Adjective Activities

Awesome Adjectives!

Adjectives are always so much fun!  There are just so many activities you can do, we could easily spend a month on adjectives!  Here are a few of the activities we used to learn and reinforce adjectives in our classroom….

Adjective Detectives

The students had to be adjective detectives and look through the story to find as many adjectives as they could.  They were each given a magnifying glass to help with their detective skills.  Here are some pictures of our detectives at work…

Appetizing Adjectives!

As you can tell food is a reoccurring theme in our classroom!  We love to incorporate it any way possible, and using food to teach adjectives couldn’t be any more perfect!  We made posters with different foods, and had the students brainstorm adjectives to describe each one.  We told them to use all five of their senses to describe the foods.  How do they look, taste, smell, sound, and feel? 

We gave them little samples of each food to get their thoughts going (unless you have food allergies in your classroom and then you might have to refrain from the sampling or change your foods up).  We used chocolate chip cookies, brownies, potato chips, popcorn and lemonade.  Here are some examples of our posters.  We also laminated chocolate chips to record their adjectives for the chocolate chip cookies, popcorn kernels for the popcorn, lemons for the lemonade, potato chips, etc….

100th Day!

100^th Day!

Can you even believe it’s already past the 100^th day mark of the school year!  This year is just flying by! 

Pinterest has really become our favorite go to for every theme, holiday and party!  The ideas are endless!  This year we sent home a letter with each student asking them to dress like they are 100 years old for the 100^th day of school, and some of the outfits they showed up in were priceless!  We participated too, and they got some laughs seeing us dressed up as old ladies!  Here we are with Courtney and Jodie from across the hall…

I think Courtney definitely got best dressed, the walker was a nice touch!  Jody walked around with toilet paper hanging off her shoe and a dryer sheet stuck to her back the whole day…does it get any better than that??

Here are some of our students, lookin’ good for 100 right??

Their desks were all ready for them when they arrived, 100 days smarter! 

Here is another activity where they had to draw what they thought they would look like when they were 100 and fill in the sentences with words of their choice.  They turned out really cute….

Did you do anything fun to celebrate the 100th day?

Arctic Animals Unit

We decided Arctic animals was an appropriate winter theme.  We studied penguins, polar bears and whales for the month of January.  To celebrate the end of our Arctic animals unit we held the "Arctic Games."  We asked the parents for their assistance to put it together and they couldn't have been more helpful!  We thought of six different stations:

1.  The Snowman Relay- The students had to run to the cone, dress themselves up as a snowman, undress and run back as fast as they could....

2.  The Penguin Waddle-  For this station, students had to hold a styrofoam between their knees and race around the cone...this was not as easy as it looks!

3.  The Snowball Challenge-  At this station the students had to make a snowball out of tissue paper using only one hand (the rule was they had to keep one hand behind their back) and then run to the cone and put their "snowball" in the bin.  It was hilarious to try and watch them do this...there was definitely a little bit of cheating going on with this one :)

4.  The Snowball Toss-  The students had to stand across from their partner and have a catch with the "snowball."  Every time they caught it they had to take a step back, if they missed they had to move back to where they were when they started...

5.  Snowball Relay-  The challenge at this station was to balance a snowball on a spoon while running around the cone as fast as possible...

6.  Snowman Hockey Relay-  This one is pretty self explanatory...

We couldn't have done this without the help of our parent volunteers!  It was so nice of everyone to donate their time to come in and help out :)

After our "Arctic Games" we headed inside for some much needed Arctic treats to warm up!

Super Hero Word Hunt

Super Hero Word Search!

We were studying r-controlled vowel sounds, and in order to spice things up we decided to have a supER Hero Word SEARCH.  The kids couldn't have had more fun, and neither could we!  We posted er, ir, ur and ear words all over the building and told the kids it was our job to find all of them.  We also emphasized that super heroes are super quiet when they are completing their missions!

Of course we had to dress the part!  Mrs. Biel found our super hero capes at Target for $1 each in the dollar bins.  They were a great addition to our theme...

Each student took a turn reading the words as we found them and then we all recorded the words on our recording sheets.  

It's always nice to get out of the classroom and explore, it definitely beats sitting at their desks all day!  What kinds of things do you do with your class to get them up and moving?

Congratulations to Mrs. Biel!

We are so proud to announce that Mrs. Biel received the Teacher of the Year award for Swift School this year!  

As you can see from the blog, she definitely deserves it!  She is constantly planning fun activities for our classroom, looking for new ideas and making hands-on centers to reinforce skills.  She definitely doesn't let time or money get in the way of a good idea or lesson!  I couldn't think of anyone more creative or energetic than her!  I had to put together a little something to explain Mrs. Biel to some of you who don't know her...

Here is a little "Get to Know Mrs. Biel" trivia for you...

She is married to her high school sweetheart, Justin.

Her husband is also a teacher.

She has four kids (8, 5, 4, and almost 2) and two dogs- am I leaving out any other creatures?

She loves themes of any kind, and religiously plans parties and events based on themes.

She loves to color coordinate things and has no tolerance for things that don't match.

She is slightly OCD when it comes to hanging things, cutting things out and designing bulletin boards.

Did I mention she loves to party plan? (You can find some of her past party pictures on this pinterest board

She loves to shop (and not just for herself, she especially loves gift giving!).

She always, always, always finds the best deals- if you need anything ask her and she will know where to find it and for the cheapest price!

She is great at accessorizing.

She is a great teacher and an even more amazing friend!

Apparently this puts her in the running for Atlantic County teacher of the year, not sure how it works but fingers crossed! :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

We hope everyone had a great holiday break and a happy new year!   As excited as we are to be back it always feels like breaks go too fast.  Unfortunately, Santa brought many families the flu this year which also doesn't make for a very, fun or productive week off! Hope everyone is recovering or didn't have to experience that terrible thing :)

To ring in the new year (and to make coming back to school a little more fun) we hosted a New Year's party to welcome the students back.  Mrs. Biel bought ice cream for the class, we had blow horns, New Years party hats and all sorts of fun props!  We counted down and watched the ball drop on our smartboard to welcome 2013!

We read a story called "Un-Happy New Year Emma" by James Stevenson.  

In the story, Emma resolves to be kinder to the witches Dolores and Lavinia and their resolution is to make her more miserable than they have ever made her before.  It was a perfect way to introduce the meaning of a resolution.  We discussed good and bad examples of resolutions.  We listed some of the better choices on the board, and the students were asked to pick three resolutions that they wanted to make for 2013.  We hung them out in the hallway with our new years display...

We can't wait to see what 2013 has in store, it might just be our best year yet!  Keep checking back :)

Gobble, Gobble!

I am a little late on this but I just realized I never posted our Thanksgiving Feast Pictures!  Thanks to some terrific room moms and dads we had a great time!

How adorable are these turkey cookies?  Our room mom even had all their names written on them, they made such a cute addition to our place settings!

Our class put on a readers' theater for the parents.  Each student had a part.  We practiced for a week and a lot of the students ended up memorizing their parts- impressive right?  The pictures on their headbands even coincided with their role in the play.  Here are some pictures....

We can't thank all of the parents enough!  We appreciate you volunteering your time and energy to help with our holiday parties!