Elf Applications

Today we wrote about the reasons we thought Santa should hire us as one of his elves. We had to come up with three reasons. We hope he will hire us!

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Gingerbread Fun

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As you can tell from the slideshow, we have been doing lots of gingerbread activities in our classroom.

We read lots of different books about gingerbread men, girls, cowboys, friends, pirates, and many other gingerbread creations. We talked about the title, characters, repeated phrase, and ending for each story. We were placed in groups, and each group chose one of the books we had read. We filled out information about the book. Then we got a large piece of brown paper and made a giant gingerbread house. They turned out really neat.

We also made gingerbread cookies. Mrs. Youngblut's daughter, Kelsey, came and helped us with this. We got to decorate them with frosting, Skittles, chocolate chips, and licorice. It was fun decorating them but even more fun eating them!

Fun Games!

Reindeer Barn

The Rain Deer Orchestra

Reindeer Coloring Page

Turkeys in Disguise

Here are the turkeys we disguised so they wouldn't get eaten for Thanksgiving. We used a program called "Blabberize" to make them talk. We had fun recording ourselves to make it look like our turkeys were talking!


Alita - Ghost


James - Nerd


Griffin - Basketball Player


Kiana - Mummy


Damean - Veteran


Matthew - Policeman


Dylan - American Indian


Jocelyn - Granny


Amelia - Abraham Lincoln


Sophie - Disco Dancer


Olivia - CeCe


Allisyn - Rock Star


Michael - Hobo


Caleb - Motorcycle Driver


Blaine - Dr. Byron McKeeby


Ian - Football Player


Madison - Pilgrim Hunter


Bailey - Cowboy


Konnor - Peyton Manning

Book Fair Door Decorating Contest

(Click on picture above to go to Cardinal's Book Fair website.)

This year's theme for the Scholastic Book Fair is "Reading is Out of This World". Our PTO is sponsoring a door decorating contest for the first time this year. Our class is trying to get our second win in the door decorating contest (after our Red Ribbon Week win :-). I think we have a good shot at it. Our door turned out pretty cool. The students are holding a book they like to read.

(We discussed that the above is NOT a replica of Earth.)

We will find out this week if we won or not!

Today we had our pumpkin day. We had 4 pumpkins. They were four different sizes. We each had a booklet we kept our information in. We listed adjectives describing our pumpkins. We measured the height, weight, and circumference of our pumpkin. We counted the number of ribs our pumpkin had. We decorated a picture of a pumpkin to look like a book character. We checked to see if the pumpkins would sink or float. We estimated the number of seeds in our pumpkins, and then counted to see how many there were. The smallest pumpkin had the most seeds in it - 467! We had a very busy day today!

Fall Harvest Party/Red Ribbon Week

Today was our Fall Harvest Party. We dressed up as a character from a book. We had many different characters present today! Here are some of them:










We made a fun snack from vegetables today. This is what they looked like:







Red Ribbon Week - Door Decorating Contest

For the first time, we had a door decorating contest for Red Ribbon Week. We made really neat skeletons out of Qtips for our door. It looks awesome! We will find out Monday who won the contest. We pledge to be drug free!

Flat Stanley Predictions

Last week our class started reading the book Flat Stanley. We are taking part in the Global Read Aloud Project. We will be reading the book along with many other students from around the world. One of the activities we did was predict how we thought Stanley became flat.





How did Stanley become flat?

Sophie - His room was so hot that he melted.
Konnor - He was run over by a ball.
Michael - He was run over by a steamroller.
Griffin - He was run over by a semi.
Madison - He was flattened by a flat iron.
Blaine - He drank some liquid, and that is what made him flat.
Kiana - He probably got smashed.
James - He got hit.
Matthew - He got run over.
Ian - He got smooshed.
Alita - He got run over by a truck.
Damean - He got run over by a trash can.
Amelia - He got smashed by something at night.
Bailey - A picture frame fell on him.
Jocelyn - He was smooshed by a chalkboard.
Olivia - I think he got flat by his dresser.
Allisyn - He got flat by a chalkboard.
Caleb - He got flat in the middle of the night when a bulletin board fell on him. (Yes, Caleb admitted to hearing the story before.)

We Skyped Today!

This morning we Skyped with Mrs. Youngblut's daughter. She goes to Iowa State. We all got to introduce ourselves to her. She showed us her aquatic frog.

In math we learned about fractional parts. We used the yellow, red, blue, and green pattern blocks. The yellow hexagon is one whole. Each red trapeziod is one half of the hexagon. Each blue parallelogram is one third of the hexagon. Each green triangle is one sixth of the hexagon.

Today was pajama day. We had fun wearing our pajamas today.

Stanley is Flat!

We went to P.E. and Art today. In P.E. we played "Find the Eyeball". In Art we talked about doing designs.

In math we made ABB patterns with pattern blocks. We also made ABB patterns by tracing around the pattern blocks on a strip of paper. After we traced them, we colored and labeled them.

In reading we did a new activity called "Make a Word". Mrs. Youngblut would tell us a word, and we would use our letters to make the word. At the end, there was a secret word we had to figure out by using all of our letter tiles. Today's secret word was stand.

We started reading Flat Stanley. We found out that Stanley was flattened when a bulletin board fell on him. He was 4 feet tall, 1 foot wide, and 1/2 inch thick! We are going to be sharing our reading experience with a class from New Hampshire. We are probably going to Skype and blog with them.

We have our "Odd and Even Street" hanging in our room now. We think it looks pretty good hanging there!

We the Rock Star Kids

We practiced Read to Self again today. Mrs. Youngblut was testing students while we did that. We also read with a partner. We practiced "checking for understanding" after our partner read a page to us.

