Coming to a Freezer Aisle Near You

Friday night trip to the grocery store and what should I find in the freezer aisle but a chicken, head and plummage included.  I can only surmise that this must be so you can look him in the eye before you eat him!

I should have checked the price just to see how much extra it would cost me to reconcile with my dinner before chowing down.

Second Grade Heroics

During our study of the Vikings, we all chose a Viking nickname for ourselves based on one of our special talents. Then we took our special talents and turned them into super powers in order to write stories using past tense verbs.  So without any further ado, I present to you - Second Grade Heroics.  They will make you laugh, cry and maybe even scratch your head and say "huh?"

Yesterday was a fabulous day. There was a big problem, but we solved it! It all started like this. Around the town of Niamey, the 2nd grade heros got thier power mixed up a little. Grace forgot how to spell viking. Since Cole had dictionary powers, Grace asked him "How do you spell viking? Cole said "v-i-c-k-i-n-g!" Then Grace wrote it down. Grace took it to Miss Botheras. Ms. Botheras said "I think your powers got mixed up!" Then she noticed Andrea was burping, and Tom was doing sports. Then Jaelyn & Mikaylah found a book with where the powers belonged. Jaelyn read the book & Mikaylah drew picktures to go with it. Ms. Botheras helped the class get the powers where they belonged.
Written by: J the Reader & M the Artist


Youna and Naeva Best Friends

Once upon a time there lived two freinds.  One day a army of pigs captured Youna and Naeva.  The pigs hated eating foods.  Then Naeva took her magic paintbrush and drew piles of food.  Youna made the foods laugh.  The king squeeld like a girl.  Then the pigs ran away because they thought the foods would eat them.  Youna chuckled so hard that she explored (exploded).  Now that why Naeva is crying every single day of her life.
by Y the Chuckler and N the Drawer


The Two Secend Graders (Girls) that Saved the Day

Once upon a time there lived two secend Grade girls.  Let us interdus them to you.  These are thare names Andrea the Athlete and Deborah the Linguist Girl.  One day Joel the little King called them to come help recuae (rescue) the pallice (palace).  They needed them to come case (chase) a rilly big giant.  So they went.  Deborah the Linguist Girl spoke to the giant in giant langig (language) and told him to go away.  But it didn't work.  So they had to be quick like Andrea the Athlete and throw balles at him.  Suddnly the giant ran away.  Hurray the two secend Graders saved the day! said Joel the little King.  That day the giant got scared and never came bake agen.
by A the Athlete and D the Linguist Girl


Iyla the Friend and Cole the Dictionary saved Mikaylah the Artest and Jaelyn the Reader from the evil Beth the Riddler and her evil Vikings.  One day Jaelyn the Reader and Mikaylah the Artest were walking along a path that lead up to a bridge and Beth the Riddler was goarding it and she said "you have to figer out this ridle but they couldn't.  Then they saw Cole the Dictionary and Ilya the Freind and they called them and they solved the riddle and crossed the bridge.
by I the Friend and C the Dictionary


Two Super Heros Save the day

One day a monster crepped into a house at night.  A little girl was home alone and saw the monster and she skreamed!!!  Two super heros herd her in another building.  They came running (flying) to the house.  Grace the Superhero spelled...S-T-O-P stop and the monster stopped.  Then suddenly Tom the superhero burped a loud burp.  The monster fell out the window and died.  Grace and Tom saved the day!  The end
By: T the Burper and G the Speller


There is just nothing better than little people's writing!

Verbs: Our Action Heros

Recently, I made a new discovery - the wonderful world of Teachers Pay Teachers!  The awesome thing about this site is that there is a ton of free stuff that teachers have created and are willing to share.  Trust me, a teacher can have a whole lot of fun there!  I didn't really venture into buying anything until Leap Day when they had a big sale (maybe 50%) and I figured that it's as close as I'll ever get to a teacher's store out here so, why not? 

After creating our little noun town we moved on to verbs so I bought this little unit on verbs created by The Teacher Wife.  It has a superhero theme which my students definitely enjoyed.  One of my favorite ideas from the unit was to get the kids moving by playing the song Move it! Move it! from Madagascar.  I just turned it on and let them dance, although I think it would have been far more effective if it had been used as suggested with the students moving and freezing when the music went off.  As it was, some of my students showed me their moves and let me tell you, they were interesting!  One child laid on the floor wiggling arms and legs in the air.  Around these parts, we like to call that move the Cockroach.

 Anyway, after talking about the past tense of verbs I had the kids pair up and write a story about how they rescued someone using their "super powers".  They had to underline all the past tense verbs.  We have also been studying the Vikings and the students had all given themselves a nickname based on something they are good at doing - these became their super powers. These stories were highly entertaining!  You can read them here.

I discovered the book Charlie's Superhero Underpants in our library.   Books about underwear are just plain funny when you are in the primary grades. Plus this one has some great verbs in it and so I decided to give it a try. 

After reading the book we made a chart of Charlie's Heroic Actions.  Some of the verbs came directly from the text of the story while others were from what the students saw happening.

The next day after reading the story again I had them divide a paper into fourths and write a sentence in past, present and future tense.

Don't you love the way Charlie is desperately reaching out for his underwear in that last square?  They are blowing away again!

I'm pretty sure that Charlie is winking in the upper right hand corner of this one.  How funny is that!

So there you go - some fun things we've done with verbs!

Bumpers Were Made to Help a Brother Out

It's time for another episode of As Seen On the Bridge.  It sounds a little like a soap opera doesn't it?

