Sight Word Sorry

I was trying to think of a different way to practice sight words for Unit 2 in our Reading Series and after seeing a teacher create a sight word game with Candyland, I decided that I could do the same with MY favorite childhood board game... SORRY! Ok guys, I used to be obsessed with this game as a kid. I probably drove my mom and dad crazy asking them to play it with me all the time! I found this game at a thrift store for 2 dollars (as you can see by looking at the box!) and just doctored it up a little to make it appropriate for sight words.

Here's how you play: Turn over a sight word card. If you can read it correctly within 3 seconds, you get to roll the dice and move your pawn. If you land on a space with a star on it (which I drew on the game board) you get to draw a STAR card. These cards have either good or bad consequences! If you draw a BANG card, you lose your turn.

Sounds like fun, right? I feel like I would have loved to play Sight Word Sorry in my class! Parents, this is also a neat twist you can do to a board game you might have at home to help your child practice for our weekly sight word test. :)

Look What I Can Be If I Stay Drug Free!

Ok parents, your students outfits for Career Day during Red Ribbon Week were TOO CUTE so I decided to dedicate an entire post to them! Some were SO creative and I was extremely impressed! :)

 Nurse BabaT and Nurse Hannah
 Dr. Jaiden

Our Future Teachers of America: Ivory, Kimara, Demetri, Allie, (notice the 3D glasses) and Daniela

Crimson Tide Football Players: Brodie and Ashton (ROLL TIDE!)  

Auburn Cheerleader: Rayannua

Raven the Artist (TOO STINKIN CUTE!)

Brody the Zookeeper (What a cool job! I would have never thought of that at six years old!)

Savannah the Baker (Loving the little spatulas!)

Joshua the Soldier!

and last but not least... can you guess what Mackenzie is? :)

the FIRST woman President! :) Way to dream big, Miss Future President!

Brainstorming the /th/ Sound

This week we learned the /sh/ and /th/ chunks, which proved to be a bit of a challenge for some of my students. Since this was a totally new concept, (two letters that when put together.. make a totally new sound) I started off the week by letting the students brainstorm words that have the /th/ sound. I made this cute little buddy, and named him Therman the Thinker! Therman only likes to think about things that say /th/ and we discussed that the /th/ sound can sometimes come at the beginning of the word (THink), but sometimes it can come at the end of the word too (baTH).

To the right is an example of two students' /th/ words. I love allowing my students time to brainstorm things like this and seeing the way their minds work when I read what they've done!

Apple Week

Apple week was a BLAST! We learned so much about apples, and got to taste some pretty good food which was made with apples.
We began the week reading this book about Johnny Appleseed. We learned that most of the apple trees that we have in our country were planted by him, and because his birthday was during our week long study of apples, our students made birthday cards for Johnny Appleseed.

 Later on in the week, our class gathered some data about apples and we recorded it on this chart. 8 students said they had swallowed an apple seed before! Wow!

 After brainstorming things we already knew about apples, we wrote an acrostic poem to show things we know. We worked as a class to write it, and it turned out great!

The students favorite part of Apple Week was Friday, when we had a taste test! Each of our five first grade teachers had a different apple food in her classroom, with a different activity planned for the students. The students rotated to each teacher's classroom to taste the food and complete the activity. Here's the list of foods/drinks that each teacher had prepared in their class:

Mrs. Cochran - Apple Slices

Mrs. Brown - Apple Chips

Mrs. Robertson - Applesauce

Mrs. Henderson - Apple Butter

Mrs. Newberry - Apple Cider

After drinking apple cider, the students played "Pin the Parts on the Apple". I chose various students one at a time, blindfolded them, spun them around, and they attempted to tape the part in the correct place!

At the end of the day, each student voted on which food (or drink) they liked the best, and (drumroll please....)

MRS. NEWBERRY'S APPLE CIDER WON! Woohoo!

Special Visitors!

Ok parents, I'm SO sorry for waiting so long to update our blog! Fall break seemed to throw me off a little! ANYWAY, our first new post is about a special visitor our first graders had a few weeks ago.. JAMES SPANN! He was absolutely wonderful with the students and taught them a lot about clouds and weather (which they understood a little bit better because we have completed our weather unit). My favorite part of his presentation to the students was when he told a story about when he knew he was going to work with weather. Believe it or not, he was in the first grade! Here's a part of that story:

Here, Mr. Spann showed coverage of the April 27th tornado in Tuscaloosa. He told the students that many people's lives were saved because they turned on the TV and took shelter when weathermen told them to.

As you know, James Spann always has a KidCam that he shows on the news. This is one of our students, Kimara Parki, getting to hold the KidCam and videotape the first grade!

Right before he left, we presented him with a cookie cake from DES.

We had such a good time visiting with Mr. James Spann! :)

AND our second visitor was from someone who MOOves around a lot..... :) Butterbean the Mobile Dairy Cow! (She MOOves, get it? haha) In case you have never heard of this, the Mobile Dairy Cow travels around to stop at elementary schools. There is also a woman who travels with the cow who teaches the students interesting information about cows and the nutrients her milk makes. At the end of her speech, she milked Butterbean and the students got to see the milk travel through tubes and into a glass tank. It was pretty cool! Thanks to both of our visitors for speaking to our students!