MLK, Living and Non, adverbs, poetry, Oh My!

Hello Everyone!
First of all, I want to thank Feedspot for naming this little blog one of the top 30 Firstgrade Teacher blogs on the internet!!  What??? So honored! I haven't been blogging that long, and simply started as a way of sharing what we are doing in first grade. It has grown into a passion.  I love teaching and I love sharing. To be honored with this award is so cool!!! Thank you!!!
What a crazy busy week we've had!! And a busy weekend coming up! I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like I need more hours in the day!!  Both at school and at home.  The juggling continues. But I feel like as long as I'm making every moment count on both fronts, it's all good!! 
This week we finished up our study of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And talk about making every moment count, the lessons learned from the study, will last in the hearts of these little firsties.  I have shared my unit before, and will include a link a bit later, but I wanted to show a few pics of where our hearts took us.

I always include an impact lesson comparing the insides and outsides of apples.  On the outside, the apples all look different. On the inside they each contain a star!  Just like people. We are all different on the outside.  Every. Single. One. Of. Us.  

That should not ever stop us from letting the star on the inside of each of us shine brightly!!! 

As a teacher I try to help each kiddo find his inner star and shine!!! I strive to include many, many activities that nurture the learning styles of each little star!

I extended the apple lesson by having the kids create a star with their handprints.  With little direction, they were able to express themselves with color in a very hands on way. 

As we have worked through the MLK study, one early insight my students had was that they have dreams too.  Some of their dreams were that all kids would have books to read, food to eat, and clean water to drink.  

I love this picture so much! Even though our lives are very different from those during Mlk's time, I believe these kids are going to do everything they can to make their dreams come true!! Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that "If I can't do great things, I can do small things in a great way."  As teachers, we are doing small things...that will hopefully turn into great things!!! Thank you, MLK for your leadership!

If you would like my MLK Unit, simply CLICK HERE!!:)

In science, we finished up our unit on living and nonliving.  We have had so much fun comparing the two.

After learning about how we know if something is living or nonliving, we created and described pet rocks!

And as a culminating Sci Fri we were able to compare three things that looked similar, but proved to be very different....worms!!

I loooove that after learning about living and nonliving things, most of these sweet kiddos were not afraid to hold an earth worm!!  Again...small things!! :)

To get a printable of my Living vs. Nonliving unit, CLICK HERE!! :)

Finally, I wanted to share a bit of what we've been working on in writing! POETRY!!!  I love it so much and am so amazed at the fun we've been having with language, word choice, rhythm, etc.!   One of our first poems was a shape poem about winter, written with our senses.  Here's our brainstorming! Thinking about winter through our senses brought some deeper thinking!!

We have done so much more than what I was able to capture in a photo.  And we have just begun!! Most poems we are writing will be added to an anthology, and recreated in a visual. 

We turned our study of adverbs into a shape poem!

I love how these are turning out!!  And you should have seen those stars shining!!! First graders are poets , and they didn't even know it!!

I shared my poetry unit a couple of weeks ago.  Simply search above for poetry. And the snowball adverb study that we made into a poem is in my snowball unit that I just shared!!!

Wow!! This post turned out to be longer that I thought it was going to be!! But I have one more thing to share!!

Our 100th day of school is coming up in 9 days!!!  I reworked a few things on my unit and added a couple of other things!!! Even if you already have it, please download the new and hopefully improved unit!

HERE'S THE LINK TO THE UNIT! CLICK HERE!!! :)

Ok! that's it for today! Hopefully you got a bit out of this post!! Please know that the comment gadget is not working for some reason, but you can always e-mail me with questions or concerns about anything! We are all in this together!! 

Thanks for stopping by this window on wonder!!

I appreciate you!

Joyfully!

Nancy

firstgradewow@gmail.com

or nancyvb1@gmail.com

Not the color of our skin...

Hello Everyone!
What a wonder-filled day we had today in first grade.  We were able to set some time aside and talk about the importance of  understanding what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood for, his dream for his children, his dream for everyone.  After reading a few books about his background, and what life was like during the 50's and 60's, and learning a little song, I wanted to be sure the kids really "got" the intention, and how blessed we are to be living in an age when we can all live together in peace and equality. 
We listened to a piece of Dr. Kings's speech, especially the part "not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character."  We then looked at each other and realized each and everyone of us is different on the outside, but not so different on the inside.
 Then I used many different kinds of apples to show how they come in many different shapes, colors, sizes, etc.  I proceeded to cut them open cross-ways to reveal the beautiful star on the inside of each and every one of them.  All the apples looked so special, but at the same time, they looked equal on the inside!  Hmmmm...

Look at those beautiful colors!!

Then the kids went back to seats and wrote, drew and colored their interpretation of the lesson Dr. King was teaching.  Beautiful!  We want to be like Dr. King!

This turned out to one of the kids favorite lessons so far!  I think they will remember it, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I am so thankful for each of these precious little hearts. I hope they continue to have a love of peace and equality.
Joyfully!
Nancy