And I'm back!

 The chaos of the school year took over.  I am making a resolution (in April) that I will post at least weekly.  My great group of kiddos and I have been very busy over the past few months.  Here are some snapshots of the fun.

During the month of November, my kids brought in non-perishable food items for the holiday season to share with families in need.  I was so touched by the generosity and compassion my students demonstrated.

The PTO sponsors a holiday plate raffle in December.  Each class gets to decorate a plate and it is raffled off at the December PTO event.  Here's our cool plate- each student dipped their finger in white paint to make a snowflake.

One of my Christmas gifts was this sweet Christmas tree that lights up!  The parent had made an ornament for each child in the class.  This will be a part of my room for years to come.

My kids are really great at thinking and writing- We use a lot of thinking maps.  Here is a example of 2 thinking maps that we've completed through magazine collaging.  This was during a study of needs and wants.  The blue paper is the "Needs" thinking map and the yellow paper is the "Wants" thinking map.  (Please note, the photo on the top right is peas.)  

I love the way the kids apply their knowledge of letter sounds to their writing- the bottom picture on the left is of an I Pod Touch.  

I was lucky enough to attend a Debbie Diller conference (WOOHOO)! The conference was held at the beautiful Hotel Jefferson in Richmond, VA.  While at the conference, I picked up a lot about math workstations and building vocabulary enrichment during instruction.  I bought the Math Work Stations book and she signed it!

March came with Read Across America month.  For those not in the know, Read Across America is held in honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday.  My class celebrated with a weekend meet up to see Dr. Seuss' The Lorax.  One of our awesome mothers made delicious treats for us to enjoy at school.  See Thing 1 and Thing 2!

In preparation for Spring Break and our math egg hunt, we read the book Rechenka's Eggs by Patricia Polacco.  Afterwards, we created our own papier mache eggs.

We also studied Community Helpers during the month of March.  The biggest hit by far were the firemen from our local fire station.  

 That's enough catching up for now.  I will uphold my resolution!  I think I can, I think I can, I think I can!