Homemade Valentines

I have a very active five year old son. In order to help with his attention and hyper ness we have cut artificial dyes out of his diet. Short side of the story is if it has a color word on it we usually don't feed it to him.
Well holidays such as valentines day bring out tons of candy. Not as much as Halloween, but still an excess.
This year we made the same candy less valentines as last year for my sons's class. The idea came from Pinterest. Melted broken crayons in heart molds, make awesome multi-colored crayons.
A few tricks we have learned to make this go easier:
1. Use a utility knife and cutting mat to take the paper off. This is so much quicker.
2. Use new crayons. Buy them at back to school time. I always buy like 20 boxes to use through the year.
3. Don't bother cutting the crayons into small pieces, break them in half and put the halves in separate molds. Much easier and quicker and works just the same.
4. Use a scrap booking tape runner. I prefer my pink A&G gun. I put one strip on card and stick smooth side of crayon down.
5. Also add a do not eat note on these. I have given them to 4 and 5 year olds and find this disclaimer important. (Nothing terribly bad happens if you eat a crayon, I ate one on valentines day in kindergarten, ok maybe 4. I did throw up but am perfectly fine.)
Hope you enjoyed this post and have another useful idea for candy free valentines.

Guided Reading And CAFE

It was my goal this year to implement as much as the Daily 5 and CAFE as possible into my Writing, Core, Guided Reading Groups this year. As it turns out the only time that I have been able to do this is during my intervention time. I have a group of 12 students during this time, they are my same 12 that I have for guided reading groups. During this time I have been able to start with a CAFE mini-lesson. Sometimes there is an application activity for the lesson, depending on how many times we have worked on that skill. Then they are able to go to the Daily 4. 

First of all, I do Daily 4 not 5. I do not have an extensive listening library so I do not have a listen to reading center. We do Work on Writing on Monday. On Tuesday we do Word Work. This is the kids favorite. Wednesday is Read to self. Friday is Buddy Read. We do not have interventions on Thursday due to Spanish. 

While the kids are doing the Daily 4 I am conferring with students. I use the conferring forms from CAFE by the Sisters. I have found that setting up the initial conferences and determining goal areas was extremely difficult. Now that I have goal areas for all my students and we are both more used to the process it is going better. I do need to work on the teaching section of the conference. Usually we just review the skill they will be working on, however I do see the usefulness of also teaching during this time or modeling. 

Now guided reading groups in the morning. I have 40 minutes to work with two different groups. I have 6 students in each group. These students are a mix of both third grade classes. I have been doing more and more research on these. It seems the possibilities are endless on the way that I can set this up in my classroom. A couple things I have noticed and want to change are:

1. I would like to do the conferring section of the CAFE during guided reading groups. I could use the time in the afternoon for writing conferences. 

2. The core skill that we teach whole group when we have our own classes, needs to be the focus of my instruction with my guided reading group.

3. I still want to work on Comprehension, Fluency, Accuracy and Expand Vocabulary skills in guided reading groups along with the core skills I must focus on.

4. I have noticed that some guided reading groups read silently to themselves rather than as a group. This may be something that I try. 

There are many blogs and resources that I have found on my google quest to learn more information. However, the most helpful blog that I found was this one:

http://mandys-tips-4-teachers.blogspot.com/search/label/Guided%20Reading

I clicked on the labels for guided reading and was blown away by this site. I will be using this as a help to get this up and running in my room. I know that I will not use it as is, but I have found this the most helpful of all. 

Olweus Bully Prevention Program-Class Meetings

Our school has implemented the Olweus Bully Prevention Program. Our main reason of course is to keep our students safe and prevent them from being bullied. Our high school started this program last year and the elementary is in their first year of work with it.
One of the components of this program is class meetings with our students. These serve as a way to get our students involved, invested, talking and discussing. So far I have had two class meetings with my class.
Our first class meeting was to set up the ground rules for our class meetings. We brainstormed and made rules for our meetings. We used the rules from the book provided but also discussed each one so the students understood.
Our second class meeting involved discussing the results of the survey our students took about bullying. Each student participated in the survey and answered questions about being bullied and bullying other students. We had an awesome conversation about the fact that 9 students are being bullied and no one is doing the bullying. Because of this conversation I felt we needed to talk more about what bullying behavior is. Students made posters of what bullying behavior looks like, sounds like, acts like.
Here are some of the posters they made!

The title is supposed to be "Bullying Behavior is..."
We talked today about bullying behaviors and calling someone a bully. We talked about how calling them a bully can be mean and hurtful. However, we can talk about how they are acting like a bully and showing bullying behaviors.
This was supposed to be a 30 minute class meeting which has turned into an hour long meeting, including the poster. I still have 4 groups left to finish their posters!

Food Dyes Free

So, I have been diligently working this past week to clean my cupboards and remove all food with dyes in it. Why you may ask? I have a very hyper active child so I did some research and found that food dyes could be affecting his behavior. Now we still have many talks about behavior at home and about making the right choices. After all the talking and disciplining still did not work, we sought out extra help to ensure our child was successful.
 I talked with many friends and several had already cut dyes out of their children's diets for the same reasons, some did this 10-20 years ago and it is still working with their kids.
Here is a link to an article a friend sent me. It explains not only dyes but other things in the foods that we feed our kids.
http://healthychild.org/blog/comments/which_food_additives_make_kids_behave_badly/
So for now cupboards are being cleaned and we are getting rid of dyes.
We have done this for a little over a week. It has been 7 school days, our son has received 3 green days, 3 yellow days and 1 one red day. Before that he had only had 3 green days the whole school year and he got 3 in one week. I also want to note that the red day came after a day that he was fed dyes at school during snack time.

