The Quiet Game App

Are your kiddos getting restless and noisier than usual? Mine were. I'm glad they have a week off. They need it as much as I do. Have you seen this app? A while ago a friend told me about the Quiet Game App. It's free and my class loves it! We used it a lot last week!

The app is super simple to use. I only have my personal ipad- we're not lucky enough to have gotten them through the school- so I set it up on that and rest my ipad on the whiteboard tray so the kids can see it. I use it all different times of the day but especially like it for promoting quiet during Daily 5.

The menu allows you to set a length of time if you want and to choose the sensitivity of the app. We use the lower sensitivity during super quiet times like Daily 5.

The kids have so much fun trying to beat the clock and stay quiet the whole 15 minutes. 

When they win it looks like this

One of the fun parts of it is that "the guy" (whoever it is that talks on the app) tries to trick the kids by asking them questions. The first time we used it the class answered the question and set off the alarm. The next couple times they whispered "don't answer, it's a trick." It was really cute!

Well, I'm off to get some planning done. I went to school today and got tons of stuff ready for December. It's such a busy month that I wanted to try to get ahead. Wish me luck! Have a great evening!

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Long Vowel Word Work

Happy Friday! Boy am I glad it's Friday. I'm ready for a week off and some time to catch up, blogstalk (which I haven't done quite a while), and visit with family. The kids in my class seemed ready for a break too. They're starting to argue like brothers and sisters! Despite that, they are a really fabulous group. They love Daily 5 and are quite disappointed when they don't get to do Read to Self. Before each reading group the kids choose what Daily 5 they're going to do and head off to that activity. Before I was even finished checking in with everyone, one of the girls already had her beanbag on the rug and was reading a book. I looked her and was a little jealous. I wanted to be lounging in a beanbag reading a book too. 

Instead, I got to reading groups. Don't get me wrong, that's not a complaint. These kids are improving so much and they're all so motivated. One of my higher reading groups is currently working on decoding long vowel words. So I gave them the first page from my Write, Read, Draw packet as their word work activity for Daily 5 yesterday. It looks like this

This wonderful group of such sweet kids went straight to work. Pretty soon one of them came to me and asked how to draw a picture of the word shake. I just said, "Think about it." It turns out that it sounded like a strawberry milkshake to her. She also drew a spikey haired Jake and a coiled up snake.

When I asked how the first picture showed "late" this student said it was a picture of a girl running down the hallway holding her backpack. I never thought I could draw very well so as long as they can tell me what they intended and I can tell what they meant, then it's usually ok with me.

What I like about these pages is that the kids have to read the words and sometimes really think about what the words mean in order to draw the pictures. The packet is my newest creation and is just like my short vowel packet (which you can download free HERE). The difference is that the long vowel packet also has word searches which use some of the words the kids write, read, and draw. 

The whole packet contains one Write, Read, Draw sheet for each long vowel and one half-page word search for each vowel. Just an FYI that 2 of the word family sheets were previously freebies on my blog. I've added the word searches and the other 3 vowel sheets and put them altogether. You can check it out more by clicking HERE.

I hope you had a wonderful week! I'm looking forward to getting back to some blogstalking tomorrow.  Have a great weekend!

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Our Cranberry Tasting

It feels wonderful to be back on my blog. It's been a long time! I really don't have a good excuse and I have missed it very much. This school year is wonderful! My class is so sweet and I count my blessings every day. Last year was so hard, but I'm fully recovered from what I termed Post Tramatic Class Disorder. And it feels good.

This post will be fairly short, I just to share this cranberry idea with those of you that may still have a few days left to teach before Thanksgiving. We're off all next week and it will nice to recharge my batteries. The kiddos in my class seem like they're ready for a break too. Anyway, we did my annual Cranberry Tasting yesterday and it was great fun as usual. I start by reading Cranberry Thanksgiving, a book I've enjoyed for as long as I can remember.

After reading it, each child gets a plate with a raw cranberry, spoonful of cranberry sauce, a few dried cranberries, and a half-slice of cranberry bread. This year each child also got a cup of cranberry juice. I have the kids try the raw cranberry first. Everyone gets a good laugh looking at the neighbors sour faces! It's really funny to see their reactions when some of them take a small bite and others just pop the whole thing in their mouths. Then I tell them that's why everything else they'll taste has sugar in it. I let them enjoy the rest of the snacks.

While they're eating, I put a post-it note on each desk so that everyone can help graph the favorite cranberry treat.

My graph is simple, as you can tell. When we're all done we talk about the graph and the data it shows. The kids talked about it as soon as they came in this morning. I heard "I really liked the cranberry bread." and "I don't want to taste (raw) cranberries again!" One student said his mom had dried cranberries at home too. It sure was fun. Do you do anything like this with your class? What is your favorite Thanksgiving tradition in your classroom?

It's been good to get back to my blog again. Tomorrow I'll share my new long vowel packet I just finished. Thanks for stopping by!

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