Seeds, Seeds and More Seeds

These last couple of weeks have been a blur and as much as I love Spring Break, it is a pain preparing for the Master's coming to town.  I love it, but our town and my house revolves around The Masters!  It turns into a beautiful city during the spring and the azaleas are so beautiful everywhere!!!

Anyway, I only have 4 days before our Spring Break comes and it will be over just as soon as it began, but I will take it!  With Springtime in full bloom, our Science unit goes hand in hand with what we are teaching... PLANTS and SEEDS!  I know the curriculum is kind of boring when it comes to what we are supposed to teach, so of course I have to add to it by doing FUN stuff! 

First we started with a K-W-L chart of what we know about plants.  They seem to know a lot about plants so far, so teaching them will be easy... If I haven't mentioned, my class is super and smart!  :)

After that we compared two Lima beans, one that was hard and the other one was soaked overnight.  They all tried so hard to peel the seed coat off the one that wasn't soaked, and they couldn't believe the difference between the two.  Not only were they easier to peel, but they doubled in size because they soaked up the water like a sponge!  Then we took another soaked Lima bean and put it in a zip lock baggie with a wet paper towel.  I then hung them in the window (luckily my window gets great sunlight all day long) and now the observing begins.  They are going to keep a journal of what they see every day.  I wish I had more than 5 days to do the plants, but hopefully it will start to grow some before Friday.

I also purchased a kit from Wal-Mart that had those disc that you soak in water and they expand to fill the pots... well my kids LOVED that and thought it was cool!  I love the little things that seem to amaze them!  These worked out great because we planted different seeds in each pot and watched them grow.  I was surprised at how fast they did grow, but like I said, I wish I had another week so we could really watch them grow!  The coolest thing happened, when I was cutting them apart, there were no stems growing, but underneath the roots were coming out of the bottom.  What a cool learning time to see that just because the plant didn't grow on top, it was growing under the ground!  So cool! The kit came with tomato seeds and a neat watering system you set on top.  I labeled the sticks with their names on them and the kind of plant they planted.

Fast forward 2 weeks!!! I am now finally learning how update my blog from my phone and insert pictures!!! Yay me!! I think I might just get this whole blogging thing down after all!!

I also want to mention that we wrote in our daily journal and drew a picture of how our seed changed and on the last day, they wrote, "what do you think the seed will become?"  As you can see in the pictures, they did grow quite a bit for just 5 days!  They were so excited to see the different stages that the plants went through.

 They did awesome with them!!! Check out the pictures!

Dry seed and the soaked seed. 

Our Seeds

Our Window

We get full sunlight most of the day, so that helped a lot!

This is always one of my favorite Science activities to teach.  I don't have any fun activities that I do other than the hands on stuff you see here and the journal, which was a simple word document.  I hope they enjoyed as much I did!

Spring Break 2012

I hope you are all having a wonderful spring break and much deserved rest! I am lucky enough to be spending my time at the beach which has been wonderful! Thankfully I am surrounded by some of the best friends a girl could ask for! They are watching out for me while my darling husband lives his dream and works at the Masters. The only downfall is that we can never have a real Spring Break together as a family! He loves it, so that makes him happy, which makes me happy!

I am sorry that I haven't updated any posts lately, but at my school they blocked it so I can't update my posts from school anymore, which I only did on Sundays.... So I am going to have to find a way to do it from home now! I was looking forward to updating my blog this week while on vacation... But NO INTERNET CONNECTION!!!! Yikes!

I am dying to get on the computer and blog and I feel lost without it! I guess it is a good break for me... But I cannot wait to get back home and work in my classroom! I am having withdrawal! I am able to post from my phone but don't have any good pictures... Except one that I took of my babies on the beach! I hope you don't mind if I share!

I know this week is going by too quickly and I am enjoying it... I hope you are enjoying your break as well!

Shapes, Fractions and Super Stars

Last week we finished up our Planes and 3-D Shapes unit in math.  One fun thing we did was design any 3-D shape and they had to label the parts and how many sides/faces, vertices, right angles, and draw the shape they made.  I passed out toothpicks and marshmallows for them to become architects.  They loved it!  I had only a few that did something other than a square, but they also realized once they made their shapes, they could EAT the leftover marshmallows! 

