overall pocket door design

I love to repurpose denim.  I cut the front pocket out of my husband's old overalls.  I cut the back to fit the pocket.  Then I glued the sides and bottom together with E6000.  I love burlap with denim, so I went for the burlap sunflowers.  You can barely see the gardening tools behind the seed packet and gloves, but they are there!   I hung it on an antique wooden hanger.   I am ready for spring now!

Easter Egg centerpiece

I have a small kitchen table and wanted a centerpiece.  I went to Dollar General and found a large plastic Easter egg that contained smaller Easter eggs.  I covered it with old hymnal pages from a1948 song book.   I found an old colander, perfect for a nest.  The "grass" is shredded newspaper.

tiered tray

I have been looking at all the tiered trays and wanting one.  I had some old stove top burner covers laying around in the garage, so I though I could use those.  They come in two sizes so I put the smaller one on top.   Then I look around for a post.  I pick up empty beer bottles along the road ( yes I really do!) and a small beer bottle looked to be about the right size.  I used E6000 to glue the parts together, then spray painted them black.  All I was out was the amount of paint I used!  You can buy burner covers at the dollar store.

Christmas Wreath

It is beginning to look like Christmas.  Thank you Sammie Jo for showing me how to do this.

kitchen rake

I went to my hometown of Eden, Texas this weekend.  I leisurely stopped at every antique shop and garage sale that I saw until I ran out of money!  I have seen a rake head like this used for various things.  I love this to just display vintage kitchen things!  Looks great in my kitchen.

Plastic jack-o-lantern creations

My great painting  friends in Amarillo inspired me to decoupage and decorate these plastic Halloween buckets ($1 at Walmart)!  The scarecrow is covered in brown paper bags and patches of burlap,  The Chef is covered in a 1948 cookbook.  The owl is a worldly owl, covered in maps.  The nose and mouth of the chef and the circles around the owl's eyes were molded with KwikWood.  That stuff always amazes me!  Just a little glue and a little imagination and these creations were created.  I hope these inspire you to create your own!

old window pane transformed

Look at what I got with my Christmas money!!!  I took my daughter antique shopping for her birthday.  She didn't find anything, but I did.  This was just a plain window pane.  I went through my hardware stash and found these antique key plates and added them to the pane.  I backed the window with burlap and hung a iron hook at the bottom.  My favorite part was adding my 6 grandchildren, one for each pane.  It greets my visitors as they enter my front door.

This is my Christmas centerpiece.  I love to collect enamelware.  This tray is old enamelware.  Next I added deer horns from sheds from our ranch.  I have had the pinecones for YEARS.  I added berries from Michaels.  The candles were made with jars wrapped in jute for the bottoms and a small, clear glass plate that I glued Christmas tissue paper to the back of.  I had all of it at home except the candles that I bought at Dollar Tree and wrapped with jute..

Church song candle holder/vase

Music is from an old song book. I added the fish that I painted black and attached with jute.

Christmas bottles for candle holder or vase

Simple wine or beer bottles made into Christmas gifts.  Glue, jute, yarn, Christmas songs, paint, ornaments, and stencils are all you need.

magnets

Buy clear jewels at Dollar Tree.  Glue small pictures on back (this was scrapbook paper).  Stick on magnets.  Great gift.

Johnny Appleseed

If you have ever visited my room, you know that I am "The Apple Teacher".  September 26th is Johnny Appleseed's birthday, so we had a week of celebration!  So many of our activities fit right in with our units of study in each subject area.  Following is just some of what we did.  I forgot my phone at home one day and didn't get pictures that day.

We had real apples to cut into and explore the parts of the apple.  Great new vocabulary was introduced to the students, like flesh and core.



 We are going to watch decomposition of an apple.  Here is what the apple looked like one day after we explored the parts of the apple.

 In science, we used a balance and cubes to measure how much mass an apple has.

 



 Our writing for this week was about apples.  Before we do writing, we make a circle map (not shown here), a tree map (the picture below), then I demonstrate (picture above) exactly how to use those two resources to write a story.

 Each week, we read a big book together as a group each day to help students learn how to read.   Of course, our story had to be about apples!

 If you notice in my newsletter, a poem is read every day.  You can see the work we did on rhyming words, spelling words, and beginning and ending blends.

 For an added bonus for science, we predicted if an apple would sink or float in water.  Then, we conducted our experiment.  The apple floated!  Remember apple bobbing games?

 

 

We used a string and cubes to see how many cubes around the apple measured.  We stacked cubes to see how tall the apple was.  Lots of science and math mixed together in these activities.  The picture above is a recording of information (data) from their findings.



Live Love Laugh

This was made for a very special friend.  Here's cheers to you.

David Goes to School

My students are wild about David Books.  For the beginning of school, David Goes to School,  is a favorite.   The book is also a good way to reinforce school rules.  The picture shows what our bulletin board looks like.

numbers 1-30

We have really been busy in first grade for the first two weeks of school.  Lots of learning and practicing have been taking place.  In math, we are learning numbers 1-30 and are learning what numbers are greater than>  less than< or equal to=.  Each student cut out his/her own set of numbers and we are practicing putting them in order every day.  Try practicing with your child by picking out 2 random numbers between 1 and 30 and discussing which one is greater and which one is less.  We are also learning the symbols > (greater than)  and < (less than) and  = (equal to).
26 > 14
7 < 19
20 = 20

Social Contract

I hope you can read this chart of what your children came up with for our Social Contract.  They are amazing!  We ask four questions and this is how students respond.
How do you think I want to be treated?
How do you want to be treated by teachers?
How do you want to be treated by friends?
How do we handle problems?
We all agree and sign our contract.

Daily Five

Here is a picture of how we are rotating our Daily Five during guided reading time.  There are five activities that students are responsible for while I am working with small groups of children during guided reading.  The five activities are:  read to self, read with a friend, writing, word work, and listening to a story.

In science, we are studying weather.  Four things that we observe each day are:  (1) cloud cover,     (2) temperature, (3) wind, and (4) precipitation.  We have a science journal that we will keep all year long for most of our science observations.  The pictures show 2 of those pages for weather.

Interactive writing

To practice spelling words, and to get better at composing and writing sentences, the students and I make up and work together on writing sentences using spelling words.  While one student writes the sentence on the chart, the other students are writing the sentence down on white boards using dry erase markers.

Word Families

You will notice in the newsletter and on the spelling test that there are word families we are working on.  For the first part of first grade we work on word families like:   at, an, ap, ack, etc.  Next week we will do word families that begin with "i".  When we work on them in school, I have magnetic letters placed on the white board and we make words first with the magnetic letters.  Then students record them onto a sheet so that we can review them for the upcoming weeks.  The picture shows the sheet of recorded "ap" words.