Pair of Pears-Homophones

A little fun activity we did this week for homophone practice.
First we defined homophones and "tapped into our prior knowledge" to make a little list.

I handed out homophone cards randomly to the class. The students had to find their matching homophone pair.  They had fun doing this with the added challenge of doing it silently. Together they drew pictures to illustrate the meaning of their word.

Then we made a giant homophone pear poster...

Say Goodbye to Gallon Guy, Say Hello to Gallon Butterfly

We are currently in one of our final math units of the year, Capacity.  I have been a big fan of "Gallon Guy" in the past. It is a great craft for helping my students understand the relationship of cups, pints, quarts, and gallons.  This year, I mixed things up and introduced, "Gallon Butterfly."  It was too perfect a fit for our class since we are simultaneously studying butterflies in science.  I love when lessons cross from one subject to another.  It also makes a great spring into summer display for our hallways.

Mother's Day Tea

Mother's Day is so special to me because now that my daughters are in nursery and preschool I am lucky enough to receive gifts of handprints and scribbled "I Love Yous." This may explain how over the top we go in Second Grade to make a very special afternoon for our moms.

It all begins in September...
The students make a book or journal each month of all the special memories they shared with mom. I also take a picture of them and we start building our book month by month.
Here is a picture of our September entry.

I love how each month you can see how they change and grow in both their looks and their writing.  Here is another picture from a January entry.

Here is the cover of our book (laminated and on card stock)

Just before Mother's Day we invite all the moms in for a "Mother's Day Tea."  The preparation for the event is a little time consuming but the outcome of seeing the mom's faces and emotion is so touching.

Our beverage table....

Some of our desserts...(my homemade cupcakes, aren't they fancy? ;)

 The kids are always saying, "Mom makes the best...." so I thought it'd be fun to put together a little cookbook of all the kid's favorite recipes.

Here is how their gifts were presented to mom (on top is a wrapped gift the kids made with our Art teacher).

                      

A little decor for the hallways..

 On the flowerpot the students wrote a little opinion piece which starts out, "My mom is the best mom in the world." (I got a few giggles out of reading these).

                                          

These flowers lined the hallway going up to our classroom. On each petal they wrote words to describe mom.

It was an amazing afternoon for everyone. The kids loved sharing their special gifts and crafts.  Another surprise for the moms is that our music teacher puts together an amazing little performance made up of 6 of the cutest Mother's Day themed songs.

The day was full of lots of smiles, memories, and happy tears.  

Spring Cinquains

What better way to welcome spring than with a little poetry.  This is our last unit of writing for the year.  In my opinion it's saving the best for last. I love teaching poetry.

Cinquains are so much fun to write, the kids love these and really let out some creativity. Here is a little activity we did with them this week.

  

and here is the inside...

Now the next challenge will be what crafty things can I come up with to showcase the rest of the  poetry they will write in this unit?? 

Earth Day!

As a kid, I always LOVED Earth Day!  It is a little surprising because in the adult world Earth Day comes and goes and no one really even pays attention to it.  As a kid however, teachers always made an especially big deal out of this day.  We would spend the day decorating our room with Earth Day crafts, reading stories about keeping the earth clean, and almost always finished off the day with a little trip outdoors to do some "trashbusting." (That's what my third grade teacher called trash cleanup).  I'm not sure why I am admitting this but I would even pick out one of my "Save The Earth" t-shirts to wear to school (yes, I had more than one to choose from).

Although we are in the midst of benchmark and end of unit testings, I could not let Earth Day go by without doing a little something crafty with my class to celebrate.  I wore a blue and green outfit (I don't own anymore of those wonderful "Save The Earth" t-shirts anymore) and I posted a big cutout of an earth on the front board.

I had to tie this Earth Day Craft into a writing activity so I thought it would be a great opportunity to introduce cinquains to the class.  I did a little mini lesson on Cinquains and modeled one of my own, entitled Earth.  Then, the students were sent off to write their own. They did a phenomenal job on this. I really thought they would struggle with fitting into the 1,2,3,4,1 pattern of words but they followed it with no hesitation.

