Time Fly's When You're Havin' Fun!!!

I cannot believe that it has been almost 2 months since my last post!  Life just seems to consume so much of me!  You can always see some of the things I have going on in my other life here!

As far as my school life - things are going great!  Prior to our 3 week break I had 13 students - 8 second graders and 5 first graders.  I lost 2 second graders and gained 1 first grader after break, and am up to 6 first and 6 second right now!  It is a great mix of kids and they have been working super hard since returning from vacation in January!!  (That makes a happy teacher =) )

During out first week back, we focused on Nouns, completing lots of activities!  Some of these fun activities from Amy Lemon's Parts of Speech Unit.  We also read one of my favorite books, Chrysanthemum, talked about what our name means and why we are important!  We discussed our New Year's Resolutions and created some 'Rockin' Resolutions'!  At the beginning of June, our school hosts and HUGE Science Fair, so we also started reviewing and working with the Scientific Method and completed the Ant Farm Experiment!

Working so well together on their Noun Towns!

Noun Towns!

Our Rockin' Resolutions!

As we moved into our second week, we switched gears from nouns to adjectives, which my kids totally ROCKED!  They were adjective champs, and are still using them in their daily writing and speaking!  *I*LOVE*IT*  We continued to use some activities from Amy's Parts of Speech Unit I mentioned in Week 1 and also incorporated our adjectives into our writing!  Since MLK day was just around the corner, we also spent some time discuss him, why he was important to us in our lives today, and that led us into a small Hero Project!  We learned about a variety of heroes from the past, the present time and we also discussed and wrote about how each of us can be a hero in our future professions.  Since we were learning about adjectives, we included lots of adjectives into our Hero writing!  Check that activity out on TPT here!  

Adjectives that describe me! 

fisher, bug lover, animal lover, handsome, climber

Awesome, smart, beautiful, kind, funny

Hard at work with our groups completing our Hero Projects!

When you've learned about Nouns and adjectives - what must come next other than Verbs?!  We spent majority of the next week finishing up our Adjective activities, starting verbs and working through our Hero Projects!  The kids have produced some great writing!!  *Insert proud teacher here!*  This week in Math, I took a break from teaching separately and to teaching whole group.  We back-tracked a little and focused on place value, base 10 blocks, making numbers, exchanging ones for tens, adding with and without regrouping using the base 10 blocks - and I feel like they finally GET that!  PHEW!  Now back to grade level teaching!  ugh..........said the teacher teaching two grades in a teeny-tiny room!  

Verb Flowers with 'verbs' that show what each student likes to do and a sentence on the stem using one of their verbs! 

Base 10 Block FUN! 

Week 4 brought us into a new Science Unit - Plants.. Which went great with the planting of our classes 'box' in the school garden!  Since I am a plant killer not such a great gardener, we planted some basic greens, which are apparently hard to kill!  We will see =)  My students are now responsible for weeding the garden once a week and keeping it alive!  YIKES!  Such simple things should not put such fear in me (I'd hate to be the only class who has a dead garden...) but I am nervous!  We have had a wonderful parent who owns a Rosta farm in St. Kitts helping us, so my hope is that his expertise will far outweigh my lack of expertise!  Aside from our exciting time gardening, we also began studying about Literary Elements.  We are sticking to the basic: Setting, Character, Problem and Resolution for now!  My goal is that they will recognize those 4 in their reading and use those, as well as their knowledge of beginning, middle and end, to continue to better their writing!  You can check out my posters, some practice readings, and a guided writing here on TPT!

Here are some gardening photos!

This precious girl brought her own gardening gloves and shovel!  

Hard at work!  

My sweet darlings <3 

Well - that brings us into this week, its now 10:30 and I'm BEAT!!  So, to bed I shall go!  Here are a couple last pictures to help brighten your night, day, or whatever it might be as you're reading this!!

Is this not the BEST note ever?!?!?!  From one student to another!   

This is my view from the school/lunch/recess..Everyday! =)  Yah, that IS the Caribbean Sea!  And although you cannot see them in this picture, there ARE monkey's running down the fence at the back of the field... Just a normal lunch in St. Kitts! 

If you look REALLY careful at the middle of this picture - there is are MONKEYS!  I am pretty sure there are some in the tree to the right as well!  The field was filled with them this day!! 

There is a close up!  

The daily view! 

Not too bad! 

Happy February!  

It's been a while...

While I have been teaching a multi-age 1-2 classroom for 1 year and 4 months now, I still feel like I should consider myself a First Year Teacher mainly because I did it last year.. and have 1/2 of the same kids this year..and can't do anything the same!!  SO, I feel like I am busy, busy, busy, busy.. all the time.. Between living life in the Caribbean (which I know seems like it cannot be even slightly difficult - it has its challenges!), having a husband in Vet School (you haven't seen hard and stressful till Vet School), have 2 puppies, planning, cooking, cleaning, dealing with broken things (thing break.. A L L THE TIME here and take weeks to get fixed...), moving (we're on move 5 in 16 months!), and sleeping (not much!).. I just don't feel like I have time!  Sometimes I wonder how people with children and jobs and 'real' lives do it!!

Anyways, the last couple months at school have been crazy, but good!  The students have been working hard, are totally rocking the Daily 5, doing great in Math (have I mentioned how tough it is to teach 2 grades of Math - at the same time - in one room!  Still trying to find the perfect solution to that one!), and have done an AMAZING job on their *finally* finished Dinosaur research project!  I have been taking the bits and pieces that we have been doing and turned it into a HUGE Dinosaur Unit to share with you!

