week of February 29 | snapshot

What a Seuss-tastic week!

After reading The Cat in the Hat, we learned how to draw him with a guided drawing activity.

You can find this activity's directions {here} on Forever in 1st's blog.

On Dr. Seuss' birthday, we celebrated Read Across America. 

All morning we had visitors coming to read to us!

Ms. Kelly from Ruby Pickens Tartt Public Library started the morning off by reading My Many Colored Days and sang Skinamarink with the students.

Then we split into our classes.

Ms. Poole did an awesome activity with us.

She read There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.

Then the students read familiar words from the book and matched them to its picture.

Then they learned the song version!

We also had two visitors from Delta Chi. 

I only managed to get a picture of one of our friends :(((

Ainsley had a special visitor, John McCall, (she calls him Uncle Mac) who is the Dean of College of Natural Science and Mathematics here at UWA. He read her favorite book they read when she visits their house, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.

Ms. Annie and William shared the book that his project is based on, Family Huddle!

Ms. Jenna, who also works at Ruby Pickens Tartt Public Library, also read 

 One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.

Ms. Hayley read Are You My Mother?

and Go Dog Go!

Our very own president of UWA took time out of his busy day to read to us.

And what do you suppose he read?

Why, Duck for President, of course! ;)

Our Miss Brittany came to see us, too.

She read Groundhog's Day Off.

Our last two visitors of the day were Miss Taylor and Miss Katie.

They read I Wanna Iguana and...

Smiley Shark.

We also shared our Read Across America Projects about our favorite books and talked about our favorite part(s) of each book.

Bennett's favorite Dr. Seuss book is Cat in the Hat so he made a puppet.

Wyatt made play-dough Green Eggs and Ham. 

Ainsley made a poster about One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. 

Charlie made a poster about Dr. Seuss' ABC. 

William made a poster about his favorite book, Family Huddle. 

It's is about the Manning family.

Libby made a poster about Read Across America. 

Keely made a tri-fold about Dog vs. Cat.  

Grady brought in his favorite book One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. 

limited centers:

Cat in the Hat Art

Dr. Seuss Library

Green Eggs and Ham discovery

(plastic green eggs and Epsom salt)

Lorax Mazes

In a People House people counters

www.seussville.com  

As you can see, we had a lot of members of the UWA Football team stop by and visit with us during the afternoon of Read Across America. Our room was FULL of laughter and I enjoyed listening to the joy and feeling the good vibes in our room they always seem to bring.

#happyclassrooms

 We also had fun graphing some colored Goldfish crackers
after listening to One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish online.

Then we painted!

Several of us from CS volunteered to go to Children of the Village in Bellamy last Thursday to their Read Across America celebration. We all had such a wonderful time and experience. We can't wait until next year and hope to take our students, too! 

We volunteered our time at the facepaint station 

and if you know me, you know this was right up my alley ;)

We had SWAP (Stations With Awesome People) Friday to introduce Dr. Minear's students to the process. This week they will help us with our activities and next week they will take over.

It was Seuss themed :D

In my room we read Hop on Pop and talked about rhyming words throughout. 

Then, I told the students that they would be scientists that day and the name of their experiment would be “Hopping Corn.” I showed the students each ingredient separately being used that day. 

I asked them then to predict what they thought would happen when all of the ingredients were placed in the jar together and recorded each response on the chart under “What do you think will happen?” Then I asked individual students to come and place ingredients in the jar one at a time as the students watched the reaction happen. Once the vinegar and baking soda reacted and the corn started “hopping,” I placed it in the middle of the table so the students could observe it better, see the bubbles on the kernels, etc… Then I asked the students what they observed and recorded each response on the chart under “What really happened?” 

To end our time together, we sang and danced to Go Bananas. 

In Mrs. Byrne's class, they enjoyed the book One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. They began by enjoying a delicious snack of blue jello and red Swedish Fish. Mrs. Byrne read a few pages of the book, and they listened for rhyming words. They then had a tasting activity where they ate a Goldfish and a Swedish Fish to decide if their favorite kind of fish was sweet or salty. They added up their answers and Swedish Fish was clearly the winner. They then sang and danced to One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Once I Caught a Fish Alive. Finally, they blew up balloons and drew faces and fins on them to make their own fish to take home.

In Ms. Angie's class they read Green Eggs and Ham. Students were invited to tell what food they didn’t like, and she charted their responses. They discussed that one of the reasons the character may not have liked the green eggs is because of the way they looked.  They concluded with an experiment. One drink was a beautiful shade of blue and one was a yucky brownish green. She asked my students which one they thought would taste good and which would not. They overwhelmingly chose the blue drink as the one that looked delicious. The blue was actually salt water tinted blue. The yucky looking one was actually orange juice tinted with several different colors to make it almost brown. The students tasted a tiny sip of each and quickly discovered that their perceptions weren’t accurate!

Ms. Alison read aloud the book Fox in Socks to the students for SWAP. They discussed what silly words they heard in the book, what words rhymed in the book, and what words they heard the most in the book while being read aloud by the teacher.

Next, the students got to pick out a sock from the sock basket and use the bingo dot markers and create their own sock creations. Once they finished painting the socks, the students discussed how the socks were alike and how they were different.