Thursday, January 17, 2013

We Survived 100 Days of School

Today was our 100th Day of School and I am very sure the kiddos will be sleeping well tonight... including ME!  All day long we had a lot of moving, playing, and thinking.  This year Ms. B {the teacher across the hall from me} and I did the 100th Day a whole new way.

This is the most fun I have had in a long time with the 100th Day.  She found the idea of doing "Survivor Style"... like the show Survivor.  Some of the ideas came from the wonderful web site Teachers Pay Teachers.  Thank you Lesson Plan SOS Divas!!  We had formed "tribes" and they had to come up with their own tribe name and make a poster.  We did this the day before because it took a while to prepare.  They were so CUTE!!

Tribe Names: The Frogs, The Jaguars, Cheetah Racers, and The Great White Seagulls
I also decorated the room at the beginning of the week to set the mood and make it feel like that we were in the rain forest or on an island somewhere.


This morning when they came in we made our headbands.  They were silly looking but they loved them.  They each had 10 strips with 10 designs on them to equal 100.  Then we went to our Safari mural in the school for a class picture before all the festivities started.


The first challenge was where the tribes had to give toppings to their ice cream sundaes.  We had 5 toppings and each tribe member had to come and grab 20 of each topping.  There were cherries, whipped cream, bananas, nuts, and sprinkles.  The challenge was that only ONE tribe member could come to the center and get a topping.  Each member after that would do the same and no one was allowed to glue their toppings on until ALL the toppings were collected.  The first team to glue them on and have them stick, wins!


The second challenge was a link chain.  The tribes had to follow the same format by grabbing 20 strips at a time and then they could stick them together to make their chain link..  First tribe to get all 100 links, wins!


The last two challenges were a marshmallow hunt and a roll the dice until you get 100!  The marshmallow hunt was where I hid 100 mallows around the room.  They had to search for them by walk on their knees.  I stopped my timer every 100 seconds, they returned to their base, and counted how many they had so far on their 100 boards.  I am not sure how this happened but we got through 3 rounds of that and we had 99 marshmallows altogether.  Then on the search for that last one... someone found 3!  HUH?!  After that we added again because I was thinking maybe I hid over 100.  But no, there were then 96!  I call SHENANIGANS!!  Someone was either hiding, taking, or splitting those mallows in half just to add more to their board.  I guess I'll never find out.

Anyways, the final challenge was just a low key, simple game.  Roll the die, count how many, and color until you reach 100.


I bet you are wondering where we kept score.  To make it even more Survivor-ish, I made torches for each team and we kept a tally system.  Of course I forgot to get the end picture with the winning team but this is a before shot.



We ended up having a tie breaker because 3 teams ended up having the same score.  So the tie breaker was to guess where they would end up if they took 100 steps and walk those steps to find out if they were accurate.  Neither of them were correct and so we went with the closest one.  I was about done at that point!

I'm BEAT!!!

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Random Happenings and Thoughts

It's been a while since I have blogged about anything on here.  This year has been long  {I blame it on Common Core and new school hours}but we are almost complete for 2012-2013.  My first graders are now a little over half way to second grade.  I love to blog about what we do in class and how things are going but this year has been struggle to just sit down and write about it.  I know next year will be better after having been through the Common Core already... at least I hope so.

The one thing I feel like is going well this year is the writing.  I've fully gone back to Lucy Caulkins and I am reading through her adaptations of Writing Workshop with the Common Core component.  Get it for your grade level if you can.  It really lays out month by month which genre of writing you should do.  We have been through personal narratives, opinion & persuasive writing, how-to's, and now we are in to authors as mentors. I just finished up an author study on Laura Numeroff with my class.  Overall, the kids did a good job at writing like her.

This upcoming week we will hit our 100th day!  We are planning on celebrating "Survival Style".  There will be tribes and challenges throughout the day.  No one will be voted off the island but we will have a prize for the winning-est {is that a word?}team at the end.  This idea came from my former track mate, who is a ninja by the way, and another blogger out there who so kindly put her unit up on Teachers Pay Teachers.  We are going full on vines hanging from the doorway & in the classrooms, jungle animals, and even creating group/tribe flags.  Can't WAIT!!!


Monday, January 7, 2013

Flash Drive Giveaway!

Holy cow it seems to good to be true!  This give away will have a ton of resources.  I needed to make a blog post about this just to enter the contest!  WHY would I want to tell everyone about this if I WANT to win?! But it's what they asked me to so here it is.  Follow this link to enter the contest as well.  May the best person win!