The 100th Day & SMOOCH!

What a cah-ra-zy time of year! We've just completed our 100th Day of School - which was a blast, thanks to the sweet Cara Carroll, and it's already Valentine's, President's Day, Chinese New Year, and Black History Month!

We had the BEST 100th Day EV-AH! when I found The First Grade Parade's fantabulous activities on Cara Carroll's website! If your 100th Day hasn't arrived yet, go there NOW to make it the greatest! We started the day with some estimation, then had our tee-shirt fashion show, and followed it with Cara's 100th Day Stations. I heard my kiddos say, several times, "This is the best 100th Day ever!" Just look at them enjoying their time:

 

I know the kids had fun making their shirts, but I feel sure I had more fun than anyone else! Yep, my owl and branch, together, are made of exactly 100 buttons! And, no, I didn't sew them on. Meet E6000 glue! It works on everything!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              SMOOCH! Valentine's Day is Saturday, and we have a teacher workday on Friday, so Thursday's the deadline at our school! It seems like, around this time of year, my kids have forgotten how to add and subtract with regrouping, so I whipped up a little practice for them. I have this little cutie for just $1 at Teachers Pay Teachers. Click on the picture to go directly to the page.

Just in time for Valentine's Day, I also shared my "famous" matter and measurement introduction with my class: I bake a cake every year, mixing the ingredients from scratch right in the classroom, and then taking the pans to our cafeteria to bake. The kids LOVE it, and I think they remember more about matter from that one activity than from weeks of studying it. We talk about each ingredient and identify each as a solid, liquid, or gas. We measure everything very accurately, and talk about how important that is in baking. We talk about mixtures and solutions, as we combine the ingredients, and we talk about physical and chemical changes in matter throughout the entire process. Best of all, after lunch, we dig in! This year, I made Thundercake, from Patricia Polacco's book of the same title. We were using it as a mentor text for describing senses in our personal narratives. No matter what book I've used, the cake lesson is always a hit. Kids from years and years ago come to see me and ask if I remember baking that cake that one time...

We sort the ingredients into solids and liquids. The gas forms
during the mixing (addition of air) and beating the eggs.

 

 

This year, kids said this was the best cake they'd ever eaten - WOW! Even with tomatoes in the recipe, the best they'd ever had? Maybe it's the first home-made cake they've ever eaten.

 

Happy Everything February!

XOXO,

Brooke