100th Day

Thursday was the 100th day of school! I enjoy making this into a super special day full of fun (and learning) for my students. Here’s a peek into our day.

The students were greeted with this sign,

 

and a streamer curtain at the door. They walked into the classroom saying “Whoa!” and “Wow, what is this?”

(Pardon the blurry picture.)

Their faces were full of smiles, and that made this teacher’s heart very happy!

For one student, the day was even more special because he had earned enough stickers to trade in and use the teacher’s chair for the day!

 

In Bible class, we did sword drills, looking up verses that contained the word “hundred.” The student who found the most Scriptures got a prize.

Since it was a special day, we moved desks into groups after we were done with spelling pretests and Language.

Each student colored 1/4 of a poster with 100 puzzle pieces on it.

 

There were some very creative posters when the pieces were put together.

 

 

Although the students might have told you that we didn’t have math, they spent 1/2 hour estimating, adding, subtracting, using money, and learning about ordering from catalogs.  

Each student was given a school supply catalog, and told that they had $100 to spend. They had to buy at least three things, and their goal was to get as close to $100 as they could without going over.

One of my mathematicians was only $0.05 away and received a prize for his hard work! Several others were less than a quarter away.

Throughout the day, we did quite a few other fun activities. We did 100 exercises (20 jumping jacks, 10 jumping high fives, 10 stretches, etc.). The students guessed which of three bags of jelly beans had 100, and how many jelly beans were in the other two bags. Two students were only 1 jelly bean off in their guesses, so they each got a prize.

 

We ended the day with several 100 yard dashes.

One of the students commented that they were glad we had a whole day where they didn’t have to learn anything!

 

But it thrills my heart to know that not only did they learn quite a few things, but they also will have memories to last them for a long, long time!

Charlie the Capital Catching Seal

I’d like to introduce you to Charlie the seal. He arrived on the scene earlier this week as third grade began to learn all about capital letters.You see, he catches capitals, just like all studious third-graders should. So far, he has helped to teach them all about capitalizing the 1st word in every sentence, the word I, days of the week, and months of the year.

Last night, he somehow managed to get a hold of the third grade language papers. ;-) He painted beautiful green circles all over the correct capital letters. Unfortunately, he also found a couple of incorrect capital letters and blotted those out with black circles.

The third graders were quite excited to see that Charlie checked their capitals!

Rainy Days are Here Again!

I learned very early in teaching that rainy days can cause students to become more and more wound up, the longer the rain continues. So last year, I determined that I would do something on rainy days to encourage better behavior. I use a lot of different methods throughout the year, but my returning 4th graders all know that a rainy day means something exciting is bound to happen in our classroom.

So, when I checked the forecast for this week and found that we are to be expecting rain every day, I decided that my positive reinforcement would need to be something that lasted throughout the week.

 

So, here are the simple charts each student found on their desk this morning. All day, I watched for great behaviors such as:

* following directions quickly

* quiet hallway behavior

* attentiveness

* diligence

* neatness

The good behaviors were rewarded with stickers, at the end of the week, the students will be able to redeem the stickers for candy and prizes.

As I tell my students, “The days that seem the gloomiest outside, are the days we need to be the happiest inside!”