Halloween Fun & Watercolor Pencils

I SURVIVED!!

Trying to put my 'game face' on to get through the day.

 Anyone involved with kids should know that Halloween definitely needs to be on a Friday. My little ones were CRAZY on Friday after a late night of spookiness and sugar! But we all survived and I'm looking forward to Monday and getting some serious teaching done.

Our art teacher introduced me to a cool thing called watercolor pencils.

If you click on the picture above it will link you to Amazon.com.

Mine came in the mail on Saturday from Amazon so I had some of my grandkids try them out.

They thought they were pretty cool. You can use them several different ways. You can color a picture with the pencils just like regular colored pencils and then brush over it with water for a watercolor effect. Or you can use it as a wet pencil as we did for the face painting. The box also suggests wetting your paper first and then drawing on the wet paper with the pencils but this way didn't work for us as the wet paper would rip. The overall rating from the Livi, Anna, and Jarom was "AWESOME, COOL, and FANTASTIC!" Now we'll see how my firsties rate them.

I hope everyone had a great Halloween and you're ready for a wonderful week for teaching!

Currently

I'm linking up with FARLEY'S Currently for November. Check it out.

LISTENING: Currently I'm listening to absolutely NOTHING but peace and quiet. It's early in the morning and no one is up but me. I LOVE this time of day.

LOVING: This is my most favorite season. I LOVE the warm days and cool nights, the beautiful colored leaves, football, apples, and all that is fall.

THINKING: I have sooo much to be thankful for. I really LOVE my life.

WANTING: I need a new pair of dressy boots and I can't find them. They either don't have my size or the heel is too high or too low or it's the wrong color or they don't fit my calf. Maybe I'm being too picky :)

NEEDING: I need a day off where I just don't do anything. My last break, I went on vacation and that was great but sometimes I need a day, all by myself, where I can just do nothing at all or what ever I want.

YUMMY PIN: This looks too good to resist. It's call a Pumpkin Pecan Braid. Can't wait to try it.

Click HERE for the link.

I hope you're all having a wonderful fall.

Wonder

I just finished reading the AMAZING book called "Wonder" by R. J. Palacio. I don't know if you've heard about it or not.

It's about a 5th grade boy who is born with a facial deformity that had prevented him from going to school. This is about his first year in school and how he wants nothing more than to be treated like an ordinary kid. The story is told by a variety of view points from the boy himself to his sister, her boyfriend, classmates, and others. This story teaches about empathy, acceptance, self-respect, friendship, kindness, tolerance, and the list goes on and on.

I found this WONDERFUL site HERE by the author that has some insight into the book and great teaching ideas if you're using this book with your class. If you do a Google search you will find even more lesson plans and ideas. It might be a little hard for first graders to understand but it is defiantly for 4th grade and up. It would be a great read aloud for parents to read to their kids and discuss.

I've heard they are in the process of making it into a movie! I hope they can do it justice because it is such a fabulous book.

"Wonder" is one of those books you can't put down. It's one of those books you think about all the time. It's one of those books you want everyone you know to read it. That's why I'm buying copies for all my family for Christmas.

If you've read this book, I'd love to hear your comments!

If you haven't read this book- GET IT AND READ IT!

Spookley the Square Pumpkin and more!

Hey all! It's been a few days, okay 2 weeks, since I last posted. It's hard to say why. It's been very busy. We've had Apple Day and our field trip to the zoo. I did my district math assessments today and the next two days are parent-teacher conferences. So I guess I've been pretty busy.

I found the CUTEST book/DVD/CD today. I can't wait to share it with my firsties! Our school is focusing on no bullying this year by going the positive route. We are teaching about acceptance and respect.

I've seen the book before called Spookley the Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiano. It's been in my wishlist on Amazon.com and I really wanted to buy it this year. So I looked at it closer and found it in a DVD form. It came in the mail today and it is SO GREAT! Not only is there a darling movie about Spookley which teaches a great lesson but it also has 4 other video picture books with wonderful messages for kids. One is for Easter, Valentines, Christmas, and Independence Day. Plus the book Spookley is also on the disc read by Boris Pickett. All the stories are in rhyme and can lead into great class discussions of how we should treat others. As a bonus there is a music CD of Halloween songs. It is really a bargain for just under $10. If you click on the picture above it will take you to Amazon.com for more information.

I hope everyone is having a GREAT week. Thanks for stopping by.

More Number Lines with a FREEBIE

I know I've written a few posts about number lines before. So I'm sorry to bore you again and I'll keep it short. But I think they are important and lots of fun. You can find my other posts about them HERE and HERE.

I'm teaching them this week and made a fun little game to go along with it.

You can grab a FREE copy HERE.

I also found a FREE fun little app for the iPad.

You can watch a video about it HERE.

I have an AirPlay by AirServer on my Mac so I can send my app on my iPad to my computer and then show it on my projector. Pretty cool huh! This explains it better than I can.

You can check it out HERE.

I hope that's short enough!
Have a great weekend!

Name Frame Find

I found a GREAT activity for 10 frames and names. My dear friend Ms. Arnold over on Oceans of 1st Grade FUN blogged about an idea she found called Name Frames. Please check her out HERE. She is One-in-a-Million. And check out Ms. Nowak because the idea originated with her with a freebie on TpT HERE.

So I tried it with my class on Friday. It turned out AWESOME. First I did a name graph with my kiddos. You can find the graph HERE. We've been discussing more and less this week so this was a great assessment. We've also been talking about how important our names are since school began. And we've been exploring 10 Frames with our Nifty Number Book. You can find it HERE.

Then we did the name frames. It was a great culminating lesson.

THANKS again blogging world for such great ideas!

Love the Lehi FD

Last week we had our annual fire drill with our city firefighters. They come every year and pull a surprise fire drill and time us to see how quickly we can evacuate the building. Each year after this event, I walk my kiddos past the huge fire truck so they can see it up close. The firemen are usually in the building discussing the drill with the principal. But this year they happened to come out while I was taking a picture of my class in front of their truck. Well lucky me! The captain on duty just happened to be a former student from over 20 years ago!

He started talking to my firsties and showed them all the equipment. He even let one of them try on his helmet!

 As we were looking at all the gauges and buttons, the firemen told my class that if they wanted to be a firefighter when they grow up they need to make sure they do their math! They need to know math to work all the buttons and gauges.

 Needless to say, the huge fire truck and the firefighters were a BIG HIT! We went back inside and it was almost lunch time. I told the class we would have to skip math today because of the fire drill. That's when one little boy started to cry. I asked him what was wrong and he said he wants to be a fireman when he grows up and we just can't skip math or he won't be good enough in math to be one. It was soooo cute! I gave him a hug and told him not to worry that we would have math in the afternoon.

THANK YOU LEHI FIRE DEPARTMENT for taking the time to talk to my kiddos and for having such great role models for my firsties to look up to!!