Last Friday, my class celebrated St. Patrick's Day.

The students made St. Patrick puppets. I got the pattern from a blog called Catholic Icing.

We made this pot of gold to help us study our sight words for the week.

Lucky the leprechaun had been watching us all week from somewhere in the classroom. He was very mischievous and kept turning out the light, unplugging the sound cord from the projector, and hiding my blue painters tape (which I use for everything!)! Lucky came to visit us on Friday. He decorated our classroom while were at Mass. 

 He decorated the back door too!

 Lucky left his footprints all over the room! He went over a table,

 around another table,

and across the floor to the sink. My students think that Lucky jumped from the sink to the soap dispenser, then to the paper towel dispenser, and up to the shelf on top of the bathrooms.

 He left us this envelope on the door. The note inside said:

I got most of this note from the rainbow treasure hunt from a blog called A Cupcake for the Teacher.

At the end of the treasure hunt the students found gold coins taped under their chairs. We also found this pot with a craft inside of it under my chair. We had a great day!

Noah's Ark

Last week we learned about Noah's Ark. We made animals with our hand prints. The students could choose to make a duck, alligator, flamingo, elephant, monkey, cheetah, lion, or giraffe.  We made the hand prints in the morning and let them dry. At the end of the day, the students decorated their hand prints to make them look like the animal they wanted to make. Then I created this adorable bulletin board display for our animals. I love how it turned out!

Dr. Seuss Activities

Last week we did a Dr. Seuss theme all week. Here are some of the activities that we did.

 This is our library center with a lot of Dr. Seuss books. We read a few books each day.

 This is a graph that we did during math time.

 This is another graph that we did (I forgot to take a picture when the sticky notes were on it).

 This is a green eggs and ham rhyming activity. The students had to match the word on the ham to a word on the egg that rhymed with it.

 This is a green eggs and ham word family activity.

This is a pattern activity. The students made patterns out of red and blue fingerprint fish. They had to write what type of pattern they made.

 This is a hat we made for our Dr. Seuss party. The students had to make an AB pattern.

For science, we made oobleck! It was a giant mess, but we had a lot of fun. 

 The students generated a list of observations about the oobleck.

This is Dr. Seuss ABC order. I used words from various Dr. Seuss books and put them on Dr. Seuss scrapbook paper.  The students worked together in groups to put the words in ABC order.

We had a great day! I hope you had a lot of fun celebrating Read Across America day too.

~Melissa

Classroom Management

I use a color card chart to help my students learn how to manage their behavior. It works wonderfully in my classroom. There are four colors on the chart: green, blue, yellow and orange (yes, the last color is supposed to be red, but I don't like to use red in my classroom; I think that it is a negative color). When a student needs to have her card changed, I explain to the student why her card is being changed and we discuss how to make better choices. At the end of the day, all of the students who are on green get a sticker. If a student is on blue, she does not get a sticker. If a student is on yellow or orange, I send a note home about why she is on yellow or orange. The students love being on green.

Here is a copy of the note I send home for students who are on yellow or orange. It is a quarter size of an 8.5" by 11" sheet of paper.