Meet Mrs. Brim!

 

Mrs. Brim is someone I LOVE to teach with because she has so much energy and brings such joy into learning.  The pirate crew is already excited about the fun things she will come to do with them every other Wednesday for our gifted resource time.  

Fruit Salad... Yummy! Yummy!

Our fruit salad lesson is one of my favorites.  We talk about the bowl being like our classroom and we add fruit and talk about what it brings to our group.  Some fruit is like the pirates who follow the rules and other fruit is like the friendly pirates.  We add into the bowl fruit that represents the kind pirates and another fruit for the ones who share well.  We add in marshmallows for the pirates who are bucket fillers and sweet to others.   After ALL the fruit was added I tried to add a "bad banana" and you can tell by their expressions they didn't want it added to our bowl. 

 The "bad banana" represents trouble that can come into our classroom like calling people names or not sharing.  They decided NONE of them would be a "bad banana" this year and so the banana was thrown out and the eating of all the yummy fruit began!

Thank you for ALL the fruit you sent into class!  We loved it... yum!

Happy Birthday!

Another pirate's day to celebrate!

Milk Experiment!

This is such a fun experiment!  The crew is learning about making predictions and recording their data in their Science Journal!

  

The fun part came when they added the blue soap with the Qtip!

They watched a video with ideas for this experiment and got to try it again!

In the end... well it got messy, but there was a lot of learning going on with this experiment!

Week Two- Look at some of what we DO!

We start every morning with a Sea Chanty!  The crew is already leading this!!

Every day a new pirate is chosen to share their "All about Me" bag.  We look at their name and look for ways it's similar and different from other friend's names.  (This makes syllables, consonants, and vowels actually FUN to learn about!)  Then we interview them by asking questions which forms a "story" about them.  The crew then writes a sentence about their new pirate friend and draws a picture based off what we learned.  It is a great way to learn about each other and create strong classroom community!

                                  

                                   

                                 

                                 

Magic Playdough fun!  We got magical playdough balls with a poem and if a color appeared we were SURE to have a great school year!  We ALL got a color to appear!! 

Orange you glad you're back in school day?  Each pirate got to write about what they liked about our school year so far and got a yummy orange snack to eat as well.

                                           

                                           

WHEEL of Choice- We learned several strategies this week on what to do if someone is being "difficult" or "mean" and if your pirate told you I was singing opera they were correct.  Now, it wasn't very good opera, but it got the point across and they were belly laughing!  Next week we will practice role playing what to do in difficult situations.  This not only helps us make good choices, it also helps create a family like environment on board our ship!  We  have to learn how to talk respectfully and also how to disagree and work it out!

While we are learning to work independently pirates take turns modeling good behaviors!  This is a pirate showing us what "Work on Writing" independently looks like!

Here is one of my favorite times of the day- "Read to Self" when every one is sitting in a special spot they picked out, reading books they picked out as well!  I want these pirates to not only grow as readers this year.... I want them to LOVE reading!

We've been sailing 8 days so that means we have 172 more days of learning and growing together!

Happy Birthday Pirate!

It's another August Birthday!  Yay!

Cardinal cash!!

Mrs. Hallett our guidance counselor came by to talk to the crew about hang good character and all the fun rewards they can earn this year at the cardinal store!!

                              

Writer's Workshop

This week we got to share our stories we started writing about things we like!  During this time we focus on being good listeners as friends share, but it is also great for practicing using our "Captain Commands Voice" when we speak to a group!

We are also learning to use the white board during Writer's Workshop!

STEM fun!

We completed our first STEM activity.  STEM stands for Science, technology, engineering, and math!   The challenge begins with a problem. The pirates can then tackle solving them any way they choose within the guidelines and supplies given.  We started off with an "easy" challenge, but when I first gave it I could tell their minds were at work and they were a bit hesitant.  They had to create a name tag using three colors and include a picture that represented themselves.  They also had to make the name tag stay on their body without holding it with their hands.  Once they realized they could look around, collaborate, and share ideas the challenge turned from questionable to FUN!  

Sharing their name tag was a great way to practice both listening and speaking skills.