Sneaker Teacher

Smiles

It's Teacher Appreciation Week and I have to say, I do feel appreciated.

Apples from my students! How sweet!

Husband Crafts

Guess I'm not the only crafty one in the family. We had this wreath on our side door and after trimming some bushes this afternoon, my husband added some flowers to it. How cute!

For the Love of Cake!

Usually I like to promote ideas of how to stay healthy, but I'll admit, I do have an obsession with baking. I got this idea from Bakerella.

I don't know her, but I want to BE her. She makes the most amazing creations that not only look like art, but based on the recipe I tried, taste AMAZING!

The pictures below are of her "Cake Balls." I made them with carrot cake and cream cheese frosting this time and I have also made them with vanilla cake and vanilla frosting as well as chocolate cake with vanilla frosting.

Bake a cake in a 9X13 inch pan according to the directions. Let it cool and then crumble it.

Add a can of frosting (any flavor you like). If you make your own frosting use 2 cups.

The cake and frosting mix to become a thick, sticky "batter." Roll the batter into small balls. I think of them as dessert meatballs. The batter gets all over your hands, so I find it helpful to wash your hands frequently. When they are a little damp, the batter does not stick as much and it's easier to roll the balls.

Place the balls on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper and freeze.

Once the balls are frozen, they get dipped in melted chocolate. I tried semi sweet morsels and those worked well, but I found the baking chocolate that comes in round discs to be much easier. These melt great in the microwave which I found easier than using a double boiler.

I just used a spoon to dip each ball in the melted chocolate and then I put them back on the wax paper. The type of chocolate shown hardens within minutes.

I really liked the chocolate cake balls a lot, but the carrot cake kind came out good too. It just depends on what your favorite cake/frosting combo is. There are also lots of different colors of melting chocolate that you can purchase at a store like Michael's Arts and Crafts or JoAnn Fabrics, so you can make them look really cute for a baby shower, birthday, or any other special occasion. The colors are usually vanilla flavored, but I also saw peanut butter ones which I am thinking would go great with chocolate cake.

It is also fun to add some color with sprinkles or cake decoration when the chocolate is still melty.

Check out Bakerella's site and you will be astounded at her variations and how talented she is! Cake balls are the easier version, but she also does cake pops and cupcake pops.

Exercise Buddies

notice the brand choice?

Recently a small group of teachers at my school started to exercise together on Wednesday and Friday afternoons.

On Wednesdays at 4:00, we gather in Linda's room and push the kids' desks aside. We each bring a favorite workout DVD and we use our wonderful projector (thank you technology in the classroom!) to project the video onto the pull down screen. We have done pilates, lower body, abs, and some fun super up beat bunching, kicking cardio stuff. We all get stressed together, so it is really fun to work out together to blow off some steam. It is so funny to be jumping up and down and throwing punches in a classroom, just imagining how the kid would react to see us doing it.

On Fridays we have a little walking club. When it's rainy (I live in Portland, so that is quite frequently) we do laps around our building including running the stairs and circling around both levels. The custodian told us that 15 laps is 2 miles, so that is our usual. If the sun is shining, we try different routes outside so we can enjoy the fresh air. It is fun to walk in a group because I find that I end up walking next to one person and talking then we kind of shift and I end up matching strides with someone different. Topics of conversation are all over the board and it is a terrific way to end the week.

Before we started doing this, I would leave pretty early on Fridays so that I could start the weekend. The kids leave at 2:30 so I would typically leave by 3:00. Now that we walk at 4, that gives me an extra hour to prepare for the following week, so not only do I leave for the weekend feeling good about having exercised, but I feel more prepared because I have made copies, organized, cleaned up the room and prepped everything needed for Monday.

Exercise gives you endorphins and happy teachers are better for kids!

How Does It Grow?

Last week our reading theme was "How Things Grow" and we learned about what plants need to grow. One of the stories we read talked about seeds in different types of fruit and we classified fruit into the categories "one seed" and "many seeds." Even though it seems kind of babyish for first graders, we also did a fruit sort by colors.

Earlier in the year, my English Language Development group learned about fruit and vegetable vocabulary words and I was shocked at the response when I asked them to list some vegetables. The responses I got were:

marshmallows
play dough
Vitamin Water

I assumed first graders would be able to list some veges, but this was a difficult task for my group. They did have a better understanding of fruits and were able to name many and they did learn about vegetables after making that short list because I borrowed every related book from the library to give them lots and lots of examples, but it made me realize that I can't assume they have schema for certain categories and reviewing/doing simple activities can be helpful.

Anyway, I originally made this activity for the student in my class who has Down syndrome because one of his goals is to learn and match colors. He does this activity at his seat with the help of an assistant, but I thought it would also be fun to use **my favorite** sticky magnets on the back so that I could put these items on the white board and conduct the activity in a way that would allow him to participate within the whole group. He took a turn just like the rest of the children and placed his magnets on the board. I think that was the first time all year he participated in that way, so it was great to see.

We also learned about how apple trees grow and how strawberry plants grow. For homework the kids labeled the parts of the plant after reading a Weekly Reader about the different parts of the plant and what function they have. They learned that:

A plant has flowers. Flowers make seeds. When the seeds fall to the ground, they can grow into new plants.
A plant has leaves. Leaves use light from the sun to make food for the plant.
A plant has a stem. The stem helps hold up the rest of the plant.
A plant has roots. Roots take water from the soil for the plant to use.

I don't want to plagiarize, so I will say that this info was taken from a ScienceSpin Early Primary Weekly Reader, April 2008.

Pond Habitat Mural

Today we finally completed our pond habitat mural. My students do not have many opportunities to do art and this is one of the fun activities they get to do in which they get to be creative. They really enjoyed making all the little pieces and then glueing them on the final product.

We started by brainstorming a list of things/animals in a pond habitat and then the kids basically used colored construction paper and scrap paper to draw/cut/make any of those things. They had two class periods to make their pieces and then about 15 minutes today to glue everything on.

Included in our list were:

frogs

tadpole

spawn

lily pads

snakes

bugs

a blue heron

fish

sun

water

flowers