Book Parade - Wizard of Oz

This Friday our school had a Book Parade to celebrate National Book Week. Each class in the school had to pick a book to represent with a wagon "float" in the parade. Our class read The Wizard of Oz back in the fall, and the children loved it! So, that was the obvious choice for our parade entry. We created the Emerald City on our wagon and had a few students dress up as the characters in the story. Maybe I'm biased, but I though we were one of the best entries! :) 

Field Day!

One of my favorite days of the school year took place last week, Field Day! We had so much fun spending our morning outside playing tons of games and relays. We took second place in the grade level competition, and I was very proud of my kiddos! I didn't know they were so athletic! :) 

Hairy Harries

One of my absolute favorite projects I do with my Firsties is planting Hairy Harries. Each spring during our unit on plants, we plant grass seed in a cup, add a face to the cup, and grow our very own Chia Pet of sorts. The students love watching their Harries (or Harriets) grow hair! It is not only a lot of fun, but it is a great experiment in exploring plant needs and growth. During our planting, we did test what would happen to a few unfortunate Harries if they had to go without sunlight, water, or nutritious soil to compare them with the Healthy Harries who were receiving all of their basic needs. The students were able to see that these plants looked quite different from their own. 

The plant on the left went without sunlight, the plant in the middle had no nutritious soil, and the plant on the right was not watered enough. The students (and I!) were amazed that the plant without sunlight grew so high, but took notice of its yellow color. This led to a great extension discussion of how sunlight is necessary for plants to produce chlorophyll, which gives the plant its green color. 

Sentence Superheroes

After completing a unit on the four different types of sentences and the punctuation they need, our students got the opportunity to "Show What They Know" by creating Sentence Superheroes. For the activity, I put the students into groups and assigned them a type of sentence. They had to create their own superhero who is in charge of writing that type of sentence correctly. They had to name their superhero and give examples of that type of sentence on their poster. The students had a great time being creative and we ended up with some very cute superheroes! See some of the photos below!

             

Measurement Centers

We spent this week having a blast during math measuring items all over the room! Students used Unifix Cubes to measure everything from paperclips to my candy jar! Here are a few of the students working together to measure various objects. I absolutely love seeing them work together so nicely and learning from each other!

Valentine's Dance

Hilltop had its first ever Valentine's Dance last night for Pre-K through 2nd grade. The students got to enjoy dancing, pizza and drinks, cookie decorating, and several other fun activities during the dance. Here are a few of our students who attended looking absolutely adorable in their dance outfits. We all had so much fun!

 

Bring Your Own Device - Technology in the Classroom

We had our first BYOD Day of the year this week in our class. The children were so excited to get to bring their tablets and iPads to school and use them in the classroom. For our first BYOD lesson, we did a little research on Harriet Tubman to fill our a recording sheet on this important historical figure. The students did an amazing job working in groups to answer all the questions on the sheet. They had a blast and said they felt "very important". :)