Grinch Day and and Elf?

We were Grinchy learners today!  To set the day off to a good start we all wore green.  Of course, we read How The Grinch Stole Christmas, and after that, we brainstormed adjectives that described Mr. Grinch on a web. (I'd include the web if I knew how to upload a Word Doc.)  We watched the cartoon version of The Grinch (not the scary Jim Carey version) and we compared it to the book. We decided we like the cartoon because the Grinch was so cool looking and we could hear the singing Who's.
We went on to write about what we would do to make the Grinch grin.  More good ideas from blogland.

For math we worked on word problems all about the Grinch.  We had to divide!  Wow!

Fun day!

Oh and one more thing.......this elf appeared out of nowhere....hmmmmm.  Will he be here tomorrow? Why is he here?

Even 'he' knows the real meaning of Christmas!

Holiday Happenings

Thanks to my new bloggy friends I have some new (new for us) projects to share that we have done.  The first photo is our version of Mrs. Carroll's  idea over at The First Grade Parade.  After reading the book Santa's Stuck, we thought about how we would help Santa if he was stuck in our chimney.  Next year I'll cut the legs a bit shorter, but other than that I love them!

Our next hallway masterpiece came from an idea I grabbed from the same teacher.  With the help of Mrs. Bellettini and some tweaking of the original, I made some patterns and ran to the rizzo machine.  All the parts were  in order ready to go.  One step at a time we made our elves.  Great for building the skill of following directions! Then for writing we filled out the Elf Application.  On the second page (which you can't see in the photo) each firstie had to write a good reason Santa should choose them over all the rest of the elves to get the job.   I was proud of the great ideas they came up with.

So darn cute!!!!!!!!

Where Oh Where Has My Teacher Gone?

Did you ever have a conflict where you were honored to be asked to do something, but at the same time be upset about the very same thing.  Here's what I 'm talking about.

 I am part of a consortium that is adopting the core curriculum standards and writing them to fit the needs of our district's LA program, basically.  At least once a month I need to attend an all day meeting out of my district to work on this task.  This is exciting to me for many reasons.  I love teaching LA and getting to know the standards inside and out will help me teach more effectively.  But on the other hand these meetings take me away from my firsties and teaching.  I have been diligent in getting substitutes that I know and trust to do a great job.  I get very possessive of my firsties and am quite a control freak when it comes to what and how they are being taught. 

That's not the end.  I am also being trained in Ortan Gillingham, which is a program that uses multisensory approaches to teach reading to young children.  I am real excited about that too, but again time away from my firsties.  At least this training is in district and I can stop in a few times to check on everyone during the day.  These two events happened to take me away 4 times in December from my class.  DECEMBER  people....I'm busy in December!  We are reading so many gingerbread man/boy versions, and making so many projects, and writing up a storm.  I am about ready to pull some hair out.  Not to mention writing sub plans is no picnic!

So if you're asking...where oh where has my teacher gone?  That's where. 
Hmmmmf!