This is a scene I see quite frequently around the city.

The first time I saw it I wondered what in the world was going on.  After observing for a minute or two, I realized that the first motorcyclist had broken down.  The second motorcyclist, most likely a stranger, came up behind the first and placed his foot on the first motorcyclist's foot pedal, thus using the power of his motorbike to propel himself and his new friend's bike forward.  They rode like this until they reached a repair shop or a gas station depending on what the problem was.  This is a fairly common occurance in the city and doesn't really surprise me any more.

It was, however, a surprise yesterday afternoon when I saw it happen with cars.

I was crossing the bridge when traffic began to slow down due to a taxi which had broken down.  The taxi directly behind it looked to be going around the first taxi when suddenly, he stopped and pulled in right behind him.  I thought perhaps he was going to give him a jump but instead he pulled up right behind the first taxi bumper to bumper and then began to push him all the way across the bridge.  Ingenious!

Now that's something you don't see every day!

Whatcha Doing at the Dunes?

Whatcha doing at the dunes?

"Making sand angels," said the wee little one.

Whatcha doing at the dunes? 

"Burying my fingers and toes," said the medium one.

Whatcha doing at the dunes?

"Sailing into the sunset," said the high flying one.

Whatcha doing at the dunes?

"Tooling around," said the fast driving ones.

Whatcha doing at the dunes?

"Chasing that runaway truck," said the little boy one.

Whatcha doing at the dunes?

"Sumo stylin' it," said the crazy jumping one.

Whatcha doing at the dunes?

 "Enjoying it! Relishing it! Drinking it all in," exclaimed the whole lot of them.

Clacker Mystery Solved

Remember this fabulous little toy?

I'm thinking it must have been cool in the late 80s early 90s because I was at the place where it hadn't quite reached annoying status.  It was just a fun little toy to play with when you were bored. 

Now I would consider it annoying!  How do I know this?  Well, for the last three years I have heard this clacking sound in my apartment.  I always thought that it was coming from outside in the trees and so I assumed it was a bird.  I began to wonder why God thought that the clacking sound was a cool sound for a bird because I wasn't feeling it.

Enter the days of poor to no internet access chez moi (this would be for approximately the last three months).  At the worst of times, I've been driven out into our little office library to connect my computer to the landline there hoping  for internet that moves a little faster than a snail's pace. 

It's here that the clacker mystery has been solved.
It's not the delightful call of a bird but rather the clacking of a gecko.  It's loud for such a little creature! I can hear the sound coming from behind the books and I know geckos are the only ones roaming around back there. 

I'm still wondering why God thought it was a cool sound to give them but I'm glad to have the mystery solved!

Blowing Bubbles and Writing

The last couple of weeks in Writer's Workshop has been all about process writing or "How To" writing.  I found this fun little craft and writing activity over at the Teacher Wife .  We started out by chewing Bubble Gum and discussing the process of how to blow a bubble with bubble gum.  Then I sent the students off to write it all down.  We worked all week, editing and perfecting our writing.  Then on Friday we made the craft.  Crafting with 26 First and Second Graders almost drove me over the edge!  Thank goodness Crystal was here to help me.  They turned out pretty darn cute.  I think these ones bear a striking resemblance to their makers.

Now I leave you with one important piece of advice gleaned from this First Grader's Writing. 

That's right friends, when you are all finished don't forget to

"Fow it in the trash!"

Noun Town

This is a winning idea for teaching nouns for any First and Second Grade teachers out there.  I ran across it two years ago online somewhere so this is the second year that I've used the Noun Town to teach my students about nouns.  This time around the town was far more developed. 

Here is how the town and the lessons progressed:

Day 1:  Introduction of nouns as people, places or things.  We added places to our town.

How about that school or the pet shop?

Day 2:  Reviewed the definition of nouns and added things into our town.

You have got to love the little frog and his frog house and palm tree.

Day 3:  Reviewed the definition of nouns and added some people into the town. 

Look at the lady swimming! It's my personal favorite! :)

Day 4:  We turned our focus towards plural nouns and discussed nouns that have "s" added on to show more than one.  I let the kids choose anything in the town and make one more of it.

Stoplights.

Day 5:  We discussed nouns that end with  s, sh, ch, or x which when made plural have an -es added on to the end.  We then went back to the town and using little post it notes of different colors we labeled the things that we had more than one of that had s or es endings.

Day 6:  We discussed nouns that have a whole new spelling when they are plural such as mouse and mice.  The kids had also discovered that nouns that end in y need to have the y changed to i before adding es so we went back to the town and labeled anything we found like this with two more colors of post-its.

Day 7:  We talked about nouns that show ownership (eg. the town's mini museum).  Then I gave the students a sentence strip and let them write a sentence using a possessive noun to describe something they saw in the town.

There you have it!  Noun Town!  This group was very creative with opening doors, windows and flaps on the mailboxes.  Can't wait to see what the next one looks like!

100 and Running the Factory

To celebrate the 100th Day of school, I asked my students to imagine what the teachers at our school will be doing in 100 years.  Lookie here...one of my students wasn't too far off.

This, after all, is one of my side jobs.  Okay, well, I don't make the coke but I make sure our staff lounge is stocked with coke, sprite and fanta every week.  So it looks like I will be developing this relationship with Coke as the years go by.  One thing I will tell you though is that the

"hot cokeacola"

AIN'T NEVER GONNA HAPPEN!