now I see stuff and the "cutesy red flag" alarms.

This training has come at the perfect time as I will be teaching GATE (fifth grade) next year. I am so excited to implement some of the ideas I learned at the training. Wish me luck!

JD Seminars

Vista Print

I was blog stalking other 5th grade blogs and someone had mentioned the freebies from Vista Print. I am familiar with the company as they did cards for me in the past; therefore, I decided to check out what was "free." It is true. They do offer free things, you just have to pay for shipping. In addition, the shipping price is not bad. I ordered bathroom punch cards and a rubber stamp. So excited and cannot wait for my freebies to come. Whoop Whoop!

La Honda First Grade

Make a slideshow design

Flashback from last year....

Customize a slideshow design

V-day!

It's all about the candy hearts. I love that I can take these sweet candies and turn them into a math graphing lesson.

Also, I couldn't help but posting this.... so true!

Snowmen and Cookies

We are a year-round school; therefore, there is not a lot of time to partake in Christmas activities. Therefore, I thought we could do a winter craft and still enjoy our creations in January when we return. I found this awesome recipe online (Pinterest). You mix half Elmers glue and 1/2 Shaving Cream. I gave the kids popsicle sticks to slather on their "paint" and when they dried they look like puffy snowmen. You do not have to use very much glue and shaving cream. A little goes a long way.

Our Winter Day Celebration consisted of decorating sugar cookies. The kids had a blast using the different color icing and smothering their cookies with sprinkles and candy. 

Sequence of Events and Grab-Bag Math

My kiddos are really struggling with identifying numbers that are larger than another. Therefore, I took a math workbook page that has a game chart and the curriculum's math number cards and made  my own mini version of "War." The number cards have the dots that represent the number on the backside and my kiddos were figuring out that they could cheat and pick the number they wanted to play. Therefore, I added the popcorn bag. They have to pick a number card out of the bag and whoever gets the larger number gets to move one space on the game board. Whoever makes it to 10 first wins! The kids love it, and I love it because they are learning quickly numbers and their order.

Our focus in Language Arts is Sequence of Events. One activity I had the kids do is make of their own sequence. Such as Student 1 FIRST, had M&Ms; Next, sorted them; Last, she ate them.  Student two chose to use the orange in my lunch sack. First, she grabbed the orange. Next,  she cut the orange (she didn't really, I did). Last, she ate the orange. The kids had fun thinking up their own Sequence of Events.