Mrs.Jackman's Class

This week was mostly a review week.  On Monday we celebrated Columbus Day, had review days with the short vowels, and then Friday was Pirate Day.  We were a week ahead in reading, so I decided to have a review so we could be on the same page as the other teachers.  I love being a teacher because I also learning things every day!  When we were learning about Christopher Columbus, I learned some things that I either forgot about or never knew.  And today, some of the kiddos taught me some things about pirates that I didn't even know.  :)  It was pretty cute.  We all had a fun week.

This week FLEW by!  On Wednesday, I thought it was Tuesday.  Then before I knew it I had to prepare for pirate day.  Where did the time go?!  We were just having too much fun learning at school.

On Columbus Day, we read some stories about Christopher Columbus, made some books to help us get to know him better, and we watched a short movie to understand why he is so important.

And then Friday, it was Pirate Day!  The class earned a special "party" because they got 25 bees, which is basically the same thing as the tally mark system.  Once they are SO good that I put up 25 bees, then they get a special party.  But I can always take bees down if they aren't being good.  I was so proud of them for earning the 25 bees!

We started out the day by reading some wonderful pirate books.  If you haven't figured it out yet, I LOVE children's books.  I could sit there and read children's books all day.  It is definitely my weakness when it comes to buying things for my classroom.  :)

After we read some books, it was time for them to name their ships!  They all had to agree on a name for their ship and work together to come up with the name.  They all came up with some great ones!  When I was taking their pictures, I told them to make pirate faces.  I love the faces I got.

We've got some cool pirates in our classroom!  They did a great job naming them and I was so proud at how well they did!  After they named their ships, we got to make our very own pirate book!  I gave every 2 kids a big piece of paper with a sentence on it and they had to work together to draw the picture to go with the story.

Their drawings turned out great and we put the but together and read the story together.  The kids LOVED this part and loved trying to figure out who drew what.  It was pretty fun.  :)

We did a lot of learning the pirate way!  Here are just a few more things that we did during pirate day:
We read a story about pirates, and then we made our very own pirate scene.

We also did a few worksheets to help us learn.  Here are just a couple of worksheets that we did:

The second worksheet could be made into a short vowel game.  Many of them didn't finish it, but they took it home.  If you see this in their folder, practice their vowels with them by playing this game!  You could use a candy land board or any other game board, spin a spinner or roll a die, and you have to draw one of the pictures.  If you put it in the right spot, you get to move you piece how ever many spaces you spun/rolled.  It could be a fun learning game, so make sure you look for this in their folder!

We also went on a fun treasure hunt!  We had to follow the clues to lead us back to where the treasure was.  The clues led us back to our classroom where they had to search for the hidden treasure (it really wasn't that hidden, but it took them a few minutes to realize where it was).  And this is what they found:

I used our treasure as a math activity.  Since we obviously had more than 16 (that's how many we had in class that day) we had to figure out how to give everyone an equal amount.  They figured out that we had to start with giving each person one piece of gold.  We kept doing this until there was obviously not enough for everyone to have another one.  This was a great sorting lesson.  I love having fun while learning, and getting a delicious prize at the end!

Next week we get to start our Halloween crafts and learning centers.  I LOVE celebrating holiday's with the students.  It makes the Holiday's much more exciting (for someone like me...who doesn't have any kids of my own).  This year, we are doing a "you've been booed" to each classroom in the school.  Thank you SO much to a parent in the classroom that came up with the awesome idea!  I remember doing this when I was in elementary school, but never even thought about doing it at school.  It is going to be a lot of fun and I am really looking forward to it.  What you do is copy this poem and cute ghost on a piece of paper, and put it in a bag/basket/bucket full of candy/crafts/other fun things, and sneakily put it outside of a classroom.  Then you have to put the picture of the ghost on the outside of the door so you don't get "booed" again.  Such a cute idea!

 Here are the awesome baskets that the parent made for this fun idea.  They also have some candy in them too.  So cute!!!  Thank you so much for coming up with this idea!

I am really looking forward to all of the fun Halloween Activities that I have planned.  I hope the kids will like it just as much, if not more!  :)

Thanks so much parents for everything you do and letting me borrow you children for 6 1/2 hours M-F.  I am lucky to have the class I have and I wake up every day excited to come to school to see all of their smiling faces.  I couldn't have asked for better parents or students this year.  Thank you!