We began this unit working through each section of what WILL be part of their requirements on the Research as a class with fun activities and continually referencing our Non-Fiction books (due to my schedule this took a while and each one was over the course of a week!).  After we made it through all of those, they began their research.  We are fortunate enough to have laptops for the classrooms, so each student had a computer and got to work!  They did a remarkable job scouring the internet for facts, reading, asking for help and writing their information!  When they all had their research done, we talked through the making of a Key Note (or powerpoint) and they each got to do their own.  They continued to find great pictures on the internet, successfully copy and paste them into their powerpoint, add animations, fun fonts and colors.. I was SO proud of them!  When we were done, we set up "A Dinosaur Museum" in the schools library with their PowerPoints (which we turned into quicktime movies that looped and looped) up on computers and their Fiction writing with it.  The stayed by their project, visitors came in, there were comment cards..and it was A BIG DEAL!  The smiles on their faces were amazing, and they were SO proud!  What a great experience!

Check it out here in pictures  -  also, please check out my entire Unit on TPT!

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style 

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Teaching Caribbean Style

Here is the link to the unit on TPT -

And in closing - my thoughts are with all of those involved in the Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting.  My heart is broken for all of you..

Thankful Thanksgiving

Today, as it is Thanksgiving, and most people in America are home with their family and friends, I am at work.. I am struggling to be as thankful as I could be, but really want to push those feelings aside and let the small bit of blogging world that I am connected to at this point via my blog, know how much I appreciate them and their support.

Last year when I started teaching a 1st/2nd grade multi-age, my first elementary experience since student teaching, I was overwhelmed, scared and not really sure what to do next!  I somehow came across the blogging world and the TPT world in my frantic internet searches for ideas and could not be more thankful for the PROFOUND impact it has had on me as a teacher!  I have found so many amazing resources, and blogs..People who I don't know, but I feel like I know from reading their blog, who I feel have been a stronger 'co-worker' than any I could ask for!  I also feel so blessed to s l o w l y be able to take what I do on a daily basis and share it with the world via my blog and TPT store.  

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving Holiday and counts all their blessings - not just today, but everyday!

*Students will be arriving in 8 minutes - Must get prepared!*

Thanksgiving already?!?!

I realize that  I have not updated this blog since the beginning of October..and I wish I had a good excuse.. But I don't!  It's really just finding time, energy and ambition to do anything aside from make dinner, take the dogs out, work on lesson plans, laundry and cleaning at the end of the night!!

Did I mention that we only have 18 more school days till our FIRST break of the school year!  Currently we have had ONE Wednesday off ( for St Kitts Independence Day) and ONE Monday off for Mid-Semester break... Other than that, its been 11 - 5 day weeks from 7:30 - 3:15 every day!  I am so excited for 3 1/2 weeks off with my hubs and dogs!!  And yes, Thanksgiving is Thursday of this week, and YES we WILL be at school!  We have a huge Thanksgiving lunch at the school, but its STILL a normal day!  

The school year is going by so quickly, and I am quite impressed with how well my kiddos are doing!  They have picked up and dove into the Daily 5 so well and I LOVE the way it works and how to an outsider it may look like my kids are just all sitting around the room on the floor doing whatever they want, but they are all working and learning and doing so well!  Due to my shorter amount of time, I am running 2 lessons/2 rotations one day and 3 lessons/3 rotations the next day.  This is giving the students a much more thorough work time and it gives me more time to work with each group!  SO glad I decided to give it a try!  Wish I had more than just one year here to try it out, I have learned things I would do differently and so much I would do the same!

Our BiG focus for reading/writing/Science/S.S has been Dinosaurs over the past month - month in a half.  We have read The Enormous Egg, written some fiction stories, such as 'If I had a pet dinosaur', have done a variety of reading of fiction and non-fiction dinosaur books and are working hard on a dinosaur research project now!  I have a HUGE document of all the things we have done that I am working on finishing out and will be sure to share it when I am done!  We are hoping to be done and have a big Dinosaur Museum for the kids to share all their hard work!  Since we live on a small island in the middle of the ocean, we were not able to visit a dinosaur museum, so we watched a variety of videos and utilized the anatomy museum on our vet school campus to look at other skeletons of dogs/cats/horses/donkeys/cows and discussed how they would be similar and different to dinosaurs!  The kids loved it!

We also had Halloween over this long period of time since I last blogged.  On Halloween students get to dress up and we go trick-or-treating to every semesters (7 of them) classes on campus.  The kids get S O M U C H candy!!  But it sure is fun.  This year one of my creative students made her own centipede costume (due to living in a house on the island where I killed around 80 centipedes in 4 weeks, I HATE centipedes) and it was SO COOL!!   

These are the SMALL portion of the centipedes we killed at our cCentipede house as we called it!

The FABULOUS centipede costume!  

And random - their cute ACORN acrostic poem and design!

I am trying really hard to get a good understanding of the Everyday Math Program and effectively teach it to 1st and 2nd grade simultaneously, and am finding it so difficult!  Does anyone else out there use the program and have any great ideas for teaching it to a multi-age classroom?!?!

Happy Thanksgiving!  I hope everyone has a great holiday off with family and friends (I'll be thinking of you while I work all day!)