This week we started fractions!  I always start off with essential questions for each area I teach, so today our Math E.Q's were:

Today we only worked on the bottom E.Q.  What are the parts of a Fractions?  We talked about them and made a web of what we know.  They all came up with great facts and most of them said has to do with part of a whole!  AWESOME!  I found this great activity over that The Teacher Wife and she offered this fractions unit!  Amazing!  Click on the picture below and it will take you to her site and all that she offers there!  If you aren't a fan of yours, you totally need to be.  I love all her ideas and I am in awe of where she finds her time to do all of these activities, plus teach and do your lesson plans, grade papers, and still have a life... Amazing!

So anyway, since we are talking about the "Parts" of a fraction, I used her activity and made a poster of the fraction and then had the kids come up and work in pairs to figure out where each part went.  They loved it and the class participated as well.  Tomorrow we will be making a booklet of fractions. 

When we finished, I took down the poster and all of its parts and they had to show me what they learned.



We have our hand movements too that we use with the whole brain teaching.  We raise a fist in the air and say, "NUMERATOR" and our other arm is making a straight line, we then move our fist to the bottom and say, that's right... you guessed it... "DENOMINATOR."  They love using their hands!

On the last note... this is our last nine weeks as second graders.  These boys and girls worked so hard to reach their AR goal and I so proud of them!  Here is a picture with their AR Brain Beads on and now we are starting over with our points.  We are already rocking and rolling with our points! 

We are AR SUPER STARS!!!

We are missing 4 of the ROCK STARS... they were in the library... Hopefully this last nine weeks, they ALL will make it!  I know that can!!!

It's a Linky Party!!!

Welcome to the LINKY PARTY sponsored by

Kindergarten Lifestyle! 

It is my first time joining one of these and I am so excited because I am a stalker when it comes to blogs!  They have helped make me a much better teacher, because honestly... I just don't have the time to create all these great masterpieces that these other teachers do!  Also, I just don't know how they do it... I always thought I was so smart when it came to the computer, but after learning about all these teaching blogs, I am totally clueless!!! 

 Totally on my bucket list, but I will learn this if it kills me!!!

So if you want to join, click on the picture above and follow her directions. 

We all know that K-2 teachers are SUPER STARS! 

This will help connect you with other great teaching blogs!!!

Begging and Borrowing

Do you find it hard to believe that we have to spring forward already?  I am used to growing up in Indiana and we never had to change our time, but I don't think anyone really gets used to waking up an hour earlier...  So since I have lost an hour, I am trying to squeeze that extra time anywhere I can find it!

I am not sure what happened when I turned mid age or middle 30's... I never thought I would say I was that old.. but here I am and I feel like I am sponge and want to soak everything up.  I really wish I had this drive in college, but now it is kind of obsessive... I have always wanted to be the best teacher for my kids and I want so much for them to be the BEST kids ever!  It is still surreal to me to have my dream career and doing what I love so much every day, and that these parents trust me with their babies every day.  There are so many resources out there that are so helpful and wonderful ideas out there to help me succeed to be the best teacher for my kiddos.  That is where my title comes from.  I just do not have time to create all these wonderful activities for each subject I am supposed to teach, but thankfully there are teachers out there that are dedicated to producing these wonderful activities for me to be the best teacher ever!  (I am not the best by any means, but it sure does help me feel a lot more prepared!)

My other obsession is Pinterest... Who doesn't LOVE Pinterest, right?  I have found so many great bloggers out there that have helped me everyday!  Thank you for all your great ideas that I use all the time!  You all rock!  I wish I could list them all, but it would be all of them!

"Oh Class...."  "Oh Yesss!" 

"Classity Class..."  "Yessity, Yes!"

"Hands and Eyes..."  "Hands and Eyes!"