Here is a list of some of the food that we have gotten rid of and also next to it is the alternative that is dye free.

Gogurt  instead he gets Danino yogurts in his lunch, they are smaller and have less yogurt in them, but are dye free.
Name Brand Marshmallows believe it or not these have blue dye in them, we switched to store brand which is dye free
Mac and Cheese this is a favorite of his and mine but totally not good for us even not counting the dyes. We now serve just noodles and shredded cheese melted on top, not the same thing but he doesn't mind.
Doritos this was a hard one for him to give up, but thanks to a friends mom he discovered corn chips. Still not healthy but they are dye free and he will use them instead when we have one of his favorite meals, nachos.
Fruit Snacks you have to watch these, some have dyes and others do not. Currently we are buying Mott's medleys fruit snacks, he loves these.
Sugary Drinks like Hi-C and Koolaid he loves these kind of drinks even though they are full of sugar. Of course we limit these but I have found an alternative he can have. Capri Sun is dye free.
Candy most candy is not ok and has dyes in it. It is not good for him anyways. However he can still have chocolate and we have found that white chocolate chips work well as a reward for him. Plus side is the store had a huge sale on them so we stocked up.

Most of the things he can no longer have are not good for him anyways, so it was a good thing to get rid of them anyways. We are starting with dyes because it is extremely easy. This is not the end of our journey just the beginning.

Daily 5-update

So my goal this year was to use Daily 5. It has not happened the way I thought it would. After surviving through the first several weeks of school. I think I finally have things the way I like it, which means I can start adding in Daily 5 and Cafe.

I am using Daily 4 during my Intervention time. This is where I see my group of guided reading students for 45 minutes in the afternoon to work on skills. We use the daily 4 because on the fifth day we do comprehension and Fluency Checks.

When they arrive I do a CAFE mini lesson. On work on writing days, we do a writing extension of this lesson. This is taking 15-20 minutes right now, I've only been doing this for a week. I am hoping with time we can get it down to a 10 minute lesson. So for the other 20 minutes that we have left, (more like 10 or 15) I have been conferring with students. In the past two weeks I have still not been able to meet with all 12 students, but I have one on the calendar and he keeps asking about when he is meeting with me :) SUCCESS!

As for Daily 5 during my core instruction time with my whole class. I am working on this. We have a lot to do during core. I am trying to at least do a small mini lesson, then have more work time, so eventually I can get to conferring and small groups.

So today we did a writing lesson from voices. Then they had to finish independently after we brainstormed and did the lesson together. I was able to complete one small group lesson on introductions. I kinda did a talk a loud for writing I think. We used introductions from text and modeled our introductions after the authors. The kids thought it was great to write like authors.

It has been a great experience trying to implement this with my kiddos. By the end of the year, we may be pros at this.

Scrapbook Post- Master Crafter

Pink by Design had a Master Crafter Challenge. I decided to participate even though I am not even close to being a master crafter. This past month has not been a good one for me though. I have lost both my grandparents so this kinda got put on the back burner. And then one of the tools that came with my Master Crafter Challenge broke while using it :S It's just been one of those months.

So the word "Inspire" came on a small stamp that I wasn't able to incorporate so I used the word instead. The paper is from DCWV mat stack that came with my master crafter box. The green bling on the side also came in my master crafter box. I also had a pretty bag that I am still working on incorporating.
The canvas is melted crayon art.

Whole Brain Teaching And Conferences

So I have been MIA, but not sure anyone reads this so no biggie :)

This school year I have started doing some Whole Brain Teaching. My kiddos LOVE it. I have read some wonderful blogs of others who do this and was able to get started. Here is what we are doing so far in my room.

Rules: We have the rules posted and at this point are reviewing once a day. We are working on reciting them quickly. I will soon be introducing reciting them in fun and different voices.

Scoreboard: Smilies and Frownies. Just recently started calling them this. Also up until this point we did not have a reward. I was just haphazard about doing it at all. Starting this week we play Smilies and Frownies for each scheduled block of instruction time. The reward is quite simple: Brain Break. I make this kids earn them as they absolutely love them. It also is motivating for them. Along with scoreboard I introduced "Oh Yeah" and "The mighty groan". Smilies get an "Oh Yeah" from the class and Frownies get "The mighty groan". Keeps kids involved and alert.

Class Yes!: We have been using this since the beginning of the year. I actually started using it with students from the other third grade class as well. We switch throughout the day so I don't always have just my kiddos in my class.

Mirror: We just started this and kids are eating it up! So am I! I need to get more hand gestures though. I am using the same ones over and over.

Oral Storytelling: I know little to nothing about this. Only the "errrr" sound :)

Also we have student involved conferences next week. We have been busy writing goals. This weekend will involved putting portfolios together and gathering documentation that will match my students goals. I also need to get all the required documentation ready for conferences. 20 minutes will go really fast and the students do most of the talking :)