We had P.E. and Art today. We played with frisbees in P.E. In Art, we found out we will have tiny pieces of cardboard and paint next time we have art. We will dip the cardboard in paint and make straight lines with the designs. It is called printing.

We have been talking about the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution is the law of our country. We are making a quilt using the preamble to the Constitution.

We practiced telling time with our clocks today. We practiced telling what the time was one hour ago and what time it will be one hour from now. We also practiced numbering a clockface.

Michael was the student of the day today and did the math meeting. We counted pennies during math meeting.

Aliens!

Yesterday we read the book Aliens Love Underpants. We worked on writing a descriptive paragraph. The paragraph was given to the fifth grade classes. They are going to read our description and draw what they think the alien looks like. Today we made aliens in our classroom! First we had to make a drawing of our alien and color it. Then we used construction paper to make our aliens. Tomorrow we will start writing a descriptive paragraph for our own aliens.

We had music today. We had to bounce a big red ball while the music was playing. When the music stopped, we had to throw it to the teacher and had to do a motion that everyone had to copy. Ms. Niemeier came to our class after music and gave us a huge compliment. She told Mrs. Youngblut that we were the best behaved class!!!! Yay for us!

We also did Read to Self. We did a very nice job reading for a long time while Mrs. Youngblut was testing students.

In math we talked about some, some went away stories. An example would be "I had 5 kittens. I gave 3 away." Jocelyn was the student of the day.

Read With a Partner

Sophie and Hunter

Amelia and Blaine

Allisyn and Bailey

Jocelyn and Griffin

During math meeting today, we did an ABC pattern. We practiced telling time. Konnor had to draw the hands on the clock to show 7 o'clock. The hour hand (small one) had to point to the 7, and the minute hand (big one) had to point to the 12. We also practiced counting pennies.

During Read to Self we made it to 23 minutes! We also practiced Read With a Partner.

In math we learned about "+1" and "+0" facts. We also learned about the commutative property of addition. You can switch the numbers around when you are adding - 1+3=4 so 3+1=4. The numbers you are adding are called the addends. The answer you get when you are adding is called the sum.

At the end of the day, we went to library. We checked out books. We can have 3 books checked out at one time.

Football Friday - Iowa or Iowa State????

We took a poll to see who we want to win the football game tomorrow - Iowa or Iowa State. 18 students picked Iowa to win. Mrs. Youngblut was the only one to pick Iowa State!

Today we went to music. We had a substitute teacher. His name was Mr. Miller. He got out instruments and played them for us. He played a clarinet, a trombone, a tuba, a trumpet, and a kind of harp. He made sounds with the instruments that reminded us of race cars, a cartoon character, horse races, and funeral music. We helped Mr. Miller make a song.

We made our goal for Read to Self today. We read over 21 minutes! We read with a partner and learned that we could take turns reading the book or take turns reading the pages. We also talked about EEKK!!!! That means we need to be elbow to elbow and knee to knee with our partner. We also got a card with a poem about EEKK on it.



We don't have math homework tonight because we did our fact sheet and back of our paper with a partner today. We used the pattern blocks today. It took 2 red pattern blocks to cover the yellow one. It took 3 blue pattern blocks to cover the yellow one. It took 6 green ones to cover the yellow one. It took 1 yellow one to cover the yellow one. The pattern blocks in order of size from biggest to smallest are - yellow, red, blue, and green.

Just Right Books

We learned about picking out books using author, jacket, useful, spine, title, readability, illustration, general appearance, hook, topic, blurb, opinion, old friend, and kind.

We learned about verbs and subject nouns in English.

Today in math we acted out "some, some more" stories. We also looked at two numbers and decided which one was greater.

We listened to a new song called Tony Chestnut. We learned actions to go with the song too. When we are better at the actions, we will videotape ourselves and put it on our blog.

Picking the Right Book

We read the book Goldie Socks and the Three Libearians. We learned how to pick books that were just right for us. We can use the "five finger rule" to figure out if a book is too easy, too hard, or just right.

We did Daily 5 and did Read to Self for 15 minutes! Our goal tomorrow is 17 minutes!!!

Today we had music. We played instruments. We played drums and sticks.

We got new writing notebooks. We wrote in them and shared with a classmate.

We made our class birthday graph. Three months have 3 birthdays in them. Five months have 1 birthday.

In math we practiced our doubles facts. We made a fence using the pattern blocks. Our fence had to be a pattern. We also used the pattern blocks to practice first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth.

The Day After a Loooooonnnnnnngggggg Weekend

Today we had P.E. We played Shark Tag. Three people in our class did not like playing Shark Tag. The rest of the class did like the game.

Damean was our Student of the Day today. He was in charge of the math meeting.

We decorated our poetry notebooks with scrapbook paper and Mod Podge. They looked pretty neat when we were done.

We got to go to the library and check out books for the first time. We have a new librarian this year. Her name is Mrs. Burchett.

At recess some of the boys played football. Some of the kids played house. Some played tag. Some sat in the shade of the pirate ship.

Our stamina for Read to Self is up to 13 minutes! We are doing a GREAT job! We also have started the writing part of Daily 5. We will be building our stamina for writing too.

Keep on Reading!

We made a story map for the story Ducky. We listed the characters, the settings, the problem, and the solution. We talked about Ducky's destiny. He was meant to be a bath toy.

We practiced Read to Self for Daily 5. We read for 10 1/2 minutes! We broke our old record. We talked about the reasons we read. We read to have fun, to learn new things, and to get better at reading. When we are doing Read to Self, we need to make sure we do the following things:
1. Keep our eyes on our book.
2. Pick a spot and stay there and make sure you aren't too close to others.
3. Read the whole time.
4. Read quietly.
5. Read by yourself.

Here They Are

Meet the Rock Stars of our class!