It's Sparkling!

Two tidbits before we get to the teaching stuff...

So... today I am meeting my kiddos in line after lunch and one of my cuties comes running up to me and says, in the most excited voice ever..."Mrs. Hodson! It's SPARKLING!" Um... he meant sprinkling :) LOVE!

And...I spent all day thinking it was Tuesday (it's not, my kiddos informed me after we went to the computer lab and there was another class in there)... well at least I didn't spend the day thinking it was Thursday!

Yes, it was one of those days.

Alrighty, onto some teaching stuff...This week we started in on clocks.

I got these fun dry erase clocks from donors choose and the kids love them! We practiced setting the time to the hour and to the half.

And here's a game that we will be doing in math tubs next week. Just click the pic to download :)

 We also started our animal reports this week (a part of our zoo unit). The kids were allowed to choose any animal that could be found in a zoo, which opened up ALOT of options! My kiddos choose everything from elephants to the duck-billed platypus  (thanks phineas and ferb!). Since our school's library is tiny, I headed to the city library to pick up some extra books and it was SO worth it. Each kiddo was able to get their own book to do research out of! Today's assignment: find two facts about your animal!

And since it is BEYOND impossible to find animal books at a 1st/2nd grade for every animal, we headed to the computer lab (yep.. we had to come back later in the day since I slipped up earlier) to do some research on kids.nationalgeographic.com. OMG! A great site... complete with pics, info, videos and even sound clips of the animals.

They will start writing down their facts and organizing them tomorrow :) The class is buzzing about animals non-stop!

Oh! And I have been tagged :) I will get those questions answered soon!

Have a great rest of the week!

Wild about Charles Tiger

This week's HM story was Charles Tiger which I just adore. If you aren't familiar, it is about a young tiger who "lost" his roar and ends up finding it under a rock with a spider (he is scared into roaring ). The kids think the story is funny and the illustrations are darling, so of course we needed a matching project.

After debating between a paper plate tiger face and a few other ideas I settled on drawing out a tiger and having the kids marble paint on him. Let me just say, best decision EVER! The kids had never marble painted and just thought it was "soooo cooool" and they came out great. See how we did it...

We started with marbles, black paint and a copy paper box lid. The kids put their tigers in and tilted the box so the marbles would roll all over their tiger for some crazy stripes.

After their stripes were added they laid them to dry on butcher paper.

And this morning we added wiggly eyeballs, whiskers, a nose, and a mouth. Like so...

Some came out looking a little like Garfield rather than tigers, but they are cute non the less! And to keep it aligned we wrote about something we lost and where we finally rediscovered the item. Most of the kids lost and found a toy in their writing, but by far my fave was the kiddo who lost her money and found it under her mattress! HA!

If you get to do Charles Tiger, you might just find this printable helpful... enjoy!

 Have a happy Wednesday night!