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!

Tis' the Season!

Our principal started a monthly door decorating contest.  Contests are not something we take lightly in our room so naturally we "pinterested" some ideas for December and this is what we came up with....

We have an Elf on the Shelf in our room this month so we figured we would follow up the door with our Elf projects for the hallway.  Mrs. Biel somehow found this adorable "cloud" butcher paper as a background for the North Pole and I found these Elf Applications on pinterest.  This was our final product...

Now time to start thinking about January, can you believe we are halfway through December?? 

Show Me the Money!

We just started learning all about money.  We began by discussing why it's important to know how to count money and ways we use money in our everyday lives.  We read the kids a story called "Follow the Money" by Loreen Leedy.  It is told from the perspective of a quarter.  It starts off at the Mint where the quarter is made and he tells the story of meeting other coins, being passed along to various people and the different ways he is used- to buys things, to give change, to donate to charities, etc.  

Then, we had discussed all of the coins, their values and the characteristics of each of them.  We filled out a chart with all of the information about each coin and how to write the value of each using a cent sign and also using a decimal point and dollar sign.  The students can keep these in their folders to use a reference if they get confused.  Similar to this one...

We also introduced the dollar.  We discussed how many of each coin it would take to make a dollar and practiced skip counting the coins.  Skip counting by 25's can be difficult so of course we felt it was only appropriate to come up with a "Dollar Dance" to help them remember!  After we do this a few times we can hear the students singing this to themselves at their seats as they try to skip count quarters, and it works every time!  Fun for them and fun for us!  Here is a video of Mrs. Biel and one of our students demonstrating the "Dollar Dance"...

We have plenty more activities and center ideas so keep checking back!  

Bean Bag Addition

Right now in math we are learning two digit addition (with and without regrouping).  The students need as much practice as possible with this, and it goes without saying that this can get pretty boring if all you do is give them practice pages.  We tried this out a few years ago and the kids really loved it...

We divide a piece of chart paper into nine squares and write a two digit number in each space.  The students take turns tossing bean bags onto the paper, and if it's their turn they are the "tosser" and the "checker."  Everyone in the group records and solves the problem on their recording sheets.  The "checker" uses a dry erase board to solve the problem and then checks everyone's answers.  This is great because not only are the students practicing solving addition/subtraction problems, they are also learning to write them properly and, most importantly, they are having fun!  Every year the students have trouble rewriting problems vertically, it takes a lot of practice to remember to line up the numbers so this is a good way to help them learn, and to get them moving!

They are so cute aren't they?!

We will also be sharing more center ideas on two digit addition and subtraction centers so stop back soon! :)

It's a Pirate's Life for Us!

Last week we learned the /ar/ sound, and we obviously couldn't resist using the pirate theme to spice things up!   We started off reading about Pirate Mark and his love of chocolate bars.  Unfortunately, we can't take credit for this, we found this adorable little story on Teachers Pay Teachers (we can't get enough of Babbling Abby, she's got such great ideas and activities).  Here is a link to some of her resources...

Teachers pay Teachers

Our student teacher showed the students our big treasure map and explained that their job was to find all the "ar" words hidden throughout the school.  If they found all of the words there would be a treasure waiting for them at the end.  That was all they needed to hear, they couldn't wait to start so we put our on our eye patches and got on our way!  

There was a cute treasure box waiting at the end but we forgot to take a picture!  I guess all of the excitement got the best of us! :)