Cooking Synonyms!!!

Hi again!!! 
I love to make my lessons hands on and super fun so when I saw I had to teach my children about synonyms I went over to one of my all time favorite bloggers The First Grade Parade ! She is fabulous and it so happens that she JUST taught synonyms!!!! Of course I follow her on instagram (I am obsessed with instagram simply because I follow +100 awesome teachers!) THANK YOU INSTAGRAM ! Anyways, she posted a cute activity called "Synonyms Rolls", I know! Extremely cute! You can check her post here. I am going to tell you how my day went. 
If you are cooking you MUST have a chef hat! I have no assistant so I had to make 20 little chef hats for my little ones (I am a PRO at making hats now!) It is super easy btw! My kids knew we were going to be having something special today and they knew I was up to something, as soon as the walked in the classroom they gave me a big smile and said "we are cooking today?!?!?!" I had all the hats on my reading table ... they could not focus, they were staring at the little hats giving me the look of "Ms. Parra, can we pleeeeaaasseeee wear them now??" So as we were doing our reading block I started passing out the Chef hats to those who were on task and those who were reading...it literally worked like magic. My chef hats might have some superpowers because they started reading more and they were PERFECT. 


 

After we finished our story we started talking about synonyms. I had previously chosen five words that I knew they could find synonyms for. Each child needed to pick one so before they picked I modeled to them how to find out synonyms for my word! I chose BIG, they all helped me and we came up with Tall, High, Bigger, Gigantic, Humongous and "super big". I repeated myself once more and then they started working! They were so so so sooooo excited! 

Coming up with his synonyms! 

 After they came up with at least 4 or 5 synonyms I gave them their very own "Synonym Roll" they were so happy they were finally cooking...even though it was only a paper! They started writing down their list of synonyms in their rolls. 

 After they "finished" cooking their synonym rolls I gave them their very own rolls so they could enjoy the whole activity! 

We had a BLAST cooking our synonyms and I think we set the bar way too high now!!! My children still wear their hats when they read or work on centers, they are pros at synonyms and they are still talking about how much they loved cooking synonyms rolls! I loved loved loved this activity! Any questions ? Don't forget to ask! 

Easter Anyone?

Friday finally! It has been such a busy week! I love having breaks but I really dislike having to wake up early 5 days a week! But oh well, I love my job and the more time I spend at school the more ideas I get! One of my favorite things about holidays is the sale stores have AFTER the holidays! I got to buy TONS of easter eggs on sale, and of course I had to use them in my class. I wrote some of the high frequency words my students are learning and I put one on each egg, obviously the children were stoked when they saw a new center! Especially one with easter eggs! I love white boards and so do they, therefore we played a little writing game! Each child needed to grab an egg, inside they would find a word and then they needed to create a LONG sentence (because Ms. Parra loves long sentences).

Our Easter Eggs!!!

They even had 3 words for sentences!!!

Working hard!

I will keep the eggs for a while, they are just fantastic! The children love to pick them and play with words and is so far a great hit on work on writing! I will also use them for math facts next week, I will definitely try to post about how it went so be sure you check my blog! Any questions or suggestions?

The Tortoise and The Hare

It is so crazy to think that we are only two months away from the last day of classes! I am so thrilled!!! In my class we finally started reading fables! I love love love fables! They are so amazing but it is really hard for the children to fully comprehend what the lesson is. In order for them to start understanding the whole concept of fables I wanted them to become really familiar with the fable of The Tortoise and the Hare, what to do ???? I came up with the idea of stick puppets, yes! I had some left over popsicle sticks from Christmas (they are bigger than the regular ones) so why not use them? I printed several copies of the two main characters of the story, I found the images online and then I put them in a word document (I like to save paper, in my school printing is VERY limited). I divided them up before giving each child their pair. I gave them the option of cutting them out or cut around the line, of course they decided to cut them carefully around the LINE! They love cutting and actually they have gotten so good at it! Nothing compared to those little ones I had at the beginning of the year!

The Tortoise and the Hare

After they cut their two main characters they were free to color their own pictures and stick them to their two popsicle sticks. They were so excited to have their two little characters actually IN their hands! 

Cutting out! 

Our Characters!!!!

I love writing, therefore I love making them write! I have been teaching sequence so I had saved a graphic organizer (I am obsessed with Graphic Organizers!) I made my own and is in my store if you would like to get it, is FREE!  Sequence Graphic Organizer  

I used the graphic organizers with my small groups it took me two days to work with my four groups, I did not want to rush and they children had a blast retelling the story, when it was time to write they did the writing ON THEIR OWN! I was so proud! It was like the puppets gave them magical writing powers! I was not expecting this to go as well since I came up with it in such a short period of time! 

I bet I left some details out so if you have any questions or concerns just write me!!! 

Happy Spring Break!