Bee the Change: November 2011

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Imitation is the Highest Form of Flattery

I do not usually post during the day BUT I just had to take a minute while the children are having some inside recess (20 degrees outside with wind chill factor....I don't think so) and I saw 2 of my girls playing school.

One had a notebook and the other had a play camera. When I asked them what they were doing they replied "Playing school". When I asked them what the camera was for, they replied.......

(can you guess?)

"To put our work up on our pretend class BLOG!"

Seriously.

I love them.

Bee the Change~

Monday, November 21, 2011

Tedd Arnold Comes to Visit!

We were so lucky last week to have Tedd Arnold come to visit us at our school! It was a ton of fun!

This free photo slideshow made with Smilebox

Bee the Change~

Glasses ROCK!

I have been a little uninspired lately. Busy and uninspired. But today, this little sweetie came into school with a smile that lit up the room AND her new glasses! This was a huge deal because when she was going to get her eyes checked, she was absolutely, positively, NOT going to wear glasses. Now......I wear glasses so I was bound and determined to convince her that glasses ARE AWESOME! She now thinks so too!

Bee the Change~

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Coming to our Senses!

We are working on our TAS (Targeted Academic Support) groups at school. (I would explain it more clearly if I understood it better myself) and I have the group of first graders that has difficulty coming up with ideas for writing. We have talked about how writers write about what is important to them, write about what they see and then we did this fun writing! (Sorry for the lower quality pics...only had my phone!)

In order to demonstrate that writers use their senses to write stories. I pulled the mystery flavors out of a package of Dum Dum suckers and gave one to each of my 12 authors. We worked on our writing webs and wrote about the following:

what our lollipops looked like with the wrappers on
what they looked like with their wrappers off
what they smelled like
what they tasted like
what they thought about them

I drew the web on the smartboard to help them remember what to write about.

This is our first sentence!

Yummy!

Joey's didn't last long.

Filling in the web.

It was a ton of fun and the kids did some great writing!

I have 3 more weeks of this! Any other great ideas?

Bee the Change~

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Inspiration & Joy (and a little Halloween)

It was one of "those" weeks. You know the kind. The kind where you are thinking "Would you like fries with that?" has a nice ring to it. I think that Halloween on Monday was the reason for most of this. The kids were all kinds of crazy Monday, all kinds of tired Tuesday and out of

sorts the rest of the week. Even I thought that Wednesday was Thursday and kept referring to the next day as Friday. Anyway, I feel like I did not teach anything blog-worthy all week so I decided to post some things around my room that inspire me to keep up the good fight and things that bring me joy. Even though we do not celebrate Halloween in our school, a little bit slipped in......Here's to a better week ahead! Cheers!

My owls from my friend Becky are right next to my desk. they keep me smiling.

One of the kids made this for me and was SO PROUD that I hung it up.

(If anyone has any idea what it is, let me know.)

My co-worker (and dear friend) Michaela gave this to me when she moved to Connecticut 6 years ago. He has been on top of my phone every year since.

It is surprising how long it takes kids to notice he is there. And that he is naked.

This is my ID badge (with the picture conveniently NOT in the picture). My buddy Charlie gave me the leaf to tuck in the pouch. It had been dandelions before the leaf. The little purple crystal is a new addition from Viktoriya. Love these little "treasures".