After we did our writing we created our little "Earth Man" craft.  The kids LOVED making these and adding their silly face designs to them. They were not given any tracers to design the land.  I could see them having lots of fun with making the continents.  The Earth Man craft is something I came across in one of my favorite blogs so I can't take credit for that being my own. Amy Lemons really has some great ideas that I can't resist using because they are so cute. We did add our own slight variations to it.  Here are some pictures below.

The inside

Happy Earth Day Everyone!!!

My First Day Back

This is the third maternity leave I have taken in my twelve years of teaching.  Coming back this time was a very different experience.  Both of my daughters were spring babies. So once they arrived I had the whole spring and summer home and then returned with a fresh new class in the fall.  My son is a fall baby. Therefore, I only spent two weeks with my class in September so coming back at the tail end of March after a 6 month hiatus made me a little nervous.  The wonderful and pleasant substitute that was in my room was who the students grew to know as their teacher and how could I step in and take over?

The morning of my first day back the kids' reactions to seeing me were anything but what I expected.  They walked in with a casual, "hey Mrs. Schneider" as if I had never even left??? Of course there were a few who couldn't hold back their excitement and shouted down the hall to the others on their way up to the classroom, "Mrs. Schneider is back!" For the most part though it was just another Monday. These kids must be very well adjusted to changes.

I however wanted the day to go perfectly to set the tone for the remainder of the school year. I wanted the students to feel comfortable with me, to trust me, and to take me seriously as the one in charge.  I thought long and hard of an activity to do with them on my first day back and came up with something that was exactly what I hoped for.

I created a subway art entitled "Our Classroom."  There are many of these floating around on the internet so I can't take full credit for all of the sayings on it, but the design is by yours truly. I showed this to the kids and talked about the expectations of our classroom. The kids loved the funny letters and fonts. They also were proud to display this on our front bulletin board.  Here is what it looks like.

The next thing I did was display a subway art that I designed of myself entitled, Mrs. Schneider.  The students really loved this because it was a chance for them to get to know me.  I included details that would interest them about who I am outside of being their teacher.  

The next part of the activity was my favorite. I gave the students a template which only had some boxes on it. The boxes were randomly placed on the paper the way that they are in a subway art poster.  The kids were told to use any color, font, size words they would like to describe themselves.  It was so much fun reading the things they wanted to share with me. 

This lesson activity was a great way to get to know each other on my first day back in the classroom! 

Back Into the Swing of Things

Yesterday, I returned back to work after a 6 month maternity leave.  As it turns out, the anxiety leading up to my return date turned out to be harder than the actual return.  Yes, it was extremely hard leaving my three little loves. I was so fortunate to have all that precious time home with them in which I soaked up every moment of every day to its fullest.

The month leading up to going back I started to mentally prepare myself. I reconnected my work email account to my phone. (That really made it seem official to me). I reviewed the curriculum, read some of my favorite teaching blogs, pinned hundreds of pins on Pinterest. I even bought myself a new "teacher bag." All of these things got me in the right mindset to return to work but nothing could prepare me for the task of getting all three kids fed, dressed, and packed for a day away from home at their preschool and babysitters.  It took three days of practice runs but we streamlined our morning routine to the point where I even get to work 45 minutes before the students.

Surprisingly, the most popular questions I was asked on my first day back was, "How much do you hate being here?" "Are you just counting down the days until summer?" "How hard was it to leave your kids?"  Hmmm.  Not sure how to answer that? If I say I hate being back I'd be lying, but if I say I like being back, then it seems like I don't enjoy being with my kids???  Truthfully, it did feel good to be back.  I don't feel guilty admitting it (well maybe a little).  I truly love my job.  Teaching is a huge part of what makes me who I am.  So, although leaving my kids was hard I felt like a big part of my puzzle was back in place.

Now, let's revisit this next month when the "newness" of this life change wears off, and I may have a different opinion of it all. We shall see.