My kids love our new fun way of learning!  It is called, "Whole Brain Teaching."  I have always incorporated whole brain learning, but other teachers out there have really created fun learning ways for my kids to excel!  Check out this teacher that I have stole some great ideas from.  Not only is she a great teacher, but I love her style!  The kids love being a "teacher" and having a voice.  For so long, kids are expected to sit and listen, but really how much can they learn from a lecture, right?  Check this video out for some great ideas!  Love it, love it, love it!

We are a PBIS school and that is a great program teaching positive behavior and respect and responsibility, but along with whole brain teaching it has worked wonders keeping my kids engaged and learning!  I love it!  Before each learning activity we act out our five directions so we "remember" what our expectations are.  If a child isn't following these, I can remind them of what is expected and they get it together quickly!

I have learned over the years that I am not afraid to beg and borrow to help make my kiddos be their best!! 

What are some things that you have borrowed over the years to help make you a better teacher?

What a "Seusstastic" Week!

Wow!  So much has happened and I haven't even been keeping up with my blog!  Today, while making fun writing with paint on our hands, I let the students have fun with my camera.  I am so sad because my husband bought me a new camera for Christmas and I am just not happy with it.  I cannot get it to take good pictures.  I think it is too smart and all I needed was a point and shoot camera... so please forgive my messy pictures! 

We had our Portfolio Conferences where the parents come in and look over their child's work for since the beginning of the year.  We are big on showing our growth off!  The students come so far in just a short amount of time and they all need some Bragging Rights!  The parents seemed to enjoy spending the time with their children.  I did take pictures of the parents, but I will just email them to the parents instead of putting them on here... I have all my students permission to be on here, but the parents I don't!  So they get out of being on here!  :)  Thanks for coming and supporting your child!  They love sharing their learning with you.

Last week we had Career Week and we had different activities all week long.  One of my favorite activities are the "Dressing Up Day."  They all looked so precious in their outfits and they all outdid themselves.  Just look at how cute they are!  We had a big parade where we show off our careers with the rest of the school.  Who doesn't enjoy showing off in the parade???  (I had 4-5 students out ALL week last week, that is why I didn't have all their pictures!) 

  

This is our door!  We didn't win, but I thought ours was very cute, but I guess I got the whole career thing mixed in with what they were asking... I have to follow my own advice...

FOLLOW DIRECTIONS!

We were supposed to make a theme for our door for COLLEGE... I kind of did what we were working on... MY DREAM CAREER IS.... but they still turned out super cute!  We did a PowerPoint page and they inserted pictures that showed their career.  We then made pennants of the colleges we wanted to go to. 

They did a great job with it!

Not only did we have a fun week last, we had a wild and crazy storm pass through on Friday.  Let's just say that Mrs. Harpley doesn't enjoy storm/tornadoes at all.  We had a threat of one and next thing I know, the wind is blowing like crazy and hail started!  Anyway, they did a great job and I moved them away from the window and just waited until it was over.   

I love my class! 

When it stopped long enough to open the window, we had a great Science experience with hail! 

Ok... I HATE having my picture taken... but I thought I would put a picture of me up since the kids enjoyed being the photographer for the day... here we are working on some fun Dr. Seuss writings.

Thanks so much to Mel over at her blog... Seusstastic Classroom!

The kids LOVED this fun activity.  I will have more to follow when they are all finished!  Here is a sneak preview! 

And yes... I am wearing a tie!

Finally.... today was "Tied" up in a good book!  They all had to wear their ties and get tied up with a good book!  Too bad today, we didn't have much time to read other than our reading book!

I LOVE READING WEEK!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DR. SEUSS!!!

Wordless Wednesday (Almost Wordless)

Putting the Timeline together for President Lincoln's life.

These writings turned out so great!  I was so excited to see how creative they were with these fun Valentine writings!  I am so impressed, because it really takes a higher level of thinking to do these! 

They are ROCK STARS!

This week is career week and we have been talking about our "Dream Careers."  Today in computer lab, we created a PowerPoint of what we wanted to be when we grew up and found pictures to insert.  Once again, totally impressed with how smart these kids are!  They did a great job using the program!  I will put up pictures later, since this blog is supposed to be "WORDLESS!" 

Happy Wednesday!