From Here to There

Is it just me or did the weekend fly by?  Let me tell you about that 5 year old’s birthday party I went to on Saturday . . . I posted that I couldn’t wait to hit the pinata or pin the tail on the donkey.  Well, lo and behold, those were the two kiddie events!!!  For real!  That pinata would NOT break.  All the dads were trying but to no avail.  They finally had to open up the bottom and just let the candy spill out.  One or two kids cried that they didn’t get enough candy but I don’t share chocolate.  Every person for themselves is what I say.

We (finally) finished up our transportation unit in Social Studies.  It takes a really long time to get through units these days when I only have three days a week to do Social Studies.  (Yes, yes, I teach Science.  In fact, we started Matter today.  Ho hum.)  My kids LOVED transportation.  Their effort was amazing!  Our standards state that first graders need to be able to compare transportation from long ago to today.  We have one cool picture in our Social Studies textbook and a couple of words on transportation.  Talk about thorough and complete.   I don’t know what I was thinking when I used supplemental materials but I did.  Call me an over achiever.  Anywho, I found some awesome books through a catalog that totally cover our standards.  Our school library actually has them but I bought mine.  (don’t tell my husband)  They are from the Heinemann “Read and Learn” series but I’m having a hard time finding the series on Amazon to show you.  🙁  Waaah.  I meant to bring one of my books home so that I could type in the ISBN number but, of course, I forgot.  So I’ll update this tomorrow.

Then I made up these worksheets to go with them (kind of like the American Symbols that I did).

We covered six vehicles, although there are eight in the series.  I just had to cut it off at some point.  I mean, really.  We would have been doing this unit FOREVER.  Click the pic to grab all eight vehicles.  If you need an assessment, you can click {HERE}.

The funniest thing (or maybe not funny – not really sure) was that when we studied spacecraft, the kids learned that chimps used to go up into space before humans.  There is a really cute photo of a chimp in a capsule getting ready to take off (I assume) and the kids went crazy for it.  So we had a quick discussion about why we would send animals up into space instead of humans.  Lots of good dialogue, such as, “not safe”, “too dangerous”, “how sad”, and outcries of “that chimp has a mommy!”, etc.  AND THEN.  One of THE NICEST boys in my class (seriously – I JUST gave him a character award!) raises his hand.

“Why didn’t they just send homeless people?”

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..crickets…………………………….chirp………………………………..chirp…………………….flatline…………………………………………….

What would you have said?  “Hmm.  Now that’s thinking outside of the box.”  ?????  Or would you have gasped and made him feel bad?   I honestly have no idea what I said.  Some kind of political-mumbo-jumbo-cover-my-butt-don’t want to make him feel bad-something or other.  At least I’m pretty sure I spoke up after the crickets died down.   

I wish I would have taken pictures of their work.  The backgrounds and details that they added to each vehicle were really great.  🙂  But I sent them home.  Daily.  No stapling into a cute book or anything because . . . well . . . I am lazy too busy teaching these kids to read. And how to become advocates for homeless people.

Here’s our bulletin board, though.  We did a Step Up to Writing paragraph on all that we learned.

Yes, I am missing two pieces of writing.  Don’t you just hate that?  They are my turtles.  They will finish eventually.  Right?  Right?

Okay, time to go watch the Beverly Hills Housewives.  Looks like a GOOD one tonight!!!!!!  🙂 🙂 🙂