close call.

So we were practicing rhyming words during our spelling time today.
Our workbook gave us a word and then the kids were supposed to find one of spelling words that rhymes with it.

Gus... bus
mixes... fixes

So we do this little chant thing, "Gus, bus, they both say -US!" "Mixes, fixes, they both say -IXES."

Luckily, I caught myself before this next one...

Glass... class.

That could have been really bad.

kansas day.

Happy Kansas Day, from our staff to you! 

Most of our staff, anyway.
Two K-State fans were missing, and we didn't let the 3 KU fans be in the picture. =)
There's no doubt what the favorite Kansas team is here!

And... I will always think of my favorite 1st grade teacher next door on Kansas Day. She grew up in Indiana (I think. Maybe Illinois?) and found it so strange when she moved here. Apparently other states don't celebrate their birthdays. :)

Is it just Kansas? Does your state celebrate it's birthday? (The day it became a state)
Surely we're not the only ones!

crazy weather.

Kansas weather can be crazy. 

These pictures are from last weekend, when it was 65* out. 

Today it was 76*. In January. In Kansas. 

Crazy.

**Edited: Yesterday it was 76*. Tonight it is snowing. Told you it was crazy.***

spoiled dog.

Lawson's traded in his stuffed animals for a bigger variety lately... 

This dog is nearly as big as he is... 

These two are pretty tight.
And this dog is pretty spoiled.

crazy hair.

Have you seen Zhu Zhu pets? 

These crazy little hamster things that zip all around when you push a button on their back. 

We have a whole box of them that the kids love to play with. (They are tons of fun on wood floors!) 

Awhile back Gretchie was happily playing by herself... she came out to the hair bucket and got a comb... said something about fixing "his crazy hair" and ran back off. 

I was, of course, paying awesome attention to my child and was aware of every single thing she was doing. 

Or not... 

We found this soggy little guy a bit later in the bathroom. 

Completely soaked. 

With his spiky little mohawk all plastered down over his face...

No more crazy hair. =)

1st grade.

I realized the other day that I haven't really posted anything school-related on here. At all.
So here is a glimpse of some of the fun we've had in 1st grade so far this year...

My classroom didn't have number words posted anywhere. And I didn't realize it until I wanted the kids to be able to use them. No time to buy any, so we just made some. The letters were all cut apart and the kids had to glue them back in order and make the number...

Our daily lunch count/attendance... (3 trays with spray paint, some scrapbook letter stickers, buttons with magnets glued to the back and some number stickers)

Field trip to a nearby zoo...

We went at the very beginning of October and it was CHILLY that day!!

It was a whole school field trip, but we were all in different sections at different times. I ran into Lawson at lunch, though.

We didn't tour the whole zoo, but had different stations where college students had prepared little lessons/activities for them.

We've been doing Daily 5 for a couple months now and the kids are loving it... 

Exploring liquids in science... (this picture makes me laugh, because it looks like they have laptops. They're just their science notebooks... propped up together.) 

Building towers in science... (this was the end of our unit on solids)

I spent hours and hours trying to level some of the books in my classroom. The Sunshine books were easy to level, but I don't have that many of them. The books with our curriculum have been more of a pain to level.

Writing about our animals on Stuffed Animal Day...

More exploring in science...

I like our new science curriculum, but the lessons take a l.o.n.g. time. It's hard to find 45 minutes to an hour for science in first grade.

Exploring rocks... 

Veteren's Day Assembly...

Thanksgiving Feast...

So thankful for these two brothers in Lawson's class. There's a whole lot of ornery in this picture...

Playing "Go Fish for 10's..."

Singing at the local bank...

Journal writing...

Making books together...

Hunting for the Gingerbread Man and comparing stories...

Informational writing...

I love 1st grade phonetic spelling...

These were our Christmas gifts for parents this year. Fingerprint snowmen ornaments.

They turned out super cute! (But next time I won't let them use purple for the background. The snowmen showed up great, but the details they drew with Sharpies got a bit lost on the dark back ground.)

My kiddos are enjoying a long 3 day weekend... Monday we're off for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. (Kids are off... teachers get to spend our day in inservice. Woo-hoo!)
I think MLK is one of my favorite things to teach about each year. They get so fired up about the unfairness of it all. My school this year is much less diverse than my previous school, so there were only 2 examples in the whole school for "kids with darker skin." Luckily, they still got the point. =)