For Seuss Day I did a much less popular Seuss book. We read The Butter Battle Book. In the book, there's two groups; the Yooks and the Zooks. They each butter their bread differently and this conflict is what separates the two groups. Then everyone got a clip art of a slice of bread upon which we each wrote our name. We then put them all into a chart of which side of our bread we butter; the top (Yooks) or the bottom (Zooks).

We then recorded our class chart and analyzed the results!

And lastly, we watched the movie! While we watched the movie, I toasted some bread and they were able to spread butter on which ever side they chose and enjoy it! It was a great Dr. Seuss day! I also loved that the kiddos didn't know it as they would have known Green Eggs and Ham. (Sorry 'bout the pic quality, it was dark 'cause we were watching the movie.)

Groundhog's Day: We read some books that told us what Groundhog's Day was, what the possible results could be and what the results meant. We then colored and cut out our own little Puxatony Phils and used them to make a chart of our predictions! Lastly we recorded our predictions. The next day we revisited our prediction charts and records and discussed what he saw and what it meant. We then recorded what actually happened beside our prediction records.

We also reached our 100th day of school!! We did lots of fun things in celebration!

The day before we made a banner that I hung in the hall the morning of! Each student colored and cut out a triangle!

We also counted out and strung 100 Fruit Loops onto necklaces to munch on!

We had cool stickers and pencils!

We also read 100th day of school books, made 100th day glasses, made 100th day trail mix, (they each got 10 pieces of 10 different items such as red raisins, popcorn, pretzels, m&ms, marshmallows, cheerios, chex cereal, yellow raisins, and chocolate chips!) and while eating our trail mix we watched Cyber Chase: And They Counted Happily Ever After! It was a blast!

A week later is was Valentine's Day! I made special valentines for all my kiddos. I bought them each one of those huge 50 cents lollipops that are strategically placed by the checkouts, and stuck them through a flower made out of hearts!

We'd made cute little valentine bags that I stole from thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com!

I also had 3 moms that got together and made an amazing party! They had 3 stations that the kiddos rotated between.
1. They put converstation hearts in some bowls and they had to use chopsticks to see how many they could get out within 1 min! No matter the amount, after that station, each kiddo got a fun pencil and a jumping plastic frog!
2. They brought in sugar cookies with LOTS of different and cool sprinkles for the kids to use after they frosted them! (At this station their prize was a cookie! ha ha!)
3. Lastly, they had a large box that they'd cut 6 holes each in three sides, covered the holes with tissue paper and then covered the rest of the box in wrapping paper. The kids had to roll some dice until they got matching sized hearts. When they matched the hearts, they got to choose a hole and punch through it! Boy oh boy did they LOVE that! They then got to feel around and get all the prizes in that hole, which consisted of disk shooters, candy, pencils, and temporary valentines tattoos! Holy Smokes MOMS!! Way to go all out!! (They had small paper bags tapped to the inside of the box to each hole so each kid got the same amount and type of prize. No more, no less.)

"If I was a snowman at night, I would run around and scare people!" This was my the answer that made me laugh when looking at what the kiddos had done after school. We read the book Snowmen at Night and answered the prompt, "If I was a snowman at night I would..." Then we painted what we'd look like if we were snowmen at night! They loved it!

I also redid the fluency folders. At the start of the year I got cheapo binders and they were all falling apart and the pages were all torn by mid December. :( So I finally broke down, forked out the money and time and made good, sturdy Fluency Folders. They turned out SUPER cute!!  Of course I went with bugs! I printed the boys' on green paper with bumble bees.

I printed the girls' on yellow paper with lady bugs!! The contents of these folders are their high frequency words (words that make up 70% of everyday text that can't be sounded out, just needs to be memorized) and stories that incorporate those words to practice fluency (reading speed, accuracy and expression). We practice our reading 15 min a day with these binders. The pages are all in page protectors to prevent the torn pages problem from happening again. I have all the pages in there and then just put in a "STOP! We haven't learned these words yet." page. So that I can simply move that page back in the binders as we learn new ones! No more stuffing all 17 binders each week!

An extension of University of Idaho came to our school and did a presentation on germs! They talked about what germs are, how they get in our bodies, what they do to us, how we can keep germs away, and how to properly wash our hands. They brought a special lotion that reacts to black light and germs. The kids rubbed the lotion on their hands and then went in the black light tent to look at all the germs on their hands. They then ran to the bathroom to wash those germs away! Upon going through the tent a second time, they could see how well or poorly they washed.

It was short, but the kiddos LOVED it! Although, it's taken longer to wash up for lunch all this past week! :)

We got back to class with 25 mins before lunch. So I paired up the students and we made thank you cards to UofI.

For this very important day, we did a Weekly Reader on Martin Luther King Jr. It's a magazine that sends a little 4 page magazine to each of the students. It also sends me a large one that I put up on the board to use as we read and discuss the magazine. It's also on the kiddo's reading/comprehension level. We then talked about how sad it would be if (I listed four student's names) weren't allowed to be in our class. How fun it is to have them here and play with them on the playground and be their friend in the classroom and how sad it would make us if they couldn't be in our class. I then said how thankful I am that Martin Luther King Jr. said that wasn't o.k. and we need to be friends with everyone! The kiddos agreed.

I then brought out two eggs. One was white and one was brown. We talked about how they were both eggs, but they were different colors, just like us in our class. Then I turned around so they couldn't see what I was doing and cracked both the eggs onto a paper plate. I then showed them the eggs with the shells on the plate and asked if they could tell which egg came from which shell. We talked about how just because we may have different color skin, or hair, or eyes, we are all still the same on the inside! Was an AMAZING visual for the kiddos! Thanks once again thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com!

We then wrote how we could help Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream come true in our classroom, colored his picture and hung them in the hall!

To finish up our penguin unit, we made penguin books!

We labeled parts of their bodies; head, beak, back, tail, feet, belly, wing.

We made a bubble map of what the can do and what they are; bird, can swim, don't fly, black and white, 17 different types, live in Antarctica.

Then there's a fact page about penguins.

And a life cycle page.

We then did one page on  each type of penguin that we'd studied.